Create Thousands of New Career Opportunities with the Northern California Apprentice Network

This article was co-authored with Michael Mahoney, Resident Managing Director, Northern California at Aon.

As we focus on post-pandemic economic recovery in Northern California, we have to think about how we can work together to create a hopeful – and promising – future for those in our communities. Many of you have already been taking action to help rebuild and every step you take makes a difference.

Building a strong, diverse workforce will be key. We are fortunate to have an incredibly skilled and willing workforce in Northern California that continues to grow. It’s our responsibility as leaders in the community to play a role in nurturing, growing and diversifying this talent.

We’re excited to share that Accenture and Aon, in collaboration with several local employers, business organizations, government and skilling partners, have launched the Northern California Apprentice Network.

As part of our commitment to advance the adoption of professional apprenticeships, Accenture launched its North America apprentice program in 2016 and has trained nearly 1,000 apprentices in over 35 cities across North America. The program is a learn-and-earn model with benefits that provides a pathway for historically underrepresented people to digital economy jobs and sustainable careers. In 2017, Aon launched its apprenticeship program to help the firm build a talent pipeline of highly skilled and diverse professionals. Aon’s program partners with local community colleges to hire students in full-time roles while they study relevant courses. At the completion of the program, apprentices have earned their associate degree and a promotion into a full-time role. That same year, Accenture and Aon took the program a step further by co-founding the Chicago Apprentice Network to encourage other employers to jumpstart their own apprentice programs.

 We’ve experienced the powerful impact of the apprenticeship model within our organizations, and the amplifying effect of a network like this across the country. We recently reached a milestone of creating 1,000 apprenticeships through the Chicago Apprentice Network, a consortium of over 50 employers. We also launched a similar effort in Washington, D.C., with plans to expand into other major cities. Here in Northern California, the goal is to initially create 1,000 apprenticeships as quickly as possible, but our ultimate mission is to accelerate and scale the program to create many more career opportunities for people in the Bay Area and Sacramento.

We believe apprenticeships play an important role in economic recovery and in building a more economically inclusive world. Nearly two-thirds of our apprentices are from racially and ethnically diverse backgrounds, and one out of four apprentices are military veterans, spouses or active service members. Apprenticeships are primarily sourced through relationships with local community colleges and skilling partners and placed in roles that build skills in data science, cloud application development, supply chain operations and in business functions like finance, human resources and marketing, among others. 

Why Apprenticeships?

We know how critical it is for organizations, both small and large, to create new career pathways for people who come from diverse backgrounds and underserved communities and whose jobs have been impacted by the COVID-19 pandemic or other factors like health and financial instability. The combination of automation and COVID-19 is having a disproportionate impact on workers who were already at risk of being left behind — including those without four-year degrees. This program is and will continue to play a critical role in rebuilding our local workforce and communities.

We also know that our apprentices are huge contributors in making our workforce culture more diverse, inclusive and innovative. Each of their unique stories and life experiences have shaped them into the individuals they are today, and what they bring to our culture and work.

Susana Hernandez Torres, an Operations Specialist at Aon and a former apprentice, was in her second year at a local community college when her life changed with the birth of her son. To support her family and continue her education, Susana spent nights working at McDonald’s while going to school full-time. In 2017, she discovered the Chicago Apprentice Network and was accepted into Aon’s first cohort of apprentices, allowing her to spend more time with her family and son while still pursuing her degree and having financial stability with a full-time career. Today, she is helping to foster the next generation leaders by mentoring an apprentice and encouraging her brothers to seek out opportunities to build a professional career in their own fields of interest: health care and technology. 

Former apprentice Vicente Cruz was determined to make something of himself after his family immigrated to the U.S. from Mexico. From a young age, he helped support his family financially, making college an unlikely option due to costs. With a passion for technology and the will to never give up, he joined YearUp, a nonprofit that helps urban youth get experience in the tech field by giving them skills training. That led him to an apprenticeship at Accenture, where he now works full-time in building cloud solutions for one of the world’s largest tech giants. In the future, he plans to start a nonprofit to mentor and teach kids from underserved communities how to code and learn business skills so they too, can have promising futures.

For Lalani Rentie, a major health problem – a pacemaker placement in her early twenties – led her to rethink her career path from working in sales, to pursuing her true passion in recruiting. Unfortunately, without a degree in the field and lack of experience, many companies were not interested in hiring her. That’s when she found Accenture’s apprentice program, and today she’s part of the Northern California recruiting team. Helping other people join the company has empowered her to build confidence, keep learning and make meaningful connections. Now, as an apprentice program graduate working full-time at Accenture, she’s mentoring the next wave of apprentices.

These are just a few of the many incredible stories of our apprentices. We hope they have inspired you as much as our apprentices inspire us every day.

The apprenticeship program will be critical for our community and economy as we rebuild. But, we know we can’t do this alone. In order to have a successful network, we need strong, committed partners, and have been very fortunate to have found those partners for the Northern California Apprentice Network. Civic and nonprofit organizations that have helped shape and advise include Apprenti, Bay Area Council, Greater Sacramento Economic Council, San Francisco Chamber of Commerce and TechSF. We are also excited to see momentum from local organizations and business leaders to grow this program, including companies such as Adobe and Twilio.

We welcome all of you to be part of this transformational journey – please visit here to learn more about the program. We look forward to connecting and collaborating on this important initiative.