Hack Club, a nonprofit that runs the world's largest network of teenagers building, coding, and shipping real technical projects, today announced that it has appointed Ruth Cotter, SVP and Chief Administrative Officer at AMD, to its Board of Directors. Cotter brings more than 20 years of experience at AMD to the role, having helped build AMD into one of the leading microchip makers in the world.
"In her more than two decades with AMD, Ruth has worked across AMD and overseen challenges and enormous growth. We're honored she's bringing her expertise, time and passion to support young people," said Christina Asquith, co-founder of Hack Club.
Ruth Cotter
Hack Club also announces the appointment of Sarah Boston Andriano (top) as its first-ever Vice President of Development. Andriano brings nearly two decades of advancement leadership experience to the nonprofit at a pivotal growth moment. This hire reflects Hack Club's evolution from a small, cofounder-led startup into a scaled institution, one that has engaged more than 100,000 students and is now building the capacity to become a vital educational infrastructure across the United States.
"Sarah is the right person at exactly the right moment," said Asquith. "We've built something real: a global community of teenagers who are shipping code, building hardware, and becoming the kind of people who will lead in this generation. What we need now is a visionary philanthropy leader who can translate that to the donors and partners who want to fuel it. Sarah has done this work at a transformational scale, and she gets the mission."
Andriano joins Hack Club after serving as Vice President for Advancement and Community Engagement at Champlain College, where she served as the institution's chief advancement officer and led fundraising efforts that generated more than $70 million in philanthropic support. She launched and helped lead the largest fundraising campaign in Champlain's history, built strategic partnerships with industry leaders, and guided the advancement operation through a period of significant institutional change in higher education.
"Hack Club is doing something I haven't seen anywhere else in the youth development or education space," said Andriano. "These aren't passive learners, they're builders. Teenagers are running their own clubs, organizing their own hackathons, and shipping real projects. And the organization operates with a level of financial transparency that is rare. This is exactly the kind of mission-driven work I've spent my career supporting, and I'm honored to help grow the philanthropic infrastructure that makes it possible."
Andriano holds a Master of Education from Boston University and a Bachelor of Arts from Union College. She lives in Charlotte, Vermont, with her family, making her hire part of a deliberate organizational move to strengthen Hack Club's identity and connection to Vermont, where the organization moved in 2020 with only three team members.
A Growth Moment Across the Organization
This year, the nonprofit hired 40 teenagers into yearlong Gap Year positions through its AI Education Lab, a cohort of young builders working full-time to develop AI education infrastructure for youth across the country. The Burlington office opening reflects the organization's growing staff and its commitment to building an operational home that complements its global, distributed community.
Hack Club’s leadership also recently met with NASA administrator Jared Isaacman, and is partnered with NASA to host a national Stardance Challenge in partnership with NASA, a national program running June 1 through September 30, 2026, that invites students ages 13 to 18 to build anything from code and apps to electronics, circuit boards, and simulations using real NASA datasets and mission materials. A parallel partnership with the Challenger Center adds a first-ever space category to Hack Club's programming, with Moon and Mars tracks aligned to NASA's Artemis program.
"The NASA partnership, the Gap Year fellows, the Burlington office, Ruth coming on board, and Sarah's hire are all part of the same story," said Asquith, who first joined Hack Club in 2018 as a board member before becoming co-founder. "We've spent years proving the model. Now we're building the organization that can take it to the scale it deserves and that means investing in the leadership and infrastructure to sustain it."
About Hack Club
Hack Club is a nonprofit that runs the world's largest network of high school coding clubs and programs, where teenagers learn real technical skills by building and shipping projects they care about, entirely free. Started in 2014, founder Zach Latta and co-founder Christina Asquith have grown Hack Club to more than 1,000 clubs globally, hackathons serving 25,000 teens annually, and more than 100,000 students building engineering projects overall. The organization is backed by founders and technologists including Tom Preston-Werner, Elon Musk, Michael Dell, Dr. Lisa Su, Gwynne Shotwell and Jack Dorsey and Quinn Slack. Hack Club's fiscal sponsorship platform, HCB, provides banking infrastructure to thousands of teen-run clubs, hackathons, and robotics teams across the country. For more information, visit hackclub.com.
Burlington, VT — July 9, 2026 — Hack Club
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