Hi, I’m Kit, and Calbright is helping me enter into a new, exciting phase of my life.

I grew up in Hong Kong, and got my education there – that was the first part of my life. Then I moved to Germany for work and later started my family. I lived there for many years, and worked there in the IT industry in product management, sales and marketing and later became a business owner. But much of my husband’s family lives in North America, and so we were visiting it all the time. When we were in the U.S., especially California, my husband, my daughter and I all loved the culture and the weather. Whenever we came here, we were very relaxed and happy, and it has such a sense of potential. I feel like I have many more opportunities here than elsewhere. So when the chance came up for us to move to California, I said yes! We could do that!

This is now the third act of my life, my daughter’s getting older and I want to do something different than supporting our family’s business. It’s a chance for me to launch another career. I want to do that. It really motivates me and keeps me going. But at first, I didn’t know how.

I was thinking of transitioning into a more technical field like data science or cybersecurity, and I took some data science courses on Coursera. But I realized that I’m not much of a coding person, and the courses were really dry. Cybersecurity still looked interesting, though. I looked into some boot camps, but they were so expensive! Thousands of dollars. But as I looked for ways I could take classes in cybersecurity, I found Calbright. 

I was surprised to see that everything at Calbright is free of charge. It was hard to believe at first, but it’s true. Then I learned that Calbright is self-paced, which was perfect for me. I’m trying to get back to work in a field I love, I have a daughter and I need flexibility. So I enrolled in the IT Support program.

I’ve taken a lot of classes, I’m a lifelong learner, and what I like so much about Calbright is that it has such a holistic approach. That’s different from other self-paced courses I took. The support at Calbright is exceptional. You have the instructors, you have the course tutors, you also have the career counselors who help you write your resume, you have the success counselor who you can talk with about your progress, you have the Slack channels where you can talk with student communities. It was easy to find support and mentors. They were always available. It’s been such an enriching experience.

I completed my course and then the IT certification exams. Now I’ve just re-enrolled in Calbright’s cybersecurity course, and I’m even a peer tutor for students in the IT program.  

It’s all been an amazing experience. I’ve sent the Calbright link to many of my friends. I’ve been encouraging them to enroll! Because the courses are free you really have nothing to lose. But, I do tell them this, if you want to finish the courses and pass the exams you have to be dedicated. You don’t need to spend money, but will you spend the time? Are you serious about it? I would recommend for anyone to take Calbright courses if they’re serious about learning new skills and eventually transitioning into a new career.