NEW ORLEANS — David Shapiro, board president of NorthShore Robotics, a nonprofit providing hands-on STEM and robotics programs for youth in south Louisiana, works with employers, educators and students across the greater New Orleans region to strengthen the local technology workforce pipeline. He is also director of information systems operations with Ochsner Health.
In an Aug. 2023 opinion piece for Biz New Orleans Magazine, Shapiro examined the challenges and opportunities shaping STEM workforce development in Louisiana. More than two years later, he says shifts in hiring demand, education pathways and employer engagement have significantly reshaped the landscape.
“The biggest shift since 2023 is that employers are no longer pretending the traditional pipeline is working,” said Shapiro. “Degree requirements have softened, but expectations haven’t gone away—they’ve shifted. Entry-level roles now demand proof of adaptability, systems thinking, and real exposure to technology environments, not just credentials.”
While organizations such as NorthShore Robotics are responding by emphasizing technical skills, teamwork and early exposure to career pathways in technology and engineering, Shapiro said the overall talent gap has continued to widen.
“We’ve lost grant funding, reduced K-12 tech exposure in many districts, and seen fewer structured pathways for students who don’t already have social or financial capital,” he said. “Employers want ‘job-ready’ candidates faster, but the systems that used to help prepare them—internships, early IT exposure, publicly funded workforce programs—have shrunk or disappeared.”
Expanding Access Through Community-Based Programs
Despite those challenges, Shapiro said the region has also seen measurable progress. “NorthShore Robotics has grown from a competitive robotics organization into a community infrastructure for technical confidence,” he said.
Since 2023, NorthShore Robotics has expanded into year-round programming for more than 80 youth, with plans to grow to more than 250 participants starting in May 2026.
“Our free community teams will grow into the south shore, our juvenile justice program will continue to grow, and we are focused on reaching more youth who do not normally have access to programming like ours,” Shapiro said.
The organization is also planning a 2026 summer camp for more than 500 youth that will focus on specific technology training, though Shapiro said funding remains the biggest obstacle to that expansion. He added that similar constraints exist across the workforce development ecosystem, even as some statewide initiatives are showing measurable progress.
“YouthForce NOLA has reported over the past two years that we’ve seen measurable movement for underprivileged youth into career pathways,” Shapiro said. “In 2024 alone, over 3,300 Louisiana students engaged in career-connected learning opportunities such as paid internships and technical training, helping them develop workplace-ready skills.”
“Those experiences translated into 975 credentials in fields including IT and software development — a 74% increase versus 2023 — and nearly 250 students completed structured, paid internships with local employers, working nearly 22,000 collective hours and earning almost $472,000 in stipends,” he said.
Shapiro said those gains, while meaningful, still trail tech-forward regions nationally on a per-capita basis — a gap that continues to drive strong demand for local workforce programs.
“The expanded work at NorthShore Robotics, Operation SPARK and others in the area shows that there is a need,” Shapiro said. “These programs are competitive to get into due to the sheer volume of interested students.”
Employer-Led Training and Persistent Gaps
On the employer side, Shapiro pointed to internal workforce development efforts at Ochsner Health as part of a broader response to shifting skills demands. “Ochsner’s employer-led training program within the IT/IS department has expanded to assist many of their existing employees to advance into jobs of the future and shift work into automation and AI driven tools,” he said.
Even with those efforts, Shapiro said foundational gaps remain — particularly earlier in the education pipeline. “There is still a very large gap in K-12 advanced education to help bring our local youth into the market,” he said. “Louisiana is leading the nation on broadband expansion, however we are falling well behind on training.”
Shapiro said many employers are also struggling to adapt their hiring and recruitment practices to the pace of technological change. “I don’t think most employers are maturing their hiring and recruitment pipelines,” he said. “Most employers simply do not know where to start. Technology is advancing so much these days it is difficult to keep up.”
Despite parallel efforts by youth programs and employers, Shapiro said gaps persist for underrepresented communities. He added that broader partnerships with organizations such as The Rooted School and Black Tech Nola will require stronger support from local officials and the regional tech community to drive meaningful change.
How ‘Entry-Level’ Roles Are Changing
Looking forward, Shapiro said the definition of entry-level work in technology continues to evolve, with fewer roles serving as purely foundational on-ramps. “The most realistic on-ramps are no longer foundational roles,” he said. “IT support is still important however, data hygiene, prompt engineering, automation monitoring, and advanced systems administration pathways are growing.”
As a result, Shapiro said employers are increasingly prioritizing problem-solving and adaptability alongside technical skills. “Employers need people who can think critically, communicate clearly, and learn continuously,” he said. “Project-based portfolios and certification matter more than ever.”
That shift, he added, has implications for higher education programs as well. “Higher education needs to focus on providing project work for candidates to show employers on their resumes,” Shapiro said. “The ability to explain why something failed and how you fixed it is becoming more valuable than memorizing tools that will change in two years.”
Rethinking Hiring and Long-Term Investment
Shapiro said that mindset should also extend to how employers evaluate candidates. “In this job market it is easy to feel like there are a lot of people looking for work and filtering for perfect candidates is ideal right now,” he said. “However, businesses should look for candidates who show resilience, curiosity, and systems thinking—especially those who’ve learned in resource-constrained environments.”
“Those individuals are often the fastest learners and strongest contributors,” Shapiro said.
He said employers should view entry-level roles as learning positions and invest intentionally in long-term employee development, noting that mentoring and internal training are often more cost-effective than high turnover and repeated rehiring.
