Khanna Promotes Tech Job Coaching At Jackson State

[ad_1] by Daniel Johnson August 9, 2025

Khanna visited Jackson, Mississippi, to highlight TechWise, a Google-funded initiative he has helped introduce to HBCUs like Jackson State nationwide.

Following a $1.3 million grant awarded to Jackson State College to increase its synthetic intelligence packages, California Rep. Ro Khanna visited Jackson, Mississippi, to highlight TechWise, a Google-funded initiative he has helped introduce to HBCUs like Jackson State nationwide.

In accordance with The Mississippi Clarion-Ledger, three years in the past, the college joined this system after Rep. Khanna opened discussions with the college and Almesha Campbell, JSU’s vice chairman for analysis and financial improvement.

As she advised the outlet, the college has matriculated 35 college students through this system and at the moment has 12 college students enrolled in this system, which she described as a “workforce program” mixing skill-building and business expertise.

Jackson’s mayor, Chokwe Antar Lumumba, kicked this system off throughout his administration and launched Rep. Khanna to the gang on the Smith Robertson Museum, whom he stated he met at a rally for Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders.

“What we did was create a program to create know-how jobs and coaching throughout the nation, and we partnered with about 15 completely different HBCUs. The scholars take part in a 10-hour per week, 18-month course, after which these youngsters get a $65,000 to $85,000 job in know-how, however in addition they study and are in a position to be mentors to future college students in this system,” Rep. Khanna stated in his remarks.

He continued, “We’re producing extra wealth than we ever have within the historical past of this nation and just one or 2% of Black Individuals are getting enterprise capital. We excluded the Black group from the agricultural revolution, we excluded the Black group from a whole lot of the economic revolution. Disgrace on us if the Black group is excluded from the digital revolution.”

TechWise, the outlet notes, was launched by the training know-how firm TalentSprint and receives funding from Google to supply free preparation for college kids from deprived backgrounds for high-paying careers in know-how.

As a part of this system, members obtain coaching, mentorship, networking, and business expertise. The primary observe of this system runs for 18 months, that includes dwell digital lessons, coding workout routines, and business initiatives led by skilled instructors.

As well as, college students will even take part in masterclasses offered by Carnegie Mellon College’s Faculty of Laptop Science, which can award them with an official credential.

As Rep. Khanna advised Mississippi In the present day, he has a deep appreciation for the civil rights motion, which he expressed by describing his grandfather’s participation in Mahatma Ghandi’s motion for Indian independence from British rule. That motion, as BLACK ENTERPRISE beforehand reported, impressed the nonviolent resistance techniques employed by Martin Luther King Jr. and Medgar Evers, amongst others.

Rep. Khanna additionally indicated that he believes that the nationwide Democratic Social gathering wants to take a position extra in Mississippi, and customarily, the South, the place Black folks and other people of colour dwell, held captive politically by voter suppression states. By investing in these states, Democratic candidates in states like Mississippi, Texas, and Florida, might turn out to be extra aggressive in statewide elections.

“The Civil Rights Motion then led to the Immigration Reform Act of 1965, and that’s what led my dad and mom to return to the USA. Anybody who needs to know the historical past of segregation, the historical past of racial justice, has to know Mississippi,” Khanna stated. “And anybody who needs to see the hope and promise of financial improvement has to return right here.”