Workforce and People

University of Missouri and Harvard-Smithsonian researchers found that “STEM Career Days” can build an early interest in STEM fields, which could help meet the demand for trained professionals and diversify the field.

Rebecca Cai has been named Hawaii’s first chief data officer. She brings experience from an identical role in New York state government.

About 600,000 people have completed a Google certificate through Coursera since 2018. Lisa Gevelber, founder of the program and Google’s CMO for the Americas, now sees certificates as essential to filling technology jobs.

Valerie Taylor, director of the Mathematics and Computer Science Division at Argonne National Laboratory in Lemont, Illinois, says STEM diversity is increasing, but the academic environment must be made welcoming to all.

The city of Santa Monica has named southern California technologist Paula Crowell as its new chief information officer and head of its Information Services Department, after a national recruitment.

A Wake County judge has ordered Flock Safety to stop installing automated license plate cameras for law enforcement and other clients across the state, finding the firm has been operating unlicensed for years.

The Center for Information Technology Research in the Interest of Society (CITRIS), together with a cybersecurity research center at UC Berkeley, are adding cybersecurity and associated skills to a UC internship program.

Amazon Web Services’ James Sipe will replace acting CISO Chris Dressler on Nov. 27. Sipe is the first permanent appointment to the role since the departure of longtime CISO Erik Avakian last year.

A new report finds America’s cybersecurity workforce grew 11 percent year over year. At the same time, the gap between available workers and organization needs also grew 17.6 percent in the same period.

Suma Nallapati, who was appointed to serve as CIO for the city and county of Denver earlier this fall, plans to take a human-centered approach to IT to help actualize the mayor’s vision for a vibrant region.

Wisconsin Gov. Tony Evers has announced the appointment of 30 members to serve on the Task Force on Workforce and Artificial Intelligence to guide state policy and investment decisions.

Both states are leveraging digital platforms to centralize job prospects, skills data and educational opportunities in the hopes of creating strong talent pipelines to address job access, training and education barriers for residents.

A federal grant to the Cybersecurity Manufacturing Innovation Institute will help build a secure manufacturing tech hub to research new technologies, increase businesses competitiveness and grow a regional workforce.

Former Blue Cross Blue Shield of Massachusetts SVP Tonya Webster takes up the post focused on incorporating user experience principles, creating a statewide customer experience strategy and building up a human-centered design team.

Washington CIO Bill Kehoe and Chief of Staff Amy Pearson explain that while their agency is fully remote and even hiring out-of-state talent, they still find ways to bring staff together on big projects.

In her first year of teaching at Arlington Preparatory Academy in Baton Rouge, Megan Hall won District Teacher of the Year. A year prior, she was working at a Home Depot in the same city.

Amazon employees have long worked alongside robots — but the company is now testing a very lifelike, two-legged machine that has the potential to help its human co-workers with some tasks.

State officials in Connecticut are pointing to the increasing threat of cyber attacks as proof that more needs to be done to build the cybersecurity workforce. An estimated 600,000 future cyber security jobs are expected in the U.S. alone.