About
AI adoption for everyone else.
Standard on-ramps for learning AI aren't working for most people, and especially not for women.
We help women and non-technical professionals gain confidence and agency in an AI-enabled future. Through hands-on workshops, advisory, and policy advocacy, we're building AI on-ramps that prioritize community, curiosity, experimentation, and mutual support.
Curiosity is your superpower. AI shouldn't be something you're left alone to "figure out." We create hands-on, peer-based learning experiences where people move from overwhelmed to empowered.
Credentials
First Prompt is built on over twenty years of work across nonprofit, finance, and government roles, including Oxfam, the Federal Reserve Bank of New York, and the U.S. International Development Finance Corporation, plus a fellowship at Harvard Kennedy School. Founder Mara Bolis started First Prompt after watching capable women hesitate at the edge of AI, not for lack of ability, but for lack of an on-ramp built with them in mind.
Trusted partners: AwakenHub, Imagine Her, Mountaintop International, Oxfam Canada.
- Fellow at the Berkman Klein Center for Internet & Society at Harvard
- Published in Stanford Social Innovation Review: "The AI Gender Gap Paradox"
- Profiled in Fortune, March 2026: "Women are avoiding the very technology that threatens them most, as expert warns of a 'two-tiered AI economy' approaching"
- Contributed to an OECD expert focus group on the AI adoption gap between women and men; panelist, OECD webinar, June 2026
- Featured, BBC Radio 4, The World Tonight, May 2026 (via the Berkman Klein Center)
Fierce Ambivalence
Mara's signature framework for approaching generative AI, neither hype nor fear:
"The response to dizzying hype should not be rejection; it should be fierce ambivalence. That means passionately holding two seemingly contradictory truths at once: We should use generative AI to empower ourselves and others, and we should demand exacting standards of transparency, fairness, and safety from those building and governing these tools."
Speaking
Mara speaks on Fierce Ambivalence and the AI gender gap for conferences, corporate audiences, and industry events. Notable speaking engagements include Reuters Momentum AI in New York City, a Main Stage panel at the APA 2026 Convention in Washington DC, and a keynote address for Philadelphia Insurance Companies.
In her own words
A few words on why a different onboarding approach is necessary, plus short takes on the ideas behind First Prompt.
From a First Prompt masterclass: why women's caution about AI is a leadership capability, not a deficiency, and why we can't be in the game if we aren't using the tools.
Men and women feel very differently about AI, and that gap has consequences.
AI suggests entrepreneurship to boys and image-building to girls. The bias is measurable.
From the keynote stage: women shaping AI together, as leaders and visionaries, not alone.