Cisco: Transforming Career Development Through AI

NORTHAMPTON, MA / ACCESSWIRE / December 14, 2023 / Cisco Systems Inc.

Foto: Accesswire

By Noel Burke

The Transformational Tech series highlights Cisco's grant recipients that use technology to help transform the lives of individuals and communities. This blog features Cisco's partnership with CareerVillage.org, a nonprofit organization based in the United States that helps students get career advice online from real-world professionals. If you are interested in a deep dive on this partnership, please contact Kyle Thornton.

Every child deserves opportunities for success. But socioeconomic factors can play a huge role in children's development that can disrupt their education and life progression. According to the American Community Survey, about 17% (more than 10 million) of all U.S. children under 18 live below the poverty line and are considered at-risk.

An essay from the Washington Center for Equitable Growth highlights that children from low-income families are more likely to start school with limited language skills, have less parental support with homework, and deal with more emotional and social problems that interfere with learning. CareerVillage.org is helping to change the systemic equation by democratizing access to career information and advice for underrepresented youth. This is done in part by crowdsourcing the answers to questions from students about careers that any online learner can access anytime, anywhere.

Having reached over 7 million individuals and mobilized more than 150,000 volunteers across 190 countries worldwide, CareerVillage.org aspires to be the universally trusted source for career information that youth can turn to, and a place where they find the encouragement they need to persist in the face of adversity. And with recent advancements in artificial intelligence (AI) technology, they are expanding their reach and accessibility with Coach, an AI-powered career prep platform that tailors advice to an individual student's goals, learning from each interaction.

CareerVillage.org's Founder and Executive Director Jared Chung and Special Projects Senior Manager Rebecca Gitomer share the non-profit's technology evolution and how its partnership with Cisco has led to crucial, high-impact, replicable and scalable partnerships in the education industry.

Cisco invests in nonprofits to increase their impact through replication and scale, how has this influenced CareerVillage.org's strategy?

For us, scale is extremely important and always top of mind. Career development is a challenge that affects young people all over the world, and there is a real lack of investment and overall support, especially in underserved communities. Cisco has been aligned with our scalability mission from the beginning of our partnership in 2017, and what began as volunteer opportunities for Cisco employees to participate in has evolved into crucial funding from Cisco to help us unlock high-impact partnerships that have allowed us to scale across classrooms in the U.S.