Each week in the New Tech Newsletter we feature a Spotlight Q&A with founders, angels, New Tech alumni presenters, and other people or companies in our community we believe you’d like to learn about. Reach out if you’d like to recommend a startup, founder, angel, accelerator, or New Tech alumni presenter for us to spotlight for the PNW tech community!
In this week’s spotlight we caught up with Mitch Robertson, SVP of Business Development and Growth at Code Fellows.
Tell us about your organization:
Code Fellows is an internationally recognized technical skills training academy, delivering high-quality live instruction both online and in-person to people from all backgrounds. Learners are guided toward vocational change and life transformation through software development, technical operations, cybersecurity, and career training. We provide people from all backgrounds the opportunity to change their lives through fast-paced, career-focused education. We shape passionate learners with immersive training to meet industry needs and improve diversity in tech employment. We are more than honored to announce that our audited employment results show that our alumni have achieved an outstanding 93% In-field Employment Rate. According to this study conducted by Switchup, we were the number one ranked program for landing a job at a major tech company.
Tell us about your bootcamp program and what problem your program is helping to solve?
Code Fellows has been crafting technical curriculum since 2013. We are leading the way in building, refining, and adapting curriculum to ensure we are keeping up with the demands of the industry while preparing graduates for the rigorous expectations of a career in tech.
We have tailored our curriculum to fit learning styles, exceed employer expectations and industry standards, and set a high bar of excellence. Graduates who immerse themselves in Code Fellows curriculum and training methods, like stacked learning and agile methodologies, have the skills they need to be world-class technologists. Our graduates are able to immediately contribute to the companies they join on day one.
What do you love the most about this initiative?
We guide people from all backgrounds to change their lives through fast-paced, career-focused education. We shape passionate learners with immersive training to meet industry needs and improve diversity.
What’s the most innovative or interesting thing about your organization?
We believe it’s critical that students learn the skills that allow them to pursue their passion. Just as important, is our belief that everyone should have the opportunity to succeed. In reality, many qualified candidates aren’t pursuing careers in a technology-related field because they are discouraged somewhere along the way. That’s why Code Fellows invests in individuals who come from underserved and underrepresented backgrounds to find rewarding careers in tech. The future of tech needs to be shaped by the diversity in our world–all different backgrounds, races, ethnicities, genders, sexual orientations, socio-economic statuses–so that we all benefit and make tech a more inclusive, diverse and equitable place. It is because of this strong belief that we teach and embrace a growth mindset, where we learn from our differences rather than avoid them. We work tirelessly to create a learning environment where every student feels welcome, safe and heard. We want to ensure that we’re not just educating men and women to become amazing tech leaders, but also better humans.
We believe that now is a perfect time for individuals to find ways to reinvent themselves, explore new learning opportunities, develop new norms, pursue careers they are passionate about and discover ways to thrive.
What is one of the highlights, or memorable moments, for you in doing this work?
Changing lives!
Here are Code Fellows’ mission, vision and values:
Vision: Why We Exist
We focus on technology skills for a better life, for a better community, and for a better world.
Mission: What We Do
We guide people from all backgrounds to change their lives through fast-paced, career-focused education. We shape passionate learners with immersive training to meet industry needs and improve diversity.
Core Values: Who We Are
We are growth-minded.
We receive and give feedback to fuel personal, professional, and community growth through iterative self-improvement. We are focused on progress, open to challenge, willing to fail, and above all committed to the good of the collective.
We are inclusive.
We celebrate differences and encourage curiosity to understand the people and perspectives around us. We accept people as they are and embrace the characteristics that make us all unique.
We are passionate.
We are here because we want to be. Student success fuels our commitment to our craft. To us, this is more than a job—we put our heart and soul into what we create.
We are quality-focused.
We pursue the delivery of excellent experiences. Customer feedback informs our priorities and every day we strive to produce better outcomes. We take action on things big and small and hold ourselves to a high standard.
We are empowering.
We believe in our students—sometimes even before they believe in themselves. We equip individuals, companies, and communities to impact the world around them, revealing their latent superpowers. By instilling confidence, desire, and self-determination in the populations we serve, we get to be part of how tech reshapes our world.
We are transformative.
We are on a global mission to change the hearts and minds of an industry, as well as the lives of our students. Remarkable change happens at the intersection of individual determination and a supportive community. We will settle for nothing less.
We are caring.
We seek the holistic well-being of our students, our partner companies, and the tech industry at large. Feedback is a gift: so we present candid feedback, delivered kindly and clearly. We do well by doing good.
We are knowledgeable.
We are committed to growing our collective skills, education, and expertise to maximize our impact on the lives of students and the industry. Recognizing that knowledge is power, we strive to help students master their own craft.
We are customer-oriented.
Every decision at Code Fellows is made with the customer in mind. We align with our customers’ short- and long-term goals, and we support their dreams. We actively work to understand each person’s perspective, so that each customer interaction is positive.
We are revolutionary.
We challenge the status quo. The industry needs a more inclusive and collaborative approach in tech to influence the products that serve our increasingly diverse world. We are here to equip and prepare the talent needed to push the industry forward.
