< Previous28 G R E A T E R P H O E N I X : T HE C O N N E C T E D P L AC Eboth full- and part-time immersive programs on campus. “It can take somebody with limited tech skills, relatively close to entry level, and put them in a position to become a junior developer or software engineer in six months,” says Galvanize General Manager Diana Vowels. “We have two distinct programs: software engineering and data science. Our placements run in the 90 percent range for our students getting placed within six months of graduation, and the average starting salary we’re seeing in Phoenix is about $75,000. These are great starting salaries. I like to say it’s a short-term program. It’s an intense program with tremendous outcomes.” Woz U, inspired by Apple co-founder Steve Wozniak, is a career-based program specializing in technology. The coding school works with traditional universities, businesses and other local agencies to help its students advance their careers and fill the technology gap in the workforce. With several programs offered at the Scottsdale campus, as well as online programs, students can refine their coding skillsets and better position themselves to contribute to companies. The school has an 80 percent placement rate for graduates. “The tech industry in the Phoenix area provides a vast array of opportunities for students to continue their career path post-graduation with employment at one of our local businesses. The technology-focused culture inspires students, as they gain their education through our programs that prepare them to be a part of the innovative spirit that continues to rise locally,” says Chris Coleman, president of Woz U.Of course, getting the opportunity to meet “The Woz” himself is often inspirational for the students at Woz U. “Steve is very passionate about education,” Coleman says. “As a Woz U founder and active member of our board of directors, he is a tremendous visionary with a wealth of experience, which is a valuable resource for the company as we work together to advance Woz U’s education offerings. It’s a great thrill for students when Steve is at our Phoenix campus. They can interact with him and discuss the projects they are working on as part of the program.”Early ExposureWoz U Education is a separate sector of the coding school that works with K-12 students to “instill a tech-based mindset,” says Coleman. The program is currently working with students in 10 Arizona school districts. “Our career-centric approach to education enables us to equip students with the tools and resources to work with prominent companies in Arizona such as GoDaddy, Axway, GlobalTranz and Infosys,” says Coleman. The Phoenix Coding Academy is an innovative public high school that’s focused on computer coding and multiple technology pathways. In addition to earning a high school diploma, students can take Career and Technical Education (CTE) classes in pathways such Phoenix Coding Academy is an innovative public high school focused on technology.Phoenix Coding AcademyG R E A T E R P H O E N I X : T HE C O N N E C T E D P L AC E 29as software design, networking, information security, engineering and entrepreneurship. Students receive inquiry-based instruction and participate in job-shadowing and internships with local companies. Seth Buete, principal of the Phoenix Coding Academy, says the need for the school became apparent in 2014 when the district learned more tech companies were moving to the region and of the national under-representation of women and minorities in STEM careers. The academy’s district is 85 percent Hispanic. “There are a lot of tech companies opening here. There are national companies relocating and there’s explosive growth of all companies using technology,” says Buete. “So, it’s not just tech companies, but everyone using technology. We saw this as an opportunity, especially in Phoenix, because of the growth locally, we can get our students a four-year head start toward a career in these fields.”Currently, some 300 students are enrolled in grades 9 through 11, with additional grades and students being added each year. “I want our students to go out into the community and focus on connecting through internships and mentor programs and on job training,” says Buete. “I want these companies to see what our students can do and start bragging about it. They have a lot of great ideas and are excited for opportunities. A lot of times, especially low-income neighborhood students, they don’t see the opportunities, and I want to make sure they know the doors are open.” AVAILABLESIGNAL BUTTE DATA CENTER SITELocated in Mesa’s Elliot Road Technology Corridor “BILL JABJINIAK City of Mesa, Economic Development DirectorMICHAEL ORTIZ Vice President DIR +1 602 222 5069 michael.ortiz@colliers.comKIRK KULLER Vice President DIR +1 602 222 5179 kirk.kuller@colliers.comCOLLIERS INTERNATIONAL 2390 E. Camelback Rd. Ste 100 | Phoenix, AZ 85016 | colliers.com/greaterphoenixSIGNALBUTTEMESA.COLLIERS.COMTo learn more go to:With nearly 400 acres sold in theCorridor since May 2017, the Signal Buttesite is ideally positioned in the area.The Signal Butte site is primed to bring the next tech giant to Mesa.”30 G R E A T E R P H O E N I X : T HE C O N N E C T E D P L AC EE N T RE P RE N E U RS H I P A N D I N N O V A T I O NOrganizations in the Greater Phoenix region help startups grow every step along the way.n 2016, Fortune magazine ranked Phoenix No. 10 among its Top 25 Hottest Cities for Startups, while the Kaufmann Index ranked Phoenix among the Top 10 for Startup Activity.With a plethora of incubators, coworking spaces and maker spaces in the region to foster entrepreneurship — not to mention the business-friendly climate, quality of life, low taxes and low cost of living in the area — innovation is springing from the desert. “Phoenix has a different kind of startup community. There tend to be smaller dollars at play here compared to San Francisco and New York and other big cities,” explains Diana Vowels, general manager of Galvanize in Phoenix. “So there tends to be less funding that’s happening here. However, when you get funding in Phoenix, when you can secure VC money or any kind of funding, you can stretch it much further in Phoenix. So, a $5-million round in Phoenix accomplishes something, whereas a $5-million round in San Francisco is a drop in the bucket.”Galvanize is a coworking space for entrepreneurs that focus on building tech-enabled innovations. The Phoenix campus is one of eight nationwide. Since opening in 2017, the campus has reached 100 percent occupancy with 120 companies and 450 members. Vowels says the energy coming from the companies working at Galvanize “is palpable.”“Because Phoenix is geographically Iby SAVA NN A H K I N GSmall BusinessGrows in the DesertG R E A T E R P H O E N I X : T HE C O N N E C T E D P L AC E 31spread out, entrepreneurs and startups are all over the valley,” says Vowels. “There’s never been a central hub for the startup community. By locating downtown, we’ve created the place for the conversation to happen. It’s a physical space, but it’s also a vibe.”Another popular coworking space in midtown Phoenix is CO+HOOTS. Founded in 2010, CO+HOOTS was the first coworking space in Phoenix and sees its members generate more than $62 million annually. CO+HOOTS plans to open a new coworking space in nearby Mesa in 2019. Several other coworking spaces are in the area including Elevate Coworking, MOD, Union Workspace, Coworking at 15th Ave., Society, Hive, Workuity and The Department. Startups that need a little extra support can take advantage of several incubators in the area focused on everything from helping veterans launch their own business at The Armory, to creating video games at Game CoLab, and supporting innovative social entrepreneurs at the SEED Spot. The region’s higher education institutions are also available to facilitate startups. As the most innovative school in the country, Arizona State University’s Entrepreneurship + Innovation program has helped students create apps that limit screen time for children, help millennials learn to invest in the stock market, create smart pool gate locks and more. Paradise Valley Community College, part of the Maricopa Community Colleges, is helping students create the next generation of Arizona companies at its Entrepreneurship Education Center. MCC and ASU have teamed up to offer Poder, a free, five-week entrepreneurship program that teaches students to apply entrepreneurship skills to problems in the community. 32 G R E A T E R P H O E N I X : T HE C O N N E C T E D P L AC ETheRightWO R K F O R CE D E V E LO PM E N Tby SAVA NN A H K IN GRightRightRightRightRightRightRightRightsk any hiring manager and they’ll tell you that vetting qualified candidates takes time and can be an expensive mistake if the wrong candidate is chosen. In Arizona, there’s a new program working to help people make better decisions about hiring, jobs and education. PipelineAZ.com, launched in March, is the first regional platform of its kind that is made by all the community workforce stakeholders in an effort to create an enhanced experience for job seekers and employers. Through the innovative website, employers and job seekers can easily explore careers, salaries and career pathways, and can access educational and training resources; all of this is based on local information. Employers can post any open positions for free and use the software to find candidates that have the skills and interests needed to be successful in the role. The website, initially thought of as a way to help veterans find employment, even translates military experience into skills needed for civilian jobs. Pipeline AZ director Katherine Pappas says the technology will help our region better understand the marketplace and our talent pipeline in real time. With employers’ needs, pathways become regionally specific and more agile for a changing market.“Skills are changing at such a rapid rate,” says Pappas. “And a resume is a retroactive look at what somebody’s done. Typically, when a job post is created, it’s already outdated. So, then you have an educator trying to produce learning outcomes that don’t fit into that description or don’t showcase what a job seeker would be applicable in terms of the marketplace.” “What we are aiming to do is use technology as an infrastructure to Fit RightPipeline AZ is connecting employers to highly skilled, engaged workers around the state. Rightconnect our workforce partners so they, along with the technology, can guide transactions and exploration, and based on people’s skills, we can better align people’s capabilities in terms of what their interests are, what their current skills are, and we can quickly and automatically match them with opportunities that exist in our marketplace and help people prepare for jobs they want or are available tomorrow. We’re really changing the way we connect people to jobs and disrupting the paradigms of how to find the right fit.” Job seekers can explore career pathways in 18 different targeted industries and see any open positions at any given time.“We’ve taken all of those standard occupations and distilled them into 750 careers, and all of those are searchable from our site, with a particular emphasis on the Top 100 jobs expected to be especially relevant as informed by growth and replacement projections,” notes Pappas. “From a pathway perspective, job seekers can take a look at what they’re interested in. For example, if they’re looking at becoming a web developer, they can see what an entry-level employee makes or what an expert-level web developer position would look like. They can see the skills and knowledge that they would need (and how to obtain), what the salary is and what the actual day-to-day looks like.”For employers, this translates into an easier time finding the right fit for the company, says Pappas. “What we’re hearing from employers is that they find not only more of a quality match, but the conversation is easier right off the bat,” she says. “You already know they have the most important skills, and it becomes a little easier because now they can see if it’s more of a cultural fit.” “We’re really changing the way we connect people to jobs.”— Pipeline AZ Director Katherine PappasG R E A T E R P H O E N I X : T HE C O N N E C T E D P L AC E 3334 G R E A T E R P H O E N I X : T HE C O N N E C T E D P L AC EI N V E S TM E NT PR O F I L E :S A L T R I V E R PR O J E C TElectric utility engineers a more sustainable future for Arizona.t has become fashionable for companies to tout their sustainability street cred. In Greater Phoenix, they’re not bragging about sustainability; they’re doing it.Salt River Project, a $3-billion, 5,300-employee company based in Tempe, has been delivering reliable, low-cost electric power and water to the people of Arizona for more than a century. But the hallmark of its second century is building a sustainable future.SRP’s leaders, which include publicly elected officials, are doing a lot more than paying lip service to sustainability goals. They’re raising the bar to levels not seen in the electric power industry ever before and encouraging other companies to do the same.With the groundbreaking SRP 2035 initiative, SRP is leading by example.To promote ongoing stewardship of natural resources and ensure a sustainable power and water future for every one of its customers, SRP is pursuing these five 2035sustainability goals: reduce carbon footprint; ensure water resiliency; modernize the energy grid; promote a sustainable supply chain and reduce waste; and engage with SRP’s communities.The chief architect of these goals, Kelly Barr, says that SRP 2035 is about making decisions through the eyes of future generations, balancing costs and impacts while providing reliable, sustainable water and power — for today and tomorrow.“If SRP is successful with 2035, there will be significant benefits to the community,” says Barr, associate general manager and chief corporate services and sustainability executive for SRP. “Climate change is an international issue but GHG emission reductions can have local impacts. When you take measures to reduce carbon, you also reduce conventional pollutants. The SRP 2035 initiative will ensure that fossil fuel pollutants will be reduced, resulting in cleaner air for everyone who lives here and for the businesses that are trying to attract people and customers here.”That’s why SRP moved away from a single goal and toward a bundle of sustainability goals, says Barr. “Intel, Boeing, Arizona State University, the city of Phoenix and the city of Tempe all adopted this approach. We selected five pillars for SRP. We’re Iby R O N S TA R N E RSRP Focuseson the FutureG R E A T E R P H O E N I X : T HE C O N N E C T E D P L AC E 35This Investment Profile was prepared under the auspices of Salt River Project. For more information, contact Maaike Banning of SRP at 602-236-3548 or Maaike.Banning@srpnet.com. On the web, go to www.powertogrowphx.com.proud of this structure. It allows every SRP employee to align with at least one of these goals, and it’s good for business.”Top Priority: Making the Grid SmarterMany of these benchmarks will result in radical transformation, Barr says. “We envision a time when most people will drive electric cars, most folks will have rooftop solar, and devices will allow energy to be sent back to the grid.”Chris Campbell, senior director of grid modernization services at SRP, says that grid modernization is “about how we adapt the grid to meet the challenges of the future. Our customer preferences are changing. A lot of this work centers around renewable energy resources, using solar as clean energy and battery storage systems. Electric vehicles will be new sources of load. This means we’ll need more capability to manage the grid effectively, particularly as we see power flow across our network going in both directions.”As the penetration of renewable energy resources and electric vehicles grows, the dynamic nature of these resources will place more demand on the grid, says Campbell, and the electric utility provider will need to draw upon multiple solutions.The Advanced Inverter Pilot by SRP is a good example of what is being done to prepare. It is one of the largest pilots in the country that integrates customer connected solar photovoltaic generation with utility real-time operations to optimize distribution voltage regulation, load shape and overall fleet operations. This will enable SRP to make renewable energy, including solar, more accessible and reliable for residential and business customers.“Toward that end, we are developing a grid modernization road map,” says Campbell. “We will be able to model and plan the network of the future, using advanced process control technology and analytics to help us understand how the grid is performing.”Collaboration Led to SRP’s Five PillarsBarr says the five sustainability pillars were not developed in a vacuum. “We conducted a very robust outreach process,” she notes. “We interviewed a diverse set of stakeholders individually about these goals and asked them — are these goals consistent with where SRP should be headed? We are focused on being very responsive to our customers and the communities we serve.”SRP’s current Sustainable Portfolio Program — serving 20 percent of its retail energy requirements with sustainable sources by 2020 — served as the impetus for developing the 2035 initiative. “We are ahead of schedule,” Barr says. “And we will ramp up SRP 2035 as we complete our current sustainable portfolio. With SRP 2035, we are one of the first utilities in the country to have such a significant and comprehensive bundle of sustainability goals.”She adds that “the utility of the future is very different from the utility of today. Our industry is undergoing such rapid change and the 2035 Goals help SRP to strategically prepare for these exciting opportunities.” SRP has the largest workplace charging program in Arizona. Here Kelly Barr is standing next to her own EV.Photo courtesy of SRPtill think driverless cars are a thing of the future? They’re already on the road throughout Greater Phoenix. Waymo, a self-driving technology company, is signing up early riders in communities throughout Greater 36 G R E A T E R P H O E N I X : T HE C O N N E C T E D P L AC EI N F R A STR U C T U R E , L O G I ST I C S A N D TR A N S P O R T A T I O Nby M AR K AR E N DSA TRANSIT SYSTEM BUILT FOR BUSINESSBUSINESSBUSINESSBUSINESSBUSINESSBUSINESSBUSINESSBUSINESSBUSINESSBUILT FOR BUILT FOR BUILT FOR BUILT FOR BUILT FOR BUILT FOR BUILT FOR BUILT FOR BUILT FOR BUILT FOR BUILT FOR BUILT FOR BUILT FOR SYSTEM SYSTEM SYSTEM SYSTEM SYSTEM SYSTEM SYSTEM SYSTEM SYSTEM SYSTEM SYSTEM SYSTEM SYSTEM SYSTEM SYSTEM SYSTEM SYSTEM SYSTEM SYSTEM SYSTEM SYSTEM SYSTEM A TRANSIT A TRANSIT A TRANSIT A TRANSIT A TRANSIT A TRANSIT A TRANSIT A TRANSIT A TRANSIT A TRANSIT A TRANSIT A TRANSIT A TRANSIT A TRANSIT A TRANSIT A TRANSIT A TRANSIT A TRANSIT A TRANSIT A TRANSIT A TRANSIT A TRANSIT A TRANSIT A TRANSIT A TRANSIT A TRANSIT A TRANSIT A TRANSIT A TRANSIT A TRANSIT A TRANSIT A TRANSIT A TRANSIT A commuter-friendly transport network and a head start on driverless cars put Phoenix laps ahead of other Western metros.G R E A T E R P H O E N I X : T HE C O N N E C T E D P L AC E 37Phoenix, including Chandler, Mesa, Tempe and Gilbert, to help test the technology in real-life situations. Waymo uses input from early rider passengers to help shape the future of how the technology will work.But that’s not all Waymo is up to in the Valley of the Sun. On July 31, Valley Metro — the Phoenix area’s regional transportation provider — and Waymo joined forces to introduce a new partnership that will help drive the future of transportation. Using Waymo’s self-driving vehicle technology, Valley Metro will participate in an innovative travel solution pilot that can be modeled across the country.“Technology is fueling a transportation revolution,” said Phoenix Mayor and Valley Metro Rail Chair Thelda Williams. “Valley Metro and Waymo are joining forces to pilot autonomous vehicle trips to better understand the purpose of real-life trips and connectivity. AV technology, combined with public transit’s expertise, will help bolster and reinvent transportation.” Williams “Technology is fueling a transportation revolution.”— Thelda Williams, Phoenix mayor and Valley Metro rail chairNext >