IBM and Hispanic Heritage Foundation partner to upskill Latinos for IT careers

Creating opportunity is key to fostering diversity in the tech industry — and that’s what IBM is aiming to do in partnership with the Hispanic Heritage Foundation. Together, the organizations have brought Spanish-based IT learning courses to the Latino community through IBM’s SkillsBuild platform, creating new pathways to careers in technology.

IBM SkillsBuild is a free online learning platform that gives students and job seekers access to self-paced digital courses to learn new skills, earn certifications, and embark on new career paths. SkillsBuild courses are offered in more than 20 languages, including Spanish, covering topics such as communication, leadership skills, AI, analytics, cybersecurity, cloud, and more.

The SkillsBuild platform and IBM’s partnership with HHF are part of IBM’s commitment to provide more than 30 million people of all ages globally with “new skills needed for the jobs of tomorrow” by the year 2030, says Claudia Cortes Romanelli, director of WW CSR geos and markets at IBM.

Antonio Tijerino, president and CEO of HHF, says partnering with IBM on SkillsBuild presented a clear opportunity to connect the Latino community to career-building opportunities in technology through a well-established learning program.

A platform for social impact

The SkillsBuild platform has been “designed for social impact,” IBM’s Romanelli says, noting that courses are specifically tailored “for the populations that we are envisioning to serve — in this case, Latinos.”

IBM’s aim is to ensure content on the platform is engaging, interesting, and relevant to each user. As such, IBM takes great care to ensure translations of its courses and content are not only accurate but “culturally relevant,” Romanelli says, and that they resonate with the audience.

Outreach is a large part of fostering that resonance, and Tijerno, on his end, sees HHF as something of a “sales team” for the platform, encouraging those interested in tech in the Latino community to take a course or earn an IT certification that can create a pathway to a new career.

“I would consider [HHF] in that role as being the conduit to the community — we’re presenting it in a way that is making our community feel like they belong, making them feel like they have the confidence to be able to do it and the encouragement and the belief system that they can you can do this,” he says.

IBM also places a strong focus on ensuring SkillsBuild accommodates people at every stage of their career — from high school to entry level to adults making a career change.

One of the challenges IBM faces with SkillsBuild is ensuring the platform remains up-to-date with the latest in-demand skills, adapting courses and offerings to flow with market demands. Plus, with its global focus for SkillsBuild, IBM’s team also must take into consideration how various markets differ, such as those in Europe, India, and Latin America, to develop courses for skills most relevant to those locations.

SkillsBuild success stories

Sara Kaufman grew up in Buenos Aires and later moved to the US, where she is now a college student studying biomedical engineering and creative writing. Introduced to the IBM SkillsBuild platform through her connections with the HHF, Kaufman says she started with “limited computer science knowledge.”

Jumping into AI course, Kaufman quickly learned about “AI’s technical aspects and societal impact.” She says that she has since continued to explore AI and is “now looking to integrate AI into her educational technology project and continues to engage with AI initiatives in her research role at university.”

“I know that AI’s capabilities are soon going to be incorporated into nearly every sector of daily life, and I found it important to understand them as best as I could. I did not have a strong computer science background when I started the course, but it met me at my level and taught me about how AI functions,” says Kaufman.

AI is a big focus for the HHF, Tijerno says, pointing to data from the 2024 LDC US Latinos in Tech report, which shows that Latinos are not only early adopters of AI, but that 14% Latino-owned businesses have adopted AI, compared to only 7% of white-owned businesses. The data also revealed that Latino representation in technical AI roles grew by 59% from 2018 to 2022, compared to an increase of 26% for the overall US workforce. Additionally, by 2022, 10% of these technical roles were held by Latino workers.

Oscar Ramirez immigrated to America when he was five years old, eventually applied for DACA (Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals) and enrolled in college. After growing up in Silicon Valley, and using the computers at the local library, Ramirez had his eye on a career in the technology industry. Unable to obtain student loans due to his immigration status, Ramirez worked full-time while attending college full-time, earning his BS in applied mathematics and computational mathematics from San Jose State University in 2023.

During Ramirez’s final semester of college, he became aware of the SkillsBuild platform through the HHF and soon began enrolling in courses and earning credentials to help his resume stand out. What Ramirez likes most about the platform is that it gave him the opportunity to dig deeper into a wide range of interests, and to identify his strengths and areas where he needed to gain more skills.

“If there’s anything that you’d be interested in doing that IBM SkillsBuild can offer, take the first step, and start with the courses. It’ll paint a clearer picture of what you need to do to get where you want to be,” he says.

The importance of creating opportunity

Despite reported skills gaps, there is no shortage of talented, smart, and eager candidates to fill IT roles. Many just need the chance to gain the right training to build relevant skills for the industry. IBM’s SkillsBuild creates this opportunity by being accessible — it’s free and digital — and through partnerships such as HHF, which encourages its members to gain IT certifications through the platform.

“It’s creating direct pathways to tech jobs. Certifications go a long way when you are looking for a job — that’s the obvious way — but it also goes a long way to giving you confidence that you belong in this industry, and that gets left out a lot,” says Tijerino.

Tijerno says that it was also important to the HHF that the courses offered through the SkillsBuild platform were accessible to a range of professionals, as well as students.

“We wanted to provide these opportunities and trainings for our community to make an impact and we’re really grateful to IBM for allowing us to leverage their expertise and pathways in preparing our community for these jobs that America desperately needs to fill, and Latinos have always been ready to do it,” says Tijerino.

From Romanelli’s perspective, the SkillsBuild platform is “putting talent in the center of the discussion,” especially in the Latino community, and providing the “right format for this talent to be successful.” She notes that, in Hispanic Heritage Foundation, IBM has found a partner that understands the importance of joining forces to make the program “more effective and efficient in the way that we deliver that content and the experience for new learners.”