Amani Walker sat in bed watching TV last year when she had a realization.
She had been working as a barista, but fractured her elbow on the job. As she recovered, she considered ways to use the spare time to alter her professional trajectory.
Walker asked her mom for ideas, and she soon learned about a program that was free for D.C. residents at Carlos Rosario International Charter School.
She earned a certification, and then earlier this year, an instructor at the Academy of Hope Adult Public Charter School recommended that she apply for a new apprenticeship program at the University of the District of Columbia.
Through a new partnership with PeopleShores and Accenture, the university opened a new Cybersecurity Tech Hub at its Congress Heights campus. The yearlong program offers paid training and real-world experience, with the goal of establishing a pathway to a job.
Now, as part of the program, Walker is taking steps toward her goal of becoming an ethical hacker.
“Who fractures their arm and has a whole career change?” Walker said. “But that was it. I was literally just in bed. What can I do?”
The program includes almost four months of training in cybersecurity, and nine months of real-world project experience with Accenture staff. Apprentices get paid and earn benefits, and have opened doors toward getting a job.
Walker, for one, has been motivated by the desire to help her family. She wants to encourage her 12-year-old brother jump-start his career and ensure her family members don’t have to live paycheck to paycheck.
“Being from a family currently, who is suffering from poverty and things of that nature, I’m like, ‘something is going to change, and I’m going to be the one to change it,’” Walker said.
Joshua Hawkins has similar motivations. When he graduated from high school, he became a massage therapist. But he wanted to create a better financial life for his family, so he started learning about and searching for cybersecurity roles. He spent a year looking, which resulted in ‘a bunch of rejection letters in your Gmail inbox,’” he said.
The professor, who is teaching a free course he enrolled in, recommended he consider the program at the Tech Hub. A month after applying, he got a call back saying he had been accepted.
“Now that I’ve got people that I’ve got to take care of and feed, and be there emotionally, I’ve got to support and I’ve got to show them that they can reach education too,” Hawkins said. “Basically, I’m breaking generational curses.”
Hawkins grew up across the street from the university’s Congress Heights campus. He said not taking steps to create a better path would have come with consequences.
“I see people strung out on drugs,” Hawkins said. “It can be poverty, violence, mental health issues. It can be anything.”
Hawkins said he likes to study policies, framework and structures, and his own studies revealed how “irresponsible I am with my own data online.”
He viewed his experience leading up to the apprentice program as a test “to see if I’m going to give up.”
Walker is an aspiring ethical hacker, a “hacker that works for the good guys,” she said.
“It’s important for people to know that nothing that they think about or dream of is unreachable and unattainable,” Walker said. “If you have a goal, strive for it.”
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