Cisco’s Networking Academy – a global training platform for career and skills growth – is aiming to train 25 million people over the next decade. The lofty challenge comes amidst growing methods within cybersecurity to recruit and retain new and diverse talent.

“By 2025, 97 million new jobs will be created due to advances in technology and automation,” Cisco stated in the release.

“We can get a diverse workforce if we train a diverse workforce,” Laura Quintana, VP and GM of the Networking Academy, told SDxCentral.

This push is chiefly supported by Cisco's Skills for All program – a free online platform for learning courses, interactive tools, and career resources, including certification for entry-level security jobs.

Alongside the internal program launches, Cisco also announced its partnering with Experis to place 1,000 people in new IT roles in the first year.

“The partnership with them is exciting because we are able to create that complete pathway to the job. While we prepare them with the digital skills, Experis comes in and offers job opportunities,” Quintana explained.

The announcements are the latest of Cisco’s multi-faceted approach to fostering a diverse talent pipeline through external partnerships and internal skill and career-development pathways.

“Our ecosystem of partners has allowed the program to reach prisons, community centers, and military bases, while also extending learning opportunities to underserved members of our community such as underrepresented minorities, at-risk youth, and people with disabilities,” Cisco stated.

A big part of Cisco’s approach to hitting such a large number of new talent is “to meet learners where they’re at,” Quintana explained.

“As many of us know, the pandemic disproportionately impacted low wage workers, women, people of color,” she explained. “And we know that automation is only accelerating, and as a result we're seeing, unfortunately, more and more jobs that are being disrupted. And these are roles and jobs disproportionately held by people of color, especially in the United States.”

With millions of unfilled cybersecurity positions, expanding the outreach for entry-level opportunities will be key in cultivating the workforce needed to face the industry’s challenges, Quintana said. “Our workforce does not represent our nation,” she noted.

Cisco’s effort to diversify this representation – exemplified by initiatives like Women Rock-IT and their work with historically Black colleges and universities (HBCUs) – is seeing noticeable growth through the Networking Academy since its start in 1997.

“Of the 17.5 million learners trained since inception, nearly 4.6 million or roughly 26% were female,” Quintana explained, and “preliminary calculations for current students in FY23 indicate that female participation is already up to 28%.”

“We will continue to work in this space to ensure that we can include more female participation,” Quintana said, but she noted the overall work must expand to include neurodiverse and disabled demographics as well, citing Cisco’s long standing partnership with Curtin University to assist visually impaired learners.

“There are over a billion people that are disabled around the world, and we know that there is talent everywhere," she said. "It's just that we don't always ensure that we can, again, meet people where they're at.”