Carmen has systematically put in place the pieces she needs to run her own home health agency. She always knew she wanted to provide nursing care, but the cost of college was a barrier, so Carmen took advantage of every resource her local community college had to offer.   Carmen completed an associate’s degree in medical office administration, and multiple certifications for nurse assistant, medication technician, medical coding and CPR. She is one class shy of completing a second associate’s degree in office systems management. She has years of work experience where she has moved steadily upwards from entry level Certified Nursing Assistant, to med tech to being a special care unit coordinator.  She still has her eye on the nursing degree through an associates to bachelors transfer program.  

As she worked at various care facilities, Carmen developed a solid understanding of how they work and what patients need.  “I’ve seen so many bad things. I want people to be able to maintain their independence at home if they can do so.” Carmen has built strong relationships with her staff, many of who express interest in continuing to work with her. She recognizes that funding could present a challenge to accomplishing her goals but she believes that she can do the research to figure out the finances. Ultimately, she has confidence in her ability to start her business.   “I know if I’ve got a good set of people and I do good business, then I can get good things in return.”

Quinn joined the military at 18 to become an infantryman. His dreams of a military career were dashed when he suffered an injury that led to a medical discharge, however during the two years he spent in the military, Quinn cultivated a strong work ethic, critical thinking skills, and adaptability. Quinn described the military as a place that rewarded problem-solving and efficiency and recalled, “If I look at a maneuver my squad is doing and I told my squad leader, ‘Hey, this route looks better,” nine times out of ten he’s going to say, ‘That’s very smart, I didn’t see that.’” These traits served him well after he transitioned into civilian jobs. “Even if I apply for a job and don’t completely understand exactly what it’s going to take, it’s very easy for me to look at what’s being done and replicate it, and then usually very quickly find better ways to do things. It was just something you learned to do on autopilot in the military.”

While Quinn was well-liked and appreciated by employers, he noticed that it was difficult to get callbacks on his job applications and he has found it hard to find a career path that fits his interests. He thinks employers do not understand how the skills he developed in the military make him a valuable worker. He also believes there is a stigma associated with his military experience. “I don’t know what it is that the media or the entertainment industry or news has done to make that employers think that everyone who has been in the military—especially medically discharged—is somehow unstable or not as good as an employee.” Quinn noted that people in the military are “people doing a job with a goal, the job just happened to be a little harder, which usually makes us better workers. We’re not the liability.”  Quinn aims to attend college in the future to offset the challenges he faced in his job search.

“Really, anything I wanted to learn, I honestly learned it by myself.” When Daquan graduated from high school, college was simply not an option. “When you have to survive, you have to do what you have to do. You don’t think about college, you think about how you are going to eat, where you are going to live, and how you are going to support yourself”. To provide for his family, Daquan worked a series of service jobs in fast food and retail. After some years in the workforce, he completed a medical certificate and became a home health aide.

While he works as a professional caregiver, he continues to build skills and pursue his interests.  He loves tinkering with electronics, and has thought about pursuing a degree in aviation engineering, but the cost is a barrier. Instead, he is working towards an associates degree in liberal studies, aiming to eventually transfer to a four year college.  He is also teaching himself carpentry. “I like building fireplaces and cabinets and stuff like that. I learned it from YouTube.” Daquan is confident these self-taught skills will always be of value. “As long as I have my hands and a trade or skill, no one can take it from me, so I’ll always have work”.

Experience can be the best teacher. When Tadarius had his identity stolen, he took control of the situation, repaired his credit, and learned the fundamentals of credit scores. He soon became a resource to his friends and family.  “A lot of people look at it as just credit repair, but you have to learn the ins and outs of what actually goes into a great score and what to do to help someone go from a bad to a good score”. Tadarius is now certified as a credit score consultant, a credit repair specialist, a financial planner and he is working on his life coach certification to round out his professional toolkit. In June of 2020, he launched his credit repair business and is actively recruiting clients. Running his own business is rewarding after years struggling to find work that made full use of the skills he got in the military and on the job.  Tadarius believes customer service, time management and a willingness to work with authority figures are the skills that will make him a successful business owner. When asked about the necessity of a college degree in his line of work, he says, “I think learning from other business owners and people who have already done it has been a lot better than going to the classroom.”

Mary began to work straight out of high school. Her father, a local politician, leveraged his connections to help her find work in local government. Mary began as an entry-level cashier and was promoted to cashier manager. As a supervisor, Mary’s philosophy was, “you’re only as good as your people”.  She aimed to create an environment where her staff felt supported and treated with respect. “As a manager, I felt anything I had been wronged on, I could undo.”.\ She felt it was important to give honest and consistent feedback and to provide support when employees are struggling. She says, “When you give someone an evaluation, it should never be a surprise. If they are having problems, you should be telling them on a daily basis, no matter how hard it is”. Mary believes her efforts paid off.  “I think I was well-respected and I hired a couple of supervisors under me who were well-respected. We were a good team”.  Unfortunately, after her boss lost a bid for reelection, Mary found herself unemployed for the first time in 20 years. This was when she realized the challenges related to not having a college degree. “I lost my job … It’s 2005. That’s the time when people want people with college.” Mary succeeded at finding new jobs both in nonprofit and the public sector but she never quite found the same good fit again. She is now retired.

As an employment counselor, Elizabeth helps people find good jobs, but her own path to a job she loves was anything but smooth. Inspired by a post 9/11 television commercial, she enlisted in the military out of high school. After her service, she struggled to find her footing and was incarcerated for five years. In prison, she participated in a program that earned her certifications in administrative assistance and industrial cleaning.  With her work record and certifications, she was recommended for a job upon her release at a 5-star hotel where she thrived. Since then, Elizabeth worked in several other jobs before finding her current role with a nonprofit.  She enjoys building relationships with employers and supporting job seekers, many of whom were also justice-involved.

This job, however, was not Elizabeth’s first choice. With a certificate in administrative work and fluency in Spanish, she was certain she could be successful as a medical transcriptionist so she enrolled in a medical transcription degree program at a community college. Disqualified from loans and grants by her criminal record, she paid for the program out of her own pocket. Over a year into the program, her program counselor told her that she could never work in the medical field because of her criminal record. “I was pretty much in there and was starting to try to find out about internships or part-time jobs … It is really discouraging that the counselors at college, when you’re signing up will not tell you ahead of time, ‘Hey, you might not be able to work here doing this job. They just tell you ‘yes, sign up!’” She now helps formerly incarcerated individuals avoid these barriers and pursue their dreams. She says, “to have a criminal background, have no education, but be a social worker and be a teacher at a college? I think any of us can do it.”

Debrena makes the most of every opportunity.  From her very first job as door-to-door saleswoman at 14, a job that only lasted a day, to a job as a QA engineer, she has developed a deep and broad skill set.  She never wanted to go to college but through training programs, bootcamps, and self-guided learning, she learned technical skills like HTML, CSS and JavaScript. On the job, in roles she sometimes characterized as “survival jobs”, she learned to leverage those skills for professional success.  Debrena recalls, “I learned really, really, really solid HTML and CSS. I just didn’t know how to organize it very well and do it professionally. [Working] helped me understand the role of HTML, CSS and JavaScript. You know, HTML is the framework and the framing of a house, the CSS is the paint and the décor, and JavaScript turns the lights on.”

Debrena recognizes the importance of advocating for herself. For example, two weeks before her graduation from coding bootcamp, she overheard two other students in the program talking about an event they were attending just up the street, hosted by a company she aspired to work for. She had written to the company asking about internship opportunities but she was discouraged by her prospects due to her lack of college degree.  She did not know what the event was but she knew it was a way to get in the door so she got in the car and drove there. She recalls, “I was aggressively pitching myself and I made it… I made an impression, I filled out the application, and then I got the invitation to participate in their Make-a-thon. I remember screaming in my car, like I can’t believe this is happening. I participated in the hackathon and they selected me to be an apprentice there for three months.” Debrena feels that all her skills have come together to get her where she is now. She shares that, “every single skill that I think I’ve built, all of the experiences that I have, are kind of coming through in these projects, and it feels almost kismet.” Looking forward, she hopes to use her skills and experiences to do more educational and advocacy work.

Courtney grew up in a family of hard workers who pushed him and his sister to seek out opportunities. He initially set out to pursue a career in mechanical engineering. While still in college, he interviewed for a job as a CAD designer at an architectural firm, and because he had a background in construction and experience managing people, the firm hired Courtney as a project manager instead.  “My plan was to be a CAD designer, because I have the skills and knew the craft, and then just finish up my degree part time. Well, they ended up hiring me to be a project manager, because on the side, I was doing a lot of construction work and I had people working for me. I didn’t know what a project manager was, but I was basically doing project management work.”

Courtney thought this job would launch his career but the 2008 housing crash hit the industry and he was laid off. He continued to work in construction through his own construction company and then moved to  California, where he made a career shift into IT. In his current job, as Client Services Manager, he is responsible for project planning, troubleshooting, writing API scripts, and producing highly technical project implementation guides.

Courtney says his project management skills facilitated his transition between fields. “I had that strong project management background, and I was able to demonstrate, through my work, a lot of soft skills that were highly desirable, especially dealing with customers. . . Being able to translate technical information into layman’s terminology, a natural curiosity,  and things of that nature that are desirable, regardless of industry.” To complement these important transferable skills, he went through a formal training program to build additional IT skills. In the future he hopes to get a project management certificate and continue to grow his technical skill set.

Ricky remembers telling his dentist when he was 12 years old that he wanted to be an actor when he grew up but he did not pursue this career until much later. In high school, he took his first job as a busboy to pay off a new car and then worked in retail. He entered business college planning to take over his dad’s business but his old dreams of becoming an actor remained. He began to do auditions. Ricky’s early acting years were filled with ups and downs, and he continued to work in restaurants and retail while booking jobs. Over time, he began to coach aspiring actors and leveraged his networks to expand his clientele. Over the last 15 years, he has developed a strong reputation as both a performer and coach.

Ricky’s success in his acting and coaching careers are grounded in one more important life lesson: learning to fail. It took a lot of trial and error before Ricky drew a steady flow of students for coaching. With acting, Ricky had gone after jobs that didn’t pan out. Rather than viewing these failures as devastating, he saw them as new opportunities: “People never teach you how to cope with failure and failing for some people could be really, really difficult. But if you do it, you know how to deal with it, it’s like okay, alright, whatever. Now let’s go back and see what I can adjust for next time. So you’re never really failing anymore, you’re just kind of trying to get better.” Ricky’s growth mindset and ability to normalize failure kept him perpetually striving towards new projects and goals. Taking a page out of Denzel Washington’s book, Ricky said, “They asked Denzel, ‘What’s your best movie?’ And he said, ‘Oh, it’s my next movie. If someone like that is trying to get better, each and every time, you’re going to be. You’re done if you don’t try to get better.”’

“Be the first to show up, the last to leave, and get your job done.” Robert recalls seeing his father work hard his whole life as a supervisor and a foreman and he brings this same work ethic to his career. His first job was at a skate shop where he learned to manage people and inventory. He helped his boss open three new stores and then manage them. These experiences allowed Robert to transition to a larger company where he started as a sales associate and demonstrated his ability to succeed across multiple management and sales roles. He is currently a merchandiser and he loves to analyze the numbers and predict trends so he can send stores the correct inventory. Working his way from the sales floor to the corporate office, Robert has gained skills that have laid the foundation for him to excel at his job. He has been with his company for almost 10 years and has a high level of commitment and desire to be a positive influence on his work environment.

Over the last few years, Robert has learned how to be a better leader. A priority of his is to be empathetic and understand that every role in the company is important. “I have learned to take my intrinsic biases and expectations out of the equation and focus on what the employee is good at and drive them from there.” Despite his skills and accomplishments, Robert worries that he still needs a degree. If his company had a shift in leadership, there is a chance that they could require a bachelor’s degree for his position. He continues to take part in organizational training and classes to prepare him for the next step in his career.

Carol grew up with a family that instilled in her a strong work ethic as her parents worked long hours in retail and in gas stations. Carol learned that work is a part of life and requires dedication and responsibility. She became a mother in high school, and took a break from school but parenthood ignited a new flame for Carol. “After I had kids, exploring with them and teaching them, I just learned to enjoy learning a lot more.” Seeing the world through the eyes of her children showed her a path forward. Carol developed strong communications skills working at call centers and through a stint studying broadcasting. Data entry taught her attention to detail and efficiency. Being a mother meant managing schedules, budgets, and personalities.

And yet, when she got her associates degree in Veterinary Science, she had a hard time finding a job that fit her family obligations and made her feel valued. She felt overlooked on the job for not having a bachelor’s degree.  Always an amateur artist, she realized she had the skills to develop products that she could sell. She started her own business where she found the fulfillment and freedom that she had been looking for. Carol worked at trade shows for five years, but when the pandemic hit, the shows were suspended and she did not have the resources to move her business online. Carol has been without work for the past two years but she looks forward to rebuilding her business and selling her art in the future.

Reyna reflects that growing up low-income, she never saw a career path for herself but her experiences in various jobs helped her develop a vision of what she wants to accomplish. She started in the restaurant industry and worked briefly in an office before doing an IT internship through a youth work program. The internship experience helped her transition to a job in insurance sales, where she had to go through a rigorous training process and pass a state exam to get a license.

She applies many of the communication and teamwork skills she learned across her prior jobs to be successful in the sales role.  She said, “my family doesn’t really come from any type of corporate field or anything of that sort. So just seeing the environment and talking to the people in that environment, really gave me a new perspective on how to see things and talk to people where I actually want to be.” She also learned the importance of sticking up for herself in the workplace, especially as a woman who is interested in going into the tech field. She recalls how in meetings with potential clients, “they wouldn’t even look my way. They just made direct eye contact with the guys, with my male colleagues.” She describes having to adapt and focus on the client’s needs to show that she is capable. “I would just have to improvise and start thinking critically about what it is that they need.”

Reyna continues to work and take college classes towards a computer science degree.  She wants to develop a learning and support platform that helps young people who come from similar backgrounds to hers. She says, “everyone has a different way to success, and navigating life is already hard as it is. I believe that once I create this, hopefully it could help out millions of kids who are going through it.”

Sharon is a billing coordinator for an accounting firm.  She runs financial reports, analyzes them, and can explain them to colleagues and clients.  She often manages multiple tasks at once and coordinates with colleagues.  She developed the organizational, analytical, and communication skills to do this work over a series of administrative and billing support jobs. Sharon noticed that the firms she worked for, especially the larger ones, invest only in the professional development of their senior staff, so she seized opportunities to invest in herself.  Through guidance from colleagues, some training, and her own initiative, she mastered important workplace skills and learned many billing and project management software programs.

Sharon has been strategic in her job transitions. She started as a receptionist at a law office, became a billing specialist, and has had a series of jobs in law and accounting firms of varying sizes.  She observed differences in how these workplaces treated their employees and used this information to navigate to jobs that met her preferences.  She found that in small firms, she received more professional development support as well as a more welcoming workplace culture. While she lacks a degree, her real-world experience seems to be valued in the field as she continues to get job offers. She has made multiple job transitions to higher-paying jobs over the years and during the pandemic found a new job that allows her to work from home. Sharon looks forward to retiring in a few years.

Erin found her way into the mortgage industry by starting out in accounting, moving into compliance, vendor management, and  Due Diligence Warehouse Manager. Then eventually she became an Internal Audit Manager. She evaluates company policies and procedures, identifies deficiencies, and recommends improvements.  With thirteen years of experience, she is a subject matter expert who interacts with high-level executives and presents at industry conferences. She notes that the mortgage industry is particularly friendly to workers without degrees because all the skills can be learned on the job and through short company-sponsored training programs. That said, she still worries that she could be displaced by someone with a bachelor’s degree. Erin reflects, “When I think about if there was somebody else sitting right next to me with the same skillset, but they have a bachelor’s degree, I don’t know who they are going to pick.”

Erin has learned the importance of self care as she has navigated the industry. As a woman of color, she has experienced micro-aggressions on the job and has learned to navigate them. She plans to recommended development of a Diversity, Equity, Inclusion, and Belonging committee in her organization, and she believes that companies should recognize the importance of mental health. Her experiences has made Erin want to “pay it forward”. On top of the demands of being a full-time worker and single parent, she serves on the board of directors of a local nonprofit.   Her discipline, public speaking skills, communication skills, and experiences working with high level executives are useful contributions to the organization and she finds personal fulfillment in expanding her comfort zone and building her leadership skills. Erin’s dream job is to support young people in their personal journeys as a life coach or counsellor.