CITF Tech Ambassadors Program

Racial and gender barriers in technology education are preventing promising youth of color from pursuing technology careers, leading to diminished opportunities for students and their communities and decreased competitiveness for the companies that would hire them. 

The Creating IT Futures (CITF) Tech Ambassadors program, part of CITF’s Pipeline2Parity initiative, is designed to change that by igniting a love for technology in girls and youth of color through free programming, workshops and experiences that inspire curiosity, impart confidence, and build community as a foundation for technology leadership and careers. 

Having established proof of concept in Chicago in 2019-2020 in collaboration with Best Buy and the Little Black Pearl Academy, CITF will now expand the Tech Ambassadors program city-wide, serving 250 girls and youth in collaboration with partners across Chicago, as a model for expansion of the program to girls and youth of color across the country over the next five years.

Creating an inclusive technology future for our youth – inspiring youth to embrace technology and become innovation economy leaders – is among the greatest challenges and opportunities of our time. This problem is particularly acute in communities of color. As a result of the racial and gender barriers youth of color face in pursuing technology education, and the fact that there are too few role models in the IT industry to inspire them, promising students’ technology careers often stop before they begin. 

Youth already have tech in their hands every day (smart phones, video games, etc.). The challenge is to make the connection between the technology youth love and the opportunity for fulfilling jobs and careers. Further, girls and youth of color have different life experiences that need to be reflected in the way they connect with their futures. 

Youth want to learn from people they can relate to, who share their backgrounds and life experiences. We need to meet them where they are and provide them with knowledge, understanding and opportunities to break through barriers and achieve tech leadership. Further, we need to provide parents with the information and tools they need to support their childrens’ technology futures.

through free programming and experiences that inspire curiosity, impart confidence, and build community as the foundation for the application of technology throughout a child’s career and life. Over the next five years, as part of CITF’s Pipeline2Parity initiative, CITF will expand its pilot program in Chicago, IL to serve as a proof point for a national program focusing on girls and youth of color across the country. Working with partner schools and nonprofits, we will establish programming in five Chicago locations to provide learning and connection opportunities including technical and soft-skills workshops, visits to tech companies and meetings with tech professionals. We will also develop toolkits for youth and parents that provide critical information for establishing and supporting futures in technology. We expect the program to  serve 250 youth and parents over the next year, with a longer-term goal of serving 1,250 youth per year across the country by the end of 2025. The result will be an ever-increasing pipeline of tech leadership of color that will begin to erase the racial and gender disparities in technology.

In the coming year, our solution will primarily serve youth from low-income communities and communities of color in the Chicago area. Chicago youth who experience disproportionate economic, educational, and poverty-related challenges. For example, compared to their white counterparts, African Americans youth in Chicago are more than four times as likely to be on food stamps, more than twice as likely not to graduate high school or attend college; and more than twice as likely to be outside the workforce upon completion of school. (https://statisticalatlas.com/place/Illinois/Chicago/Overview).

The Tech Ambassadors program will provide programming and interventions at multiple points of potential engagement for youth to build their interest in technology and spark their passion for pursuing a technology future, putting them on the path to well-paying careers in jobs of the future and leadership in the technology field. As the program expands to other cities and nationwide, the solution will serve youth both in-person (conditions permitting) and through online program delivery.

This solution increases access to high-quality, affordable learning, skill-building, and training opportunities for girls and youth of color who will soon be entering the workforce, building a love for technology that can inspire lifelong careers that benefit youth, their families and communities, and the broader technology economy.

There are seven CITF staff involved in our solution team.

Dezyre Stewart, Youth Resource Specialist

Eric Larson, Senior Director of IT Futures Labs

Charles Eaton, CEO

Amy Cliett, Executive Director, TechGirlz

Sara Nieman, Chicago Outreach Coordinator, TechGirlz

Alicia Park, National Outreach Manager, TechGirlz 

Sarah Marie Fields, Outreach Coordinator, TechGirlz  

All are full-time employees.

A core part of CITF’s mission is creating opportunities for women and people of color in tech. Youth are more likely to learn and be inspired in technology by people they view as role models and mentors. To do so requires cultural competence. CITF will recruit for this program in the underserved communities in Chicago where we work. An example of this is our work in 2019-2020 with the Little Black Pearl Art and Design Academy that serves urban youth in Chicago, our first pilot of the Tech Ambassadors program. When hiring our program coordinator, we prioritized hiring someone with strong cultural competency who can relate to the students we serve. 

CITF has a multi-racial Board and program leadership, and more than 80% of the leadership of the organization is female. We believe this is the only way we can be effective in this work and true to our mission.

CITF’s Tech Ambassadors program takes a human-centered approach to technology knowledge and learning. Because CITF’s work and mission are broadly focused on interventions that will encourage technology leadership at every level – from youth to workforce transitions to retooling for the technology jobs of the future – our program is holistic, taking a long view of technology opportunities and how programming that sparks young people’s creativity can inspire technology careers and leadership. As opposed to other STEM education programs that often focus on coding and gadgetry, the Tech Ambassadors program builds curiosity and leadership as necessary first steps in creating opportunity for youth who may never have considered technology as a possible career path. 

Further, because parents are twice as important as any other adult in guiding youth towards tech careers (per a recent CompTIA survey), the Tech Ambassadors program specifically focuses on providing participating youth’s parents with the skills they need to support their children in the program, dispel myths around technology opportunities (e.g. that students need to be good in math/science to have a future in tech) and encourage their children’s technology futures.

In addition, CITF’s role as the nonprofit arm of CompTIA, the trade association for the IT industry, provides us with real time information about the IT labor markets and relationships that we’ve built with prominent technology companies who provide input about the future of technology and participate in Tech Ambassadors programming.

One key technology in the Tech Ambassadors program is CITF’s TechShopz programming, developed by our subsidiary TechGirlz. Since 2009, TechGirlz has been developing leading edge tech education curricula for girls ages 11-14. Because of high demand for these workshops, TechGirlz developed a model to open source curricula, documents, and procedures, calling these free materials TechShopz in a Box™. Today, the TechGirlz open source library offers over 60 workshops on a wide range of topics from designing mobile apps, infographics and Arduino programming to robotics, building web sites and animation. Each was created using a rigorous methodology of research, curricula development, expert review, and extensive testing and evaluation before its addition to our library (http://www.techgirlz.org/topics/). In addition, to meet the demands and restrictions of the COVID-19 crisis and the impact of school closures on our target audience of middle school girls in Chicago and across the country, TechGirlz has incorporated robust online delivery of programming including volunteer engagement that will be used as part of the Tech Ambassadors program.

The program is also building a suite of tools for parents of the youth participating in the program, including materials from the award winning book “How to Launch Your Teen’s Career in Technology: A Parent’s Guide to the T in STEM Education“ by CITF’s CEO Charles Eaton.

In our initial pilot of the Tech Ambassadors program with students at Little Black Pearl (in collaboration with Best Buy), we saw strong levels of engagement and technology growth. Some participants achieved entry-level certifications which will facilitate employment following graduation from high school. All gained a stronger resume for themselves. Our key KPI’s for this program are Increased engagement in technology, interest in technology futures, excitement about taking the next step in technology.  

In addition, TechGirlz workshops have a long record of success in their primary KPIs – “did you change your mind about a career in tech” and “would you bring a friend to a TechShop.” Historically, 80% of participants have responded positively to this question. In the past year, since the start of the pandemic and the transition of TechGirlz programming to online delivery, demand for workshops has increased 60%, and 65% of workshops were oversubscribed, indicating that this approach is working.

The Tech Ambassadors program pushes the envelope for redefining what girls and youth of color can – and should – be learning about technology. Rather than delivering classroom instruction, our programming connects students with fun, interactive and inspirational technology experiences that can lead to lifetime technology careers. In so doing, we create an accessible starting point for youth to engage with technology, take control of their technological futures, and set out on a path to well-paying technology careers and futures, with benefits to their families and communities. This pipeline of young technology leadership will transform the diversity and gender equality of the technology industry.

The Technology Ambassadors program will serve 250 students/parents in the coming year. Through technology experiences, learning and tools, youth will be presented with technology opportunities, and their parents will be provided with information and tools on how to support their child’s interest in technology. This first year pilot in Chicago will serve as a model for multi-city/national expansion of the program to the five cities where CITF is established, and a national online program that can break down geographical barriers for youth outside of population centers. Over the next five years, CITF will grow the program to reach 1,250+ youth/parents per year. 

It is important to note that the way we implement the expansion of the program will depend significantly on the degree to which COVID-related restrictions require instruction to be virtual vs. in-person. If in-person programming is possible, we envision a hybrid program, with in-person programming in CITF’s established training locations supplemented by national virtual programming for those outside these population centers. In the alternative, CITF will present programming through our virtual instructor-led online program delivery system. CITF’s national footprint and technology infrastructure give us the capacity to make either path successful.

The uncertainty around the progression of the COVID-19 pandemic has presented challenges to the Tech Ambassadors program as we plan our growth and expansion. With conflicting signals from a third wave underway and new restrictions imposed for Chicago just last week even as vaccine development is promising and the potential for lifting restrictions seems possible, it has been challenging to build flexibility into the program to meet the needs of youth regardless of the level of restriction.

Further, we are continually confronting long-term stereotypes of STEM fields and tech entrepreneurship being an exclusive club dominated by white men. We are also confronting misconceptions around technology careers – that tech jobs require high-level math skills, that computing jobs are predominantly coding, and that a college degree is required to get a job in technology – which are barriers to engaging students of color. These myths are also often shared by parents of students of color, who believe that technology careers are outside the skillsets of their children.

To meet the challenges of the COVID-19 crisis, we have adapted our Tech Ambassadors program for remote access. Over the last six months, we have transferred much of our TechGirlz programming to online delivery, and we are in the process of refining our delivery platform to broaden access to youth during the crisis and into the future. An example of how we are developing new program delivery methods for the new ways children are learning under COVID-19 restrictions are our new TechGirlz TechPodz, which are designed for children learning in multi-family environments. Regardless of the level of COVID-19 restrictions, we believe we are well positioned to deliver and expand Tech Ambassadors programming, either through the in-person, place based model we piloted in Chicago prior to the crisis and hope to expand to other cities where CITF has facilities, or through remote program delivery that we are currently using in Chicago that is accessible to youth wherever they are. 

To confront stereotypes among students, we will continue to develop and disseminate materials and information that provide youth with critical information about their potential for IT careers and leadership. We will also continue to develop and build partnerships with schools, after school clubs and youth groups to engage and motivate students with our technology programming. And for parents, we are in the process of developing a suite of tools that will help them support the technology interest and skills of their children.

Because we are working with youth, there are a number of challenges (e.g., privacy, legal issues) to collecting data that tracks program participants’ progress in technology careers after they leave the program. In our pilot efforts in Chicago as well as our TechGirlz programming, we have worked to collect data around our participants’ level of interest in technology before and after the program, as well as engaging parents after the program ends. In the future, we hope to develop methods for tracking participants’ progress in technology long-term.

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The team delivering the Tech Ambassadors Program has the experience, skills, knowledge and tools to take the program from its current pilot stage in Chicago and expand it to a multi-city/national program in the next five years. 

The program team lead is Dezyre Stewart, who is a 28-year-old African American woman who grew up on Chicago’s South Side and graduated from Western Illinois University with a degree in fine arts and communication. Because of her work experience, communication skills and cultural competency, she has been integral to our efforts piloting the program at Little Black Pearl Academy, where many of the students share her background and experience. As the program expands to different communities and cultures, CITF will hire additional Tech Ambassadors with experience and cultural competency that matches the youth they will be engaging.

Supporting the Tech Ambassadors Program will be the leadership team of CITF. Creating IT Futures is uniquely positioned to drive outcomes as the charitable arm of the world’s largest IT industry association, CompTIA – providing access to employers, data, and private funding. CITF’s leadership team has experience and demonstrated success taking technology programs from local pilots to national programs, including the successful expansion of CITF’s award-winning IT-Ready technology training program and its TechGirlz youth engagement program. The program will also be supported by the staff of CITF’s TechGirlz program, which created the technology workshops that are at the heart of the Tech Ambassadors model.

CITF has developed a strong network of local program partners in Chicago with whom we have worked to develop and pilot the Tech Ambassadors program. These include: 

• Best Buy Clubhouse Network Teen Tech Center, through which we have presented workshops; 

• Little Black Pearl Academy, which was the site of our pilot programming

• TEKSystems, CITF’s national employer partner that is providing early support for this program expansion effort

• Genesys Works, which we have supported to create an alumni program and to which we have referred qualified participants.

CITF developed the Tech Ambassadors program in response to an established need for technology programming from our community partners in Chicago. Through our relationships with local and national technology leaders, educational institutions and nonprofit partners, we have determined that there is significant unmet demand for programming in Chicago, and nationally.

Now that we have established proof of concept with our Tech Ambassadors pilot at Little Black Pearl Academy, we will develop new partnerships to bring programming to more schools, more communities and more partner organizations.

The initial work developing the program has been made possible by seed investment from CompTIA and through general operating support grants that CITF receives from foundation and corporate partners. As we expand the program and continue to demonstrate program success, additional program funding will be sought from foundation, corporate and government sources, first locally, then in expansion cities and from national funding sources. This model has proved successful for expansion of other CITF programs, and we believe that, given the demand for programming, it will be successful for the Tech Ambassadors program as well. 

This grant will support the expansion of the Tech Ambassadors program, initially in the Chicagoland region in partnership with established Chicago-area partners, and then to other locations and/or nationwide through established CITF facilities and remote delivery. 

This expansion follows CITF's established model of developing initial primary partnerships with local service providers, employers and funders. We have used this model successfully to expand both our IT-Ready job training program and our TechGirlz teen technology program. The model is based on the premise that initial investment by CITF in establishing pilot programming pays dividends by catalyzing foundation, corporate and government funding and resulting in long-term, sustainable support as the program demonstrates its success. As we build partnerships, word of mouth and funder validation encourages other funders to support the program, providing a stable source of medium to long-term support. 

An example of this model working successfully, CITF piloted our IT-Ready training program in Minneapolis. After an initial CITF investment that allowed us to demonstrate the success of our model, we formed an early partnership with Jewish Family and Children's Service of Minneapolis, which enabled us to secure several large state grants from the state of Minnesota, early support from local foundations including the Otto Bremer Trust, Minneapolis Foundation, and Wells Fargo Foundation, and corporate support from companies that repeatedly hired our IT-Ready graduates. This broad-based support in turn provided validation to other funders and catalyzed additional foundation, corporate and government funding that is providing long-term sustainable support.

Revenue sources to date include:

CompTIA: grant of $25k/yr. for 2 years. Funds received 2019 and 2020.

CITF: general operating support of $25 for 2 years. Funds allocated 2019 and 2020.

Best Buy: $150k/yr. over two years. Funds received 2019 and 2020.

The Tech Ambassadors program has received initial start-up investment from CITF and CompTIA, and will receive an additional investment from these partners for this next phase of program expansion. In addition, we are currently exploring corporate sponsorships with national partners like TEKSystems, as well as local foundation funders, to support this pilot and expansion. By the end of the grant period we expect to have secured ongoing support from 2-3 local or national foundations, one major employer partner, and one significant city or state funding source, sufficient to fund the program expansion described in this proposal and set long-term funding sustainability in motion.

2021 CITF TECH AMBASSADORS PROGRAM BUDGET

Reimagining Pathways Grant Funds

Staff and Benefits

$65,000: Youth Ambassador Program Solution Team Lead (Tech Ambassador – Chicago) 1.0 FTE @ $65,000/yr. 

$19,500: Benefits for Solution Team Lead @ 30%

Total Staff and Benefits $84,500 

Other Expenses

$3,525: Materials Design/Production (online educational materials, supporting documentation, marketing materials)

$850: Local Travel

 $1,125: Supplies (materials and supplies for workshops, office supplies, etc.)  

Total Other Expenses $5,500 

  Indirect at 10%:  $10,000 

Total MIT Solve Grant Funds $100,000 

Funding from Other Sources (not from Reimagining Pathways Grant)

Staff and Benefits

$36,000: 6 Youth Ambassador Program Solution Team Members .05 FTE/each 

$8,200: Other staffing support (communications, marketing, etc.)

$10,800: Benefits for Non-lead Team Members and Support Staff @ 30% 

Total Other Sources Staff and Benefits: $55,000

Other Expenses

$35,000: App Development (developer for creating parent/student support app) 

Total Other Sources Other Expenses: $35,000 

  Indirect at 10%:  $10,000 

Total Funding from Other Sources: $100,000 

TOTAL 2021 CITF TECH AMBASSADORS PROGRAM BUDGET: $200,000

The Tech Ambassadors program is at a critical point in its development, as we develop new partnerships for program delivery, expand programming, and adapt to the changes brought about by COVID-19. This is a time of transformation, as the rapid development of technology changes both the workforce and the fundamental structures of everyday life. We believe that this presents an essential opportunity to engage young people in the growing wave of new tech leaders. 

CITF develops and tests models of intervention with youth that can get them on a path to prosperity. We believe that the Tech Ambassadors Program is the right formula for engaging youth in school and after-school settings with the information, activities, and skills they need to be successful in their tech leadership and career development. Funds from this Reimagining Pathways grant will provide our Tech Ambassadors program with the resources it needs to meet the moment, providing a critical bridge from proof of concept to full deployment in Chicago, as a first step toward establishing the program in locations around the country and nationally.

Creating IT Futures does its own promotion of programs through online advertising, depending on the audience we are trying to reach. However, there is no better advertising than word of mouth and networking with partner organizations to reach the people who can use our services.

CITF is based in the Chicago area and has a broad network of local nonprofit, corporate and government partners in the region. For the expansion of the Tech Ambassadors program, we will be looking to deepen partnerships with: 

• IT-Ready employers in Chicago like Here Technologies, Stratosphere Networks, and TrippLite, who would participate in programming and participant experiences

• National corporate partners like TEKSystems who will participate in programming and potentially provide expansion funding

• Technology trade groups like the Chicagoland Chamber of Commerce Tech Council

• Local and national PTA organizations, who we will partner with in reaching out to parents and public schools in Chicago and future expansion sites

• Local and national nonprofit partners, with whom we will develop relationships over the course of program expansion to partner on program delivery. 

These partnerships will be based around the Tech Ambassadors collective impact model, where we work with nonprofit organizations with established youth constituencies and partner with them to deliver programming with cultural competence that provides youth with the inspiration to pursue their technology futures.