Native Tulsa entrepreneur Mikeal Vaughn said he taught himself how to code at age 13.

“I used that amazing experience on a computer and leveraged it into a career that included 10 years living and working in Tokyo, Japan,” said Vaughn, founder and executive director of the Urban Coders Guild. “That’s important because when I think of our youth and what they can do, when I tell them if you learn this you can go anywhere in the world, I literally mean you can learn this and go anywhere in the world.”

Vaughn’s inspirational words were among the many shared by workforce organizations Wednesday at the Tulsa Regional Chamber’s second HR Forum of the year at OSU-Tulsa.

About 70 interns and human resources professionals from companies, educational institutions, nonprofits and tribal nations attended the meeting, which focused on getting employers better connected to the talent ecosystem.

Vaughn’s Urban Coders Guild is a Tulsa-based nonprofit that provides free, high-quality computer science education to Black, Latino, Indigenous and female-identifying middle and high school students.

“When I came back to Tulsa, my goal was to make sure our young people have the skills and experience and support that they need to enter into a tech career and persist in a tech career,” he said.

Representatives from six workforce organizations were featured at the forum: Urban Coders Guild, My Brother’s Keeper, Thunder Fellows, Good Jobs Initiative, Campus Tulsa and Tech Hubs Talent & Training, or “T3.”

Cedric Ikpo is executive director of Thunder Fellows, an Oklahoma City Thunder-themed program headquartered in Tulsa that is a free, after-school college and career readiness program.

In five years, 168 students have gone through signature programming there, Ikpo said.

T3 is led by the Tulsa Higher Education Consortium in collaboration with Tulsa Innovation Labs and regional employers.

It was launched to match college students with tech-focused businesses and jobs, said Dr. Laura Latta, executive director of the Tulsa Higher Education Consortium.

“The really cool part is that they get college credit that elevates their motivation to put their best foot forward at all times,” said Latta, adding that 83% of students in the program have had their internships extended or been offered a job.

Rue Ramsey, the Chamber’s vice president of workforce and talent strategies, led Wednesday’s programming and talked about the importance of work-based learning such as internships and mentoring.

“I am not the keeper of all the information,” she said. “I know all of you, but I want you to know each other, as well, so when you have needs, you know where to go to get those needs filled.”

During one part of the program, interns moved from table to table in three-minute increments – speed-dating style – to converse with potential employers.

Ramsey also posed questions to interns about the most important elements of a job and how they seek work.

“We want to broaden the network,” she said. “We want to bring more employers into the talent ecosystem, and we want you to have deep, great connections.”