Africa – A Growing Opportunity

Image credit: IBM Mobile Insights blog

We all know that dreaded sight when you return from vacation: the imminent swelling number of emails in your inbox. Now imagine 6 months of unread emails. I was fortunate to have the support of my IBM team to take a leave of absence to pursue an opportunity as a volunteer consultant for an NGO called TechnoServe in Tanzania. Yet in the midst of the 1000+ emails, there was one email that caught my eye and energized my spirit. The subject read Learn about IBM in Africa and highlighted IBM’s strategic focus in Africa in 2014.

Ready for jobs that haven’t been invented yet [Citizen IBM post]

How did I spend my summer as a 17-year-old? Teaching young girls how to kayak in a freezing cold lake at an overnight camp in northern Ontario. How is Leslieanne John, a 17-year-old rising fourth-year student at Brooklyn, New York’s Pathways in Technology Early College High School (P-TECH), spending her summer? She’s completing an eight-week internship with the Center for Applied Insights – a thought leadership team within IBM. I’ve had the privilege of serving as Leslieanne’s manager and mentor this summer, and can attest to what a truly invaluable experience this has been for both her and our team at IBM.

Leslieanne John Interview: P-TECH, President Obama, and IBM CAI

Leslieanne John, P-TECH student & IBM CAI intern

“Leslie Anne John epitomizes what an education like P-TECH’s can achieve.  [She’s] in the 11th grade and already taking eight college classes” – President Barack Obama

Leslieanne John is a third-year student at P-TECH (Pathways in Technology Early College High School) who garnered the attention of President Barack Obama during his visit to the school last year.  She is an accomplished young lady who hopes to become a lawyer in the future.  For her summer break this year, she is interning with the IBM Center for Applied Insights (IBM CAI), where she hopes to gain more knowledge in the technology field.  She will be conducting a series of executive interview blog posts for IBM CAI exploring topics such as technical skills necessary for business today, addressing technical skills gaps and preparing students for the future, and how technology integrates with education.

[INFOGRAPHIC] Fighting Hunger… One Infographic at a Time

At the IBM Center for Applied Insights, we could probably create data visualizations, infographics, and datagrams in our sleep. Cloud Pacesetters? Marketing Scientists? Chief Information Security Officers? No problem. But this week, we faced an exciting new challenge. Along with our broader Market Insights team, we participated in “Hack Week”, a competition to create the best infographic for a great cause, the West Side Campaign Against Hunger (WSCAH).

A bit about the cause – West Side Campaign Against Hunger’s mission is to alleviate hunger and create a culture that promotes self-reliance and works for change. The WSCAH food pantry, located in New York City’s Upper West Side, is unique – it is a customer-choice, supermarket style pantry. Clients choose the food they need for themselves and their families and also volunteer at the pantry, creating a cooperative system. In 2013, WSCAH served 1 million meals to 115,000 people.