In our post last week, we called attention to certain current events that contribute to the discussion of how information technology training can be used to do good works and give back to the community. This week we’re doing it again by drawing attention to the press release regarding the honors to be conferred on Karen Ross for her work as CEO of Sharp Decisions.
Last week we talked about how online information technology training can give you the tools to participate or take the lead in projects aimed at solving social problems or improving the lives of others. But previously, we had addressed how the same training can help you to better match your skills to the job description for a training and development specialist, particularly one who works for any of the growing number of firms that specifically offer information technology training to the underprivileged.
Ms. Ross’s work is relevant to that latter topic, but it specifically relates to the provision of in-person and online information technology training not to the poor or marginalized, but rather to veterans seeking to make the transition from the military to civilian careers. Ross is responsible for the Vocations, Education, and Training for Service Members (VETS) program, which provides boot camp-style information technology training and employs military veterans as consultants, dispatching them in multi-person units to work with client companies.
As a female business leader, Ross’s story distinctly relates to last week’s list of socially conscious IT projects that were mentioned at the Fortune Most Powerful Women Summit. It is another example of the same impulse to use an IT background for good, as well as for profit. But it is unique in that it also serves as an example of how certain elements of the modern workforce may find a special means of entry to the very same field.
When we discussed programs targeting the underprivileged, we speculated that those projects would proliferate. And subsequent information seems to have borne that out. So we’re prepared to similarly project that programs providing opportunities to military veterans and other special workforce demographics will also be developed to complement the work for which Ms. Ross will be honored as a “Woman of Distinction” by the Girl Scouts of Greater New York.
This may be interesting to two types of persons seeking online information technology training: those who are veterans themselves, and those who are interested in giving back to service members by helping them to have successful post-military lives. In either case, the VETS program speaks to potential career opportunities that will particularly suit both your background and your desire to do good.
And if any veteran finds that his online information technology training truly pays off, such programs give him or her an opportunity to both gain and give the unique help that VETS and its successors will provide to service members.