Award-Winning Female Tech Guru and Former Homeless Ex-Offender Partner to Create a Successful Tech Busines

An African American man who was in and out of prison, homeless in Michigan and addicted to crack for decades, is now the Chief Operating Officer of Nevada Help Desk – a company that manages Nevada’s leading technology workforce development program.

Known as “The Uncle Gary,” this man who had been separated from his family due to being adopted 65 years ago, was found by his oldest biological sister’s daughter 2 1/2 years ago. His niece, Duana Malone, who is also known as “The Tech Queen” was voted 2018 Technology Woman of the Year and serves as the Chief Executive Officer for the business. They discovered they had the same DNA not only in blood but extraordinary STEM skills. So, they teamed up to form the Nevada Help Desk project.

This dynamic uncle-niece duo has used their combined skills to change the trajectory of technology education & workforce development as a solution in meeting Nevada’s rising demand for skilled technologists.

High School and college students are taught and certified in front-end web development, digital marketing, graphic designs, game development, multimedia production, and Microsoft applications which convert to jobs at the end of this program.

Nevada Help Desk is working with a consortium of educational institutions and employer partners to create a statewide workforce talent pipeline. This project is partially funded with a grant provided by Nevada’s Office of Science, Innovation, and Technology.

The goal is to create a workforce development career pathway that can be modeled in other states where they:

1. get kids excited about tech careers (including camps/tech summits)
2. continue weekly training through graduation
3. certify students (guaranteed)
4. hire students for nevadahelpdesk.com or help them land a job (also guaranteed)

Virtual global technology training starts at age 7! Yes, seven.

Younger kids are taught basic coding, the core skills of vector-based animation techniques plus tools in developing characters and scenes (used in popular 3D games, like Halo).

Students from multiple locations (including Africa, Europe, Canada, and the Caribbean) gather together in a single virtual classroom on a daily basis to learn in-demand technology applications to prepare them for this rapidly growing economy filled with technological advances.

This article was originally published by BlackNews.com.