OpsLens Deck of 52 Most Wanted Post 9/11 Frontline Leaders
In 2018, as a spin-off and salute to the original 2003 deck of 52 Most Wanted playing cards, let’s honor post 9/11 frontline leaders here at home. Once a week, for 52 weeks this year, OpsLens will post a card highlighting one of the 52 Most Wanted Post 9/11 Frontline Leaders. You’ll learn the top facts about their business or organization, as well as why they made the list, which comes down to impact, scalability, health, and unique value proposition.
I encourage you to look for these weekly updates, share the card with your network, and support or buy the products and services they offer. See the 52 Most Wanted Post 9/11 Frontline Leaders launch story here.
10 of Diamonds | Vets Who Code
Approximately 250,000 service members are leaving the military every year, starting new jobs, seeking education and/or new skill set training. This was the case for U.S. Air Force veteran Jerome Hardaway, who stumbled into his journey to become a software engineer when he took a marketing job to pay the bills, and was asked to update a website. He had never done that before—but he needed this first job, and figured he would figure it out. That’s exactly what he did—and he was good at it! Moreover, he enjoyed it! Jerome’s transition story could have been labeled successful at that point, but he decided to make it his mission to help other veterans break into web development and help fill the nation’s technical skills gap with America’s best. In 2014, he founded the nonprofit Vets Who Code, which builds squad-size classes of veterans into programmers by offering a 14-week cohort (twice a year), where they virtually learn JavaScript in the evenings (the most popular computer language in the world). Like Jerome, every member on the Vets Who Code team has a high-level day job in the industry, and the veterans who go through the cohort are supported with further resources and mentors beyond their training.
This high-touch transition service has worked with over 120 veterans; this may seem like a small number, but their impact is mighty because the focus is quality, not quantity. It’s not their goal to help code schools with their bottom line by feeding them troops with the GI Bill. Jerome’s team fundraises, is committed to each student, and puts skill training at the forefront, which translates into a deeper understanding of code, better resources, and opportunities to interact with high-level experts in the field, all of which is provided at zero charge to the veteran. As Jerome has learned, “This industry doesn’t care about your service so much as if you can do the job. Being a coder is more sport than academic. You must have skills training, and that’s no different from being a good marksman.” It’s a testament to the brand that Silicon Valley experts not only jump at the chance to zoom in and talk with Vets Who Code students (for instance, the VP for Google Cloud spoke two weeks ago), but Jerome has been invited to speak at Facebook and was one of 50 invited to the White House by President Obama for Tech Demo Day, recognizing leaders impacting both social and civic good.
Vets Who Code is a frontline leader that should be on your list of most wanted nonprofits to support in 2018.
Frontline Leader (Founder(s)): Jerome Hardaway.
Name of Company/Organization: Vets Who Code, founded 2014.
Location: Nashville, Tennessee (however, the Internet is home base, so their reach is worldwide).
Post 9/11 Service Connection: U.S. Air Force (Security Forces, Phoenix Raven).
Tours of Duty: Iraq, Afghanistan, Korea, other.
One sentence tagline & mission statement: Retool. Retrain. Relaunch.
Company / organization website: https://www.vetswhocode.io/
