Broadband Development Conference
FBA, Director of Workforce Development
Todd Jackson joined the Fiber Broadband Association as Director of Workforce Development in July 2023. Previously, he served as Market President and President of Workforce Development for an Internet Service Provider Startup, and as Chief Information Officer for the City of Westerville for 18 years. Todd's career began with GIS and evolved to providing strategic leadership in technology, workforce development, and community capital improvement investments. He now assists organizations with workforce development strategy, planning, and training.
Throughout his career, Todd has helped organizations realize business value through strategic technology, workforce development, and broadband investments, including creating WēConnect (2010). WēConnect, the nation's first municipally owned and operated community data center and fiber network, was instrumental in Westerville's recognition as a 2019 & 2020 Top7 Intelligent Community by the Intelligent Community Forum. This experience provides Todd with insight into leveraging fiber broadband for economic, social, and cultural value.
Todd and his wife, Jennifer, reside in Columbus, Ohio, and have been Central Ohio residents for over 30 years. They enjoy exploring Northeast Ohio’s wineries, traveling the Bourbon Trail, and spending time with their adult children, Noelle and Josh, and their families in Central Ohio.
Fiber networks, edge deployments, and data centers are converging faster than the workforce pipelines supporting it. Fiber technicians and data center technicians are increasingly working side by side, yet they’re being trained, credentialed, and hired as if they operate in entirely separate worlds.
The result is a compounding labor shortage: not just a lack of workers, but a lack of workers who understand the full connectivity stack. This session will examine the emerging overlap between broadband infrastructure roles, the structural gaps in how the industry currently trains and classifies technicians, and the opportunity to solve both problems at once through cross-discipline, standardized training frameworks.
Attendees will leave with a clear picture of where role convergence is already happening in the field, what standardized curriculum and credentialing could look like across disciplines, and how ISPs, data center operators, workforce development programs, and policymakers can collaborate to build more resilient talent pipelines.
