Chattanooga Mayor Andy Berke meets with Barack Obama in this summer 2013 file photo.Chattanooga has joined with the White House and 20 other communities across the nation to ramp up training and hiring of people in the technology field.
At the National League of Cities Summit in Washington D.C. today, President Barack Obama announced the TechHire initiative, a $100 million technology training grant program.
Chattanooga Mayor Andy Berke has put together a task force made up of members of local organizations such as Unum, BlueCross BlueShield, EPB, Lamp Post Group and others to make sure Chattanoogans are trained for some of the 500,000 technology jobs the White House estimates are available today.
Berke said he was eager to get the program up and running.
“I hear from companies that they have a hard time filling good, middle-class IT jobs. I want those jobs to be filled by Chattanoogans, and this initiative makes that more likely,” Berke said in a press release.