She was the co-founder of the Ada Initiative,[2] a non-profit organization that sought to increase women's participation in the free-culture movement, open-source technology, and open source culture.

[1] In 2012, Aurora, and Ada Initiative co-founder Mary Gardiner were named two of the most influential people in computer security by SC Magazine.

[3] Already an activist for women in open source, she joined Mary Gardiner and members of the Geek Feminism blog to develop anti-harassment policies for conferences[8][9] after Noirin Shirley was sexually assaulted at ApacheCon 2010.

[13] In 2013, Aurora provided a comment to The Verge about the Electronic Frontier Foundation's involvement in the legal defense of Andrew Auernheimer, who was in prison for hacking and had previously harassed Kathy Sierra.

[16][17] Aurora condemned the threats sent to the woman and stated that Anonymous, by using large numbers of computers, was "distorting social pressure".

"[18] Two years later, Aurora praised the gender ratio at PyCon and called Guido van Rossum and the Python community "the biggest success story for women in open source."