We recently announced the start of our fifth annual Cisco Global Problem Solver Challenge, with prize cash totaling $1 million USD. The Cisco Global Issue Solver Challenge is really a competition that awards money prizes to early-stage technologies entrepreneurs solving the planet’s interpersonal and environmental problems.

Dream

The fantastic abolitionist Harriet Tubman said, “Every great fantasy begins with a dreamer.”

This is exactly what drives a lot more than 290,000 students at Historically Black Universites and colleges (HBCUs) across the USA. When other organizations in the U.S. were off-limits to numerous aspiring Dark scholars in the first and middle 20^th hundred years, graduates from these universites and colleges helped release the civil rights motion and built the building blocks for the Dark middle class.

Now, HBCUs take into account 80 percent of Dark judges, 50 percent of Black doctors and attorneys, and 25 % of Black learners that earn STEM degrees within the U.S.

Cisco works to greatly help stoke the imaginations for a fresh generation for HBCU college students, exposing them to a couple of new opportunities to energy their desires … and make sure they are a reality.

Plan

This year, Cisco offers a HBCU Startup Prize for entrepreneurs from HBCUs. So when a proud alum of NEW YORK Central University, I’m for several of it here!

The HBCU Startup Prize will undoubtedly be awarded to a team with a minumum of one founder who’s an HBCU student or graduate and who presents a forward thinking technology solution that addresses a social or environmental problem.

This $50,000 USD prize emerges by Cisco’s Employee Resource Organizations (which give a platform for different groups of employees for connecting, build powerful new relationships, explore their particular talents and passions, innovate, and excel) and supports our commitment to the strategic recovery, sustainability, and legacy of The united states’s Historically Dark Universities and Colleges.

We have spent the final eight yrs helping others at Cisco create bridges between our corporation and frequently overlooked institutions, like many HBCUs. Despite such historical luminaries because the Reverend Dr. Martin Luther King, Mary McCleod Bethune, and Thurgood Marshall getting obtained their educations at HBCUs, these were eclipsed by other institutions often. My group and I understand, however, there are bright students and thoughts as of this educational schools. We make an effort to support professional growth routines through HBCUs, such as for example looking at resumes, carrying out mock interviews, and talking to students.

I even as soon as drove all of the real method from Orlando FL to my office in Analysis Triangle Park, NC to aid a learning student who was simply taking part in Cisco’s day-long Product sales interviews.

Within my collegiate experience, We didn’t have the mentor, therefore the value is understood by me personally having you to definitely be present throughout a challenging interview. So, it’s a genuine understatement for me to state that I’m excited to notice our organization stoking enthusiasm for the HBCUs.

I’m also thrilled because of this innovation problem because we are seeking to generate engagement in a different type of HBCU graduate … the business owner. I believe that arriving to work for a business like Cisco could be a game-changer, as an initial role especially. And I shall continue steadily to encourage all which are interested to take action. In addition, sustaining and igniting the entrepreneurial fires of a HBCU graduate nicely aligns with Cisco’s personal roots.

It really is my hope that competitors encourages some contestants to check out within the footsteps of additional illustrious HBCU alums: Earl Graves, graduate of Morgan founder and Condition of Black Business Magazine. The fantastic Oprah Winfrey obtained her education and learning at Tennessee Condition University. Will Packer obtained his begin at Florida Agricultural & Mechanical University and continued to found and mind a multi-million-dollar production business. Janice Bryant Howroyd, the founder of Act 1 Staffing (among the largest staffing businesses in the U.S.), discovered the ropes of entrepreneurship at NEW YORK A&T Condition University. Serial business owner Sean “Puffy” Combs visited Howard University. And the cup history-making and ceiling-shattering Vice President-Elect Kamala Harris is really a proud graduate of Howard University.

Execute

There is a lot more to this competitors than winning a prize (although $50,000 is fairly nice).

We live in an extremely interesting amount of time in our country’s history. We have been facing a worldwide pandemic that has resulted in a catastrophic lack of life, producing a devastating influence on our economy. There’s historic interpersonal unrest and a corresponding concentrate on interpersonal justice from all sectors of our modern society.

The participants of the year’s Cisco Global Problem Solver Challenge have a distinctive opportunity to not merely flex their entrepreneurial muscle groups but create their voices heard in a number of meaningful methods. From my viewpoint, this tumultuous period is the greatest time for Black business owners showing resilience and a solid spirit of innovation. This award continues the legacy of a residential area which has made a “way to avoid it of no chance always.”

I am worked up about the partnerships formed in and through Cisco once we start off in this path. These sorts of business initiatives don’t happen independently. I have already been fortunate to utilize a great band of “Ciscoans” that stepped around support these initiatives without hesitation.

It is times such as this that Dr. King’s words ring a lot more clearly even, “We have been caught within an inescapable system of mutuality, tied within a garment of destiny. Whatever impacts one directly, impacts all indirectly.” True phrase. This problem is our possibility to build and reinforce that “network.”

Interested? Connect with win!

If you have a forward thinking solution that you imagine could win the Cisco Global Issue Solver 2021 HBCU Startup Prize, please go to our website to join up and find out about the application process. January 29 the application form deadline will be, 2021, at 5 p.m. PT.