Mary Awodele boasts an impressive career in tech. She started as a specialized systems administrator and had roles as a ServiceNow engineer and business analyst. She received a promotion as a tech consultant, but she has her eyes set on the Head of People Operations role.
Undoubtedly, with her in-demand skills and expertise, she is highly qualified for any position. She holds certifications in database, cybersecurity cloud, and software.
She had many industry colleagues asking her for advice and seeking her out for tech job opportunities during her tech career. She decided to launch a business to address the demand.
In September 2020, Awodele founded MyTechBestfriend academy, which focuses on career development, résumé review, and certification instruction.
Once clients complete the boot camps, they attain gainful employment within four months, with high-paying salaries at companies like Pinterest, Playstation, Salesforce, and Amazon, to name a few.
I am super excited to announce that a Black Tech organization has donated $50,000 to MyTechbestfriends scholarship fund to sponsor students for full and partial students in 2022 & yes this will be applicable to all 4 quarters
🎉🥳🥲😳— Mary ✨ (@Girasol_Mary) December 30, 2021
Due to the success of her clients, Awodele offered additional courses and training. The academy now has instructions for 12 IT certifications in Oracle, ITIL, AWS, Azure, Splunk, ServiceNow, and Salesforce, according to its website.
“I want to help minorities secure high-paying careers and increase minority wealth,” Awodele said to AfroTech. “There are a lot of jobs out here in web development, regular software developers, or cybersecurity. Within each of those areas, there are so many niche spaces and so much more talent. You can maximize your salary within those unconventional spaces. Getting people into unconventional careers in the tech space to increase their demand, make them super competitive, and increasing minority wealth, particularly within Black homes, is the main focus.”
A Statista report reveals that tech companies have only 22% of talent that are minorities.
MyTechBestfriend accepts clients quarterly and offers new courses each term. Future clients can expect upcoming boot camps in cybersecurity (Q2), data analytics (Q3), an account executive (Q4), according to the course catalogs.
Tuition is between $4,000 to $5,000; however, for those experiencing financial hardship, the academy offers scholarships provided by Black In Technology.
“Despite the tuition being affordable, there are still people in general that just can’t. The scholarship will help people land better jobs and change generations. That is very rewarding to improve more people’s lives,” Awodele said.