Bridging Skills & Opportunity Gaps In Tech
Expand opportunity to all in the changing economy by connecting people of color with the resources, training, mentorship, education, and career development needed to find jobs in the technology economy.
“HUMANITY’S GREATEST ADVANCES ARE NOT IN ITS DISCOVERIES, BUT IN HOW THOSE DISCOVERIES ARE APPLIED TO REDUCE INEQUITY”
African-Americans and Hispanics make up only 5% and 7% of the technology workforce respectively. This reality is unacceptable as technology continues to change the way we work and live and the fact that all industries will be driven or enabled by technology. Underrepresentation means another generation gets farther behind the curve creating higher income inequity.
How Generationalshift Works
Learn
Skills development that meets the needs of employers struggling to find competent, highly skilled and well-trained IT employees..
We design and offer learning experiences that help students attain technical knowledge ordinarily gained from years of experience.
The immersive training program takes a career pathway approach to education by combining skills development with professional development skills required to excel at their tech career.
Practical Experience
Students work on projects source from black-owned startups and businesses that are looking to leverage technology to deliver a true competitive advantage.
Workforce Readiness
Workforce readiness instruction incorporates teamwork, collaboration, written and oral communication, time management, critical thinking and problem solving.
Launch
One of the barriers to launching a career in tech is obtaining the necessary experience once students obtain the skill to do the job. We leverage creative ways to help graduating students launch their tech career including an apprenticeship program. Apprenticeship, a time-tested approach to training that help graduating students obtain experience in their chosen tech career path,
Provide opportunities for students to use their technical skills and gain workplace experience to prove their abilities to employers and build their professional networks.
Support services such as job search readiness, resume writing etc.
Grow
We take our graduates’ success personally and provide a support network with continued training and support services to ensure upward mobility in their chosen career path.
A support network of professions to serve as mentors, pipeline to employers, feedback loop for continuous improvement of the program.
Training Programs
Amazon AWS Cloud System Administrator
The Amazon AWS Cloud System Administrator program is designed to provide students the core skillsets required to deploy, manage, and operate scalable, highly available, and fault tolerant systems on AWS.
Infrastructure as code is a key focus of the curriculum to equip students with the skillset to create automatable and repeatable deployments of applications, networks, and systems on the AWS platform. Additionally obtain the skills required to identify appropriate use of AWS operational best practices, estimate AWS costs and identify operational cost control mechanisms.
Salesforce Administrator
The Salesforce Administrator training program is designed to provide students a career path on the Salesforce platform. Students learn the fundamentals of the platform, how to become indispensable to the business as a Salesforce Administrator and the technical skills necessary to succeed as a Certified Salesforce Administrator utilizing a curriculum that delivers the real-world skills that employers need.
Students are equipped with the skills to automate complex business processes, create reports and dashboards, and train users on Salesforce.
Tech Career Prep
Immersive Summer Program aimed at equipping black undergraduate or graduate students with the technical training, network, resources and community they need to launch, sustain and excel in their tech careers.
Tech For Good Project - Developing Technology Solutions for Social Good
Real-world experience on what it takes to collaboratively develop a product from scratch and the professional development skills required to excel at their tech career.
Opportunities
Technological Economy
The continuous integration of technology into all facets of our private, professional, and public life is changing the way companies compete, create value, and engage with their business partners and customers. Addressing the rapidly evolving business challenges means companies need to be able to move quickly and innovate fast which often translates into the new technologies and platforms.
The rate of innovation means that 5, 10, 20 years from now our digital life will not look the same.
Tech Talent Shortage
Indeed Survey: 83% Of Hiring Managers Say Tech Talent Shortage Hurts Business.
Today there are over half a million unfilled jobs in information technology across all sectors of the economy. These IT jobs make up ~12% of the approximately 5 million job openings making IT the largest occupational category for open jobs right now.
And they’re not high tech industry, many are in industries we don’t think of as part of the technology sector – in health care, retail, manufacturing, financial services, energy, transportation, or in local government.
Non traditional Training Program
Employer demand for IT skills is everywhere-- and it is growing. Those ready to hire from both nontraditional and traditional training programs are reviewing and upgrading their hiring practices to integrate non-traditional hiring. Employers are also working to share robust data on where they have greatest needs and what skills they are seeking to help make sure that training leads to jobs.
Shifting technological landscapes means professionals with years of experience will be require the ability to adapt and the intrinsic motivation to continually learn.