White House Names Tulsa a “TechHire” City

The White House just announced Tulsa as one of the 20 new TechHire communities dedicated to creating pathways for more Americans to access well-paying tech jobs. Tulsa is joining a national network of 71 TechHire communities receiving support from the White House to spearhead efforts to help overlooked and underrepresented Americans start technology careers.

In short, this means Tulsa is primed for non-traditional coding education designed to meet a growing demand for computer programmers.

“We are very pleased to welcome Tulsa to the TechHire Initiative,” said Tess Posner, Managing Director of TechHire, an initiative introduced by President Obama in March 2015. “Tulsa has demonstrated a true commitment to making opportunities in tech more inclusive in your community, and we look forward to working with you to help implement, grow, and amplify your efforts.”

TechHire, an initiative introduced by President Obama in March 2015, was created “to expand local tech sectors by building tech talented pipelines in communities across the country,” their website explains.

The ultimate goal of TechHire is three-fold:

1. Create a network of communities and employer partners to pilot accelerated training strategies
2. Find large, private-sector companies and national organizations committed to providing tools to support these communities
3. Funnel $100 million in federal grant funding to these communities

Now that Tulsa is a TechHire community, organizations here will be connected to the national network of other TechHire communities and qualify to apply for the grant money mentioned above.

36 Degrees North is proud to collaborate with Techlahoma and a network of other workforce and education partners to quickly train candidates for tech jobs with local employers, including ConsumerAffairs and Mozilla. “We are thrilled to join the TechHire community,” said 36 Degrees North Executive Director Dustin Curzon. “It is a testament to collaboration among dozens of corporate leaders and nonprofit organizations who are passionate about building the next generation of workforce in Tulsa.”

With strong support from the incoming Mayor’s Office, Tulsa TechHire plans to train and place 600 candidates, including women and youth, into tech jobs across sectors by 2020.

All TechHire communities go through an intensive and competitive application process to demonstrate their level of commitment and readiness in expanding the technology sector. This TechHire designation shows that Tulsa has the partners, employers, training providers, and the civil leadership support needed to implement and scale tech job opportunities for everyone.

Groups focused on supporting this specific mission include:

Work in Tech: a program of the Oklahoma Innovation Institute designed to match top university students with tech companies in Tulsa
A Code of Their Own: a summer camp created by the Tulsa Regional STEM Alliance designed to teach girls how to code
Rails Bridge: a free, weekend, coding bootcamp for women
Techlahoma: an umbrella organization that supports user groups like Tulsa Web Devs and tech conferences like 200 OK
OK Coders: a class developed by the University of Oklahoma’s Center for the Creation of Economic Wealth to teach adults how to code and then transition into a coding job
The Mine: a program of the University of Oklahoma that is assessing the existing and needed coding education, skills development and workforce pipeline in Tulsa and testing and recommending steps to develop Tulsa into a coding hub
Tulsa Tech: an institution of higher learning with multiple campuses in the Tulsa metro that is adding new coding courses to their class offerings

We’re excited to see how the coding community grows in Tulsa in the years to come. To join the initiative, we encourage you to click on the links above and reach out to the organizations you’d like to help.