CYBERWARRIOR FOUNDATION, INC

Since its inception, it has delivered immersive and intensive bootcamp-style training to under-represented communities in the Greater Boston area. Our scalable program and intensive training approach engages community colleges, local employers, workforce stakeholders, and ed-tech innovators to provide tools, skills, credentials, industry exposure, and the hands-on experience necessary to meet the demand for cybersecurity talent. Our multi-pronged strategy integrates several stand-alone elements, which in combination provide high levels of competence, creating alignment between the student experience and employer expectations.
Leading in Growth: Lagging in Opportunity
Simultaneously, two of the biggest challenges facing the technology industry is the lack of a talent pipeline in cybersecurity knowledge and training, and the lack of diversity within the sector. With unemployment levels still rising a year after the pandemic, full recovery for the labor market appears distant with a loss in employment that could take more than three years to recoup assuming job creation proceeds at roughly the same rate as it did from 2018 to 2019. This leaves millions of people looking for jobs while at the same time many of the new career opportunities will demand greater education in science and technology. In fact, the Bureau of Labor Statistics noted that in 2020 there were 1.4 million computer-science-related jobs available and only 400,000 computer science graduates with the skills to apply for those jobs. Beyond the shortage of the candidates who are applying for these positions, fewer than one in four are qualified, according to the MIT Technology Review.
Further, the challenge of a lack of diversity in the cybersecurity field is widespread and well documented. The percentage of people of color in tech is less than 10% of all employees and anecdotal figures suggest under 2% within cybersecurity. In spite of these challenges, the tech sector continues to grow in Massachusetts and nationally, with net employment in 2018 bringing on over 260,000 jobs nationally. Since the employment shortage that followed the Great Recession over a decade ago, net tech employment has increased by about 1.9 million jobs. And still, as the industry is growing it is leaving people of color behind.
This lack of diversity is a pervasive problem at nearly all tech companies—big and small. As an example, in 2014, Google released its employment diversity numbers, showing 83% of its employees were men, with 60% of its entire tech workforce being White and another 34% being Asian. Google’s 2020 diversity report shows numbers that have barely moved over the past 6 years, with only 32% of its employees being women, 3.7% Black, and 5.9% Latinx. Evidently, the tech industry has made very little effort to diversify its workforce.
It is clear this lack of gender and race inclusivity has proven to be an industry-wide problem. Only 25% of the tech workforce are women—a number that has actually declined since 1990—and the percentage of Black and Latinx employees at major tech companies remains especially low, making up just one to three percent of the tech workforce.
By the year 2044, the U.S. will become a majority-minority nation, with the population being less than 50% White. In order to reflect the shifting demographics of the U.S. population, at least 13% of a tech company’s workforce should be Black, 17% Latinx, 5% Gender Non-binary, and 45% Female-Identifying. As an example, and much like the rest of the country, Boston’s tech companies have long featured a pervasive underrepresentation of high-skilled Black and Latinx workers – currently comprising only 6% of the workforce and an even smaller percentage of the technical workforce.
Reversing women’s and the Black and Latinx populations’ broad exclusion from tech occupations that promise significant upward mobility, is critical to long-term efforts to address racial inequality. Efforts to expand the diversity of the cybersecurity talent pipeline and radically expand exposure to entry-level tech skills are a good place to start, but skills-based solutions will not solve the nation’s digital inclusion problem on their own. Broad-scale progress is going to require the tech sector to change its hiring and promotion practices to bring about more equitable distributions of power within companies—power that can change hiring outcomes. With aggressive actions, tech companies could benefit themselves, as well as advance the economy and benefit employees of all ethnicities and genders. In the context of a growing affluence gap in the United States, increasing the opportunities of people of color in one of America’s highest-paying, fastest-growing sectors would be a transformative step towards widening the circle of inclusive growth. Unquestionably, workforce training is a critical element of the necessary industry talent acquisition formula.
CyberWarrior’s Unique Role: Advancing Equity and Growth in Cybersecurity
CyberWarrior Academy has long recognized the need for an inclusive and accessible work-based cybersecurity training program for underserved communities, including Women, Veterans, and People of Color and is poised to tackle this challenge head-on. In an effort to meet the societal challenge and peril of critical industries that lack a skilled cybersecurity workforce, we are simultaneously working to find a solution to socio-economic inequities and the inherent economic injustice found in high-wage, sustainable jobs that lack a diverse workforce, as well as prepare our students to effectively fill the skills gap in the cybersecurity knowledge and talent pipeline.
CyberWarrior Academy is a live, online cybersecurity workforce training program that combines vocational lab-driven exercises delivered by ethical hackers and industry engineers with a competency-based model. Composed of three modes of engagement for historically underserved Women, Veterans, and People of Color. CyberWarrior Academy provides hands-on technical training and interpersonal workplace tools necessary to launch high-growth careers in cybersecurity. CyberWarrior Academy is a critical resource in connecting diverse communities to opportunities in a booming local tech economy, while also building a sustainable pipeline for communities that have been marginalized for decades.
Building on a strong foundation and momentum, CyberWarrior Academy is entering a new phase and is poised to build capacity for greater impact. We can build this capacity with new investment in our role as a leader in building a sustainable pipeline of cybersecurity talent through online training programs, transitional services, and employment opportunities. By making advanced work-based training, accelerated learning solutions, incumbent-worker upskilling, and inclusive cybersecurity education accessible for people of all backgrounds, CyberWarrior Academy will create new avenues of opportunities in the cybersecurity field for the historically underserved and under-represented communities.
CyberWarrior Academy’s Program Structure

CyberWarrior Academy strives for transformative change through economic empowerment by training youth and adults from traditionally underserved communities, including Women, Veterans, and People of Color in high-growth careers in cybersecurity and connecting them with jobs—aligning students with a lucrative and meaningful career path. Our multi-tiered approach funnels adults from learning cybersecurity skills through online training bootcamp, and ultimately, job placement with an average starting salary of approximately $80,000/year.