Influential Woman · Education / Nonprofit / STEM Workforce Development

Ruthe Farmer

Founder & CEO, Last Mile Education Fund

Lafayette, CO

6Awards received

Her Story

About Ruthe

I've been working in this field for 25 years, and my journey has been all about opening doors for people who deserve them. I started out in marketing and advertising, but throughout that entire time, I was always doing pro bono work for nonprofits. That passion led me to transition into nonprofit work when I joined the Girl Scouts in 2001. Since then, I've been steadily working on inclusion of women and underrepresented groups in technology, engineering, and broadly STEM fields. My path took me from the Girl Scouts to the National Center for Women in IT, then to the Obama White House, where I was recognized as a White House Champion of Change. I then launched a national organization called CS4ALL, which carried on President Obama's call to action for computer science for all students. In 2019, I launched the Last Mile Education Fund to close the loop on the pipeline. I'd been working a lot on getting students into the pipeline, but I figured out students were actually falling out at the end for really trivial financial reasons. We're losing nearly 14,000 students in tech and engineering every year because of a less than $3,000 financial gap. My goal is really to just change the way people think about who has ability and potential. Our entire system is like, show me all the amazing things you've already done, and then I'm going to reward you with more support, versus going, what could you do if you had the same level of support as everybody else? As of this week, I have funded 14,142 individual students, and they're graduating at 80%, which is double the rate of low-income students nationally. We've distributed more than $18 million to students, and we can do that within 3 or 4 days if there's a crisis.

Her Interview

Ten minutes with Ruthe

01What are the biggest challenges or opportunities in your field right now?

The biggest challenge I see is that our system of higher education was designed as a finishing school for the children of the rich, with the assumption woven into the fabric that if you're there, you have a safety net. But now over 70% of students in the U.S. rely on financial aid to go to college, and a Pell Grant used to cover 50% of the cost of state college but now covers less than 30%. We're losing 60% of lower-income students who aren't graduating, and it's not rocket science - rich kids graduate, poor kids don't. The answer is money. Everything in college is focused on recruitment, not on graduation. We need to fix the fact that college is the largest purchase in your young life where you do not know the price. The opportunity is that we can solve this for around $2,500 a person. We need to get the employers at scale to be investing and seeing this as a powerful workforce development investment. Why are we focused on getting kids into college when we could just make sure that the 60% of lower-income students that aren't graduating actually graduate? That would solve the problem. We need to get the investment sector, the philanthropy sector, and the corporate CSR sector to see this model and its value.

02What values are most important to you in your work and personal life?

My goal is really to just change the way people think about who has ability and potential. Our entire system is like, show me all the amazing things you've already done, and then I'm going to reward you with more support, versus going, what could you do if you had the same level of support as everybody else? I'm really worried about being thoughtful with resources - if I gave $1,200 to a student, it could change their lives forever. This is the talent we have as a country, and we need to look at the system and make changes. We need to get back to investing in the talent of our young people. That is how we move forward in the world. We're asking students to climb up out of a hole instead of starting them on a level playing field. My premise is, let's keep doing all the STEM inspiration and all the things that we're doing to push talent in, but we need to fix the fact that everything in college is focused on recruitment, not on graduation.

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