“We have hired a bunch of folks from his
programs,” Karl Sprules, who leads technology
and operations for AllianceBernstein, said. “We
like what he is doing.”
The “he” Sprules describes is John Wark, a laid-
back and unassuming tech entrepreneur who
formed the program in 2012. After helping
create multiple tech businesses and taking a
Southern California tech company public, Wark
moved to Nashville in 2005. As a local mentor
to entrepreneurs and an adjunct professor
at Belmont University, Wark recognized the
difficulty that local businesses were facing in
finding enough skilled software developers.
While many Nashville business leaders were
focused on addressing the issue through K-12
education or by recruiting from other cities,
Wark decided to pursue another strategy —
build a vocational school that would teach
entry-level coding skills without the tuition and
time demands of a college or associate degree.
“This shortage exists everywhere. We’ve got to
home-grow,” Wark said. “We had a big pool of
bright people with the aptitude to do this work,
who just needed a pathway.”
Today, there are about 100 students at the
school’s current campus at Tech Hill Commons,
and nearly 800 people have graduated. Students
with laptops gather around tables to work
on coding projects and build skills in web
development and data science that they hope
will lead to meaningful jobs in the fast-growing
tech sector. The school offers full-time classes
during the day and part-time classes at night
as it seeks to connect students to jobs and
to connect employers to a pipeline of much-
needed tech workers.
antfer
(Antfer)
#1