2002 - 2003 Winners

Cisco Systems, Inc.
Cisco Networking Academy Program

The Cisco Networking Academies program, which has attained widespread recognition as perhaps the most successful of all corporate efforts to overcome the "digital divide" separating the upper-income population enjoying home Internet access from the lower-income population that often lacks it. The program was established in 1997 to provide free curriculum training to high school students interested in learning how to install and maintain networking equipment. After Cisco began donating networking hardware to public school systems in the early 1990s, it often found that local school systems lacked the expertise to maintain it properly, so the company decided to train students to do it themselves. The curriculum comprises a comprehensive series of 14 courses (soon to be 16) developed after an expenditure of $150 million by Cisco.

The Networking Academy program integrates face-to-face teaching with the multimedia delivery of curricula and assessment over the Internet. It successfully prepares graduates for networking and IT related jobs in the public and private sectors as well as for continuing education in engineering, computer science and related fields. These efforts have also helped to wire schools while teaching educators and students how to manage their networks. The program has over 260,000 students who have earned significant benefits.

This not only solved the immediate problem of keeping the networks up and running once they were installed but it also created opportunities for disadvantaged students to pursue attractive careers. Lower-income groups and people of color have long been under-represented in the tech sector's labor force generally, so the program was immediately attractive to tech companies concerned about enhancing the diversity of their employee pool and customer base. It also addressed the "digital divide" issue that has been one of the main concerns of policy-makers.

Fannie Mae
Employer Assisted Housing Initiative

Fannie Mae's Employer Assisted Housing Initiative seeks to boost home ownership among its employees. Since the program's 1991 inception, Fannie Mae has loaned $24.3 million to over 2,200 employees. Homeownership rate among Fannie Mae's employees (76%) is higher than the national average (67%). The company was selected by Washingtonian magazine as one of the best places to work in Washington, DC and cited the program as one of the main reasons. Fannie Mae's employees are eligible for the program after 180 days of employment and they also receive one day of paid "home purchase leave" each year to tend to responsibilities associated with purchasing a primary residence. The program, among other things, assists employees to navigate their way through the home buying process.