Cintia loved her life in Silver Lake, but she had been working in restaurants all over Los Angeles for over 10 years. It was time for a change.
“I really, really, really wanted to get out of the restaurant industry because you’re always on your feet and you’re working weekends and it’s just a lot,” she said. “Working in hospitality kept me afloat, but I was working 24/7, teaching yoga on the side, and making about $50,000 a year. It was enough to be okay for a while, but I needed a more regular schedule and to increase my income.”
She had applied for many jobs in the public health field, without any luck, despite a degree and an internship under her belt. “I realized very quickly that I needed to change direction, because the demand for technical jobs was high and the salaries were way higher,” she said. “Data analysis seemed like a great choice.”
She enrolled in a 5-month data analytics boot camp and loved working with data – but she felt like she needed more time to process what she was learning, more practice, and to build confidence.
“Boot camps are very intense, it was like a five day per week type thing, and I was working at a restaurant, doing a lot of things, I didn’t really have the capacity to go through the program that quickly,” Cintia said. A fellow boot camp student she admired had just enrolled in Calbright, and told Cintia about it. “And when I heard about it, I said ‘oh, that sounds perfect for me! I can take my time!’”
Calbright’s Data Analysis program was what Cintia was looking for to advance her job skills and goals. “Calbright reinforced some concepts that I had not fully understood previously. It gave me the opportunity to practice. Through the internship I got at Calbright, I’ve had countless opportunities to apply what I had learned and to collaborate with others. Cleaning data, analyzing it, visualizing it, and presenting my insights to the Calbright research team was crucial to my becoming a more well-rounded analyst. And I could do it all on my schedule, and it didn’t cost me anything.”
But the most important thing “was being able to see a counselor, to get help and advice about my studies and my career whenever I wanted to,” Cintia said. “This college really cares about supporting students and building a community, and giving opportunities to people who haven’t had them. ”
That human connection was especially important to Cintia. “I’ve had a lot of insecurities around not being a technical person from the start, or not being a numbers person,” she said. “But Calbright’s not like YouTube classes: Calbright gives you the content and they give you the support to learn it. You have instructors, you can have access to tutors if you need to, you have a whole support system.”
She also got an internship at Calbright, getting paid to work with real data for real projects. “It was a very valuable experience, and I got to speak on our project and do a 30-minute presentation.”
After completing her program, she began her job search again – and with Calbright’s support, moved into a new job in a whole new industry. She’s now a Customer Relationship Management Coordinator for a hospitality company that focuses on digital marketing to reach its clients.
“Having the constant practice, attending meetings, knowing how to communicate in the business or organizational setting – the more you do these things, the more proficient you become at doing that. So I think that having that support and having the projects I’d done made me feel so much more confident.I didn’t feel ready for the workplace right out of the bootcamp, but I became a lot more confident as I got through my program at Calbright.”
She’s also noticed a difference in the way people treat her professionally.
“When you have a certificate like this, people will see you with different eyes. Whether you have a bachelor’s degree or not, whether you went to high school only but then go through Calbright’s IT Support program or Data Analysis or Medical Coding, the skills you gain are valued. That’s something I didn’t know until I had this certificate. Because I know for sure after getting my certificate at Calbright, it’s been completely different. People treat me like I know so much more, which I do. You get opportunities and into spaces you wouldn’t have gotten into if you didn’t have the program.”
