Repost of this interview in advance of my presentation later this week

This year’s Cyber Summit will be hitting “pause” to focus on the inequalities that have arisen during the rapid advance of our digital economy. To shed light on some solutions to these inequalities that are already being implemented here in Canada, Jake Hirsch-Allen, Economic Graph and Lynda.com Higher Education Lead at LinkedIn Canada, will be speaking at the Cyber Summit on November 8–9 in Banff, Alberta.

The theme for this year’s Cyber Summit is focused on the issues surrounding technology disparities, and how they affect different regions and different sectors. Tell us about projects you have worked on that tie in with this theme.

The theme of this conference is very much in line with a central struggle throughout my career, namely the fight against inequality. I grew up as a “diplobrat” in the developing world. I experienced first-hand and at a young age the contrast between a private international school and the shanty towns of New Delhi. In response, I’ve worked to integrate social impact into my work in intellectual property and public international law. I’ve also incorporated this thinking into the founding of hacking health, Lighthouse Labs — a software development bootcamp that teaches how to code in cities across Canada — and other tech endeavors. My teaching experience, work in both the education and healthcare industries, and even my current role at LinkedIn have all involved the fight against inequality.

I fully realized my passion for education when I was invited to chair the Technology Committee of the Global Education Platform, which brought together 70 global organizations — from UNESCO to the Brookings Institute and EdX to LinkedIn — to talk about how to increase access to online learning and make it useful for the least advantaged populations in the world.

Years later, when I started work with LinkedIn, Lynda.com was acquired on my second day on the job. This returned the focus of my career to online learning. It also coincided with the evolution of LinkedIn’s broader vision to be a place that is very in line with my struggle with inequality, namely, to provide economic opportunity to every member of the global workforce. Specifically, I am currently working to bring government, the private sector and post-secondary institutions together to increase access to online learning across Canada, while taking advantage of LinkedIn’s data on career and learning pathways to provide equality to the entire workforce, rather than just to white collar professionals.

What challenges exist in the world today that inspire your work?

As a kid I spent a lot of time on the early versions of the World Wide Web. I was caught up in the widely held aspiration that the internet, by dramatically increasing access to information, would support democracy and decrease inequality. Despite the best intentions of the founders of Google, Facebook and many other large tech companies, I fear that over time technology has actually decreased equality. My recent work is focused on countering that phenomenon by using a global platform like LinkedIn to help those who need it most. In a world that is moving so quickly, rural communities and small schools can’t keep up financially. Simultaneously, larger institutions, like universities, can’t adapt fast enough to changing educational tools like online learning, or the changing realities of a world where the shelf-life of skills is shrinking radically, and, therefore, requires them to embrace more just-in-time curriculum.

LinkedIn is helping educational institutions to better leverage online learning with Lynda.com and LinkedIn Learning. With our data from more than 500 million professionals worldwide, we’re also able to play a pivotal role in helping employers to look at skills and other important signals — apprenticeships, boot camps, etc. — when evaluating potential talent, thereby expanding their potential talent pools beyond only those with prestigious degrees. This shift, also accelerated by technology, has the potential to equalize. I think this is one of the more interesting topics for this conference to address.

Where do you think LinkedIn has the opportunity to have the biggest impact on communities with its data and educational resources?

In Canada, our economy and demographics are changing so fast that very few can keep up on their own. We are in a new era of big data and data science yet, despite massive volumes of data, we have a less accurate picture of our economy now than we did 10–20 years ago, because of the pace of change.

With ~14M members in Canada, and ~500M worldwide, LinkedIn is leveraging that data in a meaningful way to help its members be more productive and successful. We want to show what skills are in demand, where people are coming from, as well as where they are going, and why so that we can reveal learning and migration patterns, close skill gaps and assist workforce development. We want to provide access to real time information to help schools and government in ways that few other organizations can. As I suggested earlier, among the more important trends for higher education is the changing value of credentials. LinkedIn is at the intersection of changes to the value of credentials and how people learn.

Is there a community or industry where you would like to see improved access to technology, connectivity and/or computing resources?

Alberta was once a thought leader in learning technology and changes to pedagogy, not only across Canada, but even worldwide. BCNET and BCCampus were modelled after eCampusAlberta, which was shut down last year. Yet I would argue these are exactly the areas Alberta and its educational institutions need to be funding. These concepts pull together online learning content from colleges and universities across the province, and share best practices across these institutions, creating a learning ecosystem that benefits staff, faculty and students.

Alberta needs to return to being a centre of educational innovation. If it can do so, in not two, but maybe ten years, it could return to being the top economy in Canada and the world. Through public-private partnerships, and with its colleges and universities, government can affect change in a broad way at a low cost, albeit over the medium term.

If you could make one bold statement that describes your goals for 2018, what would it be?

I would like online learning to begin to work for the people with the least access to education and history of education. I think technology should serve the interests of the most disadvantaged communities rather than those with the greatest wealth.

Hear more from Jake Hirsch-Allen at the 2017 Cyber Summit

This post is meant to explain my excitement about being the first Lynda.com employee based in Canada and why I am even more excited about the future of Lynda.com and LinkedIn together. Days after the acquisition I wrote this post summarizing the press and my views on why LinkedIn spent 1.5 billion on an educational video library. Since then, I’ve been working with LinkedIn’s Economic Graph team on a Metro Insights project to help disadvantaged youth in Toronto connect with the skills they need and employers looking to hire them. This work coupled with a growing understanding of the potential contained in Lynda.com’s library confirms that the Lynda acquisition is perhaps the single greatest step towards achieving LinkedIn’s goal to create an Economic Graph.

In our CEO’s words, the LinkedIn Economic Graph hopes to “digitally map the global economy, identifying the connections between people, jobs, skills, companies, and professional knowledge — and spot in real-time the trends pointing to economic opportunities.” This is aligned with LinkedIn’s Vision to “create economic opportunity for every member of the global workforce” and is a broader and in my opinion more equitable and therefor moral goal than our Mission to “Connect the world’s professionals to make them more productive and successful.”

Our Toronto Metro Insights project demonstrated the potential of LinkedIn’s data to trace pathways of learning and the skills required to attain jobs. We were able to identify which tech skills individuals in Toronto seeking a job early in their career need and then connect them with the organizations that can train them. For instance, our data showed that Toronto employers are seeking mobile web development skills. We also know that bootcamps like the one I founded, Lighthouse Labs, coupled with online learning, such as Lynda.com’s courses, can provide low cost, fast ways to attain these skills. Bring this all together and we can now enable students to achieve their career goals on LinkedIn.

Established brick and mortar universities and colleges and online schools can also benefit from using Lynda. Lynda enables teachers to implement many advances in pedagogy such as flipping their classroom. In this model, course content is studied at home allowing students to interact and engage more with the material in class. With courses that can be many hours broken down into digestible, several minute long segments, Lynda’s content can be inserted into lectures or other online content as well. This format makes it easy to distribute across LinkedIn’s network. Lynda’s content is also ideal for professional development, allowing those who already have jobs to change career tracks or level up. And by working with our partners such as Adobe to revise our courses as soon as their software is updated, we can ensure students’ skills are cutting edge.

A recent post by one of my colleagues on the Economic Graph team with whom I worked closely on the Toronto Metro Insights project highlights the power of connecting LinkedIn’s data with Lynda’s courses. Sohan Murthy outlines the top skills to get a job in 2016 and then links to the Lynda courses that provide these capabilities. As we continue to map Canada’s economy, LinkedIn will more and more clearly be able to chart pathways to learning and promotion like this and with Lynda we can now deliver on the promise of enabling individuals with the skills they need to follow these paths.

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Originally published at alittlebitofjake.wordpress.com on February 18, 2016.

I wrote this post in April of 2015

While my favorite daily newsletter summed up LinkedIn’s acquisition of online learning company Lynda.com in one sentence:

“Pending shareholder approval, the $1.5 billion deal will allow LinkedIn to make Lynda.com’s 6,300 online skill-building courses and 267,000 video tutorials a part of its social network for professionals”,

I thought I’d pull together a bit more of the recent coverage of my employer’s biggest single move yet.

Ryan Roslansky, LinkedIn’s head of content products welcomed the company and its employees and explained the synergies between our companies on the LinkedIn blog. He and Jeff Weiner, our CEO, explain how this a “meaningful step on [LinkedIn’s] way to building the Economic Graph” and Jeff goes on to explain how it will ensure LinkedIn plays a role in helping its users live up to the third of his three pillars of career advice that one should “always be learning.” Lynda herself explained how this acquisition would help “more people learn the skills that are needed in today’s rapidly changing economic landscape.”

While some questioned the valuation, which at 1.5B was “almost 3x more than all its previous acquisitions combined“, LinkedIn was widely lauded for the acquisition, and particularly for the “impact on its bottom line” and the quality of Lynda.com’s content.

Kurt Wagner at recode explains the three reasons he thinks LinkedIn bought Lynda.com: First, the companies’ missions align as evidenced by the above statements by their CEOs and Lynda. Next, Lynda.com will allow LinkedIn to further its connections to students. As he notes, “Lynda already works with 40 percent of the nation’s colleges and universities, including all of the Ivy League schools.” Last he notes perhaps the most obvious reason: this is a content play and video is king these days.

The official press release is helpful in summarizing Lynda.com as a platform:

“Through a subscription to lynda.com’s service, individual members and organizations have access to a comprehensive collection of top quality courses taught by industry experts, offered in [5 languages]…lynda.com serves corporate, government and educational organizations” and its video library contains “more than 6,300, engaging, top-quality courses and more than 267,000 video tutorials taught by recognized industry experts.”

The release also covers the respective companies’ CEOs’ high level explanations of the value in the partnership: It quotes Weiner saying

“The mission of LinkedIn and the mission of lynda.com are highly aligned. Both companies seek to help professionals be better at what they do […] lynda.com’s extensive library of premium video content helps empower people to develop the skills needed to accelerate their careers. When integrated with the hundreds of millions of members and millions of jobs on LinkedIn, lynda.com can change the way in which people connect to opportunity.”

And Eric Robison, CEO of lynda.com states:

“In LinkedIn, we have found an incredible partner who shares our vision and passion for empowering people around the world to make real change in their lives through access to information, learning and professional development.”

Note: These views are my own and, in writing this summary and quoting the articles above, I do not represent LinkedIn.

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Originally published at alittlebitofjake.wordpress.com on February 18, 2016.

In this series, professionals thank those who helped them reach where they are today. Read the posts here, then write your own. Use #ThankYourMentor and @mention your mentor when sharing. I drafted this post in August of 2015.

From law to global health and entrepreneurship to education, I’ve had many bosses, but the past 7 months at LinkedIn were made by one man. I’ve been fortunate enough to enjoy most of my jobs but never before have I wanted to come to work in the same way. I attribute this inclination in large part to my boss, Jeff Roy.

Jeff, or JRoy, as he was almost universally called, was a) humble, b) ambitious, c) compassionate, d) reassuring, e) rigorous.

JRoy would always joke that he did not deserve his leadership position. He described his path from a B student at B schools to management within LinkedIn Sales Solutions — a group that many aspire to within a hyper-growth company — as the result of luck. Yet his endearing modesty concealed natural skills in sales, and more importantly management expertise, that were carefully honed over years. While I looked up to JRoy from the moment I met him, he never spoke down to me or any of my teammates. We were all equals and in his post-departure absence, our team’s cohesion is a testament to the solidarity created by this equality and mutual support.

The strength of our team also came from a strong desire to be the best. Sales is inherently competitive and LinkedIn does a fantastic job of motivating its reps through sales processes, business structures, benefits and compensation. Taking this to the next level, Jeff created a team that surpassed expectations and excelled even among other LinkedIn teams. This success was based on a communal ambition that resembled that of an elite military unit as much any sales group.

This unit is also made up of the best. Carefully selected from other LinkedIn teams and from outside of the organization, my colleagues are diverse in their backgrounds and approaches but share many of the attributes that made JRoy an amazing boss. Yet JRoy and I often discussed the importance of hiring individuals that are different from each other and challenge each other as much as those who are similar and naturally cohere. JRoy hired carefully, often taking longer than other managers, but our team is evidence of his successfully balancing these competing goals.

Never have I felt as individually supported as I did under JRoy’s leadership. One of the management lessons he explicitly taught me was to focus on your colleagues, and particularly your juniors, as individuals first. Listen to and support their career ambitions and their success will result in your own success as a leader. Help them achieve their goals and they will help you win any battle. Like much of his advice, this lesson came from a combination of his own experience and the insights from the many books on management, spirituality and self-improvement that covered JRoy’s desk.

Instead of meeting in a board room or a breakout room, JRoy and I would go for walks outside. Coffee in hand, he would ask about my travels and my parties, and I about his wife and child. At other times, We would joke about his neighbours and even train for athletics together. We are now friends first, rather than former colleagues. The trust and sense of reassurance that JRoy created are a testament to his mastery of the professional relationship.

Together, JRoy’s modesty and his drive, his empathy and his support, made him an incredible boss.

Thank you JRoy.

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Originally published at alittlebitofjake.wordpress.com on February 18, 2016.

The following post was part of a LinkedIn Canada initiative to inspire creativity and discussion amongst our network and followers. It was drafted in June of 2015.

My first job was doing tech support at the Canadian embassy in Washington D.C. I had always admired my dad, a diplomat, and I was excited by the opportunity to work near him in our gleaming Arthur Erickson-designed embassy right across The Mall from Congress.

My day-to-day work was far more mundane than the descriptions on my resume might suggest. For instance, “Supporting and reconfiguring the Embassy’s telecommunications protocols and systems” basically entailed fixing phones and voicemail. But as an ambitious high school student, the opportunity to work with our diplomats and even, on a volunteer basis, take notes at Congressional hearings, was exhilarating.

The job came with its ups and downs: I spent countless (frustrating) hours on the phone with Verizon when we rolled out the first Blackberries in D.C. Another time I had to get Secret clearance in order to manage the fibre optic lines that we leased connecting all of our posts in the Americas.

And it was not without risk and responsibility either: I connected dozens of computers to new dual input monitors (one secure, one not) but didn’t realize the voltage was different. I walked away and as each user flicked the switch to change the input device, they would blow their monitor, one after the other, until we figured out what was going wrong.

The most important lesson from this job, however, was about people: There is an aloofness inherent in knowing more than someone else even when you are their junior in age and function. This is particularly true of knowledge about technology which can be both specialized and practical. And this distance can get in the way of understanding. More than any other skill, doing tech support requires empathy. The ability to understand your client’s perspective and problems, to see a computer or phone from their level of skill and take into consideration their frustration, was paramount.

At the embassy I learned the acronym PEBKAC for Problem Exists Between Keyboard and Chair. This reference to by far the most common reason for a tech support call, user error or ignorance, gets it wrong. Rather than the problem, we had to understand that the solution existed between the keyboard and the chair. By understanding that my clients, my colleagues and eventually, my friends, were raised in different generations and perhaps didn’t understand the analogy of a folder in an operating system, or how to access a “context menu” (usually, right clicking), I was able to help them better.

I could help them understand their devices and software in a more productive and lasting manner by explaining the solutions in their terms. And once I did, I would unlock perhaps the most rewarding aspect of my job, their gratitude. Spending that extra half hour to work through how to create an out of office message or deal with a “full” mailbox resulted in lasting relationships that continue to benefit my career to this day. And learning the value of empathy, in and of itself, made my first job worthwhile.