Jennifer Schwab, CEO of the ENTITY Academy, joins ChedHER to discuss how they are hoping to upskill over 1 million women by 2025 to have the skills they need in a 21st-century workforce, and how having a mentor can make a huge difference.

chedHER

How The ENTITY Academy is Upskilling Women for the Future of Work

So joining us now is jennifer swab the ceo over entity academy, jennifer. Such a pleasure to have you here. So tell us why you wanted to launch entity academy and what kind of programs are you offering here? Absolutely. So um you know, back when I was early in my career, I looked at my own situation, I come from a long line of academics and uh you know, I entered business in the top big four accounting firm and I was sort of lost in terms of, you know, how do I navigate the politics of a major company? And uh looking back, I thought wow, I really could have used some impartial mentors back then. And so the impetus of entity is really to provide women mentorship and coaching so they can be successful early in their careers and we know how important that is and being student obsessed is one of your guys core values. So who really are your students at the end of the day, why do women come to entity? So you know, we really serve three types of students. So several of our of our students are women that have liberal arts background, so they already have four year degrees, but they're seeing, oh wow my my upward trajectory is quite limited unless I get some tech skills. So they'll come through our academy to get skills in data science, uh cybersecurity software development and digital marketing. So that's one group that we also have back to work moms unless we're really interesting cohort because these are women that having tremendous and potential, but they've been out of the workforce for a while. So they come through our programs as well. And then of course women that are like, wow, I better up skills, I want to stay relevant and that group, it tends to be like management and above and they're saying, hey, I'm going to be more promotable and I'm also gonna be able to manage better if I have certain tech skills. So let's talk about the text jobs in particular. What challenges are we seeing a lot of women face when they're breaking into a lot of these tech jobs. Well, like did you watch the amazon feature of super pumped about it? So you know, some of that's fiction and it's all, it's a little bit of Hollywood, but there are tenants of truth there and if you, if you watch like the dynamics within the workplace at companies like Uber and I know there's been a lot of changes there now, but back then, you know, women felt isolated and they felt like they didn't have a voice and I think that's quite intimidating when people are considering a tech career, especially women have never, they've never been instant before and so we're trying to provide that community and also this sense of, you know, you're not alone, you're not on an island by yourself, you've actually got industry role models you can look up to that are gonna help you rise in those careers. You were mentioning earlier how important a mentorship program is to women who are moving up into the workforce. Why is mentorship so important in this industry in particular? Well your mentorship is important if you want to accelerate your, your career, uh it's important to everybody, but especially for for women and young women that are saying okay, I want to hit the ground running in my first role, nothing really beats you know, experience and knowing the ropes, especially in a, in a corporate environment, if you can navigate some of that stuff that that is really difficult in those early years, you can actually start to manage up and down and I think that's why it's so important that we pay it forward and we mentor women that are at the entry level in their career. Absolutely so true. So for those who are watching this interview right now, what advice do you have for women who are seeking a mentor right now, what are sort of the first steps they need to do to sort of start all of this? Hey, mentorships got to be bidirectional, you know, mentor mentor mentee relationships can last a lifetime, but you make make it interesting for the person that's trying to help you. So we always tell our mentees like you know, show up on time, be prepared with questions, be proactive, be show appreciation for the fact that they're paying it forward to help you, but also teach them something, you know, I found that a lot of our mentors that are gen X or boomers that they will actually learn from our millennial and gen z mentees about like how they view the world and how they view the workplace because they're two different things. So I think that mentorship can be bidirectional and when it is, it's the most rewarding. Let's talk about some of the really great ambitious goals. You guys have, your goal here is to help over a million women just by 2025. So only a few years from now, how are you going about reaching that goal and how close are you to reaching that? Well, you know, there's a we have a lot of strides, but you know, when we help women, we not only are helping women that go through our educ programs were matching women with jobs that are just part of our online community. So our online community has over 1.5 million followers across our different social networks and we also have a number of mentorship fireside chats that are open to that community and we connect those people that participate in those fireside chats with prospective hiring managers. You know, we have them fill out assessments, we know what their skill sets are. So we can do a lot of matching uh yeah, it's an ambitious goal but we think we can get there and we're going to continue to expand our programs right now. We're very focused on data science, cybersecurity, software development, and digital marketing, but we have big plans to go into product management, UX UI design and a number of other verticals in the tech space. So I have about another minute left with you. Let's talk about the future of entity academy and also how can women get involved in this company? Absolutely. You know, there's so many phenomenal organizations and notable film therapists as well as other companies addressing women in the workplace. I see this really interesting coalition building to help to help us leverage each other's talents and also make sure that we are looking at this from multiple lenses to close the gender wage gap and wealth gap. It's gonna take a village. And so I'm really looking forward to working with partners to, to reach these ambitious goals. And you know, when I look at our own intermission of just getting more women into tech and closing the wage gap, it's really a daunting task. And I personally think that if we can work together and we can also develop more services that really hone in on why women don't want to get into tech or they don't want to stay in tech. I think it's gonna be a critical move for absolutely jennifer. Such a pleasure to have you here, jennifer Schwab is the ceo of entity Academy