Serial entrepreneur Rony Abovitz announces MDC partnership, a student offers his views on Miami tech, new initiatives announced – and more.
Over the past 18 months, the Miami community has been able to unlock over $10 million in funding from the federal government to create a first-of-its-kind coalition called Miami Tech Works, said Saif Ishoof, founder of Lab22c. “It is human ingenuity – it is people power and that is what our Miami Tech Works coalition is absolutely all about.”
Ishoof kicked off an open meeting of Miami Tech Works’ Miami Tech Talent Coalition from the main stage of eMerge Americas on April 18. As part of the high-energy hourlong presentation, the organization explained Miami Tech Works’ vision and mission, featured a conversation and milestone announcement with serial entrepreneur Rony Abovitz and Miami Dade College President Madeline Pumariega, and reported on its working groups.
Miami Dade College, the country’s largest college with 125,000 students and 2.5 million alumni, is the workforce engine for this community of nearly 3 million households in Miami-Dade County, said Pumariega. “We said technology was going to not just be a vertical or a major, but it was going to be across disciplines … The college is really being thoughtful about doing that and then just creating a massive amount of opportunities for our students with the access to education, access to internships, and especially what we’re doing with the Tech Talent Coalition building tech talent, “ she said.
Abovitz, unicorn founder of Mako Surgical and Magic Leap who is now building SynthBee, said he is “super bullish” on the region. Spend time at Miami Dade College as he has and “you can just see the excitement of all these really hungry kids wanting to make something happen. I was just totally blown away,” said Abovitz, a University of Miami alumnus, during the talk.
Abovitz announced at eMerge a major partnership with MDC offering access to SynthBee’s technology platform, with opportunities for gaining tech skills and mentorship as well as internships, fellowships and careers at SynthBee. The partnership will also extend beyond campus, and include collaboration with other local universities, physical-digital worlds, and more. The goal: to catalyze innovation by amplifying and supercharging ideas and new companies “to make this region one of the most interesting places for startups to happen anywhere in the world,” Abovitz said.
The time is now for initiatives like this because Abovitz says unfortunately AI currently is synonymous with what he calls computational autocracy. “This side of the world should be the lighthouse for computational democracy because the other coast is all about computational autocracy… giant companies hoarding all data, all the know-how, in gigantic brains. They’re going to slurp up your company and slurp up jobs and they’re saying, don’t worry, it will all be fine,” said Abovitz. “It won’t be all fine. The company we’re building, SynthBee, is hopefully an iconic computational democracy company. No one can get to control it.”
After the college’s faculty in all disciplines went through extensive AI training, MDC was the first college in Florida to launch a college credit certificate and associates and bachelor’s degree programs in Applied AI, Pumariega said. “We’ve got nearly 700 people enrolled in those courses now with the average age being 40. We’re not running a pilot program. We’re doing this at scale. Any student that wants to take an AI course at Miami Dade College can. Any faculty member that wants to use artificial intelligence in their classroom can do it, and now we’re building capacity on using AI in every operation at Miami Dade College.”
Need more evidence that Miami is a tech hub? “There’s a thriving startup ecosystem, there’s investment capital, there’s infrastructure growth, and more than anything, there’s a thriving tech talent pool because of collaboration,” said Terri-Ann Brown, executive director of Miami Tech Works, which is helping to build South Florida’s tech talent ecosystem. “We bring together employers, academic institutions and community-based organizations all focused on one thing: building a sustainable tech talent pipeline that will create economic impact for employers who all want to build a community that is focused on driving the 305 forward.”
Adam Wilson, an MDC student with a background in business development, said he chose MDC because of what he sees being created in the tech ecosystem. “I also partner with Miami Tech Works because it gives me the opportunity to be in a very interesting spot as a student and as a professional to see what’s being built behind the scenes and to connect that with student engagement.”
When Wilson wanted to get into tech at MDC, he started with a certificate program, a stackable option that also provides a pathway. From there he pursued an associate degree and is now looking at an MDC bachelor’s degree and potentially a master’s at Florida International University, which has an agreement with MDC and Florida Memorial University to provide pathways to their programs. “I definitely look forward to what’s next.”
It’s collaborations like this that will get our region to the next level, said Olga Naumovich, head of technology for Millennium, a global hedge fund, and chair of the Tech Skills Gap Workgroup, part of the Miami Tech Talent Coalition. “It’s important for employers to be closely communicating with the universities and colleges. We are very interested in a diverse pipeline and we want to see the students coming in prepared and having the right skill set. That’s where the communication is key.”
Naumovich has been helping Miami Tech Works with a thorough tech skills gap analysis that they hope to publish for the community next month. But from early indicators, Brown said, it’s showing a gap in key tech roles in data science, computer information systems and software programming. “If we don’t do something about it now, by either training enough talent in these roles or retaining talent in these roles, that gap is going to continue.”
At eMerge, Brown also reported on the coalition’s recent Miami Tech Talent Summit at Miami Dade College, which prepared 110 students with interview prep workshops, resume reviews, professional headshots and more in preparation for the Venture Miami Tech hiring fair two days later. “We’re already hearing back that people from that hiring fair received job offers and are ready to start their new jobs within the next week,” said Brown.
Miami Tech Works plans to track 1,000 participants through their technology programs to place at least 500 in full-time jobs. To make that goal, Brown has a call to action for employers: Get involved in the Miami Tech Talent Coalition. More than 300 companies and organizations already have.
Employers can join the Miami Tech Talent Coalition via this application.
Working groups led by Ken Finneran of eMed and Charles Irizarry of Brim & Co. (emerging tech talent workgroup); Selenis Leguisamon of AWS and Toia Santamarina of GET Cities Miami (inclusive tech talent pipeline); and Reginald Andre of ARK Solvers (small business capacity building) gave updates. “We have created strategic roadmaps and hiring practices to support diversity, and more importantly, to create a more equitable tech ecosystem in Miami,” said Santamarina.
Andre, a small business owner, said we have great colleges and universities, but employers don’t know about what tech talent is coming out from these colleges and then the students get discouraged and leave the state. “We need you to join this coalition so that we can now tackle this problem head on and make sure that our students stay right here in South Florida.”
“We’re working with businesses on their particular use cases to implement AI use cases for them, how they can harness it, not just for large enterprises, but for small businesses as well,” said Irizarry. “Businesses for zero or little down can actually activate these resources for their businesses to activate better growth for their businesses. Now’s the time to do it.”
Photos by eMerge Americas
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