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What happened: The Ada Jobs Foundation hosted staff from the Center on Rural Innovation (CORI) to kick-off a 3-year engagement to increase our rural technology workforce. Shaniqua Corley-Moore, Head of Tech Talent Development with CORI, introduced the program and facilitated an ideation session to learn about the assets and challenges for Ada’s tech talent and employers.
Why it matters: The program has a particular focus on working with local talent and employers, while increasing the participation of people generally marginalized in tech jobs. Through this process, we hope to increase the number of people being hired in local tech jobs in Ada in the near future. We see this as an opportunity to carry out work in our Center of Workforce Excellence strategy for Technology as one of our targeted career pathways (the other three include Manufacturing, Healthcare, and STEM). We hope to learn from this process how to support other workforce development initiatives in the future.
What’s next: The Ada Jobs Foundation will lead work to identify partners and connections with local employers and education institutions over the coming months. In 2024, we hope to focus work on creating a community-led strategy for building a stronger tech talent pipeline. By 2025, we hope to begin implementing these strategies through new programs, such as apprenticeships, employer-drafted curriculum, and wrap-around support for those entering this career pathway.
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