MPS Partners - News and Press

ITKAN launched at the Illinois Technology Association

As one of our lead efforts to galvanize a community of candidates and consultants with disabilities, corporate clients and partners from both the for-profit and not-for-profit sectors around the challenge of improving career training and opportunities for capable candidates, MPS Partners/nAblement and the Illinois Technology Association (ITA) formed the Information Technology Knowledge Abilities Network, or ITKAN, with our kickoff meeting on a cold early February evening at ITA's headquarters at 200 S. Wacker Avenue across from MPS Partners/nAblement offices in the Sears Tower. The meeting was a great success with over 30 attendees!

Since our kickoff we've conducted four ITKAN meetings with equal success and growing momentum for our efforts. For this year we have four workgroups including the ADA and Business, Training into hot-hire IT areas, Soft skills and business acumen development and Assistive technology supporting the success of candidates with severe vision loss or blindness. Additionally, the ITA has generously allowed us to sponsor our highly successful educational program, Breaking Down Barriers (BDB), on-site with our first BDB conducted on May 15th. It was a great success with Robin Jones, Executive Director of the Great Lakes ADA Center kicking off the program and a diverse panel of nAblement candidates with disabilities featured as well. Breaking Down Barriers offers the IT hiring community and HR professionals an opportunity to be exposed to a wide range of candidates with disabilities in a relaxed environment where they can ask any questions about the disability and its influence on their productivity or other key business factors.

Thanks to Bill Topel and Don Mishory, senior directors with MPS Partners, our Microsoft Gold Managed Partner, as well as SPR Talent Acquisition Partners (TAP) Director Todd Nielsen, ITKAN has its own Microsoft Sharepoint site/portal and we have over 125 members!

nAblement is a member of the SPR Family of Companies focused on identifying professional IT career opportunities for qualified candidates with disabilities. nAblement efforts are focused around four key pillars - Awareness, Recruitment, Training and Placement. nAblement staff work closely with management of SPR business units to identify any prospective opportunities for placing their professionals in IT roles as well as proactively developing their own client relationships.

MPS Partners is a leading provider of Business Process Management solutions that turn vision into value using Microsoft technologies. Our customized project-based offerings deliver people ready solutions to mid-market and enterprise-sized businesses. MPS Partners is a Premier Microsoft Solutions Partner. For more infomation on MPS Partners see our website at www.mpspartners.com.

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