TCS goIT: Advancing STEM Education, Innovation, and Career Readiness

Lina Klebanov

Head, Corporate Social Responsibility North America, TCS

Highlights

goIT recently celebrated 15 years enhancing STEM education and serving youth.
The program started in Milford, Ohio, in 2009, when TCS staff created a summer camp experience to increase student interest in—and career readiness for—computer science jobs.
Today, goIT includes camps, workshops, curricula for classrooms and after-school programs, and competitions students can engage with independently of those programs.
goIT has now reached more than 310,000 students around the world with skill-building opportunities that enable them to develop and apply newly acquired tech knowledge and skills to real-world problems such as defined by the United Nations 2030 Sustainable Development Agenda.

TCS’ Go Innovate Together (goIT) program exposes students across North America to technologies that are rapidly changing the world as that evolution is taking place, demonstrates how tech can be used for positive social and environmental impact and provides them with relevant skills and the mindsets needed to pursue related careers in STEM or computer science.

Created in 2009, goIT was ‘born’ when a group of TCS associates in Milford, Ohio, recognized that there weren’t as many interested and appropriately skilled candidates as there were jobs available in their local office. They thought they could help change that, so they started goIT as a small summer-camp experience serving a few dozen students in the Cincinnati area. Attendees learned how to code robots to perform basic tasks from enthusiastic IT experts who spent three days as volunteer camp facilitators—and as inspiration for future tech careers. Instantly, they knew what they had was special, but they had no idea they were about to start a movement.

It was good timing.

As reported by Gartner, IT jobs had started to morph into four different domains around that time:

Technology Infrastructure and Services, emphasizing technical knowledge around how different technologies work
Information Design and Management, focused more on business-specific knowledge
Process Design and Management which balances business knowledge with deep understandings of core processes sector differentiation points
Relationship and Sourcing Management, balancing business and core process knowledge with the ability to excel in negotiations and relationship management

Further, in 2009, the National Science Foundation reported that men outnumbered women 3 to 1 in all sectors of science and engineering careers in the US, and women were significantly underrepresented in both STEM degrees and jobs in across the country. Researchers studying the gap in STEM jobs between the genders noted that it got smaller with increases in educational attainment, yet women held significantly fewer STEM degrees compared with men, and fewer women than men with STEM undergraduate degrees actually ended up in STEM jobs. As recently as 2023, the Foundation reported that men outnumbered women in science and technology jobs 2 to 1.

Pitching dreams and influencing youth

Creativity, enthusiasm, and innovation at the 2024 TCS New York City Marathon’s goIT Student Challenge where students in grades 6 through 12 presented their ideas for advancing gender equality in sports.

In the years following goIT’s 2009 summer camp startup led by TCSer Brian Purvis, we took the program across the US, and, in 2014, across the border to Canada. By 2020, we had expanded goIT with the help of fully engaged, compassionate employee volunteers. Brian, for instance, served as a subject matter expert for the development of goIT’s Internet of Things tech pathway. We also collaborated with other tech experts to develop more offerings as we laid the foundation for a meaningful global program. Our program’s years of greatest growth, expanding from two to 48 countries, took place over just four years, from 2020–2024 and, today, we have reached more than 300,000 students, with 49% of participants being girls and approximately 75% from ethnic minorities.

In goIT programs, these students develop and apply knowledge and skills such as AI, IoT, and app design to create solutions to real-world problems, as defined by the United Nations 2030 Sustainable Development Agenda. It’s tech with heart and purpose. Today, goIT engages female and minority K-12 students as a program priority, because we’re confident that a fun and meaningful experience with technology can stimulate girls’ interest in STEM education and careers—and that goIT can instill in them the confidence they need to pursue them.

TCS’ investments in STEM education programs—with the help of program leaders, the generous volunteers who give of their time and expertise, and thousands of wonderful teacher and student participants—are creating positive change. It will help all tech employers benefit from the perspectives of individuals from typically underrepresented groups, including, but certainly not limited to women.

All curious parties will have many chances to learn more about what we’re doing for the world with goIT, as we’ll soon launch a goIT Learning and Impact Summit series. These events will provide educators in schools, nonprofit after-school programs, and more with best practices for implementing goIT with their students. They’ll focus on knowledge exchange and offer focused guidance for teaching from goIT’s newest tech pathways, like GenAI and machine learning.

Tech-for-good

I think providing this added educator support is the best way for TCS to launch into goIT’s NEXT 15 years and I look very much forward to the Summits’ impact.

Looking back, some favorite goIT memories include:

Seeing the smiles on the faces of the 75% female goIT Live group in our 2024 Honolulu Schools program.
Judging the 10th annual Toronto District School Board’s 2023–2024 goIT program culmination featuring 250 K-12 innovators and their big dreams for sustainable development.
The year that astronaut Nicole Stott encouraged youth to enter the goIT Global Innovator of the Year competition as “crew members, not passengers” on the spaceship Earth.
The two consecutive years that the goIT Global Innovator of the Year was a girl!
- I loved celebrating Laura Farry (2022–2023) and Casey Schwartz (2023–2024), ages 14 and 13, respectively, when they were recognized.
The day I learned that a goIT alum took the confidence he gained innovating in the program to do something quite extraordinary—build his own, motorized prosthetic hand.

goIT has proven itself to have the relevance, stamina, credibility and longevity needed to continue for many more years. That is definitely a good thing because there is so much more work to do.

goIT turns 15

Celebrating 15 years of empowering future innovators

TCS' goIT program is a global initiative that has been empowering students with the skills, confidence, and mindsets to pursue careers in STEM and computer sciences for the past 15 years. With a presence in 48 countries, we have impacted over 300,000 students worldwide.

About the author

Lina Klebanov

Lina Klebanov oversees corporate social responsibility, philanthropic programs, employee engagement, and strategic partnerships for TCS in North America. She’s been guiding the company’s cross-sector efforts to advance equitable digital opportunity since 2016.

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TCS is here to make a difference through technology.

We deliver excellence and create value for customers and communities.

Extraordinary expertise leads to remarkable results.

Want to be a global change-maker? Join our team.

Find the latest news about TCS in our Newsroom

Recent Press releases

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TCS works hand in hand with world-leading investors.

TCS is here to make a difference through technology.

We deliver excellence and create value for customers and communities.

Extraordinary expertise leads to remarkable results.

Want to be a global change-maker? Join our team.

Find the latest news about TCS in our Newsroom

Recent Press releases

Recent News

Recent recognitions

Upcoming events

TCS works hand in hand with world-leading investors.

Reflecting on goIT’s reason and relevance

Highlights

Pitching dreams and influencing youth

Tech-for-good

goIT turns 15

About the author

Lina Klebanov

Adaptability starts here

TCS is here to make a difference through technology.

We deliver excellence and create value for customers and communities.

Extraordinary expertise leads to remarkable results.

Want to be a global change-maker? Join our team.

Find the latest news about TCS in our Newsroom

Recent Press releases

Recent News

Recent recognitions

Upcoming events

TCS works hand in hand with world-leading investors.

Highlights

Pitching dreams and influencing youth

Tech-for-good

Gallery / Tech-for-good

goIT turns 15

About the author

Lina Klebanov

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