The newly launched Tech Council of Delaware believes the state is a tech hub

It was 2014 — the same year Technical.ly launched in the Delaware market — and leaders from the State of Delaware, then under Gov. Jack Markell, traveled to Switzerland with Rodel to gain insights on how to keep up with an increasingly tech-focused job market.

That trip led to the establishment of Tech Hire Delaware, which led to the launch of the Delaware IT Council in 2020 and its incorporation as an LLC within Rodel in 2021.

Zakiyyah Ali, who had spent a decade as a workforce development consultant in Wilmington, was selected as the Council’s inaugural executive director in early 2022. That’s when the Council really began to take shape, including a rebranding as the Tech Council of Delaware, with a new logo by Launch Point Labs (a 2023 RealLIST Startups honoree) and an online interactive platform that includes a career center, courses, a data dashboard and workforce services.

The Tech Council of Delaware had its official launch this week, with a sold-out event that included a demo of the website, a presentation on its tech talent workforce intermediary First State Tech Partnership, and commentary from members of Delaware’s tech ecosystem.

Zakiyyah Ali. (Photo by Quinn)

“The Tech Council offers us a way to foster greater exposure of Delaware programs that will be crucial in helping Delaware residents stay current with the latest trends in the field,” said Karryl Hubbard, secretary of the Delaware Department of Labor. “You need workforce solutions that develop the industry specific technological competencies and durable soft skills necessary to attain high wage employment.”

That includes certificate programs and apprenticeships in areas like programming, cybersecurity and data science, as well as new skills that will be increasingly sought after in the next few years.

“AI is going to take over a lot of the mundane jobs, but it’s not going to remove opportunities for people to earn and make money,” said Tariq Hook, cofounder of equity-minded coding bootcamp Code Differently. “But the thing is, we have to be prepared. And at the Tech Council, we sit down and we have these conversations. We go to the Department of Labor, and we talk about starting a new program for prompt engineering, because this is going to be a needed industry. Why can’t Delaware be the first to have a critical mass of people that are prepared to go into these new technologies?”

Among the issues the Council is addressing is the loss of strong tech talent after they get an education in Delaware, even while there is a tech talent shortage in the state.

“Why do our best graduates take an Uber right by our offices in Delaware to go to the Philly airport and accept jobs all over the world?” asked Pete Steiner, a senior technology leader who has worked with Hercules, MBNA, Bank of America and now CSC as its VP of enterprise technology. “Save the plane tickets, stay in Delaware and get to work. Our government leaders and our educators believe Delaware is a tech hub.”

“We can do this, but we need to behave differently,” he continued. “Let’s put the energy into the core of our success: our organizations and our people in Delaware. So repeat after me: I believe Delaware is a tech hub.”

The Tech Council of Delaware now has memberships for all areas of the tech ecosystem, from aspiring tech professionals to corporate, government and community organizations, and it invites members to participate in an ecosystem committee.