Jeanette grew up the child of immigrants in Los Angeles – the first in her family to go to school in the United States. She’s always wanted to have a successful career, but didn’t know what kind of work she’d feel good doing. She was looking for jobs she’d care about, and not finding them.
“I was kind of exploring everything because so many of the professional careers I considered were not of interest to me. It was never ‘hey, I want to do this specifically so I tried to explore different avenues and I ended up in business because that seemed like a good general field.”
She found herself working in sales, which wasn’t a bad job but she quickly learned wasn’t for her. “I felt like I was kind of at a dead end in my career, which was funny because I had just started,” Jeanette said. “So I decided to look again, pivoting to find something that I could be passionate about.”
The problem: Pivoting would mean getting new skills, maybe even going back to school. How could she do that?
“That’s when I found Calbright, and Calbright was the motivation I needed to be able to pivot into a different industry,” she said. She enrolled in Calbright’s Data Analysis program, and started to feel passionate about the career opportunities in front of her.
It wasn’t just the classes though, she said. Through Calbright, she was able to enroll in “micro-internships” – paid projects she did for real companies, getting work experience, and meeting colleagues who also became mentors.
“That was eye opening,” Jeanette said. “I had to deal with large amounts of data, cleaning data logs across four or five programs, then figuring out how to work with the information on spreadsheets. It was very supportive and very helpful and guided me to what I wanted to do. And the building blocks just kind of fell into place.” Those real-world internships helped make it clear: this was a career she wanted to pursue.
That wasn’t all. While still studying at Calbright Jeanette got a contract to work on the data operations team of a nonprofit: her first job working with data. “I was able to apply everything that I was learning, it really helped me succeed,” she said. “Calbright’s courses gave me a great introduction to this role, got me comfortable talking about data, so it was easy to make that transition into industry.”
After completing her course at Calbright, Jeanette was contacted by a recruiter at Honda, and applied for the role.
“I was able to leverage all the experience that I had from Calbright, from my internships, and from my job at the nonprofit to be a great candidate for the role,” she said. “I met with my career counselor at Calbright, we went over my resume and that was a huge help. I was able to include keywords based on my experience to be able to match what was asked on the job description and ended up getting the job, and that’s where I am now.”
But for all that she now has with a job and a career that she wants, Jeanette also plans to stay involved with Calbright. Why stick around the College now that her career is on track?
“Honestly, I think it’s a sense of community,” she said. “The connections I’ve made from being a student and then an intern and then being involved in some of the events here have made it so that I want to stay involved. This is kind of like my little family remotely that helped me pivot. So I feel like I almost have a duty to give back and stay connected.”
As she works at her new job, Jeanette is also now a peer tutor at Calbright, a paid position where she gets to support students currently enrolled in the Data Analysis program. “It makes me a better communicator, and a better leader, because I’m guiding students through the assignment, the data analysis curriculum and motivating them to continue and to finish the program. I really enjoy it.”
That’s the passion she was looking for.
