American Idea Foundation

Measuring Results, Expanding Opportunity, Improving Lives.

I.C.Stars filling the tech skills gap and creating local leaders

I.C.Stars filling the tech skills gap and creating local leaders

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By: AIF Staff

One of the organizations receiving support from the American Idea Foundation in 2024 is I.C.Stars, formally known as the Inner-City Computer Stars Foundation. The American Idea Foundation is partnering with them because of their commitment to evidence-based approaches and because of their effectiveness in training and launching technology careers for over 700 young adults from underserved communities.

Founded in 1999 in Chicago, IL, I.C.Stars is a national technology workforce training and placement program that prepares young adults for technology careers and community leadership.

They work with young adults from low-income backgrounds and provide a technology-based curriculum which gives participants the education, training, tools, and experience to obtain a job in the information technology sector.

Detailing the approach taken by I.C.Stars, Stand Together described how they select students for their program:

            “Rico is a proud alumni and now the full-time recruitment manager for I.C.Stars, a technology-based workforce development and leadership training program for low-income adults. Rico is the talent guy.

            Three times a year he pours over 400-500 applications and funnels them through a rigorous selection process that includes a hot-seat panel interview. There are a few standard prerequisites—a minimum age (18), a high school diploma or GED, and six months of cumulative work experience.

            Beyond that, Rico is looking for resilience and career aspirations. Proof that a candidate has weathered adversity and desires to build a salaried career in technology, and not just an hourly   paycheck. The process ends with a class of 20 interns who will embark on a 16-week experience (called a “cycle”) that will turn their lives right side up.”

True to their motto: “Learn to Code. Launch a Career,” I.C.Stars enrolls students in a free, two-year program which begins with an intensive, 16-week paid internship program. Through the program, students learn how to build web-based applications and become experts on in-demand coding skills—Javascript, Python, and others— while also focusing on client project work, leadership development, career readiness and network building.

Following the internship, students receive a two-year residency position with local employers. As they proceed through the program, I.C.Stars students are also provided with a mentor in the IT field and ongoing professional development opportunities.

The results are impressive: I.C.Stars places approximately 90% of its qualified graduates in jobs and these participants see their annual earnings increase by an average of 300% as a result of the program. This video, featuring testimonials from three I.C.Stars graduates highlights the impact this program has on the lives of students.

While helping underserved youth learn valuable skills upon which life-long careers can be built is a noble goal in and of itself, I.C.Stars believes they must do more to create lasting improvements in communities around America.

It is why a core part of their mission is creating a community of change agents by encouraging their alumni to adopt a pay-it-forward mentality. Over 80% of I.C.Stars graduates continue to engage with the program and volunteer with the program.

As Stand Together noted when profiling Tierra Phillips, an I.C.Stars graduate in Chicago:  

            “The I.C.Stars end game isn’t just to churn out expert coders, it’s to build community leaders. Civic leaders, business leaders, and service leaders who go back home and create change. In a very real sense, I.C.Stars is a leadership college disguised as a tech bootcamp. And its alumni are poking holes in glass ceilings, bringing new hope to their neighborhoods, and slowly but surely reversing that cycle of opportunity.

            Tierra Phillips says that before coming to I.C.Stars her goal was to make it out of her        neighborhood, describing it as a “terrible” place to live. But the program’s emphasis on community impact has changed her perspective.

            “I can take the skills that I’ve learned here and take that back to my community,” she says, smiling as she talks about the I.C.Stars civics class. “They’re actually teaching us how to reach out to our alderman. I never knew who my alderman was. So now I actually know how to take the steps to being a civic leader. Going into my neighborhood and making changes.”

Because of their success over the last 25 years, I.C.Stars has expanded with chapters in Kansas City, Missouri and Milwaukee, Wisconsin where Mackenzie Scott recently made a $5 million contribution to buttress the organization’s efforts.

To help quantify the effect of the program, I.C.Stars has partnered with Notre Dame’s Lab for Economic Opportunities to measure the program’s impact on earnings and future employment opportunities. This study began before COVID-19 and is still ongoing, as I.C.Stars was able to convert their programming to virtual engagements during the pandemic and the funds provided by the American Idea Foundation will be used to help complete this study.   

In explaining I.C.Stars impact on her life, Milwaukee program participant Luz Mercado told TMJ4: “It’s going to shape the future of technology one step at a time, that everything that they do, causes an impact and literally changes the life of the person that goes through the program.”

Transforming young lives in an evidence-based way and creating communities for positive change are exactly why the American Idea Foundation is so excited to work with I.C.Stars in the year ahead.

To learn more about the American Idea Foundation’s 2024 grant recipients, click here.

Ryan issues 2024 grants to 8 poverty-fighting groups advancing evidence-based solutions

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By: AIF Staff

JANESVILLE, WI – Today, AIF President and former Speaker of the House Paul Ryan announced 8 non-profit organizations across the United States will receive financial support and strategic assistance from the American Idea Foundation in 2024 as they work to fight poverty and spur upward mobility.

Since 2022, the American Idea Foundation has issued annual grants to organizations developing evidence-based solutions to challenges like homelessness, educational access, vocational training, literacy, and child welfare. Throughout the year, Ryan and his Foundation will offer strategic advice, policy expertise, and visibility to these amazing groups in furtherance of their work.

In announcing the American Idea Foundation’s 2024 grant recipients, Paul Ryan said:  

“Our grant recipients are making a profound impact in their communities. They are improving people’s lives every single day. My foundation and I are honored to partner with these groups as they develop evidence-based solutions to some of America’s biggest challenges.

“These organizations are doing the hard but necessary work to make progress in the War on Poverty. They are helping people and doing so in a data-driven way. With the American Idea Foundation’s assistance, my hope is these groups will identify scalable solutions with demonstrated track records of success and provide policymakers with clear evidence about what works – and what doesn’t – when it comes to fighting poverty. I cannot wait to partner with these groups and assist them deepen their impact.”

Started by Ryan in October 2019, the American Idea Foundation believes by taking the politics out of poverty-fighting and focusing on outcomes and results, successful programs can be scaled, elevated, and replicated. The Foundation believes this approach – prioritizing what works and validating these interventions with evidence — will provide policymakers with a better blueprint to address the challenges facing individuals and communities across the United States.

The 2024 American Idea Foundation grant recipients are….

            – ACE – CUNY (Accelerate, Complete & Engage – City University of New York)

            – Downtown Boxing Gym

            – Family Promise of West Michigan

            – Found Village

            – Future Forward

            – I.C.Stars

            – NPower

            – Safe Families for Children

Past recipients of grant funding from the American Idea Foundation include: Gatekeepers, Corner to Corner, Child First, Merit America, The Joseph Project, Bernie’s Book Bank,  Bottom Line, Brigid’s Path, Friends of the Children, Per Scholas, Wisconsin Inmate Education Association, and the Women’s Bean Project.

Bloomberg: Paul Ryan discusses advice for CEOs, China, Tax Rates, and the 2024 Election

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By: AIF Staff

London, UK – This morning, former Speaker of the House Paul Ryan talked with Bloomberg’s Francine Lacqua in a wide-ranging interview about his advice for executives as they think about a potential 2nd Trump or Biden term, the future of the U.S. economy and the U.S. tax code, and the 2024 election. Video of the interview is accessible here and some excerpts of Ryan’s responses follow.

2024 Election is “too close to call”

“I’m here in London as Vice Chairman of Teneo, a CEO advisory firm, and we’re basically advising our clients who see a lot of unpredictability on the horizon and they’re trying to scenario-plan for which way various governments are going to go.

It’s a little easier to predict here [in the UK], than it is in my country which has a razor-thin polling margin in our election. It’s just hard to determine who’s going to win the election [in the U.S.] so therefore, you have to scenario plan for two very different potential administrations.

I think it’s just too close to call. If you really want to look at it, this thing is tied in polling and will be going into the election. This is probably the likeliest of scenarios because, right now, Trump is polling at his peak and Biden is polling below his peak performance and let’s just assume Democrats come home at the end of the day, as they typically do, so it’s probably going to be a few hundred thousand voters in about five or six states that will determine the outcome of this election. My state of Wisconsin is one of those. Trump won it by 25,000 votes out of 1.61 million cast in 2016 and then in 2020, he lost it to Biden by 20,000 votes. It’s just that close and this is where campaigning makes the difference.

At the end of the day, it comes down to the new swing voter in America which is a suburban college-educated swing voter and let’s go back to Wisconsin, for example. Out of 1.61 million cast, 53,000 Wisconsinites — that’s what we call ourselves — in the suburban parts of Wisconsin didn’t vote for Trump but voted for every other Republican on the ballot and then 20,000 of those 53,000 voted for Biden giving him the 20,000-vote margin of victory that he got.

It’s just that close. It’s probably going to be Arizona, Nevada, Wisconsin, Michigan, Georgia, and Pennsylvania.”

The future of tax and trade policy

“On tax policy, personally, I think [a Trump Administration] would be much better and a lot of executives see it that way, because you have to remember that the tax law we wrote in 2017, the individual side of that tax code has many expiring provisions, some of which hit small and medium-sized businesses, and then we have some corporate provisions like the research and development tax credit and expensing provisions, those are all up for grabs.

The next presidency will help determine what happens there, so Trump’s going to be more pro-business on taxes. Biden is proposing to get rid of those things. And then, when it comes to tariffs, Trump is proposing a lot of tariff increases. Biden hasn’t reduced the Trump tariffs. He’s continued those tariffs, but I don’t think he’s proposing a whole new range of tariffs with respect to everything but China. On China, you basically have a bipartisan consensus.”

Concerns about nominees’ inaction on fiscal policy

“One of the reasons why I’m frustrated, like many Americans, about our choices for President is neither is proposing to do anything about the coming debt crisis in our country. Our debt is already as large as our economy. It’s going to go nowhere but twice as big as that. And so, we have an entitlement problem which is these entitlement programs are going bankrupt by the end of the decade and no one’s proposing to solve that.  We have to get ahead of that, otherwise we’re going to have a debt crisis in America and it’s not inconceivable to have a treasury auction failure in a short period of time — like in the next 6-12 months probably after we’re done cutting interest rates….

Right now, both of our candidates for President aren’t proposing to do a single thing about it. I think the only shot we have, given the political reality, is an entitlement commission but one with teeth that requires Congress to vote on it.  

I served on the Bowles-Simpson Commission, which was the last time we had one of these things, and it could be ignored by the President and Congress, and it was. So, you have to have an entitlement commission that says Congress is going to have to vote on this, up or down, no filibuster, no amendments, and then hopefully you have a President that’s willing to accept its results provided they’re substantial. That is, in my opinion, the best way we get out of this, short of Congress actually doing its job and fixing this problem in a way that gets us out of the ditch.

Uncertainty is the biggest challenge for business leaders

“I think uncertainty is the number one problem. There is so much uncertainty. There’s geopolitics. There’s NATO. There’s Ukraine. There’s Putin. There’s conflict with China. You have a war in the Middle East and then also, by the way, you have a bunch of tariffs that are being proposed, so you just don’t know what’s going to happen. We don’t know what anti-trust laws are going to look like if Biden gets a second term. Is he going to double down on a lot of regulations? You just don’t know.Not to mention all the geopolitical risks that are outside of any government’s control so that’s what CEOs are trying to prepare for.

You tell them to just be nimble and prepared for: Here’s what Door Number 1 looks like. Here’s what Door Number Two looks like. You want a contingency plan for both scenarios.”

Future of the Republican Party

“Well, I am still a Republican, of course. I consider myself an anti-establishment Republican. Trump has taken over the Republican Party and it’s really a populism without any anchor to principles.

I’m a big believer that you want your party pledging fidelity to a set of principles and policies that solve problems, versus a person, and I don’t think a personality-type populism is durable, so I do think at the end of the day, our party, like we have in the past, will have a big discussion about what we stand for, what are our ideas, what are our principles, and who are the best people capable of carrying those ideas forward.

That’s not the conversation we’re having right now but if Trump wins, he’s a one-term president. He cannot have a second term because he already had one, so I just don’t think it’s durable and I think we’re going to have to have a real calling as to what we stand for and if he doesn’t win, that conversation happens sooner rather than later.”

Stablecoins as a mechanism to help avert a debt crisis

“I think blockchain has a lot of use cases, so what I proposed the other day is that we should advance stablecoin legislation because stablecoins actually create a lot of new demand for US debt. We talked just a minute earlier about potential Treasury auction failures, well, it would be nice if we created more demand for our debt and if we had a law, which there is bipartisan support for in Congress, to advance stablecoins, I think that helps put the dollar in the digital world.  It helps give people, who have bad currencies in some counties, digital dollars, and it creates new demand for our debt. So, I think there are a lot of good, interesting and exciting use cases for blockchain and for Web3, stablecoins are one of them and I think it actually helps solve some of our fiscal problems as well.”