Joe's story
I started CloudWise Academy because I saw that the people who needed technology the most had the least access to it. Retirees, small business owners, trade workers, teachers — the people who keep a regional economy running — were getting left behind as AI went mainstream.
CloudWise Academy works because the teaching comes from someone who has actually built things. The courses are grounded, the students are real, the credentials mean something. But there was a missing piece. The Tri-Cities region — Bristol, Kingsport, Johnson City, Greeneville, and the towns around them — was being talked about everywhere except where it lived. National AI coverage skipped over us. Generic "future of work" pieces never named the jobs people here actually do.
That is the gap TriCities.ai fills. It is the regional publication for AI in Northeast Tennessee — the workforce, the employers, the schools, the people doing the work. Reporting, interviews, data, and plain-English explanations of what AI is doing to the economy here. Same principles as the academy: plain English, real outcomes, no hype.
Published by CloudWise Academy
TriCities.ai is published by CloudWise Academy — a real training institution with real students, real credentials, and real partnerships with regional universities and the workforce development community.
The reporting draws on the academy's research, including the Northeast Tennessee Workforce Report and the academy's ongoing analysis of how AI is changing the 281 occupations in the region. Editorial independence is the point — partner organizations and academy programs are covered the same way any other story would be.
CrushingIt.ai
CrushingIt.ai is the nonprofit arm of the same mission. It brings AI literacy and workforce training to underserved populations — displaced workers, career changers, group homes, and schools. The Crown Cutz Academy partnership is a template that keeps expanding.
The publication, the academy, and the nonprofit are three arms of the same mission: AI literacy and economic mobility for the people and places usually left out of the conversation. The reporting is one of the ways we keep ourselves honest about whether it's working.