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 Operating Officer of SoftBank Group Corp. Claure oversees the vast portfolio of the Group’s operating companies, including Arm, WeWork, Brightstar, Fortress, SB Energy, Boston Dynamics, among others, al...
Mar 31, 2021•39 min•Transcript available on Metacast 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 instead of a professional level. Back in Michigan, Erik started his career by creating rapt.fm, which led him to go to 500 Startups, that also led him to become the first employee of Product Hunt. Later...
Aug 13, 2020•1 hr 5 min•Transcript available on Metacast 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 the COVID-19 crisis, about 33 million Americans have lost their jobs in the last seven weeks. GA has around 120 campuses globally which they had to shut down in two days and go completely online. Today, ...
Jul 27, 2020•1 hr 2 min•Transcript available on Metacast 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 coding bootcamp that came out and created offerings for people impacted by the COVID-19. Listen in to find out more about their initiatives. Another thing Dan emphasized today is the principle of reversibi...
Apr 21, 2020•50 min•Transcript available on Metacast 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 get a degree in Computer Science at Purdue University. Today, he talks about his journey into tech, the qualities of effective engineers, and how to build and grow products to millions of users.
Mar 04, 2020•53 min•Transcript available on Metacast 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 nursing to tech, her bootcamp journey, and her job search experience.
Dec 30, 2019•1 hr 27 min•Transcript available on Metacast 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 many struggles he had to overcome and how Career Karma helped him pave his way to success. Career Karma is a community that helps you figure out a road map that is customized to you, your preferences, and y...
Dec 03, 2019•1 hr 10 min•Transcript available on Metacast #119: Career Karma Origin Story (by the CEO of Free Code Camp) by Breaking Into Startups
Oct 14, 2019•1 hr 19 min•Transcript available on Metacast 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. Together, they continue to help transform how people acquire tech skills in the most efficient way possible. On this episode Darrell covers how Thinkful help career transitioners acquire tech skills thr...
Sep 30, 2019•52 min•Transcript available on Metacast 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 BNP Paribas during the financial crisis. Today, Chok talks about how he has realized his dreams to help people break into tech and his thoughts on income share agreements (ISAs). Career Karma now has over...
Sep 23, 2019•56 min•Transcript available on Metacast 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 members of the FFT Squad were part of Career Karma before the app even came out. Here are their names: Meet the FFT Squad: Melanie Harris (Ms. CEO, Lady Savage) Jennifer Weaver (J-Smooth) Elisabeth Earley (L...
Jul 15, 2019•2 hr 35 min•Transcript available on Metacast 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-building and the work she's doing at Climb Credit as she tries to build the future for her own kids.
Jul 01, 2019•54 min•Transcript available on Metacast 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 as a music industry icon for having helped Prince get his master's back as his manager, without having any legal background. What’s interesting is Ruben met Phaedra when he worked with her at Honor. She b...
May 27, 2019•1 hr 3 min•Transcript available on Metacast 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 bootcamps, but also for traditional universities. They are working now with 22 colleges and universities! If you're someone looking to manage your finances as you're preparing for a career transition, t...
Apr 16, 2019•52 min•Transcript available on Metacast 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 School, to give $1M in scholarships to people with color who wish to pursue a career in tech through coding bootcamps.
Apr 09, 2019•55 min•Transcript available on Metacast 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 suddenly left his job, flew to LA, and applied to General Assembly. Through the bootcamp’s Opportunity Fund, Ameer’s coding education was fully funded by Adobe until ultimately getting hired (and he didn’...
Mar 23, 2019•54 min•Transcript available on Metacast 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 formerly the COO of Yahoo! and CEO of Guitar Hero. He's also on the board of several amazing companies. Dan admits Chegg was considered a failure for most of its first 7 years. 8 1/2 years later, they're ...
Feb 12, 2019•50 min•Transcript available on Metacast 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.
Feb 05, 2019•26 min•Transcript available on Metacast 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 have thousands of students who have completed Trilogy-powered programs, and 1,500 companies employ them. In May, Dan secured a $50-million Series B and he's been doing a lot of exciting things related ...
Dec 23, 2018•59 min•Transcript available on Metacast 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 interest in coding! On the episode he covers a lot of topics as what it was like growing up with role models who were athletes, which a lot of us could relate with. And how not until he dropped out of co...
Dec 11, 2018•1 hr 8 min•Transcript available on Metacast Balaji Srinivasan is the CTO of Coinbase. Prior to that, he was a co-founder of Counsyl, Earn, Teleport, and a General Partner at Andreessen Horowitz. Today, he talks about his insights into traditional education vs. alternative education, as well as numerous concepts on technical debt, voice vs. exit, idea maze, idea vs. education, and more! Balaji has a very interesting mindset in that he believes that not everybody can be a founder, but everybody can be an investor.
Nov 29, 2018•1 hr 10 min•Transcript available on Metacast Rick O’Donnell is the Founder and CEO of Skills Fund, a place that provides people with an opportunity to acquire skills and they also provide financing for students as they're doing a career transition. Prior to Skills Fund, Rick worked as an Executive Director for the Colorado Department of Regulatory Agencies as well as the Director for the Department of Higher Education where he oversaw 29 public colleges and universities in Colorado. Since its founding in 2015, Skills Fund has provided over...
Nov 19, 2018•52 min•Transcript available on Metacast There are half a million open tech jobs, and yet, diversity in tech continues to be a problem. The key is in building relationships and connecting people with the right companies that need their skills the most. Leanne Pittsford is the founder of Lesbians Who Tech, the largest LGBTQ community of technologists in the world with over 40,000 members. She is also the founder of Tech Jobs Tour, connecting diverse, underrepresented, and nontraditional talent with companies across the country. Among ot...
Oct 31, 2018•49 min•Transcript available on Metacast Our guest on the podcast has a remarkable story. Madelyn Tavarez did a part-time bootcamp, while holding a full-time job. She taught herself how to code. And became a software engineer at Pinterest now building products for hundreds of millions of people. She is also a Dominican Republic-native who grew up in Washington Heights and due to her own drive and curiosity was able to change her circumstance. Her senior year of college she went from being a bartender to an “eat, pray, love” moment whic...
Oct 24, 2018•1 hr 2 min•Transcript available on Metacast Austen Allred is the CEO and Co-Founder of Lambda School. Recently coming out of Y Combinator, Lambda now has thousands of students. Prior to this, he served as a Growth Expert at LendUp. Lambda School is an online bootcamp that gives students the tools and training they need to launch their career in software engineering at no upfront cost. Their end goal is to eliminate all the distractions related to income, living expenses & time so students can focus on transitioning into their dream career...
Oct 09, 2018•1 hr•Transcript available on Metacast Avi Flombaum is a lifelong educator. He is the Co-Founder of Flatiron School, which grew to thousands of students and got acquired by WeWork. Prior to starting Flatiron School, Avi also built several companies. Avi’s philosophy believes that education should mold and flex to the needs of the student. On this episode, he shares his insights about their different programs and how they’re making education more accessible to people without having to carry that huge financial burden themselves.
Oct 02, 2018•59 min•Transcript available on Metacast Moving from Atlanta to the Bay Area, from being a writer, artist, to mathematician, David Harris completed App Academy and became a software engineer. By combining hard work and the power of networking, David ultimately landed a full-time job at Omada Health. In this episode, David talks about his struggles and how he hustled his way to success. He’s also dishing out a ton of resources you can use whether you’re preparing for a bootcamp or prepping for an interview. David is the brother of Ruben...
Sep 20, 2018•2 hr 46 min•Transcript available on Metacast In 2017, Iris Nevins decided to leave her work as a teacher in Florida to attend a bootcamp in the Bay Area - but it was not without its own struggles. Iris believes that when you’re on your path, no matter the road blocks, serendipitous things will happen. In 2018, Iris landed a job as a software engineer at MailChimp, an Atlanta-based marketing automation platform (although Iris works remotely in Oakland). Quick trivia: MailChimp sends out a whopping billion emails per day! Iris is also the fo...
Sep 12, 2018•2 hr 37 min•Transcript available on Metacast Galvanize and Hack Reactor have now merged to become bigger and better in the bootcamp space. With the merger, Shawn who is the Cofounder of Hack Reactor and a returning guest on the Podcast, is now serving as SVP of Strategy and Innovation. Galvanize has eight campuses across the U.S. including San Francisco, Seattle, Phoenix, Austin, Denver (2), Boulder, and New York City. They're primarily engaged in immersive education, enterprise work, and co-working. Hack Reactor is one of the largest codi...
Sep 02, 2018•52 min•Transcript available on Metacast Ryan Carson is the Founder and CEO of Treehouse. He grew up in Colorado and is currently in Portland. Today, he talks about the future of education, work, and more! Treehouse is an online school that teaches adults how to code and build apps so they gain a super power. Running for 8 years now, they've taught over 850,000 people how to code, with currently 80,000 enrolled students. Their mission is simple: to change lives through rebooting the talent pipeline in America and the world!
Aug 28, 2018•34 min•Transcript available on Metacast 
