Frankly Speaking – Adventures in Tech Apprenticeships was produced by Franklin Skills (formerly Franklin Apprenticeships), a woman-owned tech apprenticeship company on a mission to unlock the potential of the American workforce. Franklin offers upskilling, reskilling, coaching, and apprenticeships for a range of tech roles, such as cybersecurity, help desk, IBM Z, network engineering and software engineering.

Help us spread the word about tech apprenticeships by leaving a review and telling a friend about our show. And don’t forget to subscribe to be notified of new episodes.

You can also find detailed show notes and more details at: https://franklinskills.com/category/news-resources/podcast/.

Melissa shares her experience making the leap into a new career in tech with Franklin’s Network Engineering Pre-Apprenticeship. Around twenty years ago, Melissa started her career with a Bachelor’s Degree in Environmental Horticulture from the University of California Davis. She's had several different kinds of jobs – from working with animals to customer service – and also became a mom. Then, a life event prompted her to re-evaluate and discover she wanted to make a switch to tech.

“I didn't really feel like I was reaching my full potential,” she explains. “I wasn't growing every day. It didn't feel like the future that I wanted to build for my family. And so I started looking at technology and it just kind of checked all those boxes for me, all the things that I was looking for.”

Melissa considered a degree but decided to pursue an apprenticeship instead as she wanted to start working and learning in the real world.

She reflects, “I didn't know if I wanted to pursue a degree. I didn't know if I wanted to put in the time. I just wanted to get in there. I wanted to get working. I wanted to get the experience.”

Through Franklin’s Pre-Apprenticeship program, she fell in love with Network Engineering.

“My kids just think I'm the coolest when I can pull up a command line and do something, they think I’m like a hacker!” she joked.

Melissa also developed a passion for the coding language Python, which prompted her to launch a YouTube channel called “Pea-Sized Python.”

UPDATE: At the time of this interview, she was actively pursuing a full-time position and has since been hired in her first Network Engineering role. Congratulations Melissa from the whole Franklin team!

Mixed & Edited by Next Day Podcast.

Frankly Speaking – Adventures in Tech Apprenticeships was produced by Franklin Skills (formerly Franklin Apprenticeships), a woman-owned tech apprenticeship company on a mission to unlock the potential of the American workforce. Franklin offers upskilling, reskilling, coaching, and apprenticeships for a range of tech roles, such as cybersecurity, help desk, IBM Z, network engineering and software engineering.

Help us spread the word about tech apprenticeships by leaving a review and telling a friend about our show. And don’t forget to subscribe to be notified of new episodes.

You can also find detailed show notes and more details at: https://franklinskills.com/category/news-resources/podcast/.

Six years ago, an idea was born on the back of a napkin in a New York restaurant. Instead of relying solely on the same talent pool of computer science college graduates, the IBM zSystems Ecosystem team decided to build its own. Meredith Stowell, Vice President of IBM zSystems Ecosystem at IBM, and her colleagues have been developing and growing the IBM Z Apprenticeship program ever since.

“We had been doing apprenticeships in other areas for years and years and years, but not in IT. We wondered, how does this fit IT? And it does. It's fantastic,” Meredith tells Cable Rose, host of Frankly Speaking.

In this episode, Meredith and Cable explore the evolution of the IBM Z Apprenticeship program, where it started and how it has evolved to help hundreds of people develop IBM Z skills and been adopted by more than 30 IBM clients and counting.

Meredith explains, “We hit a challenge with all the administration, everything behind the scenes. We teamed with Franklin because Franklin has the deep skills and the deep knowledge of the best ways of recruiting diverse talent and the best ways of ensuring success for the apprentices. Having that Success Coach help them along the way, that's what really ensures the overall success of the program.”

Fast forward to 2023, and as Meredith explains, the program expanding quickly. “Holy smokes, this thing is taking off. And not only are we doing this within the U.S., but we've taken this framework and we've leveraged it to go global. And so now we're starting to see successes in Canada. We're looking at Australia. We're looking at Thailand. We're going all over the world with this program.”

For Meredith and the IBM team, it's all about creating opportunity. By forging a new career pathway for people from any background with a passion for IBM zSystems, they are not only changing lives, but also future-proofing IBM zSystems for decades to come.

“For anything to really be successful, you've got to have a vibrant, sustainable, diverse community surrounding it,” she observed.


GUEST BIOGRAPHY
Meredith Stowell, Vice President of IBM zSystems Ecosystem, IBM

Meredith is the Vice President of IBM zSystems Ecosystem, helping to build skills and a strong community of partners. Her team works with clients, universities, students, professional developers and partners around the world to build critical IT skills needed in the marketplace by IBM and the broader ecosystem.

She leads developer outreach activities including hackathons, meetups, and trial programs to increase awareness of the platform and build a vibrant ecosystem of solutions supported on the IBM zSystems and LinuxONE platforms.

She has worked with a broad range of IBM software solutions and much of her background is in the analytics field where she has worked as a business analyst, enterprise implementation consultant, program manager, and leader for Business Analytics technical and sales enablement.

Mixed & Edited by N

Frankly Speaking – Adventures in Tech Apprenticeships was produced by Franklin Skills (formerly Franklin Apprenticeships), a woman-owned tech apprenticeship company on a mission to unlock the potential of the American workforce. Franklin offers upskilling, reskilling, coaching, and apprenticeships for a range of tech roles, such as cybersecurity, help desk, IBM Z, network engineering and software engineering.

Help us spread the word about tech apprenticeships by leaving a review and telling a friend about our show. And don’t forget to subscribe to be notified of new episodes.

You can also find detailed show notes and more details at: https://franklinskills.com/category/news-resources/podcast/.