SCTE CEO Maria Popo Wants to Build a Stronger Industry Workforce

(SCTE/Dave Weston)

Building advanced communications networks requires a highly skilled, highly technical workforce to complete the job. That's why SCTE works to advance the industry's technical workforce by offering its members training, resources, and more. In recent years, SCTE merged with CableLabs to combine the strengths of both organizations, and last year announced its new leadership in CEO Maria Popo, taking over after longtime CEO Mark Dzuban's retirement.

Popo's background and passion meant she was an ideal fit for the important role, which is why earlier this year, NCTA sat down with her to talk about her vision for the organization's next chapter and learn more about her leadership. During that conversation, Popo discussed her background and motivations, which are intrinsically tied to her vision for SCTE and cable tech workforce development.

Early career

Popo started her career as a customer service representative before going into tech services for a fiber optic connector startup. She says her time working closely with technicians, doing things like demonstrating how to wire a connector USOC patch panel, taught her a lot about what it meant to be a technician and what those careers required.

From there, she attended trade school, foregoing traditional college until much later in her career, when she ultimately got her Masters in Learning Design & Technology from Stanford University.

• "It gave me an opportunity to see how you work your way up through the career ladder and how exposing yourself to technology actually really, really helps you."
  • "I was always interested in the workforce aspect because of that, thinking, 'Why do some people go to college or not go to college? Who does well in college? Why do some people do well in their careers if they don't have college? Why do some people with college not do well in their careers?'"

Building the workforce of tomorrow

Popo is leveraging her background and experiences to help shape how SCTE designs its trainings and certification programs, meeting busy techs where they're at and utilizing digital resources to help develop skills and careers in a modern, highly technical and connected world.

• "How do we help the chapters reach out to high schools, reach out to community colleges, trade schools? How do we ensure that the programs can be offered at times convenient for everybody because technicians are working all day, and then they have to go do some things on their own time."

She's also focused on helping develop soft skills that are sometimes overlooked but can make a world of difference in a person's career growth.

• "When I was at Stanford last year, one of the projects I worked on was how do you create skill sets that are more tightly integrated?"
  • "For example, digital adaptability is a flex skill that's coming. That's the ability…to learn [digital] tools more quickly than ever. We look at how to teach people to adapt to these tools based on their career tech stack. So some of the things that we did, and I foresee us doing, are these task analysis: who is the expert, how does she do this task versus how the other person does it?"

With the industry positioned to continue expanding its networks to every corner of the country, the CEO's strategic vision to build the technical workforce is well underway. To learn more about what else she had to say to NCTA ahead of TechExpo this September, be sure to read the blog post and visit the SCTE website to learn more about their programs and certification opportunities.