Aaliyah Siddiqi is quite literally the model of skilled American workers without college degrees.Siddiqi, a 26-year-old tech worker from Newark, Delaware, was recently featured on a billboard in Times Square as the face of a national ad campaign for YUPRO. The workforce placement organization aimed to raise awareness of the 70 million Americans who took alternative routes to professional careers.For Siddiqi, that started with taking a few college courses before getting a job at an Amazon warehouse where, she said, she sometimes never saw the sun.“I was a picker there, so it was very, very intense,” Siddiqi told Technical.ly. “I remember getting up in the morning before sunrise, and then exiting the warehouse after sunset.”That warehouse would become what Siddiqi considers the beginning of her journey into a tech career, a place where the work was hard and her coworkers were supportive of her finding what she really wanted to do with her life. Today, she works as a marketing operations specialist for a Philadelphia pharmaceutical company.Her journey includes a 2021 Year Up Wilmington cohort, internships, a YUPRO apprenticeship and, finally, officially entering the tech workforce in 2023.In this edition of Technical.ly’s How I Got Here series, Siddiqi discusses her journey from warehouse to hybrid tech worker, and shares advice for anyone not sure of their career path.This Q&A has been edited for length and clarity.How did your Amazon warehouse experience lead you to where you are now?Everyone was so kind there. When I would speak to people who were a lot older than me, they would always comment on how I had my whole life ahead of me and I shouldn’t be spending it there. These conversations would always stick with me for the rest of the shift, and I would think about if this was something I wanted to do for the rest of my life — the incentives were great, but my feet were killing me.The incentives were great, but my feet were killing me

DENVER--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Skillsoft (NYSE: SKIL), a leading platform for transformative learning experiences, today announced a multi-year partnership with Year Up, the national workforce development organization. Through the partnership, more than 30,000 young adults enrolled with Year Up will gain access to Skillsoft’s learning platform to build the critical skills needed to gain employment at leading organizations within the technology, banking, and financial services industries. Digital literacy is critical in today’s workplace especially with the rapid advancement of generative AI, yet 67% of the world’s youth lack sufficient skills needed to use and understand technology. Additionally, it is estimated that by 2030, 60% will not possess basic, transferable skills required to transition into the workforce. The partnership between Skillsoft and Year Up will address this crisis head-on by breaking down accessibility barriers for underserved young adults in the U.S. seeking upskilling and career opportunities