Breaking Into Startups
126 episodes - English - Latest episode: about 3 years ago - ★★★★★ - 262 ratingsThe Breaking Into Startups Podcast is a platform where we feature stories of people who broke into tech from non-traditional backgrounds. Curious about how startups work, how to get a job without a degree or what technical and non-technical careers are out there? We have news for you - tech fields are booming and you don’t need the best technical degree in information technology to break in and get a six figure job in technology.
Our podcast gives you an inside look at the most disruptive startups by sharing success stories of people from all walks of life, including college drop outs, professional and student athletes, army veterans, teen parents, corporate folks, investment bankers, consultants, venture capitalists who acquired new skills and found jobs in technology.
Our guests attended coding bootcamps and immersive programs like Hack Reactor, App Academy, General Assembly, Dev Bootcamp, Flatiron School, Iron Yard, Tradecraft and more. After graduating they found well paying jobs in big time startups focusing on education, medicine, financial services, healthcare, AI, machine learning, automation, sharing economy and more. If you listen to 500 Startups, Learn to Code With Me, Twenty Minute VC, This Week In Startups, Startup Radio, Startup Podcast, The Tim Ferris show, Startup School Radio, Course Report or other tech stuff news, then this podcast is for you my friend.
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Episodes
#76: Gary Vaynerchuk - CEO of VaynerMedia
February 19, 2018 00:00 - 56 minutes - 77.2 MBGary Vaynerchuk does not need an introduction. For those of you who haven’t heard of him yet, he is not only a rockstar entrepreneur, he's an author and a speaker. He's a four-time New York Times bestseller. He now runs a 800-person media agency, VaynerMedia. He is also an early investor in Twitter, Snapchat, and Uber. Big on giving back and making people happy, the one legacy he wants to leave is that he has given more than what he has taken.
#75: Heather Swan - Journey From Retail to an Enterprise Account Executive at Zoom
January 31, 2018 00:00 - 32 minutes - 29.5 MBA San Jose-native, Heather Swan is the Chief Happiness Officer at Zoom, a video conferencing tool that works on any device. She started as an employee #15 and now Zoom has grown to over 700,000 clients worldwide, she has worked in every sales role within the company and has consistently hit her quotas. Heather has previous experience in the retail sales space, particularly for Tory Burch shoes and medical devices. Today, she shares the perspective of founding a startup from an employee pers...
#74: Ian Harriman - from a Sales Development Rep to an Account Executive at Checkr
January 12, 2018 00:00 - 55 minutes - 50.8 MBSouthern Californian-native, Ian Harriman is a rockstar salesperson. He started as a sales development representative until he rose up to the ranks of being a mid-market account executive at Checkr, a background check community that utilizes software (instead of people) to complete a majority of the parts to the process. Ian also talks about his leadership role in the Bounce Back to Work Program at Checkr, where they help both applicants and companies through their background screening proces...
#73: Kyle Woumn - Software Engineer at Twilio, who Turned an Internship into a Full-time Offer
December 30, 2017 00:00 - 50 minutes - 47.3 MBToday, we take a closer dive into getting internships and how you can leverage those to get full-time offers. Kyle Woumn is a fullstack engineer on the messaging experience team at Twilio, a cloud-communication platform that integrates communication into apps. A Georgia Institute of Technology graduate, Kyle did internships at GE and Twilio. He's also part of the National Society of Black Engineers and he is currently building an app that fosters an online community for Black Greeks.
#72: Marco Morawec - Founder of The Firehose Project (Remote Coding Program)
December 18, 2017 00:00 - 52 minutes - 49.9 MBBorn in Germany, Marco Morawec is the co-founder of The Firehose Project, an online coding school that helped over a thousand people learn how to code remotely and become engineers. They also got a 1-million dollar grant from TechHire to help more people from under-represented groups to gain tech skills. Marco got his undergraduate degree and Master's in Public Policy and Management from the University of Constanz in Germany. He formerly worked as a Product Manager at an advertising firm cal...
#71: Jon Deng - U.S. Army Captain who Became a Software Engineer at Snapchat
December 02, 2017 00:00 - 52 minutes - 48.8 MBJon Deng is a mentor who has helped several people break into tech. He is widely known as a software engineer at Snap Inc. Prior to tech, he was actually a platoon leader in the U.S. Army with 40 men reporting to him. He was a captain and a field artillery officer. In this episode, Jon walks us through his transition from the military into tech, his thought process, and how he essentially prepared himself for the coding bootcamp at Hack Reactor. He also talks about how he got through his job...
#70: Dan Burrill - Director of Inside Sales at Twillio
November 09, 2017 00:00 - 55 minutes - 51.8 MBDan Burrill is not just the inside sales boss at Twilio but he's also a seasoned executive having spent time with other amazing companies including Box and Honeywell. A man who’s big on commitment and the power of listening, Dan admits coming to Twilio for one big reason - market opportunity. Twilio operates in the telecommunications industry that has been around for decades and it's fast-forwarding the space into the future. No wonder it’s his favorite among all the companies he’s worked at.
#69: Adam Braun - Co-Founder of MissionU
November 01, 2017 00:00 - 56 minutes - 57.7 MBAdam is a co-founder of MissionU where he is building a school for the 21st century. He is also a founder of Pencils of Promise that has built over 400 schools around the world and provided over 70k kids with an opportunity to learn! At MissionU, Adam is building a school for the 21st century! Millions of people are either themselves effected by college debt or know someone in their family who is effected by it. College loans are also the only kind of debt you cannot default on. To fix ...
Nick Caldwell - VP of Engineering at Reddit
October 20, 2017 00:00 - 59 minutes - 54.8 MBNick Caldwell is the VP of Engineering at Reddit and has been in the game for over fifteen years. He has worked for impressive institutions including Microsoft and NASA. He is also heavily involved in the community, having worked as a facilitator for organizations like /dev/color. If you haven’t heard, Reddit is the fourth most traffic website in the United States, and seventh in the world. With about 320 million monthly active users, Reddit is home to several communities with 1.1 million ac...
#67: Bangaly Kaba - Journey to a Product Manager Role at Facebook & Instagram
October 11, 2017 00:00 - 1 hour - 55.6 MBBangaly Kaba shares his story on how he broke into product management from a non-traditional backgrounds in Education and Finance. Originally from the East Coast, Bangaly is now considered as one of the best PMs in the Bay Area. He previously worked at Facebook's growth team until landing his current product management role at Instagram. You probably first heard of Bangaly's name back on Episode 13 when Elaina Koros mentioned his name on the show referring to him as a great mentor. From wor...
#66: Rocio Lopez - A Product Designer & a DACA Recipient is Standing Up for All DREAMers
October 01, 2017 00:00 - 54 minutes - 48.2 MBRocio Lopez came to the U.S. as an undocumented minor and lived on the East Side of Palo Alto. For years, she and her family have gone through so much struggle until the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals or DACA was signed by President Obama, a program granting temporary work permits to immigrants who came to the U.S. as children illegally. Recently, DACA, has been repealed by the Trump administration. And Rocio is one of the 800,000 DREAMers that are going to be affected by this deci...
#65: Zac Otero - From the Meat Factory's Floor to becoming a Salesforce Admin
September 22, 2017 00:00 - 49 minutes - 44.5 MBA Missouri-native, Zac Otero is a true testament that a four-year degree isn’t always an indicator of success. High school dropout, Zac Otero describes how he worked his way up the career ladder from working a blue-collared job working at a McDonalds, a popcorn factory, a grocery warehouse and a meat packing factory before landing a Salesforce admin role. He talks about how he got into this role, what Salesforce is, and how he learned through books before the online platform Trailhead came ou...
#63: Saron Yitbarek - Self-taught Engineer & Founder of CodeNewbie Podcast
September 08, 2017 00:00 - 51 minutes - 71.3 MBFrom New York to San Diego, Saron has launched one of the biggest coding podcasts called CodeNewbie. The show has over 1.4 million downloads and listened to over a hundred countries. With a Twitter community of over 27,000 people, Saron hosts the #CodeNewbie Twitter Chat happening every Wed @9PM EST. She organizes meetups in ATL, Philly, New York, and DC. She caters to an early audience to get people to recognize that there are multiple ways to learn how to code. Saron is also the producer ...
#62: Mandy Cole - VP of Sales of Startups such as Living Social, Zenefits and Stella & Dot
August 31, 2017 00:00 - 1 hour - 59.5 MBBorn in Atlanta, Mandy Cole is the founder of The Cole Method, a consulting firm that helps startups that have reached $1 million revenue to start learning how to go from putting balls in the basket to playing basketball. It's very important for someone that successfully broke into a startup to understand what a high functioning sales organization looks like. Listen in to find out how a high-functioning sales organization is supposed to operate. Mandy is an expert at not just building organ...
#61: Gabe Moncayo - Founder of Always Hired who Helps People Get Into Sales
August 20, 2017 00:00 - 57 minutes - 52.1 MBGabe Moncayo is the CEO and Founder of AlwaysHired, a three-week teaching program focused on training sales development representatives. A Bay Area-native, Gabe grew up in a family with roots to South American. He never went to college and instead got his first job in political fundraising. Gabe transitioned over from nonprofit to for-profit orgs where he did lead generation and worked at several startups. He was so passionate about the skill that he wanted to focus on teaching other people f...
#60: Matthew Tran - Youtube Personality & Founder of Engineered Truth Youtube Channel
August 11, 2017 00:00 - 44 minutes - 41.5 MBMatt Tran is the Founder of Engineered Truth, a YouTube channel with over 240,000 subscribers. He initially followed the traditional path, studying Psychology and Mechanical Engineering in college. He had three jobs as a mechanical engineer but got fired from all of them until he finally started his YouTube channel where he now makes over $10,000 a month. Also, tune-in and check out how Matt did this and what are some resources you can use to help you get started if this is something you’re...
#59: Dr. Carol Langlois - How Self Esteem & Empowerment are Changing the Ratio through Hackbright
July 30, 2017 00:00 - 40 minutes - 38.7 MBDr. Carol Langlois is a lifelong educator who used to run the business program at USF. She was the Dean at Mills College and founder of Higher Education Specialists. She did a dissertation in female self-esteem development that led her to creating a book called Girl Talk where she interviewed over 200 high school women on the subject. It was later turned into a play called Girl Talk: Teen Monologue Series. It's next performance is going to be on August 24 @ Potrero Stage in SF.
#58: Tiger Shen - An 18-Year-Old Software Engineer Who Worked at Square and Braintree
July 25, 2017 00:00 - 1 hour - 57.8 MB#58: Tiger Shen - An 18-Year-Old Software Engineer Who Worked at Square and Braintree by Breaking Into Startups
#57: Kelvin Lightner - Tax Consultant from Deloitte Become A Software Engineer at Intuit
July 16, 2017 00:00 - 56 minutes - 49.4 MBKelvin Lightner is a software engineer apprentice at Intuit and a graduate of Dev Bootcamp. Prior to tech, Kelvin has a double major in Legal Studies and Economics from UC Berkeley and he worked as a consultant at Deloitte. A true lover of logic, he jumped from management consulting to tech with this strong belief that the end does not justify the means. Kevin has drawn great support from #YesWeCode, an organization that helps people from underrepresented backgrounds break into the tech space.
#56: Mike Slagh - How a US Navy Veteran Started a Company to Help Veterans Break Into Tech
June 29, 2017 00:00 - 47 minutes - 45.1 MBMike Slagh is the Founder of Shift.org, a hiring pipeline for military veterans. Back in the military, Mike was a bomb technician and since finishing his service a little over a year ago, he started Shift.org to create new pathways for veterans into various industries that didn't exist before. There will be about a million new veterans in the next five years, which means there are 20,000 military service members leaving every month. Mike’s greater purpose is to help bridge that gap between ...
#55: Pavan Ravipati - Deep Dive on Software Engineer vs. Sales Engineer
June 14, 2017 00:00 - 33 minutes - 31.7 MBAn East Bay-local, Pavan Ravipati grew up in a family of tech people. He initially took Film and Media in college, landed some corporate sales roles, and worked his way up but he ultimately found his calling in tech. After taking some coding courses online, Pavan decided to join Hack Reactor and he eventually took part in the organization's Hacker in Residence Program. Currently, Pavan serves as a Solutions Engineer at GitHub, a leading open source software company.
#54: Erica Prenga - How a Graphic Design Major became an Experience Engineer at Adobe
June 02, 2017 00:00 - 1 hour - 61 MBErica Prenga is currently an Experience Developer at Adobe. Aware that she had a different learning style, she decided to quit college after her fourth year of studying graphic design until she ultimately figured that going to a coding bootcamp was what she wanted to do and how she wanted to learn. Erica is a Dev Bootcamp graduate and in this episode, she shares how she approached her job hunt differently as well as a couple of negotiating techniques, which people wouldn’t have normally don...
#53: Ysiad Ferreiras - How a kid from the Bronx became the VP of Sales at Hustle
May 30, 2017 00:00 - 1 hour - 75.8 MBWith Dominican roots, Ysiad Ferreiras grew up in the Bronx where fear was not unusual thing and where hard life would be an understatement. He has made some bad decisions in his early life but he managed to pivot his way into right path doing well academically, learning how to code, and breaking into the tech space. Currently, he serves as the VP of Sales at Hustle, a text messaging platform which is now being used by major politicians and people in nonprofit and labor organizations includ...
#52: Kristin Parke - How a Music & a Biology major became a Security Hacker
May 23, 2017 00:00 - 47 minutes - 41.6 MBKristin Parke is a hacker aka a security consultant at the NCC Group. She shares her journey into tech and how she transitioned from music to science until ultimately she becoming an engineer. In this episode, you can find out how she went from learning how to code and following that path until breaking into the security industry. She also discusses the parallels of reading music and coding and biology and hacking as well as what you can do to protect yourself from imminent cyber attacks.
#51: K. Mannah Kallon - an Educator who became an Engineer at Stitch Fix
May 19, 2017 00:00 - 46 minutes - 42 MBFrom a chef to restaurateur to Math teacher to software engineer, Mannah Kallon has a pretty crazy and nontraditional background. That makes him an asset on anyone's team. He earned degrees in Psychology and Philosophy from the University of Michigan and got his Master's in Education from Fordham University. Mannah was teaching kids in Harlem when he decided to move to the West Coast and learn how to code through Dev Bootcamp. Today, Mannah’s shares a handful of insights that you too can a...
#50: Jessica Uelmen - A Hardware Engineer who became a Product Manager at Fitbit
May 14, 2017 00:00 - 36 minutes - 32.8 MBA self-confessed nerd and Sailor Moon enthusiast, Jessica Uelmen built her first HTML/CSS website at 13 years old and got involved with theater during college until she ultimately decided to major in electrical engineering during Sophomore year. She ended up working as an electrical engineer for a few years after finishing school until she decided to pursue her passion for education and worked as a program manager at Udacity, an education company that offers free online classes where she spe...
#49: Yusuf Soomro - An 18-year-old College Dropout who Became a Software Engineer at Omada Health
May 11, 2017 00:00 - 41 minutes - 32.4 MBYusuf Soomro figured out a way to incorporate his love of healthcare into tech and basically fast-track his way to a well paying job. Dropping out of college as a pre-med, he decided to become a software engineer and enrolled in App Academy when he was 18-years old. He ended up going through his job search at 19-years old and finding a software engineering job at a healthcare/tech startup. During the episode we also discuss what it was like being 20 years old, driving a BMW while some of his ...
#48: Chloe Condon - An Actress who Quit her Job as an Office Manager and Became a Software Engineer
May 09, 2017 00:00 - 52 minutes - 46.6 MBBased in San Francisco, Hackbright Academy is focused on teaching women how to code. We're recording several interviews with Hackbright graduates including our guest today, Chloe Condon. Growing up in a family of artists in the Bay Area, Chloe ended up working at startups by day and performing as a theater actress by night. Prior to her current role as a Developer Evangelist at Codefresh, Chloe held a number of jobs including an Account Executive at Yelp and an office manager role at anothe...
#47: Wayne Neale - Founder of GrowthX Academy
May 05, 2017 00:00 - 49 minutes - 46.3 MBWayne Neale is the Co-Founder of GrowthX Academy, a 12-week, onsite, immersive, full-time educational experience program focusing on careers in Sales, Growth Marketing, and UX Design. The academy was born out of the need for more non-technical roles in the tech space. Prior to this, Wayne was an operator at several companies. He started his own design consultancy and got several degrees including a Doctorate in UX Design. Originally from Ohio, Wayne currently lives in Phoenix and today, he ...
#46: Niv Dror - How Leaving Finance Led Niv to Become Head of Social at Product Hunt
April 29, 2017 00:00 - 59 minutes - 51 MBNiv Dror currently runs social at Product Hunt and does their daily newsletter featuring the latest and coolest products. Prior to tech, Niv shifted from soccer to academics, majored in Finance, and worked for some of top hedge funds and VC firms. It wasn’t until witnessing the power of Twitter and getting inspired by the investor Chris Sacca, did Niv decide to get off the finance path and break into tech. In this episode, Niv talks about how he leveraged blog posts to meet the Who's Who of...
#45: Kenny Tran - How an App Academy & Hack Reactor Alum skipped college and became an Engineer
April 26, 2017 00:00 - 40 minutes - 30.5 MBKenny Tran is a passionate writer and coder. He chose to forego college and instead pursued his personal projects and his love of writing. After reading a post on Hacker News about App Academy, he decided to apply and learn how to code, joining the first Ruby on Rails cohort. He also attended Hack Reactor and built a cool project, PurifyCSS, that went viral on GitHub and Hacker News. He eventually joined Mesosphere, an infrastructure startup, serving as a front end engineer but is soon leav...
#44: Anthony Pompliano - How an Army Sergeant became a Product Manager at Facebook
April 21, 2017 00:00 - 1 hour - 74.3 MBAnthony "Pomp" Pompliano is best known for his hustle. Since early years, he's been coming up with business ideas and today he invests in companies and helps them grow. Before he became a Venture Capitalist, Pomp served as a Sergeant in the US Army, founded and exited 2 companies and then broke into Facebook as a Product Manager. On this episode, Pomp drops a lot of gems on how he helps companies grow and what he did to get his job at Facebook.
#43: Soroush Mehraein - How a switch from Industrial to Software Engineering led to a job at Uber
April 20, 2017 00:00 - 30 minutes - 28.4 MBUK-born Soroush Mehraein moved to the United States and graduated from UC Berkeley. He studies Industrial Engineering and ended up doing consulting for biopharma companies, Soroush attended a coding bootcamp and transitioned into the software engineering roles top Silicon Valley tech companies. Prior to Google where he’s currently working as a software engineer, Soroush attended Hack Reactor to hone his coding skills and ended up landing a job at Uber. On the episode, Soroush discussed the ...
#42: Dan Pickett - Founder of Launch Academy
April 15, 2017 00:00 - 51 minutes - 45.9 MBBased in Boston, Dan Pickett founded a program called Launch Academy built around the premise of helping people become the best version of themselves. Graduating over 500 people, the school is now set to expand in Philly along with some plans to create a virtual adaptation of their on-campus experience. Starting his company at 15 years old, which is indicative of his entrepreneurial, hungry, and passionate spirit, Dan encourages people to not let age become a barrier if you’re interested in...
#41: Kim Han - Biz Dev Deep Dive: from Tango to Business Development at Square
April 11, 2017 00:00 - 1 hour - 55.1 MBGrowing up in Taiwan for 17 years, Kimberly Han moved to Seattle to go to College where she majored in Psychology while minoring in Dance. For majority of her adult life she was a professional tango dancer and a teacher as well as a voice actress for eight years. Until one day she realized she wanted to break into tech. Having been able to successfully translate her dancing and acting skill-sets in sales, Kim currently works as a Business Development Rep at Square. She is also an organizer a...
#40: Quincy Larson - Founder of Free Code Camp, Community of 1,000,000+ People Learning How to Code
April 09, 2017 00:00 - 55 minutes - 48.8 MBComing from a nontraditional background as an educator living in China for years, Quincy combined his passion for education and technology to launch Free Code Camp, an open-source community that helps people learn how to code and practice their coding skills by building projects for nonprofits. Quincy has indeed built a massive network of “campers” with close to a million developers learning how to code around the world. Free Code Camp has helped over 5,000 people find their first engineeri...
#39: Carly Robinson - Broadway Actress who became a Software Engineer at Slack
April 03, 2017 00:00 - 1 hour - 58.8 MBFrom dancing to coding, Carly Robinson left her theater career in New York and Chicago to break into tech. She attended Hackbright Academy and is now working as a software engineer at Slack. Prior to coding, Carly got involved with Freedom For All, a nonprofit organization that tackles issues related to human trafficking. She continues to do so up to this day in her commitment to make a difference. Carly’s secret sauce to success is sheer mastery of the fundamentals topped with good netwo...
#38: Nimit Maru - Founder of Fullstack Academy & Grace Hopper
April 03, 2017 00:00 - 49 minutes - 43.7 MBRealizing the need for a more rigorous and accelerated curriculum for software engineers, Nimit Maru founded Fullstack Academy. He also founded its sister school, the Grace Hopper Program, which is the world's first tuition-deferred coding academy for women. Prior to Fullstack Academy, Nimit and his co-founder, David Yang, graduated from Y Combinator. He also worked as a software engineer at Yahoo! and got his business degree from Wharton. Aside from seeing how the tech scene in the Bay Are...
#39: Carly Robinson - Chicago Actress who became a Software Engineer at Slack
April 02, 2017 00:00 - 1 hour - 58.8 MBFrom dancing to coding, Carly Robinson left her theater career in New York and Chicago to break into tech. She attended Hackbright Academy and is now working as a software engineer at Slack. Prior to coding, Carly got involved with Freedom For All, a nonprofit organization that tackles issues related to human trafficking. She continues to do so up to this day in her commitment to make a difference. Carly’s secret sauce to success is sheer mastery of the fundamentals topped with good netwo...
#37: Natasha Vianna - Teen Mom who led the #NoTeenShame Campaign & became Head of Community at Honor
March 30, 2017 00:00 - 40 minutes - 35.3 MBAs a teen mom, Natasha Vianna had to deal with the stereotype that society has boxed her in. But she didn’t let this break her spirit. Natasha’s goal was and is to be the best version of herself. In fact, seeing how people (who are in a situation similar to her) needed all the support they could get was what led her to break into tech activism. Currently, Natasha leads the community activities at Honor and she is also the co-founder of #NoTeenShame, a movement that works towards reproductive ...
#36: Austin Belcak - Career Coach and Virtual Career Mastery Summit Founder
March 27, 2017 00:00 - 1 hour - 57.7 MBAustin Belcak didn’t have it all figured out when he picked a Biology major in college and landed his first sales job in the medical field, both of which he didn’t actually like. However, he used them as motivation to push harder and further. By building his knowledge and networking with the right people, Austin has now landed his dream job at Microsoft. Additionally, his brewing desire of becoming an entrepreneur eventually led him to create Cultivated Culture, a platform that allows him to ...
#35: Everette Taylor - How a 17-year-old who was homeless in HS rose to become the CMO at Skurt
March 22, 2017 00:00 - 1 hour - 78.8 MBEverette Taylor is not just any 27-year-old. Don’t be fooled by his age. To date, Everette built four companies including GrowthHackers.com, which he co-founded with Sean Ellis, Millisense Marketing Consulting, and GrowthPub. He is currently the Chief Marketing Officer at Skurt, a mobility startup delivering rental cars-on-demand. Additionally, he was recently announced as the National Brand Ambassador for the NASA Startup Initiative and has been honored as a Social Influencer of the Year b...
#34: Michael J Walker - How a Marketing Exec Became an Engineer at 51 Years Old
March 20, 2017 00:00 - 55 minutes - 48.3 MBFor Michael Jay Walker, his career was more likely driven by the motivation to do what people thought he couldn't do, fearlessly working his way up the marketing ladder until a decision to take a passionate leap into the tech space. Michael got his MBA at Ross School of Business and took on executive marketing roles for large corporations such as Ford Motor Company, Kraft Foods, PepsiCo, EA, and Mattel. 25 years later, he went out to co-found a mobile app startup and served as a Chief Ma...
#33: Stevon Cook - From Public Housing to bringing Tech Training through Mission Bit
March 16, 2017 00:00 - 1 hour - 57.4 MBBeing a 3rd generation San Franciscan who grew up in public housing, Stevon has always been aware of the challenges of his community including the major lack of access to Computer Science education among kids in the Bay Area. His drive to take part in bridging this tech divide was what got him to join Mission Bit, where he now serves as the CEO. Stevon also ran and won the election to be the Commissioner on the Board of Education for the City of San Francisco. By leveraging relationships an...
#32: Carlos González de Villaumbrosia – Product School Founder on How to Become a Product Manager
March 12, 2017 00:00 - 53 minutes - 46.9 MBIt is his love of tech that got Carlos González de Villaumbrosia to immigrate from Spain to the United States. Being good at numbers and video games, led him to study computer science at one of the top universities in Spain where he spent five years learning how to code. Although he once dreamed of becoming a soccer player as a child, Carlos is a coach, not on the playing field, but rather in the educational space. He is a serial entrepreneur having started three companies including Product...
#31: Kenyatta Leal - Surviving San Quentin Prison By Walking The Last Mile into a Job in Tech
March 08, 2017 00:00 - 1 hour - 62.1 MBOne thing Kenyatta Leal knows is that while there’s no manual for surviving a life sentence, tapping into the power of visualization can definitely get you far (in fact, as far as getting out of prison and now working as a Manager of Campus Services at RocketSpace, a tech campus for startups.) Kenyatta believes that the greatest challenges present the greatest opportunities. A former resident at San Quentin State Prison, Kenyatta owned up for the bad choices he had made in the past and cor...
#30: Yan Fan - How a Bootcamp Grad is teaching Syrian Refugees How to Code
March 06, 2017 00:00 - 32 minutes - 29.1 MBBorn in China and raised in the U.S., Yan Fan knows that her coding skills are a superpower she can apply in any industry or role. Yan started out working as a commodities trader on Wall Street. Several years later, she discovered her other passion - coding. After completing a coding bootcamp, Hack Reactor, Yan became a UI engineer at a big data startup called Ayasdi. This experience led her to join forces with ReBootKAMP, a nonprofit organization in the MIddle East focused on teaching Syri...
#29: Charlie Harrington - From Finance to Biz Dev before finally becoming an Engineer at LendUp
March 01, 2017 00:00 - 47 minutes - 44.1 MBA New Jersey-native, Charlie Harrington believes that you can’t find luck unless you take that courage to jump off the train and put yourself out there. From New York to London, Charlie transitioned from finance to business development at a startup. As if breaking into startups via the non-technical route wasn’t enough to quench his thirst for creativity, Charlie ultimately took a deep dive into software engineering by attending a coding bootcamp called Hack Reactor. Charlie currently wor...
#28: Rodney Urquhart - How a 16-year-old High School Dropout became a Software Engineer at Slack
February 25, 2017 00:00 - 1 hour - 95.7 MBRodney Urquhart grew up in a North Philly neighborhood ridden with gang violence and effects of the crack epidemic. After seeing people around him get involved with gangs and crime, he realized that staying in high school would result in getting arrested or shot. At 16, Rodney dropped out of high school and moved in with his grand mother. Being a high school dropout and having no college degree, Rodney had his fair share of companies casting doubt on his ability. But his willingness to lear...
#27: Jotaka Eaddy - From Senior Advisor at NAACP to Head of Government Affairs at a Tech Startup
February 19, 2017 00:00 - 1 hour - 62.8 MBJotaka Eaddy is a concrete example that you can come from political and social activism, take those exact same skills, and use them everyday to help build a business that creates change. Even back as a seventh grader living in a small town in South Carolina, Jotaka was adamant about her commitment to abolish death penalty (that she even wrote this down on her high school yearbook.) Jotaka grew up as an activist and organizer who evolved into a political strategist. Currently, Jotaka serves ...