From hospitality to tech: How this mom built digital skills for a new career
Tiffany Paovella shelves books at the Ossining Public Library in Ossining, New York. Photo credit: Emily Schiffer
At a glance
Tiffany Paovella was running a restaurant in her hometown of Ossining, New York, when she realized that the ups and downs of the food service industry were becoming less palatable to her. As a mother of three teenagers, Paovella wanted a steadier career to provide for her family and allow her husband to stop working nights.
Paovella took a part-time job at the local library and decided to build on her associate’s degree to earn an online bachelor’s degree, followed by a dual master’s program. She supplemented her studies with free Verizon skill-building courses in programming, data science and cybersecurity. She has earned six professional certifications so far—most of them from a prominent tech company and one from Harvard University—that enabled her to add new credentials to her resume.
“It bolstered my baseline knowledge so that I could actually take classes and do work that I wouldn’t have been able to do if I didn’t know what I was talking about,” Paovella says. “With AI progressing as it is, it’s essential that you have tech skills in almost every career. You’re going to have to have them in the future if you want to keep up.”
Building these digital skills has helped Paovella prepare for an evolving job market and pursue new career possibilities.
Her experience reflects the kind of practical, accessible learning Verizon is expanding through Verizon AI Skills for America, which provides free AI training and resources designed to help workers build skills for an evolving job market.
Building digital skills for a new career
Paovella found that the self-paced online courses easily fit into her busy schedule, and she was impressed by the variety of the offerings.
“When I started exploring, it was easy to navigate,” she says. “I didn’t believe what I was seeing. It has opened up a whole new world for me that I never knew even existed.”
Paovella dove right in, determined to enhance her regular college coursework. “I’ve gained computer science knowledge that I never would’ve had access to before,” she says. “I’ve learned multiple computer languages that I can interact with and code with and try to get jobs for.”
As she developed her coding skills, Paovella also began exploring AI as a tool to support her coding. “I needed AI to understand what I was doing with the coding. For example, if I couldn’t figure out what was wrong with my coding, I would turn to AI to evaluate it. So it basically helped me troubleshoot and get my coding perfect.”
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Putting cybersecurity skills and AI to work at the library
Paovella’s new expertise has inspired her to help her colleagues during cybersecurity training.
“Because we’re on a public network when we use the library’s network, we have to know about cybersecurity and how to avoid getting scammed and getting hacked,” she says.
Paovella also uses AI at work, as a kind of tutor to help teens with homework and help adult patrons find answers to their questions. “I’ve been using the AI skills that I’ve learned to help bridge the divide in the library with people that come in the teen room, and adults as well,” she says. “So it’s really helped me.”
Preparing for a future career in tech
Even now, while earning a dual MBA and master’s degree in library and information sciences, Paovella has her eye on working in the tech industry, thanks to what she’s learned.
“All these skills are useful and play into getting a job in this field,” she explains. “The more you have, the more beneficial. This is the future and where the demand is.”
Ready to build your AI skills? Verizon AI Skills for America offers free access to AI training, certifications and resources designed to help workers prepare for the evolving AI economy.
An individual user’s experience may vary and results are not guaranteed.
