Careers in Code Student Success Stories: Elizabeth Metcalf
Careers in Code Student Success Stories is a series focused on our coding bootcamp graduates. We’re following their progress in the six months after graduation to learn about projects they’re working on, job placements, and other exciting updates. Our first cohort graduated in August 2019.
When Elizabeth Metcalf joined Careers in Code in March 2019, she was working as an AmeriCorps*VISTA service member at Cooperative Federal, an innovative, Syracuse-based credit union dedicated to social justice and financial inclusion.
She hoped that her time in the coding bootcamp would give her the skills to be an independent consultant and support herself fully through software development jobs. She also intended to provide lower-priced services to under-resourced nonprofits that make a big impact in their community.
So where is Elizabeth now, four months out of the program?
Right before graduation, Elizabeth was excited to accept a contract position where she could utilize her web development skills at a small nonprofit. She manages multiple Wordpress websites, engages Salesforce CRM for agency development purposes, and works with Mailchimp for the company newsletter.
“My Careers in Code knowledge combined with my previous experience in nonprofits enabled me to navigate through organizational and technical hurdles to produce meaningful outcomes in a really short time.”
“I’ve always been conceptually intrigued about combining genomics and blockchain technology. Prior to Careers in Code, I had zero skills in coding, let alone the skills needed to understand or explain a decentralized, distributed ledger.
I was familiar with blockchain technology and had experimented with cryptocurrency, but I had no idea how to move biomedical information to ‘blocks’ as it were, though I’m making progress toward the goal. I recently got closer, given my interest in engaging biochemical data to empower novel health products and results.”
Thanks to the skills she developed in Careers in Code, Elizabeth has been able to dive into an open source project that’s able to utilize almost 50gb of raw scholarly research data to produce usable information by scraping data and processing it through an NLP (Natural Language Processing) library.
“I’ve never had such fun in my life,” she said.
Currently, Elizabeth is using connections made during the coding bootcamp to set up a website development agency called CuseCode.com. She is partnering with an instructor from the program to make Wordpress websites for small businesses in the greater Syracuse area.
“What sets us apart is our simple up-front pricing of $500 per site. Not only does this give me an opportunity to continue to expand and reinforce my skills, it’s a rewarding way to help the community get online. We’re currently looking for clients to build out our portfolio.”
