Dayna and Sadaf are two of hundreds of Per Scholas learners who received tech toolkits as part of our 1,000 Careers Campaign. 

Dayna Thomas Tucker, a Per Scholas learner, has personally benefited from the Raspberry Pi toolkit she received. The working mother of two has had a passion for technology and computers since she was young and would work on computers in school to try to figure out how they worked. 

We recently connected with Dayna, who reflected, “I received the Raspberry Pi toolkit and gave me access to hands-on experience that I needed. The Raspberry Pi is Linux based and Linux was not something that I was used to. I had to rely solely on commands and learn codes.  It  was an interesting and fun way for us to learn a new system that was not like my Windows computer. It was definitely something different, but a great experience for someone like myself that has never worked with that type of system before.” Dayna is currently completing her End User Desktop Support training and is set to graduate in June with her eyes set on a technology career. 

Another example of how these tech toolkits and laptops assisted in our learner’s success is that of Sadaf Haroon, who received a Macbook for her training.  Sadaf obtained her Bachelor’s Degree in Computer Science originally, but had a gap in her employment once she became a mother.  Eager to return to the industry, she looked into Per Scholas’s training as a way to get back and freshen up her skills.

Now a Software Engineer at AT&T, Sadaf initially received multiple job offers within a week of graduation and mentioned how her training and career development at Per Scholas connected her with her current position.  Sadaf, an immigrant mother of three, was at first intimidated to resume a career in a thriving field as Tech. “Per Scholas made it easier for me to learn and now I am an earning member of my family. What can be greater than that?”

When we had the chance to chat with Sadaf, she shared, “It was a great initiative to provide the laptop.  I was able to keep up with online learning and materials covered in my course since the computer came equipped with everything I needed that was up to date according to the program. It was also exciting to pick up the device and meet according to CDC guidelines.”  

The impact of these toolkits is clear – enabling hundreds of learners to pursue training and open doors to high-growth careers in tech. 

Alexander was born in Malawi, one of Africa’s poorest nations. After moving to the United States to advance his education, he encountered various personal and financial troubles. Alexander needed to consider a career alternative, not just for his future, but that of his family.

Title: Senior Coordinator for Help Support

Employer: Capital One

Location: Dallas/Fort Worth, Texas

Program/Course Name: IT Support

A Dream an Ocean Over

The seventh of nine children, Alexander grew up in Africa where he and his siblings all shared responsibilities around the house. He enjoyed learning and was the first in his family to go to college. He studied education at the University of Malawi and taught geography as a high school teacher for several years. However, what he made as a teacher was not enough even though he continued to provide for his family.

As the only educated member in his family, Alexander needed to support his family the best he could. To meet the financial needs he hoped, Alexander decided to look elsewhere, beyond Malawi, beyond Africa. Education was both a career and a personal interest of his so he decided to study abroad and get his master’s degree.

“I had hoped to leverage my education to better provide for my family. To do this, I dreamed of moving to the United States and excelling in my career there.”

Educational Background before IT Training

Alexander was off to start his new life in Boston, Massachusetts where he enrolled at Brandeis University. His family had pooled all of their funds together to finance his travel to America. However, his transition to the Northeast was not easy. Even with a partial scholarship, between paying for his tuition and living expenses, he could no longer afford school and had to drop out.

Hoping to still complete his degree, he moved to Texas to live with a distant relative and enrolled at Dallas Baptist University. After one semester, he could no longer support himself nor send funds back home to his family. Once again, Alexander withdrew from college and immediately began looking for a full-time job.

A Tech Genesis

For a time, Alexander worked at a local nursing home that paid $10/hour. It was barely enough to afford his basic living expenses. Although he stayed with his relative, he still needed to pay his share of rent. While attending a local church he came across a flyer for Per Scholas Dallas and their free IT certification training. Alexander always had an interest in technology. Back home in Malawi, he and his brother dabbled with operating a small computer repair business providing computer technical support to locals. The business still operates to this day!

He was skeptical about the absolutely free training offered by Per Scholas as per the flyer. “I have been paying a lot of money for education and you’re telling me that someone is going to give me IT training for free?” Fortunately, the person who placed the flyer was both a member of the church and an alum of Per Scholas. They encouraged him to attend an upcoming information session for IT Support training.

Alexander held off applying in order to build up his savings to finance himself throughout the ten weeks of training. “If I was going to do this, I wanted to make sure that I had all the support I needed. That meant quitting my job and focus only on my training. I was still paying back a loan for the semester I attended in Boston.”

At times it was challenging, especially when taking public transportation. To get to class, Alexander needed to take a 15-minute bus ride which took him to a train station where he had to travel 45 minutes to the Dallas metro area. “Students were expected to adhere to the strict attendance policy, so I had to wake up very early to make sure I was on time.” Sometimes Alexander stayed late to work with his peers to finish assignments, but for him, it was worth it!

After passing his CompTIA A+ certification exam, he was ready to find a job. He uploaded his resume whenever he could, attending networking events to get his name out in the job market. Still, there were no offers forthcoming. “It tested the best of me. I was interviewing and getting calls, but no job.”

Capital Gain

A month after graduating, Alexander was called in to interview at Capital One. He was selected among 20 other applicants for a contract position. Six months into the role, he was brought on board as a full-time associate working as Senior Coordinator for Help Desk Support where he currently trains and helps to onboard new hires.

“I am grateful for my experience at Per Scholas Dallas. I am able to envision a professional future for myself. I’m proud to be an alum because I also get to see other students come out of the training and find career success. Even here at Capital One, on a different team, there is another Per Scholas graduate who started out as a team leader and was soon promoted to principal coordinator. That only speaks to the caliber of the training we received from Per Scholas. We do our best, but Per Scholas is what helped us to realize and maximize our potential.”

Alex currently works at Capital One as a Senior Coordinator for Help Desk Support and continues to learn more about the field and progress his skill sets. To learn more about our IT Support course and other course offerings, visit our apply page.

In 2016, the country of Cameroon erupted with a series of protests that led the country into a civil war. Tensions escalated, as did the death toll as a result of mounting conflict. Thousands of miles across the Atlantic Ocean in Boston, Massachusetts, Justice Abinyui Muh, a Global Health Corps fellow conducting research abroad at the time, bore witness to his home country’s civil uprising from a distance.

Justice was about to become one of the millions of refugees from across the globe who have been displaced due to crisis and conflict, and would have to begin the daunting task of rebuilding his life and career.

Prior to completing his fellowship, Justice worked at the Limbe Regional Hospital in Southwest Cameroon to implement a software to manage HIV data. “For many patients that I met in this hospital, it was their suffering from the disease that they were most aware of — they wanted to be healed by any means possible,” he wrote in a 2017 Medium blog post.

As political tensions grew in Cameroon, Justice worried for his family, friends, and the nation overall, and weighed his options returning home. He was an activist back in Cameroon, however, during this time, the government sought out all activists who spoke out against their policies. Although his fellowship supported him for a year, his visa was not enough to support his stay in the states beyond the tenure of his fellowship. With all that remained behind, separated by an ocean, Justice applied for asylum and sought refuge in the United States.

Efforts to fully ground himself proved challenging. After his fellowship, Justice moved to Washington, D.C. and stayed with a friend, spending his days researching jobs in the information technology sector. Even with a Bachelor’s degree in Mathematics, and a Bachelor’s of Engineering in Information Technology, Justice struggled to secure a job, especially one that matched his technical experience and interests. Likening his job search to that of a “full-time job,” his savings was slowly shrinking and his approaches to finding work and starting a new life in America were proving fruitless.

“What was wrong? What am I doing in this country? How do I get a job, and what happens if I spend this money and run out of it?” Justice became greatly frustrated, not expecting his work history experiences and advanced education to be so hard to apply to prospective work opportunities.

Fueled by his frustration, Justice researched online how other immigrants might have experienced difficulty integrating into the United States and discovered Upwardly Global—a national nonprofit that helps newcomers integrate into the professional workforce. He enrolled in their courses and realized how truly different was the job market in the United States.

“I knew I needed a coach, assistance with getting a job. I learned how to present myself differently to hiring managers,” Justice reflects, learning to distinguish himself not just as someone who needed a job but as a fully competent individual with the skills and experience to do the work successfully. “Upwardly Global was an organization that bridged the gap with applying to jobs and improving my communications with recruiters.” An encouraging meeting with Bethany, his career coach at Upwardly Global who remained confident in his career prospects, proposed that Justice apply to Per Scholas to seek further specialized technical training.

Reading up on the many student success stories from Per Scholas alumni, Justice decided to enroll at Platform by Per Scholas in Dallas, Texas. He moved to Texas in January 2018 and started classes that March.

During his first week at Per Scholas, Justice was still concerned about his prospects finding a job once he completed his training. As his technical background lent well to his ability to navigate the coursework comfortably, Justice tried to focus more on establishing a strong network of friends and colleagues. He made himself available to his other classmates, helping them to understand the coursework. He even collaborated with them from time to time on how to apply for jobs once they graduated, thinking through how to review and complete applications and how to network effectively. What was most important, for both Justice and his peers, was to know that they were not alone, and that they could support one another through this process.

When Justice graduated from Per Scholas, he once again applied for jobs. This time, with an industry recognized certification in tow, combined with his newly found confidence, Justice walked into interviews and presented his best self. The calls came in, as did the offers. After what felt like a long journey, Justice was hired at a leading global professional service company. Finally, he had a job, and not just a job, but an opportunity to launch a career in his field with a Fortune 500 company.

Though he finally found employment, when asked what was next, Justice, always forward thinking, replied that he would focus on being the best he could be where he is at now, often times creating and setting work learning plans to educate himself further in the areas of quality assurance and engineering. Unfortunately, the war in Cameroon is still ongoing, and contact with his family remains nonexistent to this day. Justice might not have assumed that he would discover his best self a world over, but he chose to discover himself where he is at now, and that alone is a process of which to be proud.

Deris Pennington is a family man. As the oldest of his three kids starts to look ahead to his high school graduation, Deris is thinking a lot about the example he sets for his children. They know him as a bit of an egg-head, a Jeopardy fan who knows something about everything, a responsible dad who is always up for helping with homework, and a stalwart coach whose enthusiasm and energy has guided their basketball teams since they were little.

Deris finished second in his class in high school, but family obligations prevented him from completing his degree in a joint program at North Carolina Central University and Georgia Tech. “I was looking for an opportunity to show my kids a level of commitment. I wanted them to see me work toward a new goal and finish something” says Deris, as he considers the motivations that led him to take the IT Support course at Per Scholas in Cincinnati. “Getting my A+ certification while also taking an entrepreneurship course at Xavier University was a lot of work. I was studying side-by-side with my kids, and it was important for them to see that I had an idea, a vision of what I wanted, and that I was seeing it through.”

Deris had spent years in jobs that he calls “tech adjacent”. Working as a project coordinator at a community health center, he led an effort to modernize the way that patient data collection helped to deliver care, and he convinced the health center to bring in social workers to help overlooked populations access services. Later, in the mobile telecommunications field, Deris managed 36 service desk representatives at a company that handles bulk wireless accounts for corporate clients. Still, as Deris looked to save enough for his family’s future, he felt that earning a certification was the missing rung on the ladder to reaching the next level in the tech field. When he found himself back on the job market, a Per Scholas flyer at a job fair helped him to see a path forward.

“Juggling class every day with my family life was definitely a challenge.” Says Deris. “At my age, my personal CPU already has so much going on, between the kids doing sports, my youngest daughter taking ballet, and juggling all of their schedules with my wife. I had to be driven to get through Per Scholas.” Deris was up to the challenge. He was voted class president and finished his IT Support course as valedictorian, which he couldn’t have achieved without the support of his wife, Patrice.

After graduation, Deris found a job as a contractor with  TEKSystems, a Per Scholas Signature Partner, working on an Internet Security team for an insurance group. It’s challenging work, and he says that the knowledge he gained at Per Scholas is helping him to expand his role on the team. He also has his sights set on the future. Deris is making plans to open a “Youth Tech Café”.

“I think of it as a place where kids can start to learn technology skills before they are old enough to come to Per Scholas. It’s not just a simulator where kids can fix computers, it’s also a place where they can do their homework, hang out after school, and have access to technology.”

Deris thinks of the Youth Tech Café as an extension of his years of coaching experience, and his role as a father. As a coach and a dad, he has always had the leadership skills and smarts to inspire kids at home and on the basketball court. Now he has the tech knowledge he needs to teach kids about new pathways for building futures of their own.

Sione Joseph is an artist. As a painter and sculptor, she once imagined a career in graphic design, and studied for two years at Dillard University in her home city of New Orleans. After the death of her dad, she left school and went to work. Working just to get by left her without the time or energy to pursue her creative passions, and without the means to afford art supplies.

“I’ve always been somebody who wants to create, to make things, to make things happen, to leave some version of myself behind on Earth after I’m not here anymore,” Sione says. “Having to put my art on hold to pay the bills was frustrating.”

At 25 years old, Sione has had a lot of jobs. She has taught pre-k. She has been a cook in a restaurant in New Orleans. She even worked for a time as a financial advisor. She has taken any job she could get to stay afloat. “Not everyone has the luxury to chase a career. I grew up really poor,” she says. “I would have worked any job to avoid going back to that.” Still, despite her diligence, she has experienced eviction and homelessness due to low wages. “I had a job, and I was doing everything that I was taught was right.”

She moved in with her sister in Arlington, Texas, and went to work for the State’s Housing and Human Services Department. She saw the job as a dead-end with no opportunity to advance, no potential to build a career, and once again, no time for her artwork.

Artwork by Sione Joseph

She had learned to love computers during her time at Dillard University, and had grown comfortable with technology through her graphic design classes. “I found Per Scholas while I was looking for jobs in technology. I didn’t think I would get in, because I didn’t have the experience, and most of what I knew about computers, I had taught myself.” She was surprised and excited to be accepted. The IT Support class at Per Scholas requires no prior experience, only resilience and a determination to learn. Sione embodied those attributes, and threw everything she had into her Per Scholas experience.

Sione worked nights as a concierge while going to Per Scholas during the day. Money was tight, but the staff at Per Scholas was supportive. “They helped me to get free city bus passes, and they were always asking if I needed anything,” she says. ”They were encouraging too. They would say ‘I know things are hard, but just push through. We believe in you.’”

Sione reflects on the strength of the bonds she forged with her classmates at Per Scholas: “We were all in such high stakes situations of our own, and while that would drive some people apart, it pulled us together.” Tragically, during the week of her final exam, a close friend of Sione’s died unexpectedly. Her Per Scholas family helped her through the loss. “It pushed me to do better, to have something to live for and to strive for. Everyone wanted to comfort me and pray with me. They’re honestly more like brothers and sisters to me now.”

With graduation approaching, wages from Sione’s job as a concierge were falling short of her expenses, and she felt that she was racing against the clock to find a job that would sustain her. Impressively, she got an interview at the second company that she applied to, and it wasn’t long until she had a job offer. Less than a week after she graduated from Per Scholas, Sione started a new job making more than $21 per hour.

“Working in Desktop Support is amazing. Being around people who love their job is amazing. Being at a company that cares if you like where you work is a major cultural shift. Everyone is in a creative get-up-and-go mode. It’s not a creaky old dinosaur.”

What makes Sione happiest is that she now has the time, energy, and means to pursue her artwork in her free time. She is painting and sculpting again for the first time in two years. She also enjoys refurbishing old furniture with her mom. “Now that that I have the time, and I’m in a position that I have excess money, it’s weird actually,” says Sione, reflecting on her newfound means. “A lot of people think that a job is a job, and a career is a career. But it isn’t separate from your personal life. Working a job that you hate drains you. Now when I go home, I still have energy left to create. That’s the greatest blessing that has come out of this–being able to get my creativity back.”

Sione can once again afford art supplies, thanks to her new career

When you take a look inside a classroom at Per Scholas, no two students look the same. Take a deeper look and you will discover that our students educational and professional backgrounds are just as diverse. For some, technology is a hobby that they wanted to turn into a career. For others, technology is an industry they have always hoped to explore. Each and every student took a different path in life that led them to Per Scholas. We asked three IT Support students:

“What brought you to Per Scholas to #LearnTech?”

Daquan Dennison, 19

“Before Per Scholas, I was in a sales associate position at Uniqlo. My mom came to my room one time and showed me a list of programs that were free for me to do. One of those programs was Per Scholas. I decided why not since I love technology.” Daquan’s parents have always been involved in technology which led him to become fascinated with it as well. Daquan started his tech education with the IT Support class to obtain two certifications, A+ and Network+. He knows that acquiring both will make him more marketable to employers. Although Daquan has to commute from Brooklyn to Bronx to study at Per Scholas, he is determined to learn tech so that one day he can become a video game developer.

Maggy Ureña, 30

“I learned about Per Scholas, actually, at my last job. I was linking some members to your tax program. I found out what you guys do and was like, ‘Oh my gosh. That’s right in my neighborhood.’” Everyone is somewhat tech savvy these days, but Maggy knew how to setup internet, printers, and troubleshoot before coming to Per Scholas. However, days of work would be lost if the internet went down. As the go-to person in the office for technical issues, Maggy wanted to be able to help coworkers more and was motivated to study technology. Maggy says the professional development at Per Scholas set a serious tone that made the class aware of what is expected of them in the workforce. IT Support was suggested to Maggy as a great foundation for the tech sector. Next up, Maggy hopes to go into cloud computing or train at the Cognizant Bronx Training Center with Platform by Per Scholas.

Enrique Cruz, 28

“I used to work at a book publishing company and my position unfortunately got outsourced. I had to start making decisions about my future. So, instead of getting a new job, I decided to come to Per Scholas to further my career.” Enrique has been a gamer most of his life and used to repair gaming consoles when he was younger. He always wanted to learn more about technology and has done just that. Enrique looked into other programs at Per Scholas, but says CodeBridge and Cyber Security did not seem like courses you could just jump into without any tech knowledge. He ultimately chose IT Support to get his foot in the door of the tech sector. Enrique hopes to start working right away after dedicating so much time to the program. He says he definitely plans to study cyber security in the future and would prefer it be with Per Scholas.

In July 2017, Per Scholas enrolled its 7,000th student. Whether it be a referral or a curious mind that leads to our website, something continues to bring individuals that are eager to begin a career in technology through our doors. Per Scholas would not be as successful as it is today without our talented, motivated students who come to class every day ready to learn tech.