Announcing the NapaLearns Virtual Career Academy

COVID-19 has upended education as we’ve known it. The pandemic has also revealed that businesses are more dependent on technology than ever. As everything around us hinges more on technology, our reliance on a workforce that is skilled in digital tools increases, as well.

Access To Courses, Subject-Matter Experts, Software, and Labs

To address the gap between the skills required and the attainment of those skills, I am thrilled to announce the NapaLearns Virtual Career Academy. This program offers students a path to industry-recognized certifications from Adobe, Autodesk, Cisco and Google in four fields AT NO COST TO PARTICIPANTS:

• Information Technology
• Business and Marketing
• Programming
• Digital Design

The program targets 16-25 year olds and initially, we are trying to engage 10 students in each course.

Why Tech? Why Now?

We are focused on these areas because the tech sector is the fastest growing in the economy and it offers a variety of high paying jobs across all business sectors. The program has three main goals:

• Make a significant new investment in expanding and improving Napa’s tech education and training ecosystem
• Scale up tech training with a focus on developing in-depth, career-ready skills
• Give participants a fast track to high tech, high demand careers

Co-Founder, Chuck McMinn, Summarizes the Program

“Technology is fueling our local economy in a variety of ways that may not be readily obvious. We need a skilled workforce that can build new apps and websites, design and market our products, build and operate our wineries and infrastructure, and help manage businesses through data analytics and IT support. The NapaLearns Virtual Career Academy offers courses that complement the work-ready skills like communication and collaboration that our schools are providing.”

I would love to talk to you more about the program and get your help to broaden our reach. We are also looking for industry partners as guest speakers. Can you join us in this effort?

I look forward to hearing from you, 

Peg Maddocks, Ph.D.
Executive Director