Making Cybersecurity Education Accessible
In this week’s episode of “The People Behind Innovation,” Owen Brown interviewed Lawrence Wagner. Together they discussed the inspiration behind Lawrence’s company, Spark Mindset, and the problems it aims to solve. The series is available under Google, Apple, Amazon, and Spotify streaming services, or on Anchor with no account needed to stream. Please contact katherine@exponentialimpact.com , if you have any comments or founder stories.
Lawrence Wagner is the founder and CEO of Spark Mindset a company that works to make cybersecurity accessible to low income families. Spark Mindset provides a variety of classes and learning opportunities to those who may not have access to cybersecurity training and information. The company’s mission is to break the cycle of poverty and give low income families access to high paying and high demand jobs in the growing cybersecurity field.
Why is education in the cybersecurity space so important?
Cybersecurity is one of the fastest growing STEM career fields. There will be 3.5 million unfilled jobs by 2027. You have a career field that is lacking talent, the industry needs cyber security talent, and they don’t have it. By training people in low income communities, we actually provide them with high demand jobs that can actually break the cycle of poverty in their lives.
Why did you become interested in education, in such a complex field?
I just felt like people weren’t getting the information early enough, or they just didn’t have access to the information. And so, to me, the things that keep people in poverty are a lack of job skills, a lack of access, and a lack of opportunity. Right? So if I can provide you with the job skills and the access, then and the opportunity, then I can provide a pathway for you to break the cycle of property in your lives.
Lawrence Wagner pitches at Exponential Impact Demo Day
Lawrence Wagner pitches at Exponential Impact Demo Day
What are some of the tactics that you use at Spark Mindset to get young people, people of color, and women in the doors right away?
So the first thing we do is middle school camps. When they are still in middle school, when they still believe they can do anything in the world, we introduce them to cybersecurity. Middle schoolers, they’ll run through a wall because they believe that they can run through the wall, right? And so by introducing them to skills before they learn what they can’t do, it’s a way to open up their minds to additional things. If you asked the average middle school about careers, they can probably name off only four to five, doesn’t matter if they’re low income or wealthy, they can only name out four to five occupations. And this is why we have to begin to open their minds to all the things early.
What content are you covering if you want to educate students in cyber security?
So far we have multiple camps, and we kind of take them on a pathway. The first one is really about cyber security awareness and anti-bullying and passwords. Basically what not to do in the cyber security world. For example, keeping that alias when you’re playing a video game. We teach a lot of awareness and we touch different career fields and how much you can make, it’s just really an introduction level to like cyber security. And then in the next class level they’ll take something around networking. From there, the next class they’ll want to take is IT fundamentals and cyber security. By the time they’re in the ninth grade or ninth and 10th grade, they’re ready for a high school, two year program.
If you were to narrow down successful entrepreneurship to a few key traits, what would you say those are?
Grit, right? I would say number one has to be grit. Because no matter what, it’s gonna be hard and you have to have the will to persevere through that. So there’s a part of grit that you have to have. And then, you have to be teachable, right? Like you can’t come in somewhere and be like, I know it all. If you’re not teachable, then you don’t know when to pivot. What I learned from XI and talking to a lot of entrepreneurs; your initial ideal is not what makes you successful, it’s all the pivots along the way. It’s how you become successful. Well, you can’t make a pivot if you’re not teachable. So I think being teachable is a trait that you have to have. And to me those are the two biggest traits.
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