Ada has been working for the University of Kansas (KU) since 2002, becoming tenured in 2008 and and moving into her dream job at KU in 2009, leading the scholarly communications program. In 2013, she became head of the (newly named) David Shulenburger Office of Scholarly Communication & Copyright.

She publishes and presents on scholarly communication and open access and advocates for open access on the national level. Ada has been a presenter for the ACRL Scholarly Communication Roadshow and currently serves on the ARL's Scholarly Publishing and Academic Resources Coalition (SPARC) Steering Committee.