Advancing San Diego’s Workforce with Kate Gallagher & Rachel Merfalen

Startups get the party Startups get the party started Startups get the party Startups get the party started. You want tech and tacos tacos and tech you know we got tacos and tech is on smash border green guacamole keeper captains counting beans Contador quentan frijoles founders trying to raise some queso la vida San Diego school of rappy rapping fire tortillas round jalapenos in these modern times a crappy my coding yoga posse fold the body origami we be surfing coronado eating tacos el gordo the tacos standing puesto lucha libre and sombrero Got a shout out to cost angels by the ocean watch the sunset La Jolla shores Entrepreneurs trying to get funded When San Diego Startup Week is popping in the summer Oceanside the Tijuana Estee be full of hustlers from couch surfing to penthouses right on the beach Tech leaders believe stars are within reach we interview and founders who be shooting for the Moon SD TechOS with your host Neil Bloom. Startups get the party Startups get the.

Welcome to the Tacos and Tech podcast where we discover cutting edge San Diego technologies and the builders making it happen. I'm your host Neal Bloom, San Diego's Tech Ambassador and together we're going to put a face to the name of today's tech leaders with our own blend of local lifestyle. I want to take a moment to thank our friends at Cocker Business who have enabled us to tell these amazing stories of local leaders, technologists, founders and funders. Cox is actually a 121 year old family run private company that thinks in terms of decades in connecting communities a lot like we do in building a tech ecosystem. For years now the local Cox business team has helped us grow through partnering at San Diego Startup Week, South Dakota Quick pitch and in celebrating our technical leaders at the Top Tech Awards this October, we're very excited to kick off an entire month of virtual networking and learning at San Diego Startup Month with talks on sales, marketing, data, people, design, development and more. There's something for everyone in the startup and tech community. Drop in on the pitch competitions, get your LinkedIn reviewed, meet new colleagues and listen in on investor panels on the future of deep tech. Check out the schedule and more@sandagostartupweek.com and thanks again to Cox Business for your partnership.

And welcome back to the Tacos and Tech Podcast. I'm your host Neil Bloom and I am joined by the movers and shakers behind an amazing program here in San Diego building up our talent talent pool for Advancing San Diego. Kate Gallagher, Senior Manager of Economic Development for the San Diego Regional edc and Rachel Rafalin, Director of Business Services for the San Diego Workforce Partnership. Welcome guys.

Thanks Neil. Good to be here.

It's really good to have you here and I'm really excited for you to shed light on this amazing program. Honestly, Kate and I go back, man, four or five years possibly and we've gone back and forth on talent right from that software talent study back in 2016 that really shed light on what our existing talent is and where our gaps are. So I'm really excited to just dive in and talk about the talent pool of San Diego, how we're going to provide more talent to make more jobs, to make more companies, which we're all about. Do you guys want to each give your roles and introduce the entities? Why don't we have Rachel go first?

Great, thank you. So I'm the Director of Business Services at the Workforce Partnership and we're an organization. We're one of quite a few different workforce development boards across the nation. Every major city and metropolitan area has one. And our mission is to empower local talent to meet the current and future workforce needs for San Diego employers. And we do that in a couple different ways. One, we bring funds into our region, federal, state, philanthropic investment funds in order to foster cross sector collaboration and problem solving around workforce needs, skills gap, talent shortages, et cetera. We also help those businesses fill some of those gaps and ultimately help people get to work. I'm really excited about this work because it supports businesses in hiring the talent they need from within our region instead of consistently hiring from outside. We like our transplants, but we also want to provide great opportunities for the talent that's here in San Diego.

Awesome. We also know you're an entrepreneur. Why don't we get to know your company a little bit too?

Sure. About six years ago I started a business with my husband. We design and manufacture cocktail tools. So we have got an e commerce company. Thankfully we're already set up to be successful during the mass exodus into online e commerce marketing. I've been around San Diego in the startup community for a couple of years now and know a lot of probably the folks that are listening to this podcast in that capacity.

Yeah, awesome. Proud to have business owners helping set the needs for the community. That's the greatest thing when you have that feedback loop because the business owners are the ones hiring and looking for that talent, especially CEOs or the talent spotters. So it's great to have you in a dual role there. Kate, want to introduce your role in the edc?

Yeah, sure. Kate Gallagher with the San Diego Regional Economic Development Corporation. It's a mouthful, so we'll stick with edc. I am on our economic development team. EDC is a privately funded nonprofit organization. We've been in San Diego for over 50 years and our role as an organization has really shifted and changed quite a bit really, since our existence. But at the end of the day, EDC's goal is to really support and promote the local economy in San Diego. So, I mean, the whole region of San Diego, the county really, and oftentimes down into Baja California, and we do that through providing a variety of services to companies as they continue to grow in San Diego or interested in moving to San Diego to grow. And we also have some bigger, broader initiatives, sort of ecosystem development sort of things. And so my role in particular is focused on talent, which is obviously what we're here to talk about today. It's what I do all day, every day, is figure out how can we provide more opportunities for more San Diegans to access the growth that is happening here in San Diego, particularly within our innovation economy, which is really a key driver of the growth here in San Diego. What I hear consistently from companies as we're doing our core work around economic development, as we're working with them to really address any challenges that they might be facing as they're trying to grow in San Diego, what we continue to hear is they love being in San Diego because we do have a really strong talent pool here. We have a variety of colleges and universities that they are consistently going to building relationships with so that they can fill jobs in their companies. However, we also hear that they continue to struggle to fill some kind of critical roles in their business. And so we want to really create that system where employers can look to our local talent pool to be able to fill the jobs that they're looking to fill. And that's really what Advancing San Diego was built around.

That's great. Can you dive a little bit deeper into kind of the beginnings of Advancing San Diego? I know you got the grant together with the workforce development a few years ago now, but obviously it's been years that you've been hearing this from employers and kind of working on a solution. So can you take us through that kind of etymology or the development of it?

Sure. So the Advancing San Diego Initiative is a three year project. It's funded by JPMorgan Chase and it's part of a national initiative by JPMorgan Chase called Advancing Cities. And the goal of the initiative is really around systems change, making systems change around a variety of. Through a variety of different ways, but really to promote more inclusive economies. And so the systems that our project is really trying to influence or shift is the relationship between industry and education and how those two industries work together to grow. And so we, and looking back at the way that our economy has shifted and changed, and this is a key role of edc, is to really keep an eye on what factors are really causing growth or stalling growth in our economy. We know that over the last decade or so, the growth of our innovation economy has been significant. San Diego has really become sort of on the map as a place where people are considering us a tech hub. And so with that growth, however, we've also seen that a lot of San Diegans are not accessing the benefit of that growth. You know, over the next decade, San Diego's population is expected to be nearly 50% Hispanic. And we see that both Hispanic and black San Diegans are glaringly underrepresented in top tech fields, growing tech fields, particularly software engineering. 87% of software engineers in San Diego are either white or Asian and only 10% are black or Hispanic. And so we want to really see more of that representation of our local, our local talent pool represented in these tech industries. And so advancing San Diego is a broad partnership between employers, education providers, economic and workforce development partners like Rachel and myself, to collectively prepare more San Diegans for high demand jobs and create a system, as I mentioned, where employers, including small companies, we have a particular focus on small companies. Small companies make up about 98% of our economy, so that those companies can really establish and expand recruitment relationships with locally serving education institutions. And a big part of this is really recognizing the role that we all have to play in this companies, education partners, economic development, workforce development partners. There's all something that we can do to really be contributing to this environment where there's more equal access to opportunity.

That's fantastic. I love that. I mean, we have so many great. We have obviously tons of, like you mentioned, small businesses. 98%. Right. Or small businesses where a lot of the jobs may not be tech focused. But like you said, the growth is coming there. Why not be able to train and upskill, reskill that our local talent pool for, you know, the new wave of jobs. That's so fantastic and obviously what we're all about in terms of building a great ecosystem for San Diego. Rachel, do you want to touch on a little bit about what does it mean to train talent locally? I think the workforce development is definitely squarely in the middle of that, regardless of advancing San Diego. Right. You provide a lot of resource tools to train talent. Do you want to give us a little background of what the workforce development does in that area?

Yes.

Thanks.

The Workforce Partnership is the region's workforce development agency. We're funded by federal funds through the Worker Opportunity Innovation act, often referred to in shorthand as WIOA funds. For those of you who know, we're also uniquely structured as a nonprofit entity, so we have the opportunity to accept philanthropic and investment funds to support our programming. And so I'm so thrilled to be part of this organization because it's one of the most innovative workforce development boards in the country, partly because of the flexibility of that structure. So our programs, historically in workforce development, a lot of programs are very talent pool facing, job seeker facing, starting with a talent pool and start and saying we want to provide opportunities for this group of people who have been underrepresented in these industries, which is great. My role in business services is to also think about our, our demand, the demand side of the supply and demand model for talent in our region. And so if we just start with a supply driven, workforce oriented model, then we begin inform, informing training based on what the needs of our job seekers are. And if we're not bringing that perspective of business and industry need into that conversation, then we're going to, we're not going to effectively address the skills and the knowledge gap that we're experiencing between those who are graduating from our, our programs in our region and for what the need is. So I think that there's, there's an acknowledgment that there's a big skills gap. I think one of the Gallup studies a couple of years ago mentioned something about 96% of academic institutions believe that they are preparing, adequately, preparing their students for the workforce. But only. What was it, Kate? 11% of business owners agree. Yeah, 11% of business owners agree that our educational institutions are preparing for the skill sets that our employers need. So that's pretty shocking. And that's partly our role as well is how do we lessen that dissonance and that gap that we're experiencing between the two? We as a workforce partnership, a lot of our funding goes towards training programs. And so we have, I think we have something like 450 people right now who are currently enrolled in some kind of training program that are training and upskilling either to enter a new industry or to enter a new stage of their career or to reskill. We're serving a lot of people who have been displaced due to COVID 19 who have lost their jobs and looking at rapid reskilling about how to get them into maybe they were in the hospitality industry or they were working for an airline. How do we pivot and reskill to help them move towards industries that are in higher demand, that have good job growth? We have a focus on resilient jobs in our economy and in the industries where we're also looking at high quality jobs, high good paying jobs. And so how are we reorienting our workforce and where their needs are to align with the needs of the businesses in our region? That's one of the big things we noticed too. As you know, we went from an environment pre Covid where we had record unemployment rates in the positive direction to having a lot of people who are looking for work and looking for different kinds of work right now because they're not necessarily going to go back to the kinds of jobs that they were doing or in quite the same way. So in addition to the training programs, some of our funding also goes towards providing on the job training and wage subsidies for employers who are hiring and have a need to retrain new talent to come in. And that could be because there's new technologies. It could be because the role that they have, there's not an exact match with our talent pool. And so that's one of the things that we also support businesses with is if you have a need to hire a bunch of people and they're not exactly equipped for what you exactly need them to do, then there's some subsidies there that can help retrain and reskill so that, that will make that transition for the employers that much easier. We also have a list of programs that is like longer than both of my arms put together, so I won't go through all of them. But that's kind of a high level overview of some of the ways that we work with talent in terms of training. We also do a lot of job placement services. We have quite a few career centers in San Diego that we work with as well as a bunch of different programs. And we can talk about some of our tech talent focused programs a little bit later or now if you want.

Yeah, Follow up, I guess. On the demand side I would ask is, you know, how do, how do you measure demand? Right. And take us through that. You know, is it both a surveying, is it going out to companies but also the other push pull side of companies knowing to come to you saying here's my openings over the next 5, 10, 20 months. Like take us through how you demand pull.

Sure. There are a couple different ways. I think both the workforce Partnership and the EDC have done pretty extensive research and we've got some, some very talented people on the research side of things and we dig into national databases and labor market information to, to really follow the trends of industry and labor and, and job growth in our region. And that's great. I think the thing that Advancing San Diego does is it takes that labor market information a couple of huge steps further by actually engaging employers through working groups. So so far we've hosted three employer working groups. The first around software talent, the second around engineering talent, and the third that we're wrapping up is around entry level business talent. And this is bringing both anchor businesses that are huge, hugely influential as far as employment in these in demand occupations as well as small businesses to understand their need all to the same table, quite representing a diverse industry and then doing a deep dive with them into, you know, well, this is part of the Advancing San Diego process is saying this is what this labor market information is telling us. These are the 10 most in demand occupations in that have to do with software and software development and software engineering. Validate that with us and then let's take it a step further and let's dig into the actual skills that you require for your incoming talent to have. And so we're, we're vetting and validating that broadly accessible information by actual real employer feedback about how they're hiring and what their hiring needs are right now in this moment according to the changing needs of our skills based economy. So those employer insights are pretty critical.

Yeah, it's true. Speaking back to on the research side, you know, I worked when I was@hired.com a few years ago, I worked with Kate and the EDC on this 2016 software talent study where we tried to, I think pretty successfully did an overview of the software talent piece. But what it sounds like is you've layered in a lot of other aspects of that marketing talent, sales, other business parts. And realized as we all have is like when you grow a company, you can't grow one department, you need to be growing all of it together. And so it's fantastic to see that part. Kate, do you want to speak to a little bit more of what the research has shown beyond just like software development talent and the needs of the supporting roles around that that you've seen grow, maybe even coming stemming from that original study we put out a few years ago.

Yeah, definitely. And that software report I think really did for us as a community in San Diego got us paying attention to software and really the role, as you mentioned, Neil, that software is playing in helping drive a lot of the innovation that's happening in San Diego. I think that that report was cited a lot in a lot of marketing materials about San Diego to help really put us on the map as a place where there's a lot of software development happening. We have a lot of software engineers who are really pushing that work forward. And then even more so it helped us kind of understand even all the different ways in which software is touching all of these different parts of our community across really all industries. And I think it's a really, it's no surprise that software jobs continue to be in high demand in San Diego because essentially every industry in some way, shape or form relies on software developers to help meet their goals. Some of the other areas that we've looked at and we see the growth kind of concentrated in some of these areas are in addition to software engineering, which continues to be the number one, I want to emphasize that. But general more traditional engineering roles. So think industrial, mechanical, electrical engineers. We see a lot of continued growth in healthcare and this was pre Covid we see a lot of growth in manufacturing and logistics. So those types of roles continue to be in high demand. And then we've recently focused looking at business roles, marketing, sales and those types of positions which you look at all of the different job areas that I just listed and there's a tech component to all of them in some way digital skills are required. And that's kind of the underlying commonality between these jobs that we continue to seek is that those digital skills are something that kind of regardless of what industry you end up in, you're going to need to have some sort of like digital literacy to be successful in terms of trends that we're seeing. So in San Diego we're seeing about our education institutions are producing about 10,000 skilled workers per year. And what I mean by a skilled worker, someone with a post secondary education, so education beyond high school. And we focus on that number because we do see that those jobs that are continuing to grow typically do require some sort of post secondary education in the next decade. So by 20, by around 2030, we're going to see about 20,000 job openings within these high demand areas. And so that's a pretty, it's a pretty clear representation of the gap that we're expecting in terms of just actual completions of, of education programs. And so that was kind of the what we call a two by four, you know, that stat that really like smacks you in the face about an area that we really need to be paying more attention to. And so the focus, and this kind of came up earlier, but the focus is not really to expect that we are going to fill these 20,000 jobs in these high demand, pretty digital skill focused areas by people moving into San Diego. It's a costly talent recruitment strategy for companies. It's costly for the people themselves. And beyond that, we have plenty of talent to go around here in San Diego. And so our attention needs to be on investing in that local talent pool to be able to fill that gap. And again on software, it's just been interesting to kind of watch through Covid how the job posting activity has changed, how hiring is changing by companies, which industries are being hit the hardest. And you know, software developers has maintained growth throughout Covid in terms of hiring. It slowed, absolutely. And it was surpassed as the number one most posted job by registered nurses for a brief period of time. But then just in this last month, software developers is again at the top of the list as the number one most advertised job in San Diego. I pulled the numbers yesterday and it's around 3,800 job postings monthly for software developers and around 700 software developers are hired each month. So that's definitely a job area that I'm particularly interested in for a variety of reasons beyond just there being such a demand, it really is an opportunity. I think it's kind of a sweet spot in the workforce development world in terms of training because we've learned and companies are really starting to realize over, over time that you don't necessarily need a bachelor's degree to be able to be a successful software developer. There's a lot of non traditional training programs that give people, maybe even with little to no background in software, the skills and ability to really show up and be a successful software developer within these companies. And so that's when we're talking about, as Rachel mentioned, how do you get people back to work? How do you help support people in as they're exploring new career opportunities? I think software the demand is there, the training programs are there and it gives people more options beyond just a four year institution which is not accessible to many of people, many people who are looking for a career transition. And these jobs pay well. I mean it's not uncommon for an entry level software engineer. To start at $70,000. You know, some of our larger companies in San Diego I was shocked to learn recently that are paying upwards of like $35 an hour for interns. And so huge opportunity here. And then last thing I'll say about software is that these are jobs that we didn't see a whole lot of layoffs through the pandemic. You know, these are jobs that can be done remotely. These are jobs that sometimes are even more software engineers are more successful remotely. You know, teams are really used to using these remote tools to be effective. And so all of that to say, you know, this field won't be slowing down anytime soon.

Absolutely, yeah. And you make a good point about the backgrounds of what people can have. You know, we find just as a tech entrepreneur myself, that people coming from off nominal backgrounds is fantastic into the workforce. Especially for tech companies that may be building and selling to small businesses. If you come from that as a background as an operator or even just working in hospitality, now you're building code, thinking about who the customer is in mind. It's a great background to have, you know, for the tech workforce to bring that highlights the importance of the diversity of people's skill sets coming into, coming to the field. Something else you mentioned around is the kind of off nominal training or unique training it may be. It doesn't have to be a four year degree between the two of you do want to talk about specifically the kind of training that Advancing San Diego is utilizing and kind of semi spinning up but also leaning on existing trainers to build the supply side.

Yeah. So something that we're really trying to focus on through Advancing San Diego is increasing employers knowledge about where they can source qualified talent from. So we all know UCSD is an amazing asset for this region. They obviously a top, a top ranked engineering school in the country, consistently getting recognized for their engineering programs that they offer to students. I think though that employers and they've done a great job at really engaging employers and building recruitment relationships with employers. But we have a variety of other universities in San Diego and community colleges and non traditional training programs that could be good options for companies who are not able to fill all of their recruitment needs by just going to one school. And so that's something that we're trying to do is really create a network of schools that employers can go to to be able to recruit from those schools. And we do that by identifying what we're calling preferred providers and what it means to be a preferred provider is that your curriculum, your program has been looked at by industry. And we do this through these working groups that Rachel mentioned. But this, by digging into the curriculum, it gives employers a better understanding of the type of training that students are receiving through each of these programs, whether it's a community college program or a software apprenticeship program, a certificate program, what have you. So it's not only giving those schools an opportunity to get recognized by employers, but it's opening employers eyes about where are some of the alternative places that I can be looking to recruit this talent from. And so that's just one way that we're trying to really have a more comprehensive look at the education programs in San Diego that are really going to help employers fill those talent needs.

That's fantastic. So it's a free program on the employer side, potentially, in a sense, that you are, in a sense, doing kind of an evangelism service for these training programs, saying, hey, employers, let's make sure you're aware of everything that exists. And then on the supply side, you've got people who potentially want to go through these programs. And are you helping them find the appropriate program for them as well, too?

Yeah. So there's a whole internship piece of Advancing San Diego. And so aside from the work that we do with these employers to help educate them and just increase the lines of communication between employers and education partners, so another component of the working groups is not only identifying those programs that are really doing a great job already at training, say, software talent, but giving those education programs an opportunity as well to hear from the companies about what are the emerging skill sets, what are some ways that you might pivot your program or make some small adjustments or introduce training for this particular skill so that your program can be stronger? And we've seen a little bit of that happening. It's a slow process in the education world, but we are doing our best. And then what happens after a school is designated as a preferred provider is that students of their program immediately enter the preferred provider Provider network. And the grant funds are actually that we received from JPMorgan Chase for this project. Most of those grant funds are funding internships for students of those programs within small companies. And so this is where the small company piece comes in. We've had around 50, I believe, 30 small companies so far host interns as part of Advancing San Diego. And that includes about around 50 students who have done internships as part of Advancing San Diego. And we are really interested in supporting small companies for a variety of reasons. As I mentioned, 98% of companies in San Diego have less than 100 employees, Neil, as you alluded to, most of the actual job growth that happens in San Diego is coming from a small company growing from say, 10 to 40 employees. It's not coming from large companies picking up their headquarters and moving them here to San Diego. And so that's the kind of the key reason why we're focused on making those connections to small companies. We also are providing these companies that host interns as part of this program with training about how to host interns. Many of them have not in the past, many of them have recently gone remote themselves, but have not onboarded a new student into their remote environment. So we're providing a little bit of that. And we also find that just in general, a lot of smaller companies, especially startups, are not deeply committed to their recruiting habits, I guess I'll say. And so they're a lot more open minded when it comes to the backgrounds of students. You know, they want help where they can get it. They, you know, they want, they are completely open to hosting students from a variety of backgrounds. And that really jives with what we're trying to do through Advancing San Diego. By offering some opportunities to maybe a student who has gone through a community college, they can kind of get some experience at a smaller company. And then hopefully, you know, we do want to see some of these students get hired into programs. But there is a big piece of Advancing San Diego that is about actually providing forums where we're making those connections. Beyond the internship program, we're hosting a big industry engagement event coming up in October. It's going to be a virtual career exploration day where all of these students can come and kind of learn from about what job opportunities exist in San Diego. There will also be a virtual career fair where they can connect directly with some of the employers in San Diego, including some of these small businesses that are hiring. So, yes, there's definitely a piece of it that comes with us making sure that we're doing our part to actually make sure that the work that we're doing is actually leading to real opportunities for students.

That's fantastic. So it's pretty semi new in the program going on. But Rachel, can you tell us maybe are there already some small wins, some success stories of companies showing success in filling roles in ways that they couldn't before?

Yeah. In terms of, I'll speak broader, not just in terms of our Advancing San Diego work, but we engage with a lot of businesses who reach out to us for talent needs at the Workforce Partnership and have been able to refer quite a few of them over to the Advancing San Diego internship options for small businesses. We also run a couple of programs at the Workforce Partnership and, and that includes funded internship programs as well as identifying alternative sources of talent for businesses. I think Kate mentioned that smaller companies tend to be a little less committed to their established recruiting practices, but something else that we've been seeing especially in the recent months after the murder of George Floyd and the awareness around diversity as not just something to do to check the box for your EDI commitments, but also as something to really deeply engage in for businesses is we've seen a lot of larger companies coming to us and to other partners with the question about how do we work on diversifying our workforce. And we really believe that a diverse workforce is a more competitive workforce and is actually a competitive advantage for businesses. And we also think about diversity not just in terms of race, gender, religion, but also a diversity of background, a diversity of experience, life experience as well as. And so we've seen larger companies coming and looking for opportunities to take advantage of that competitive advantage by diversifying. And so that's something that Advancing San Diego supports. We also have a program called TechHire, has been in San Diego for the last four years. I believe we just expanded to Chula Vista. And so that's an area where we provide opportunities for folks who are looking to get into entry level tech positions and provide placement services for businesses who are looking for entry level tech talent. We have access to a lot of that kind of a diverse pipeline of talent and also can provide some internship subsidies through that program. Very similar to the model of Advancing San Diego on the funded internships for small companies. We also have, as I mentioned, just wanted to emphasize again with the preferred provider designation. The thing that I love about that is that these preferred providers of talent that come out of these working groups through Advancing San Diego are all evaluated based on how well they teach to the skills that employers have identified are needed. And so it kind of is this equalizer and it ignores sort of the pedigrees and the biases that we might have towards certain educational institution names and have been able to identify certain talent providers like a code school that might not be accredited as just as good at providing this talent as another school or to be able to compare maybe a state school to a four year university where the same level of skill, teaching and talent is coming out of these two programs and one costs a third the cost of the other as far as tuition. And that's been very eye opening for employers to say, oh, I can hire my talent from this school and that like costs that student so much less and they're going to come to us with less student loan debt. And I'm probably going to have a different kind of a person coming to me than if I always hire from like my mainstay place where I think I'm, I think the best talent comes from this place. And so I'm going to always hire from this place. One of the. And then I'll also just mention another program that we have at the Workforce Partnership which is our income share agreement or ISA program. And we've been working with UCSD Extension who is one of the preferred providers of software talent to really it's a pretty, it's pretty innovative for workforce boards and there are a couple of us doing it across the nation. But it's an answer to sort of the student loan debt crisis as well as a different way of orienting education around outcomes as opposed to, you know, somebody just going to school, racking up a bunch of student loan debt and then being under pressure to find a job. And so we've actually stood up an ISA investment fund and got investors for that fund where we pay for the education for somebody to go through a UCSD Extension certificate program in a tech field and they only pay back their education once they move into a job that pays them an adequate wage in order to do so. And so it's all. It's a win win for anyone who's looking at getting into the tech space. It's a win win for businesses because they have somebody who's newly entering this field who's been funded to get there. It's a way to increase that diversity in our tech industries and we are currently enrolling actually. So if we want to talk about anyone who's listening to this podcast who's looking to get into the areas of tech field or tech areas, we are currently enrolling for certificate programs in business intelligence, front end development and digital marketing. So those are things that are in demand. We've had cohorts go through there before and are currently enrolling for the winter there.

That ISA program by the way, I just signed up as a mentor and I'm now I've got my first digital marketing mentor that I'm helping out with and it's an incredible program. You know one it shows just what you mentioned, the diverse ways that we train people and the diverse ways to pay for that training, which is fantastic between your two or two have thought of that and then to pair them up with mentors to really say, hey, let's get you with industry professionals who will help over a long period of time, not just a one time meeting. Let's make sure you advance yourself professionally to beyond the score. So kudos to you guys for thinking through that. Kind of a full program of training, but also pairing with people as well. So I'm excited. I've had my first meeting and we've, we're set up for every other week for the next six or eight weeks now, which is I'm excited about.

That's great. Yeah, we have a very high quality, high caliber network of mentors. So double plug there.

Yeah. And then the tech hire program as well. We just got Startup San Diego involved there and Startup San Diego has their first marketing hire through TechHire as well too, which is wonderful.

It's been a great program and we've had it with the city of San Diego for a couple years now. We just launched in Chula Vista, I think I mentioned. And so this is a call to anyone who's looking for a job or looking for an entrance into the tech industry. If you're a resident of Chula Vista, we're actually looking for you right now. So go to workforce.org and check out our TechHire program and speak with a job coach. We'll get you in there.

Awesome, thanks for that shout out. We'll also make sure we put that in the show notes, especially also the event coming up. We'll make sure we'll highlight that as well too. Can you give us some other ways that you know, you'd love to see either talent or companies come and interact with advancing San Diego? Like what's the best way and place that people can go and learn more?

Yeah, so everything, everything is advancing. Sandiego.org that all lives on EDC's website. There's a variety of ways for companies and small businesses in particular, if you're interested in hosting interns through our program. If you're a company that is interested in participating in some of these working groups, I think that that's an excellent way for companies to get engaged in the work. You know, we can consistently see companies coming out like Wells Fargo this week or last week making comments about there not being enough, enough black talent for them to recruit from. And that's why they didn't meet their diversity goals. And so, you know, we try to remind companies that if you're, if you're relying on your same recruiting habits and trying to meet your diversity goals, you shouldn't be surprised if those if you're not able to meet those goals, if you're continuing to rely on those same recruitment habits. And we did see again today, and this is just timely, but a variety of large companies announced that they were going to be publishing their diversity data. I don't know if you all saw that in Forbes today, today, but this is a huge move. So companies are, I think, really being pressured and are really trying to think about how they can genuinely be committed to diversity in their companies. And to do that, you need to really take an internal look at some of your own recruitment practices and think about what are some of the ways that we can reach a broader student body. And I think that advancing San Diego is one way that local employers can really participate in those conversations. And then, you know, again, you know, in addition to, you know, participating in these working groups, you are going to get a better understanding of who's doing what in San Diego. If you're looking to fill software positions, go check out our preferred providers of software talent. If you're looking for engineers, look at go check out our preferred providers of engineering talent. Rachel is about to announce our preferred providers of business talent. So we're really trying hard to put resources together for companies and that is really what advancing San Diego is about.

Fantastic. We've had a previous provider on in Michael Roberts with San Diego Code School. And what's really cool to see is the diversity of training in that regard where they're doing apprenticeships, which is different than most of the other ways you're getting hands on learning and getting paid to learn or and if that might not be for everyone. Right. There could be more traditional, longer form and then there's boot camps as well too. So it's really great all the different kinds of trainings that you guys have put together because no, not one thing works for everyone. So thanks you guys for organizing that. I want to give another shout out for the event that you are hosting at the end, middle of October. What can you give us the details and the dates again on that?

Yeah, this is Advancing San Diego Career Exploration Day and Virtual Career Fair. And so this event is actually open to all students in San Diego, really focused on college students. However, there are a couple of sessions that we're putting together for high school students to learn about these preferred provider programs that I've been talking about. If you are enrolled in a preferred provider program, there is a morning career fair session that is just for preferred provider students to connect with companies. So we have a whole variety of programming throughout the day. Including that virtual career fair that's kind of at the start and finish of the day. I'm just going to pull up the.

While you're pulling that up, I mean, it's a perfect timing of October. October tends to be somehow a talent month for students. It's also right in smack in the middle of San Diego Startup Month.

Yeah.

And so there'll be kind of a bit more hyper awareness there around looking and saying what's going on around me. So we'll make sure we're promoting it there as well, too.

Awesome. Yeah. The link is san diegocareers v as in victorfairs.com san diegocareers.vfairs.com Great.

Put that in the show notes. Thank you guys both for what you're working on. This is planting seeds that I know you've been working on for a while that's going to bear some pretty big fruit for the next, you know, dozens of years. But this is San Diego and while we love working here, we love eating here too. We got to know, what are your two favorite taco spots?

Oh, we get two. Okay, great.

Oh, no, sorry, I mean, like. Well, you can say as many as you want because I know this is the hardest question.

I feel like I visit every single hole in the wall taco shop I possibly can because they make the best burritos. I like all the trendy cocktail places too, like Puesto Metal Bar and restaurant downtown. But my favorite right now is this little taco truck that sometimes sits outside of the Arco gas station off of G Street downtown. I don't even know what it's called. Really great guy who runs it. He's just retired and he loves cooking and serving people. And he's not there on the weekends. I haven't seen him around, so I hope he's doing okay.

Shout out.

If you're listening to the podcast, please come back because your mole is great.

Yeah, this is, this is a hard question for me. I am vegan, so tacos can be difficult. I, as a resident of north park, grew up here, still live here. I got to go with City Tacos. They've got some, some great options for people like me who can't eat a lot of the ingredients that most traditional tacos have in them.

So, yeah, it's a good one. Citi's making a run for the money for Tacostan, which seem to be expanding alongside each other right now and doing some good ingredients for vegans and vegetarians as well, too. Good shout out there. Well, thank you both so much. Thank you for being on the podcast, sharing this and for what you're helping us build in the community. So thanks again and appreciate it.

Thank you. Appreciate the opportunity to chat with you.

Likewise.

Thanks for joining us on the Tacos and Tech podcast with Neil Bloom. Thanks again to Cox Business for helping make this possible by expanding the reach of the San Diego tech ecosystem. Big shout out to School of Rap for our rad intro music. And thanks as well to Nest Podcast Network where we are recording live inside their studio at Nest Co working in Bankers Hill. You can find Neil Bloom on Twitter Eelbloom as well as friends, fresh brewed tech and tacos in tech Pod on Twitter too.

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