The Pragmatic Works Foundation has now officially launched and our first class started today. In our first class we tried to start with a tight, smaller class. For each of the five passionate students in the class, there were 3 students who couldn’t make it in this class but were equally fantastic. In this post, you can find and follow each of the candidates through their journey.
About the Foundation
The Pragmatic Works Foundation is a non-profit foundation that was created to find passionate people who are interested in joining the technology field but cannot make the financial investments needed for training and hardware. Working with our job placement partners our goal is to place all candidates who complete training with a new career in technology. Each of our apprentices go through a intense program to ramp them up in a given technology that involves weeks of deep training and mentoring for a very focused job.
http://www.pragmaticworks.com/page1.asp?page_id=7
About the Apprentices
Each of the apprentices are passionate about joining the technical field. They have worked hard to get into the foundation program and after going through the program, are excited to get their foot in the door. Priority was given to military veterans and the jobless. Click on their names to follow their blog as they go through the program.
Cash is a Navy veteran where he acted as a linguist. After his honorable discharge, he is focused on transitioning his skills into a civilian world to support his daughter.
Yanming has one of our strongest IT backgrounds we’ve seen but is new to SQL Server. He holds a degree in Computer Science but recently lost his job when the downturn in the economy affected the county IT budget.
Amity holds a double-major from UNF (marketing and logistics). She recently worked as a purchasing manager in the construction industry prior to its downturn.
Diane has one of our most diverse and vast experience. She’s spent years as a trainer, consultant and project manager.
Joshua came to us from the Wounded Warrior Project. He was an Iraq veteran who handled logistics prior to being injured. After returning, he’s been trying to support his family but was recently laid off of his job in Jacksonville. He’s focused at night on a college technical program and is an amazing hard worker.
How Big Is Your Package?