2. How to turn around a city （subtitles）

00:13

Has anyone here been to Fresno?

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OK, good, good.

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That’s where I’m from,

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where I was born

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and where I live today.

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For those of you less familiar,

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Fresno and the entire Central Valley of California

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is a place that’s built by agriculture:

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miles and miles of farmland for as far as the eye can see

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with a couple of large, poor cities dotting the landscape.

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My family, like much of the local population,

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is a family of immigrant farm laborers:

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those toiling away in the fields hoping for a ¢25-an-hour raise.

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I didn’t see myself destined for the glamour of Silicon Valley,

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but I did find my way to college, and something miraculous happened.

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I got a job in tech.

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And I remember the first time I didn’t have to count the change

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when trying to figure out how much to tip for pizza delivery,

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when I realized that this industry,

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the technology industry,

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was going to change my life forever.

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And I remember thinking to myself,

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if it can happen to me,

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a poor, queer Brown woman from nowhere,

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why can’t it happen to entire cities of people like me?

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And so for the last eight years,

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that’s what I’ve been working on in Fresno:

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building a business that could expose what it takes to cause an entire city --

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and not just a select few people in it --

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to thrive.

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It turns out we only need three pretty simple ingredients.

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Training, proof and community.

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So the cornerstone of everything that we do is job training.

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The communities that we work with are often from very poor populations,

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maybe folks who are learning English as a second language,

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maybe they were unhoused,

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the formerly incarcerated,

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veterans,

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folks who are very often from retail or factory work.

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These folks, their issue is not their ability to learn technical things.

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Their problems center on things that are a lot less obvious.

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Things like childcare,

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transportation,

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hunger,

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money.

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So those are the things that we focus on.

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It can be especially hard on families.

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How do you justify learning to do something like write code

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when there are bills to pay?

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Wouldn’t it be better for the family if you just got a job at McDonald’s

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and put in as many hours as you can?

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Because that’s a check,

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and who’s going to watch your little brother?

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That’s what we do as a family;

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we pitch in.

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But how do you justify to the people around you

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when it looks to them like you’re just playing around on the computer?

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We didn't invent a new way to teach JavaScript.

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We just focus a lot more

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on the things that actually prevent people from learning it.

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In addition to connecting our students to things like bus tokens

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and free regional transit options,

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we also just deploy a fleet of vehicles

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whose only job is to pick these folks up before their study groups

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and drop them back off after class.

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If they need food, we get them food.

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We work with food cupboards and pantries,

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making sure that boxes of food are delivered to these students’ homes

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with enough for a family of three to five people.

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We connect them to childcare options

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that make sense for their schedules and their budgets.

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But most importantly,

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because cash is such a center of energy and decision-making

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for these families,

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through our apprenticeship program,

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we literally pay them to learn.

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So not only do they get to earn a wage

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and are exposed to real-world work,

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but now they also have that first line on the resume.

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The one that’s so hard to get

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and the one that builds confidence in the rest of the world

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that you might know what you’re talking about.

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And so you might be thinking to yourself,

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“OK, Irma, this sounds great,

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but it sounds really expensive.”

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So how do you pay for it?

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We’ve turned a long-held idea on its head.

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We have to stop putting the burden --

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the financial burden --

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on the student and the families who are already struggling

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and start putting it on the people

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and the entities that benefit most from their untapped potential.

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Entities like government,

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corporations,

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philanthropy.

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These are the entities that benefit from the development of that talent,

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and so that's who we get to pay for it.

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Let’s throw back the curtain on what I’m trying to say here.

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Let's take the government.

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The US spends a trillion dollars scaling up a workforce for this country.

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Many of those programs have mixed results,

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and while some folks who come out of them do in fact earn higher wages at the end,

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while they’re still learning,

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when they’re still in training,

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many of these folks can’t also work,

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which means that they’re not bringing home a check,

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which means that they’re still in survival mode,

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which means that the people who would benefit most can’t participate

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to begin with.

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That’s where a system like ours makes some sense.

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We apply for allocations of that same kind of money,

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and use it to pay people to learn.

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We also work with corporations.

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QA testing, for example, is a job that can be taught

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and a role that companies desperately need.

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Training up a batch of QA engineers is low-hanging fruit

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and has almost instant results for companies.

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For the companies to invest in the development of that talent,

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it breeds them a local and eager technology workforce from which to choose.

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Companies that are in a growth mode

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or who are experiencing a digital transformation,

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they know that the key to their future

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is their ability to find, hire and retain talent.

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We can train up entire cohorts

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or a generation of junior-level and apprentice-level technologists

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trained directly to their systems,

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ready to be hired on day one.

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We’ve worked with all kinds of companies,

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getting them to pay for things like tuition

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and money for students to accomplish exactly this goal.

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Philanthropy’s interests here may be even easier to describe.

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Foundations and nonprofits,

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they want to see their money put to good use.

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Take the Quality Jobs Fund, for example.

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It’s a collaborative effort

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between the Federal Home Loan Bank of San Francisco

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and the New World Foundation,

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and their express mission is to address inequality

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through quality jobs expansion and skills development.

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We apply for allocations or grants from philanthropies like those,

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work with the government dollars that we just described,

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and companies in the way that we just talked about,

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put it all together to use it to pay people to learn.

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So that’s how you pay for it.

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Now, what is it that these folks should learn on?

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In our view, it’s real-world software projects,

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because that is the proof.

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You see,

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all of the software that the world needs built has to get made.

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And so we can leverage talent from these underrepresented communities

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to deliver on that need,

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build a training ground for green talent

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and also build a really robust business.

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We’ll take OnwardUS as just one example.

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It was a rapid-response initiative in response to COVID

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where we partnered with the Kapor Center.

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It was adopted by the state of California and then 10 other states.

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The idea was to take displaced workers --

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folks who are affected by COVID --

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connect them to money and services and new jobs.

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We took a high-level senior software engineer

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who could architect the full platform

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and then apprentices who could execute on that roadmap,

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and in 11 days,

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we had a functioning prototype.

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You see, the local mom-and-pop,

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the school district,

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the regional manufacturer,

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they all have software needs, and they’re going to pay someone to do it.

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With this model,

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they can have their solutions delivered back to them,

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but also participate

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in the creation of high-growth, high-wage jobs in their area.

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The last ingredient in our recipe is community.

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We need vibrant spaces

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that meet the aspirations of technologists and entrepreneurs,

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so we build castles for the underdogs.

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We buy blighted buildings in our downtowns for pennies on the dollar,

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improve them,

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lease them back out to ourselves and others in the technology industry.

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This creates community around the idea of leveling up entry-level humans

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and builds a shared understanding

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and value around what it means to have access to unlimited talent.

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The first project that we did

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was a building that had stood empty for 40 years before we took it over.

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We showed up with our tenant list and our ability to do work.

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Our partner showed up with a building that was empty and decaying.

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We painted the walls,

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we built a bunch of desks,

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we hung a lot of TVs,

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and when the coffee shop opened at the front of that building,

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it was like someone had flipped a switch on that corner of downtown.

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Suddenly, there were a thousand students and tenants

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and community members visiting that building each day.

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These ingredients,

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when you take them all together,

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they produce real impact driven by real change

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that affect real people

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who have names and faces and families and pets.

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Just one quick example.

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Our pal, Miguel,

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who was once incarcerated,

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he didn’t have any prospects for his future,

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his professional life or really, his family.

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He was scholarshiped through our pre-apprenticeship program

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using government dollars.

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Miguel veered just to the left of computer programming,

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landed neck-deep in analytics and website funnels.

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He apprenticed for our digital marketing program.

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Eighteen months later,

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Miguel has a full-time job,

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a great salary,

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benefits and a matching 401(k).

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We’ve worked with over 5,000 students,

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and of those entering our career programs,

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over 80 percent earn technical employment.

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And in Fresno, this means that the new technology workforce

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is greater than 50 percent female or gender nonconforming,

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greater than 50 percent minority or Latinx

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and 20 percent first-generation.

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And those demographics mirror the demographics of our county.

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These are folks leaving restaurant, retail, factory and field labor,

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earning on average less than 20,000 dollars a year,

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exiting the programs earning 60-80,0000 dollars a year.

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That’s gas in the tank and rent paid on time.

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And when you do that enough times,

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you see more sandwiches being purchased at the local panini shop;

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newer, more reliable cars taking these folks to work;

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the tax base improving,

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which invests in schools and rebuilds roads;

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homes in those communities that are being built or bought

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by the people who are actually going to live in them;

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dilapidated buildings that once stood empty

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now full of energized underdogs sipping coffee and writing code

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and, most importantly,

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bringing with them the next generation of human

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that didn’t see themselves leaving the packing house

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until they saw their pal make it work.

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And we can do this.

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You know, it's not at all a mystery,

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especially now that we’ve spent 10 minutes talking about it.

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But we do have to do three very specific and deliberate things.

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Invite the underdog in the front door;

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pay them to learn like it’s their job;

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and then build them castles in their hometowns.

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It’s worked in Fresno,

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it’s working in Bakersfield and Toledo, Ohio

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and it can work in underestimated cities all over the world.

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Thank you so much for your attention.

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(Applause)