uOttawa PDI News ·
Cybersecurity is a growing, in-demand field, one that often struggles to fill positions and one in which women are disproportionately underrepresented, according to market research. This made it an ideal target for the YWCA, a secular charity supporting more than 330,000 women, girls, and gender-diverse people each year through housing, employment programs, violence prevention, advocacy, and more.
The employment programming the YWCA provides is especially focused on helping women get into traditionally male-dominated fields and transition into in-demand professions. Individual local chapters deliver services with support from the national organization, YWCA Canada.
“We created the Uplift Program during the height of the COVID-19 pandemic to help women enter the skilled trades and STEM fields, including cybersecurity,” said Khadija Hamidu, YWCA Hamilton’s VP of economic development. “As a newly in-demand field, cybersecurity training was an opportunity for women in the program to get in on the ground floor of a growing profession. And as a profession well-suited to remote work, cybersecurity was an accessible option, which was especially important during the lockdown.”
To accomplish this, YWCA Hamilton partnered with our YWCA Member Associations and Institutions to begin building a curriculum to delivery cybersecurity training.
“When YWCA Hamilton received funding for the Uplift Program, we immediately started researching and approaching universities to explore potential training and educational partnership opportunities for cybersecurity,” explains Natasa Boskovic, national lead of employment strategies at YWCA Canada. “The University of Ottawa Professional Development Institute (PDI) had a strong cybersecurity training program and the education experience, expertise, flexibility, and passion to make collaborative partnership happen.”
Delivering Job-Ready Training for a Diverse Clientele
The Uplift Program offered the potential for YWCA Hamilton to make profound changes in people’s lives. But to do so, the YWCA and uOttawa PDI had to take a few things into consideration when looking for a partner to deliver cybersecurity training.
First and foremost was the huge variety of backgrounds and levels of expertise among participants. While many were either reskilling or upskilling, many others were new to cybersecurity or even to software entirely. Training needed to be useful to both audiences. “The cybersecurity industry is a bit intimidating, especially for people who are completely new to it,” Boskovic explains.
To enable everyone in the Uplift Program to participate, the YWCA also needed the cybersecurity offering to support both remote and part-time learning. Many participants were busy either with jobs, children, housework, or all three.
And, of course, the education itself had to be top-notch. Training had to be comprehensive but needed to go beyond simple academic education, as the Uplift Program focuses on enabling women to get into better professions. Therefore, cybersecurity program participants needed to have industry-recognized training with hands-on, practical examples. Strong industry partnerships and career guidance to prepare participants to apply the skills they were learning in real-world scenarios would be essential to ensuring training translated into real career advancement.
Customized Training for Effective Job-Readiness
It’s one thing to create an educational training program that covers the basic principles and applications of cybersecurity. It’s another to take a diverse group of individuals from different backgrounds and circumstances through the fundamentals of a complex and ever-changing discipline and prepare them to compete for jobs in that field. But that’s exactly what the uOttawa PDI cybersecurity training program delivered.
Interactive content, expert guidance, and customized training provided an engaging training program with real-world practicality. This covered not just the skills and information needed to work in the cybersecurity industry but also provided help with resume and cover letter preparation to ensure potential employers recognized the value of the training.
Expert guidance from faculty that blended academic rigor with industry experience, delivered in a customized package to meet different needs, experience levels, and academic training of different cohorts, ensured that every iteration of the training gave every participant in it exactly what they needed. Networking opportunities and guest speakers provided participants the opportunity to learn not just the skills they needed but provide the context of what employers in the industry are looking for and expecting.
And the training offered the support participants needed to complete their education during what was, for many, one of the most unpredictable and challenging times of their lives. Faculty and YWCA staff worked together to ensure resources were available to help every participant continue on, whether that was by providing additional resources or help with specific projects.
“We had many scenarios where people were going through a lot in their lives, especially during the COVID-19 pandemic, and considering dropping out. So, we would have those conversations to make sure we could understand how they could stay engaged, stay involved, and ultimately succeed,” explained Hamidu.
Advancing the Careers and Lives of a Diverse Group of Women
Since 2021, uOttawa PDI has delivered cybersecurity training to 80 women across four cohorts. To date, 74 students have graduated, resulting in a graduation rate of 93%. Another 30 women have enrolled for the cybersecurity training this year.
The training provided has translated into real, material improvements in the lives of participants. For some, this training was the only opportunity for them to access high-quality cybersecurity education, allowing them to upskill, move out of entry-level positions, improve their income, and advance their careers.
And while the training program is open to everyone, it has made a particular difference in the lives of immigrant women. For many, the challenge was not having the skills so much as having the accreditation. With graduation from this training under their belt and on their resumes, many have been better able to leverage their previous credentials and experience to get new and better jobs in the field.
“The feedback has been tremendous,” explains Hamidu. “We’ve heard from participants about how great an experience it was, and how staff were able to guide them through a well-structured process despite their anxiety. That they would not have been able to afford a cybersecurity course of this caliber. And that the amount of support, community, and assistance they’ve found with their peers and the program coordinators has been life-changing.”
The Sky’s the Limit for Future Programming
Last year, the cybersecurity training program completed its first round of placement opportunities in the University of Ottawa’s Information Integrity Lab, which both Hamidu and Boskovic are hoping to be able to offer in 2025.
Ultimately, the YWCA’s goal is to offer cybersecurity training as well as training in emission vehicle manufacturing, data analytics, and data science across Canada building on the highly successful model established with uOttawa PDI. “The partnership with the University of Ottawa Professional Development Institute has been amazing. The period from 2021 to 2025 has been a ground-breaking time, where we’ve been able to not just get this program up and running but exceed our expectations of how significant an impact we could make in our community,” Hamidu says. With continuous funding support, YWCA hopes to help grow the Uplift program and empower more women.
Through the process, uOttawa PDI has been a proud partner of YWCA Hamilton, offering world-class cybersecurity expertise, education, and training to help improve people’s lives.