ReDI School and Cisco: 5 years of digital integration

Cisco has been partnering with the ReDI School of Digital Integration since the very beginning. It has been a win-win-win situation for the company, the tech school and the students.

It all started back in 2015 on a conference stage in Berlin: In the year of the so-called “Refugee Crisis”, Carsten Johnson, responsible for CSR at Cisco, met Anne Kjaer Bathel during a panel discussion. Anne was in the process of founding the ReDI School and was full of ideas and motivation to make a meaningful contribution and create a difference. “I immediately realized something very exciting with a huge potential is emerging here” recalls Carsten Johnson. “Following Angela Merkel’s famous sentence “We can do it”, the mood in our discussion group was “We will do it!”

“We need the next generation of talent to digitize our country.”

And they did. Over the past five years, the non-profit tech school grew and is now active in six cities. They have taught digital skills to more than 4,500 refugees and migrants from 50+ nations as well as connecting these tech talents with the IT industry. Cisco has been one of the partners from the very beginning and has supported ReDI financially, through corporate volunteering, providing teaching material and best of all, they do this with a lot of heart and soul.

Cisco has trained more than 250 students in more than 20 corporate courses at the ReDI Schools in Munich, Berlin, and North-Rhine Westphalia and supported 450 students directly through the Cisco NetAcademy learning platform to deepen their knowledge and help with certification.

Cisco management visiting ReDI School: Uwe Peter, Carsten Johnson, Marisa Brown and international HR leaders

Cisco’s top management has been behind the partnership from the beginning. “We love what ReDI does,” says Uwe Peter, General Manager of Cisco Germany. He describes Cisco’s motivation as a long-term partner; “We need the next generation of talent to digitize our country. ReDI School is giving a great contribution to that.”

ReDI has become a growing talent pool for Cisco. More than 20 students have found internships or permanent positions at Cisco in recent years. The IoT course which Cisco-Manager Claus Schaale developed in 2016 has produced particularly successful role models. “I know the feeling of having to start from scratch in a new country,” Schaale explains. Born in Chile, he lived and worked in the U.S. for many years before joining Cisco in Berlin. Cloud computing really had taken off when we started partnering with ReDI, he recalls. “But I didn’t want to start just any cloud course, I wanted to connect the new talents to the companies.” He has run ten IoT courses at ReDI together with partners such as Microsoft, SAP, Fraunhofer Fokus, CapGemini, and Bosch. More than two-thirds of the students from his courses, he estimates, are now working in the tech industry.

Meeting at Cisco Berlin: First IoT class in action in 2016

Rita Butman is one of these students. A Syrian who came to Germany in 2017, she had already worked for a telecommunications company in her home country. She moved without an existing network, but with the will to make it here. After the IoT course, she got an internship at Cisco, then a permanent job, and has already been promoted twice. “It was not only about IT, but the course was also empowering people and connecting them”, says Rita Butman.

Giving Back: Rita, ReDI Alumni and Cisco employee supporting students in the Digital Women's Program

“This class opened a lot of doors for me,” confirms Amr Al Kudeh, a ReDI alumni who completed not only the IoT course but also Cisco’s network security training. After an internship at Fraunhofer Fokus, he is now a permanent employee at CapGemini as a Business Analyst and Technical Architect. Both partner companies actively engaged with Cisco in the tech courses. Joud Sayed Issa from Syria and a computer science student in Berlin joined ReDI right after arriving in Germany. “I did not know anything about IoT and was curious about this new field”, she says. In 2017 working in IoT had been really special, she explains. The course was the starting-point of her tech career. Today she is working as a full-time IoT Developer.

Digital Women Program: Making the tech field more equal

There are many female role-models who have emerged from the Cisco-ReDI classes but it was not like this in the beginning: “When I started the first tech training at Cisco, I was the only woman in the room”, Joud remembers. An experience that led ReDI School to create the Digital Women Programme to encourage and inspire more women into learning tech skills and working in the IT space. Rita volunteered and supported migrant women to learn basic computer skills and coding fundamentals. “I did empower the women, but was also feeling empowered through this volunteering work”, she recalls.

Digital Women's Program Celebrating: Cisco Manager Marissa and ReDI student Amal

Marissa Brown, Customer Success Manager at Cisco, shared the experience of being the only woman in the room in her first few years working in tech. Making the tech field more equal, was her motivation to volunteer in the Digital Women Program. “We trained women, who never had worked with a computer before”, she says. “Supporting the ladies and going back to the basics as an IT-professional, was an amazing experience”, she says. “It got me hooked!” She stayed connected to ReDI School, even after moving from Berlin to Düsseldorf and supported the start of ReDI NRW with funding, volunteering and curriculum building.

”Cisco is serious about the idea of Corporate Social Responsibility.”

“From the management to the teams, ReDI receives very broad and regular support,” says Carsten Johnson. At Cisco, employees take part in a charity-run for the non-profit school and every hour of volunteering is additionally compensated with 10 US dollars donated to ReDI. Together, ReDI and Cisco organize tech talks, the ReDI HR Summit, career coaching, mentoring for the students and hackathons. “Cisco is very serious about the idea of Corporate Social Responsibility,” explains Rita Butman. “Integration is not only solidarity, it is about equality. I always felt equally treated and connected to the people.” Even U.S. employees were happy to help. “Colleagues from abroad were getting up at 6:30 a.m. to teach and mentor ReDI interns remotely on Webex twice a week,” recalls Schaale. Others came to Germany for some weeks to train students in person, as Eugene Kim from San Diego did.

ReDI students on a kayak tour with Carsten Johnson (taking photo): "It was not only an IT course, we built a community."

Over the past five years, Cisco has actively supported several ReDI milestones. The Chancellor’s visit in 2017 was the highlight of this journey and the IoT class got the chance to meet Angela Merkel for a personal conversation. “That was one of the most important highlights of my life!” recalls Amr. “We talked to her about the benefit the course is doing for the newcomer”, says Joud.

A year later, ReDI launched its second school in Munich. The opening ceremony took place at Cisco in München-Garching with Munich’s mayor Josef Schmid and Oliver Tuszik, Cisco SVP (the head of Cisco Germany at the time).

Ribbon-cutting ceremony in Munich to celebrate new ReDI School with Munich mayor Josef Schmid and Cisco Manager Oliver Tuszik

The next joint showcase project is currently starting in Munich. Together with Cisco, Steelcase, Computacenter and The Human Safety Net (supported by Generali), ReDI School is creating an innovative Hub for Digital Education and Integration in Munich. “We teach modern technologies and prepare our students, who come from many different cultures, for a world of change,” says Sophie Jonke, Head of ReDI School in Munich.

ReDI’s teaching methods focus on collaboration and co-creation. COVID-19 also pushes the blended learning approach which combines face-to-face learning along with virtual, technology-supported learning. With Cisco’s cutting edge collaboration technology and Steelcase’s innovative classroom furniture, a modern learning environment is being created allowing students from so many different nations to learn together and grow for a better future. The next big step will be an opening networking event to celebrate the achievements of these collaborations with all of our partners, students, and alumni as soon as the pandemic is over.

“The fact that we have achieved so much in five years is largely thanks to the cooperation with such committed partners as Cisco,” says Anne Kjaer Bathel. Since starting ReDI School, the ReDI founders have always kept one proverb in mind: “If you want to go fast, go alone. If you want to go far, go together.”

Written By Birgit Koebl

Birgit is Head of Partnerships & Media at ReDI School of Digital Integration in Munich.