Before starting her journey with Momentum, Jocelyn was working as a federal paralegal at an immigration office. She was passionate about immigration, but also had an interest in coding and had taken a few courses already, but wasn’t sure what her next steps should be.
Jocelyn had always been an incredible student and graduated from high school with honors, but when it came to the next steps after graduation, a personal situation made her ineligible for in-state tuition, which made going to a 4-year university very difficult. Unsure of what her next step should be, she worked several jobs while also attending Wake Tech part-time. It was a lot to juggle, and Jocelyn was searching for her next move.
It was around this time that Jocelyn found Code the Dream – a non-profit organization that offers computer programming classes to people from low-income and diverse backgrounds. Through Code the Dream, Jocelyn learned Ruby on Rails and even worked on staff for a time.
It was during her next role as a federal paralegal at an immigration office that Jocelyn heard about Momentum. She was contacted by Code the Dream who had heard about a scholarship opportunity that Jocelyn seemed to be a perfect fit for. Pendo.io, a Raleigh-based data software company had identified some roles in their organization where they could create opportunities for people from underrepresented backgrounds just coming into the workforce. Pendo was piloting a student sponsorship program with Momentum where Pendo would sponsor a student through the Momentum program, and the student would receive a job offer upon successful completion of the bootcamp.
Many rounds of rigorous interviews later – including one with Pendo’s CEO, Jocelyn remembers getting the call from Pendo like it was yesterday. She had gotten the sponsorship.
“I can’t even begin to describe in words what I was feeling in that moment…I finally felt like this was my chance – this was my opportunity.”
As Jocelyn progressed through the Momentum program, there were definitely ups and downs. It had been a while since she had done any type of coding, and she still felt like she was in a college mindset of memorizing information to be later tested on. She quickly realized that this mindset wouldn’t serve her well as an engineer.
“I’ve realized that at times it’s more important to be able to explain how you got a solution than providing the solution itself. The climb to the “top” is a continual rising spiral with new problems always coming up and new processes that you have to learn to fall in love with. The final product isn’t the finish line but the journey you take to get there is the gold gem you need to continue creating new final products.”
For Jocelyn, the Momentum community was extremely critical to her success. She felt supported and not afraid to ask questions at every step of the way, and is still very close to not only her Momentum cohort, but many other Momentum alumni.
“We all came from different backgrounds but that only made it even more incredible because we had a group of people who all had the same goal and passion, coding!”
Fast forward 2 years later, Jocelyn is thriving in her role Pendo.io. Jocelyn has served as a mentor to many new developers at Pendo, and even a few other Momentum grads who have joined the Pendo team. Jocelyn feels more empowered than ever to voice her opinion and be vocal about improvements she sees that can be made to benefit the business. Plus, she was recently promoted to Senior Technical Engineer.
“She’s such an integral part of the team and is always chiming in to help others with complex problems, brainstorming sessions, and looking at difficult issues from a unique perspective. She constantly strives to bring the team together in fun and unique ways and we can always count on her to be available to collaborate or share ideas.”
- Brandon Miller, Senior Technical Success Engineer at Pendo.io
Jocelyn loves that she’s continuously learning on the job, and is always having to solve new problems. Jocelyn has been able to use a lot of different apps, which have been all new to her since she started at Pendo. She also directly works with problem-solving for different Pendo customers, constantly troubleshooting when the product isn’t working for customers the way they want it to.
As for advice, what Jocelyn would suggest to someone considering taking a course at Momentum?
“If you don’t believe in yourself, no one else will. Take the risk, dive in, and embrace the journey.”
