The SCTE Foundation said it has launched a campaign that will seek to build a fund of $10 million or more that can be applied to sustain educational, training, and diversity initiatives for the cable telecommunications workforce.

The campaign, called #BuildingExperts, is tasked with generating more than $7 million in new donations over the next three years to complement the $2.6 million-plus that’s currently on hand.

“As an educational resource for current and future technical professionals, the SCTE Foundation seeks to play an important role in deepening and diversifying our industry’s talent pipeline,” said Mark Hess, senior vice president, business and industry affairs for Comcast and president/chairman of the SCTE Foundation, in a statement.  “The ‘#BuildingExperts’ campaign is designed to ensure continuous, dedicated support for current and new grants and scholarships that will help improve the skills of our workforce and attract bright new talent to the industry.”

Advance/Newhouse’s Nomi Bergman and Cisco Systems’s Yvette Kanouff are spearheading the campaign to secure large corporate and individual donors; Broadband Advisors Group’s Keith Hayes is marshaling grassroots contributions.

Pledges made during a kickoff event at SCTE/ISBE Cable-Tec Expo 2016 in Philadelphia, included $50,000 each from Arris and Huawei, as well as individual pledges from a individual execs, including Hess, Hayes, Shaw Communications’ Jay Mehr, and CommScope’s Jim Hughes, among others.

SCTE/ISBE said corporate or individual donations of $10,000 or more can be made by contacting JoAnn Pushcarovich at jPushcarovich@scte.org.  Donations under $10,000 can be made via this Web site.

From July through October of this year, the Foundation distributed more than $12,000 in individual grants and awarded the Lansdale Catholic (Pa.) Cyber Crusaders with the Foundation’s initial FIRST grant, SCTE/ISBE said. The SCTE Foundation was established in 2005. 

The SCTE Foundation said it is accepting applications for the Catherine Oakes Memorial Leadership Scholarship for Women, which was created to honor the former SCTE SVP of operations who died in November 2013 and is awarded annually to provide educational opportunities for women “who aspire to become leaders in cable engineering or operations.”

The SCTE Foundation said it will award the grant of $3,500 to be used toward registration in an industry leadership development or executive education program, such as the SCTE/ISBE Leadership Institute at Tuck Executive Education at Dartmouth or the SCTE/ISBE Leadership Institute at Georgia Tech Scheller College of Business.

Women applying for the scholarship must be members of the Society of Cable Telecommunications Engineers or its global brand, the International Society of Broadband Experts (ISBE).  The application deadline is Wednesday, Aug. 31, 2016.

Applications will be reviewed by past recipients of the Women in Technology Award. More detail about the program can be found here.

The inaugural recipient was Jeanie Warfield, product manager, video solutions for Time Warner Cable Business Class.