Marcelo Claure is a Bolivian tech entrepreneur who founded Brightstar which was later sold to Sprint after they reached $10 billion in revenue, becoming the largest Hispanic-owned business in US history. Currently, Claure serves as Chief Executive Officer of SoftBank Group International and Chief Op…
Breaking Into Startups
by Breaking Into Startups
The 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 jo
Latest Episodes
Not only a true believer in the power of networking, Erik Torenberg definitely walks the talk. Erik is big on community building and networking. He is known for organizing huge events as well as intimate meetups called On Deck, where they allow people to get to know each other on a personal level in…
Jake Schwartz is the co-founder and chief executive officer of General Assembly, a global company advancing the future of work. Jake leads GA's growth, creating sustainable talent pipelines for businesses, and building transparent career pathways to the most transformational work.
In the face of t…
Dan Friedman is the Co-Founder of Thinkful, a coding bootcamp that provides online courses Software Engineering, Design and Data Science courses. Dropping out of Yale, Dan is proof that you don't need a college degree or certain qualifications to find your way to success.
Thinkful is the first cod…
Vaibhav Sahgal is the Head of Growth at Reddit, Inc. which has 500 million unique users around the world. Prior to this, he worked at Zynga for 8 years as a product manager. He led teams building games like Words with Friends, Cityville, and Mafia Wars.
Vaibhav immigrated from India to the U.S. to …
Born and raised in Los Angeles, Kesha Lake is a member of the Career Karma community from Atlanta.
She joined Career Karma in the beginning of 2019. Less than a year later, she got a job as a remote software engineer at Stitch Fix.
Today, she talks about her life as a mother, her transition from…
Jerrick Warren has an inspiring story of breaking into the Blockchain Tech Startup Gemini coming from a background in medicine.
He went from joining the Career Karma community, to getting accepted into Lambda School to getting a Software Engineering job in a year!
Today, he shares with us the man…
#119: Career Karma Origin Story (by the CEO of Free Code Camp) by Breaking Into Startups
Darrell Silver is the CEO and Co-Founder of Thinkful.
Their mission? To build the world’s next workforce.
Since its inception in 2012, Thinkful has graduated thousands of students. Founded based on two elements – transparency and return on education – Thinkful has recently been acquired by Chegg…
Coming to the states with two suitcases and a pocketful of dreams, Chock Ooi is currently the CEO of Kenzie Academy.
Chok is a startup veteran working at places like Loopt and AgilityIO, and is a 500 Startups mentor. He has a background in Finance and Technology at Goldman, Bank of America, and BN…
Today, we have a special group of people joining us who go by the #FFTSquad.
#FFTSquad is a group of people on Career Karma who are working together to help each other grow, learn how to code and switch careers into tech.
They were with us early from the very beginning. In fact, a lot of the mem…
Angela Ceresnie is the CEO of Climb Credit. She has experience working in and starting multiple startups. She has led teams at Citibank and American Express. Interestingly, she studied computer engineering at the University of Michigan with a technical background.
Today, Angela talks about skill-b…
Phaedra Ellis is the CEO of Promise, a startup that uses technology for good in the process to change the criminal justice system.
Prior to this, she was the leader of the South Bay Labor Council, managing over 110,000 members.
Before that, Phaedra was also the CEO of Green for All and is known a…
Tonio DeSorrento is a New York-native who spent time in the Marines as a captain. He has also worked at several institutions including SoFi.
Currently, he serves as the CEO of Vemo Education, a leading provider of income share agreements, which is an innovative financing model not only for coding …
Rodney Sampson is the CEO of OHUB while Young Guru is widely known as Jay-Z's DJ. On today’s episode, Ruben joins Rodney & Young Guru to discuss how and why they came together and why they're passionate about creating opportunities for people outside of tech. OHUB has also partnered with Flatiron Sc…
Ameer Brown is a Software Quality Engineer at Adobe. He talks about what it takes to be a successful engineer at Adobe. Outside of work Ameer also organizes parties. He also covers how that helped him take it to another level hosting parties in multiple cities.
From being a journalism major, he su…
Dan Rosensweig is the CEO of Chegg, an American education company with the aim to provide education that is less expensive, more available, more affordable, and more relevant. On the podcast, Dan explains how it's their responsibility to learn from, listen to, and build for young people.
He was for…
Cameron Yarbrough is the CEO of Torch and one of the best leadership and executive coaches in the world.
In this episode, Cameron talks about coaching for everyone! How Torch got its start and the problems that many CEO’s as well as startup employees have when they are faced with pressure.
#108: Dan Sommer, CEO & founder of Trilogy Education, workforce accelerator for leading universities
Dan Sommer is the CEO and Co-Founder of Trilogy Education Services. Dan has launched partnerships with over 37 of the world's leading universities, providing alternative forms of education on their campuses.
smarturl.it/trilogy_learn_more
They have instructors teaching 200 classes every week. They…
Announcements: Watch the video recording of this episode on Youtube
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5Rg8SHeq1Ns
Rich Smith is a Senior UI engineer at Netflix but did you know this was his 17th job?
Today, he talks about how he started hustling as early as 4th grader and eventually discovered his …