How the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals brought Rocio Lopez into the startup world
6:30 am PDT • October 4, 2017
East Palo Alto was the number one murder capital in the nation, despite being in the heart of Silicon Valley. This is where, Rocio Lopez, a DREAMer and a Product…
How sales took Ysiad Ferreiras from gang violence in the Bronx to Silicon Valley
7:35 pm PDT • May 31, 2017
Silicon Valley has very few executives that have a LatinX background, and today’s Breaking Into Startups Episode features a young Dominican from the Bronx named Ysiad Ferreiras that survived gang violence, became an engineer, and is…
How culinary school and gaming helped former teacher Mannah Kallon land a career in coding
6:30 pm PDT • May 21, 2017
It was Mannah Kallon’s love for food and gaming that ignited the former chef’s career in coding. During culinary school and on a tour of the South (which he’ll discuss in our…
How Free Code Camp has attracted 1 million students and harnessed coding education for nonprofits
5:30 pm PDT • April 11, 2017
On today’s Breaking Into Startups episode, Harris interviews Quincy Larson, the founder of Free Code Camp.
Startups
How Everette Taylor went from a homeless college dropout to chief marketing officer at Skurt
12:30 pm PDT • March 23, 2017
There are roughly 58,000 homeless students on college campuses in the United States (according to the National Association for the Education of Homeless Children and Youth [NAEHCY] and Free Application for…
At 50, Dev Bootcamp’s Michael Jay Walker quit his day job to learn coding with kids in their twenties
12:30 am PDT • March 22, 2017
Companies are increasingly investing in workforce development to retrain their employees, but if you’re in your 50’s, it can be intimidating to learn how to code with a bunch of…
Stevon Cook went from public housing to empowering public schools through tech training
4:30 pm PDT • March 19, 2017
There are roughly 22,000 tech companies in San Francisco, yet most local high school students have never set foot in one. Most don’t even know what a “startup” or a…
Startups
How The Last Mile helped Kenyatta Leal walk from prison in San Quentin to a job in tech
12:30 pm PST • March 10, 2017
Prison spending is 5x more than higher education, and ~10 percent of the U.S. prison population is in California. Part of the reason why people return to prison after they are…
Breaking Into Startups: How a 16-year-old dropout became a senior engineer at Slack
6:35 am PST • February 28, 2017
This week’s Breaking Into Startups episode features Rodney Urqhart, who talks about how he acquired the skills to become a Senior Engineer at Slack after he dropped out of high…
How a political strategist and former NAACP advisor became Silicon Valley’s Olivia Pope
5:30 pm PST • February 23, 2017
People in government are organizers and hustlers with deep industry knowledge and skills that are applicable across a variety of roles in tech.
Startups
Breaking Into Startups: How Divine broke the cycle of recidivism to become a leader in criminal justice reform
5:00 am PST • February 13, 2017
When people are released from prison, it is often hard for them to reintegrate into society because of their “criminal” history. To that end, finding a job is almost impossible…
From teen mom to tech maven, Rita Henderson has broken the mold
3:30 pm PST • February 9, 2017
We all read the daunting statistics about single motherhood and teen pregnancy, but we don’t always get to read stories that humanize the individuals going through these experiences. As we…
Breaking into startups: Idalin Bobe’s journey from North Philly to ThoughtWorks
5:30 am PST • February 6, 2017
Over Black History Month TechCrunch is working with the Breaking Into Startups Podcast to share stories of innovators making a difference. The podcast is a platform that features inspiring stories…
