Ep. 12: Building the Next Generation of Tech Talent: Cybersecurity, UX, Data, and Software Engineering Training at The Knowledge House

Bridging the Digital Divide: The Knowledge House's Impact on Tech Education

Welcome back to another exciting episode of the Big Tech Energy Podcast! In today's episode, we have a very special guest joining us. Daniel Adeyanju, the Head of Partnerships at The Knowledge House, will be sharing incredible insights into how this organization is bridging the digital divide through tech education.

The Knowledge House is an organization that connects underestimated communities to sustainable tech careers through rigorous training programs. From their Kareem Kharbosh Coding Fellowship for high school-aged youth to their Innovation Fellowship for adults making under $50K, they are committed to providing access to tech education free of charge. 

In this episode, Daniel will discuss the approach they take in selecting fellows and the areas where they operate. Covering web development, data science, cybersecurity, and user experience, the Knowledge House is creating a pathway for individuals to break into the tech industry. 

Additionally, Daniel will dive into the importance of partnerships and how companies can support the program. He will highlight the commitment they look for in partners and the unique ways organizations like Bloomberg and Barclays have already made a difference by sending engineers to work with Knowledge House students.

Tune in as we explore the inspiring work of the Knowledge House and their mission to empower individuals to succeed in the tech space. Get ready to soak up some incredible insights and embrace the Big Tech Energy!

Support The Knowledge House! Subscribe to their newsletter here (https://bit.ly/TKH-News)

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Transcript

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Take your notes, stay tuned and soak up this big tech energy. Hey, what's up, y'all? This is Jarrett Albritton with the Big Tech Energy podcast, live at the Sisters in Sales summit. And today, we're going to be talking to Daniel. He is head of partnerships at the Knowledge House. And it's really, really exciting what they're doing to help people break into the tech space. And so I'm not going to steal his thunder. I'm going to let Daniel introduce himself. How you doing? My name is Daniel Adeyanju. I am the head of partnerships at the knowledge house the house that love built. We connect underestimated communities to families, sustaining tech careers through rigorous tech training programs. We have two year long fellowships, one for high school aged youth called our Kareem Kharbosh Coding Fellowship. And we have an adult program called the Innovation Fellowship for Folks 18 Plus Making Under Fifty K. The best thing about it, my brother, is that it's free. So super excited to talk more and to be here with you, Jarrett. Yes. So my platform is all about helping people break into tech, elevate their careers in tech, et cetera. So when it comes to the Knowledge House, what's your approach when it comes to the fellows that you bring in? And what are the type of people in what areas of the country do you work in? 100%? That's a great question. But first of all, I just want to appreciate you for the work that you do to avail people to the opportunity landscape that is technology. It is very important, crucial work because of the generational financial transfer that has happened, which largely our people have been left out of. And the work you're doing is extremely important. The Knowledge House is a part of that work and is proud to partner with you in that work to bring people into the tech space. And as I mentioned, we have those four tracks in web development, data, science, cybersecurity, and user experience. For our Innovation Fellowship, where do we find folks from? The main requirements, as I mentioned, you're 18 plus, you're making Under Fifty K, and you live in one of our four core cities. So we were found in the Bronx in 2014 by a woman by the name of Geraldine Rodriguez, who saw the lack of opportunity in the Bronx, where I'm also from, and she endeavored to create opportunities first for youth and then for adults in workforce. And she partnered with a gentleman by the name of Joe Karana from Brooklyn. So we started in the Bronx and New York City by extension, so anybody who's in New York City in that kind of metropolitan area. And since we've recently expanded to Newark, New Jersey, which is certainly another highly disinvented, highly disconnected, disinvested city, shout out to Rasparaka, Mayor Rasparaka, who's partnering with us to really further this work in Newark, in Atlanta, we've been doing some awesome work. It's actually our fastest growing market. There's just so many people that are hungry to be a part of the tech landscape. And lastly, we're in La. So we're looking for people that are curious, that are willing to learn, that are problem solvers. It's a rigorous program. One of our buzwords, one of our core values is commitment. So we're looking for people that are committed to themselves, to their families, their communities, and their careers. And we also look to partner with companies that are committed to helping everybody succeed. So we're looking for curiosity. We're looking for problem solving. We're looking for hard workers, and our communities are replete with people who have those core values. So you mentioned obviously, there's the people that join the program, but then there's also partners that can support the program. So as director of partnerships or head of partnerships, what are the type of partners that you're looking for, and hopefully they're watching right now and they can take some notes? That's a great question. That's a great question, my brother. I would say it really starts with commitment. We're looking for companies that are committed to being a part of their local communities, that are committed to high quality talent. High quality talent that reflects the communities that they are looking to sell in, to build in, to grow in. So when I look at one of our extant partners, we've done some really great work with Bloomberg and Barclays, for example. They'll send their engineers to work with our students in Hackathons, right? So there's a certain level of commitment that comes in. They provide financial support, they hire our talent, and they also provide volunteers. So the ideal partnership is with an organization that is aligned on hiring top talent from underestimated communities like the Bronx where I'm from, like Atlanta, like La, looking to develop them and support them on their journey, bring them out to conferences like this and put their dollars where their mouth is. A lot of folks want to talk about diversity, but when they're willing to commit and we're committing, our skin is in the game. We're investing 25,000, $30,000. It's a free program. Each fellow is a significant investment that we make with the support of awesome organizations like the ones that I hope are listening and we're able to power the next generation of tech talent. Absolutely. So let's shift back to the tech part of the knowledge house. Now, you mentioned those four tracks, and for the audience that may not be familiar with the type of roles and what they encompass, can you talk a little bit about each of those tracks and why did you choose those tracks to train them? Awesome question. All right, so we started off with web development. We've been around for almost ten years now. We started off in the schools and our first kind of workforce kind of for adults programs. Those are focused on web development. Our co founder, Joe Carano is a software engineer, a self taught selfware engineer. That kind of was the prototype for this. He learned it himself and he started teaching others, right? So we started with software engineering, web development, and the reason why software engineering is so powerful, all these apps that we use day to day, all these websites that we experience life through during the pandemic, we lived on the cloud, we lived in Netflix, we lived on Zoom, right? So that's the backbone. So you have to start super technical, be able to build things, and it gives you that ability to start companies to build products. So that's why we started with web development. Data science was a really smart next step because it's the same software engineering skills in terms of programming with the combination of data. Data is the new oil. You've heard that said time and time again. Our data is constantly being leveraged by companies, right? But it can also be leveraged for society. The government needs data. Hospitals need data. So data is so transferable, right? So you're going to see this through line transferable skills. We cannot have our people caught without these transferable skills or having skills that are going to be outdated. Data is always going to be useful. Then the other two tracks are our most recent additions. Cybersecurity. Everybody's getting hacked. Yeah. MGM is in the news right now. MGM is in the news. So all these companies and this is one point I want to make for any of the companies that may be listening, but also for people who are looking for something to get into. There is a national security impetus, necessity to have more people that are in the cybersecurity space that are passionate about securing systems. The Knowledge House is at the forefront of producing talent nationally to ensure that we are safe in terms of our cybersecurity. And for somebody who's looking to get in the industry, if you're somebody who's a creative thinker, if you love thinking about system, understanding how things work, if you're a little creative, if you know how to finesse and try to get around, and you actually have a good mindset to help us get ahead of the bad actors. The last track is user experience design. And it's all in the name. Everything has a user experience, whether you think about it or not. We teach from the perspective of when you're going on an app or a website. Why is it that you want to come back to Netflix time and time again? LinkedIn, Instagram, somebody designed that experience, and you'd be surprised how much they invest in designers who can think in that way. Now, that skill is super transferable. You can actually, and I love this example, if you think about the DMV or going to some of these government services, you need people to redesign those experiences. So it's not just about the visual. It's actually all about the experience. So we teach you how to do the research, understand user needs. How do you prototype an experience? Oftentimes that's through wireframing when you're on a web interface, but you can transfer that and draw diagrams to explain a service design context as well. Right. But we are firmly rooted in kind of thinking about the web and the iOS or mobile context in general. So I'm super excited about those four tracks web development, data science, user experience, and cybersecurity. We are also piloting project management. I think there's a big opportunity for people who can juggle multiple things and have been doing that. If you've been working in a restaurant your entire life and you can keep track of 50 simultaneous orders and make sure that everybody gets what they need, you're a project manager. You just need to get certified. You just need to have some project in your resume and the knowledge house. In our Capstone phase, all of our tracks, you have to complete a capstone group project. We provide mentors, we provide folks to help you with your academics and your learning and to help you with your time management and help you get you unblocked. If you have financial challenges, housing challenges, mental health challenges, we'll connect the dots because we want you to succeed. And by the end of the program, you would have learned a lot about the soft skills necessary. We have career success specialists who will help you find roles. And what I'm doing as well is I'm talking to companies to make sure that they're ready and interested. They know how awesome our fellows are, so that when they've completed the program, they'll go ahead and hire them. Membership in black and HR means community and being a part of a culture of like minded individuals, you have a culture within a culture, especially in the black community. And Black and HR is that professional culture. We have fun, we laugh and joke about things that are related to us in the workplace, but we also have serious aspects as well, where we help each other grow. And it's just one of those places where I can go to any time of the day, pose a question, and I'm going to get all type of answers, but I'm going to get support. And we all work together to give advice, to give insight, to share tips. The networking is amazing. The people that I've spoken to have allowed me to learn things about myself that I didn't know. So what does that do? When I go to my next interview, I have that confidence when I walk in to be able to explain and speak on what I've done in the past and prove that I am the person for the job. No, that's amazing, man. And the breakdown of each space was priceless. So I appreciate how concise but thorough your descriptions of each of those spaces are. And so when it comes to folks that want to support the knowledge house. What are some ways for them to contact or be a part of helping these students change their lives? Awesome. Thank you so much for asking that. As head of partnerships, I always default to what I think is the highest level of commitment. If you are a hiring manager, if you know a hiring manager in one of these four disciplines, let's get our fellows hired. Our Innovation fellows. They're brilliant. They're hardworking. From 530 to 930 for three quarters of the year. They got families. They got full time, part time jobs. Sometimes all three going to school. They're hardworking. All they need is an opportunity. They need a shot to do their best work, and they're going to make you look really good. So hire our fellows, and then we have volunteer opportunities. We're looking to partner with companies to give your staff these opportunities to interact with our fellows through various means. Individuals can also sign up, and the third is for companies and individuals to donate. So all of this, all roads lead to our website. If you go to theknowledgehouse.org, you can be a part of our journey to sign up as a volunteer, get in touch with the talent team that is myself through there. And even more direct, I would love to personally connect with you. My name is Daniel Adenju. You can find me on LinkedIn and happy to talk to anyone about any of those ways to partner and be a part of the work that we're doing to connect underestimated communities to family sustaining tech careers. That's amazing, man. And I know you guys have some events that you're throwing throughout the rest of this year and throughout 2024. Can you talk about some of those events and how people can get involved? Absolutely. So we're kicking off our Corporate Engagement series. We are engaging our corporate community to really get everyone up to speed on what the Knowledge House has been up to. Learn a bit about what companies are thinking about in this age of AI. Our theme is the future of tech. So we're looking for companies that are willing to sponsor the event, willing to provide panelists so that we can really wrap our heads around what is the future of tech and how does that connect to our communities. So super excited to meet new faces, engage with old ones. We're going to celebrate the corporations who've already been in partnership with us, and we're going to welcome new organizations to partner with us. So you can get in touch with me about that as well. In all of our four markets, we are again in New York City. We're in Newark, New Jersey. Newark. For folks that are not from Newark, I say Newark because the mayor of Newark makes sure I say it how they say it, but for a New Yorker, it's Newark, La, of course, and Atlanta. So we would love to connect with you at one of our corporate engagement events. We're going to be kicking off recruitment. If you know somebody, some of you know folks who if you might be interested to get into technology or know somebody, you can also go on our website now to register your interest. Recruitment is actually going to start in January, February of next year, for technically a September start date. But the way that our process works is that you would first fill out an application, you would interview, and then you actually do pre work to get a sense of the work. And upon completion of those steps, then you're invited for the fellowship, which starts in September. So it's a process. We're going to start opening up at the top of next year in June, July, you'll be able to kind of get into the work and kind of touch and feel it. And by September you would start the program. Awesome. So my last question for you is going to be because we're at the Sisters and Sales Summit and Kerry Washington is about to hit the stage representing the Bronx right from the know, that's where the talent is. Absolutely. So last question is, what are you most excited about in terms of where the Knowledge House is going in the future? And yeah, what can people expect from the Knowledge Know, the support of all these important people, they pour into the support. What will the Knowledge House be able to create? Oh, big time. So first of all, shout out to Sisters and Sales for just creating this opportunity for us to connect. And ever since we've connected and seeing what you've been doing, it's a beautiful place to be in. And seeing all these women, these sisters in Sales, women of color doing amazing things has been super exciting. So shout out to Chantel for the opportunity to be here as compatriots in this space of creating opportunity, I just had to shout out Sister Chantel and appreciate her for creating this environment where the Knowledge House is going. I mean, the sky is truly the limit. We are already national. We are growing our numbers. We're actually tripling the size of the number of people that we are, including our Innovation Fellowship. So there's tremendous growth. I mentioned the project management track. I don't think Sales is too far off. Right? So really leveraging those soft skills and connecting it to the technical skills, the technical skills form the base of what we believe creates a highly valuable employee that's really hard to say no to. And then with those essential skills, those human skills, aka, they used to call them soft skills, but they're hard, right? Those are going to open up doors. So we're going to be really expanding into some of those new streams, continuing to provide the highest quality, culturally relevant instruction that is top of class. We're bringing on new partners, corporate partners, hiring, and then our youth program as well, which is Kkcf. I didn't talk too much about it, but it's actually named after it's actually Kareem Carbuch. That's actually French Montana, who is from the Bronx. He gave us the first dollars during the pandemic to start the program. We actually have a whole pipeline starting from the high school years, and we're seeing them go to college. We also anticipate some of them deciding to delay or essentially skip college to go straight into one of these tracks and get high paying jobs in technology. So really the sky is the limit. Again, I'm also super excited for, as you mentioned, my Bronx sister Kerry Washington, to hit the stage as well. Exciting things for the Bronx. Exciting things for New York City. Atlanta, La. And I'm so glad that the Knowledge House is a part of what we're doing. And to partner with Big Tech Energy is super exciting as well. Absolutely. So for the folks that want to get in touch with you and get in touch with the Knowledge House, please let them know how they can get in touch with you. Absolutely. So you can check us out online@theknowledgehouse.org. That's? T-H-E knowledge. K-N-O-W-L-E-D-G-E house. House. The Knowledge is where people sometimes trick out, but I'll probably just google it. And you can also find me on LinkedIn. My name is Daniel Adeyanju. Last name? A-D-E-Y-A-N as in Nancy. J U. Would love to connect with you. I'm also be great on Instagram. If you want to find me on there, be underscore. Great. And on Twitter. I am Nycdan underscore. I really need to get all my platforms in order to get them, make it easy for them. I'm different in every space, but I'm the one person. And we'll make sure we throw it in the caption as well so that people don't have to feverishly. Excellent, excellent, excellent, excellent, excellent. Thank you so much for having me. Absolutely. So again, thank you everybody for tuning in. This is Big Tech Energy podcast live at Sisters and Sales Summit. Shout out to Chantel and the systems and sales team. This is an amazing event. Amazing organization. Also, make sure to tap into the Knowledge House if you're looking to break into tech, and if you're in those target markets, make sure you apply. But if you apply, make sure you actually work your butt off and make them look great by having successful careers and killing it for the companies that you work with. And if you are a potential sponsor, meaning sponsoring your time as a mentor or somebody that can actually hire their fellows, make sure to get in touch with Daniel. You guys going to be able to cherry pick some of the best talent out there in those respective cities. And if you want to check me out on other platforms, you can go to BigTech Energy, where you connect with me on LinkedIn, Twitter, obviously, subscribe on YouTube, I'm on all audio platforms. Just put in big tech energy and, yeah, there's a lot of stuff I'm working on that I'm excited to talk about, but right now it's all about the knowledge, how assistance and sales and getting our people to the next level. So I really appreciate everybody tuning in. I really appreciate you, Daniel, for dropping all these gems. And until next time, this is big tech energy. We are out. Membership in Black and HR means community and being a part of a culture of like minded individuals. You have a culture within a culture, especially in the black community. And Black and HR is that professional culture. We have fun, we laugh and joke about things that are related to us in the workplace, but we also have serious aspects as well, where we help each other grow. And it's just one of those places where I can go to any time of the day, pose a question, and I'm going to get all type of answers, but I'm going to get support. And we all work together to give advice, to give insights, to share tips. The networking is amazing. The people that I've spoken to have allowed me to learn things about myself that I didn't know. So what does that do? When I go to my next interview? I have that confidence when I walk in to be able to explain and speak on what I've done in the past and prove that I am the person for the job.