Newest trainees, program alumni and DPI staff at the showcase.
Every cohort of Tech Talent Accelerator trainees is special in its own way. But the five who finished in May were unprecedented: they represented the Pritzker Tech Talent Labs’ first cohort to conduct the training virtually.
A successful experiment
Previous trainees completed a three-month course: four days in person at DPI headquarters and one day remote, all of it full-time. Last fall the program piloted a hybrid, partially asynchronous model to allow trainees more flexibility: to accommodate jobs, families, and other interests and obligations. Instead of three months full-time, the course became six months part-time.
Max Montesino, who has a full-time job and a one-year-old daughter, would not have been able to do the three-month version of the program.
“I felt supported,” he said, “and all these great resources were available to me.”
The projects
At the completion of their program, this group of trainees, like the ones before them, showcased the apps they built to illustrate their coding skills:
- A workout enthusiast and former personal trainer, Brian Kim made Fitness Equation to help people track their workout routines in detail.
- Grace Do formerly worked in marketing in her native Vietnam, and like anyone else trying to move documents forward in a group, often found herself confused about which version was the most updated. To help solve that problem, she created ManaVer.
- To address Gen Z’s perceived lack of financial literacy, Jalen Young created ZMoney, a financial and wealth-planning app with a social media component. Users have a feed similar to Instagram or LinkedIn, showing other users’ savings goals, on which they can post comments.
- Joseph Fleming created SuppliAI, an app that recommends nutritional supplements based on the user’s budget, health goals, medical condition, and dietary restrictions.
- Montesino’s app, SchoolYard, is a messaging app for school staff, with built-in event notifications and calendar integration, allowing communication among staff but also with parents and guardians. He got the idea after hearing his wife, who works for a public school in Chicago, talk about the school’s challenges in communicating with parents in a timely, effective manner.
Joining the trainees at the showcase was Chandhu Bhumireddy, the program’s graduate assistant, who taught the fully asynchronous online introductory course that serves as a prerequisite for the formal training. After teaching the intro, Chandhu took the six-month course alongside the trainees so that she could better support them through their entire experience.
She showcased her app, HerHealthHub, centered around polycystic ovary syndrome (PCOS). The app assesses a person’s risk factors for the condition and allows them to track symptoms.
Some things never change
When Brian worked as a personal trainer, his clients would ask him for the best ways to train: what exercises they should do, how many reps, what time of day. He would reply that to some extent it didn’t matter: “It’s about doing it and being consistent.” The same could apply to software development.
Although they weren’t together in person regularly, the cohort still felt a strong sense of community. The program featured daily lectures, which trainees could attend in person or via Zoom. Gary Nixon, DPI’s assistant director of recruitment and alumni engagement, said the group often came to DPI headquarters for lectures — or just to hang out.
Morgan Diamond, director of workforce development for DPI’s Pritzker Tech Talent Labs, was thrilled by the success of this pilot hybrid cohort.
“We’ve learned beside them about how best to support busy adults taking on challenging curriculum,” she said. “We look forward to applying those lessons as we work with future hybrid cohorts.”
While Jalen had completed other tech training programs, he particularly appreciated PTTL’s because of its local focus and rigorous training.
“It’s a game-changer,” he said. “I loved it.”
On the left: Max Montesino explains his SchoolYard app.
On the right: Jalen Young’s Z Money app.
Author: Jeanie Chung