Bio:
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.
Program Timeline
- Tata Consultancy Services recently celebrated 15 years of enhancing STEM education and serving youth through its Go Innovate Together (goIT™) initiative
- The program started in Milford, Ohio in 2009, when TCS staff created a summer camp experience to get students interested in computer science and prepare them for careers in the field.
- Today, TCS goIT includes camps, workshops, curricula for classrooms and after-school programs, and competitions for students.
- goIT offers lessons on AI fundamentals, machine learning, and Generative AI (Gen AI).
- TCS helps students make the most of these technologies responsibly by providing training modules to educators so they can encourage students to incorporate AI into the innovation concepts they develop through the goIT program, to help them stay ahead of the curve.
- To date, goIT has reached more than 350,000 students around the world with skill-building opportunities. The program enables students to develop and apply acquired tech knowledge and skills to real-world problems, such as the challenges defined by the United Nations 2030 Sustainable Development Agenda.
Smiles. Big, beaming smiles and the sparkling eyes that accompany them when students present their innovations to judges from the stage. This is the first thing I think about when I hear, “goIT.”
TCS’ Go Innovate Together (goIT™) program is an innovation and career readiness program for students aged 6-17. It’s also a smile maker.
Whether they access the program through families, a teacher or a nonprofit’s after-school program, students go through the experience joyfully, discovering new perspectives and previously undiscovered talents. Learning as much about the tech world as they do about themselves, students experience pure joy with the program. Their learning processes and innovations may all be different, but their radiant happiness and confidence is always a constant at program culminations, competitions where they “pitch” their ideas for a chance to win feedback, medals, mentoring opportunities and more.
goIT exposes students across North America to technologies such as AI that are rapidly changing the world. It also demonstrates how tech can be used for positive social and environmental impact, providing students with relevant skills and the mindsets needed to pursue careers in STEM fields. Helping educators cover several timely AI tech pathways, goIT does not shy away from either new technologies or challenging global social and environmental issues.
Created in 2009, goIT was launched when a group of TCS associates in Milford, Ohio, recognized that there weren’t enough skilled candidates for the jobs in their office. Motivated to change that, they started goIT as a small summer camp experience for 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, inspiring them to pursue future careers in technology. Instantly, they knew what they had was special, but had no idea they were starting a movement.
It was good timing.
As reported by research firm 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 a deep understanding of core processes across industry sectors
- 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.
In the years following goIT’s first summer camp, led by a TCS associate, 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 curriculum, known as a “tech pathway.” We also collaborated with other tech experts to develop more offerings as we laid the foundation for a meaningful global program. The growth of the program skyrocketed, expanding from two to 48 countries from 2020–2024. Today, goIT has reached more than 350,000 students, with 49% of participants being girls and approximately 75% representing ethnic minorities.
In goIT programs, these students develop and apply knowledge and skills such as AI, the Internet of Things (IoT), and app design to create solutions to real-world problems. And they do so 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 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 teacher and student participants—are creating positive change. In addition, these programs will help tech employers benefit from the perspectives of individuals from underrepresented groups.
The new goIT GenAI tech pathway—the educator support we launched this year to teach students about Generative AI—was particularly timely. I can’t think of a better way for TCS to celebrate 15 years of goIT and launch the program’s next 15 years.
As I look back, some of my favorite goIT memories include:
- Seeing 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, which featured 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 spaceship Earth
- The three consecutive years that the goIT Global Innovator of the Year was a girl or team of girls
- I loved celebrating 14-year-old Laura F. (2022–2023), 13-year-old Casey S. 2023–2024), and seventh graders Elizabeth and Eloise (2024-2025) when they were recognized
- The day I learned that a goIT alumnus 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 to continue for many more years. That is definitely a good thing because there is so much more work to do as the Age of Intelligence advances and changes everything we know about life and work.
Get involved with goIT early and often. Visit https://on.tcs.com/goIT-AMERS to explore the program’s offerings or send a note of interest to northamerica.csr@tcs.com to get started.
