Ruben Harris is the CEO of Career Karma, an app-based platform that helps prospective bootcamp students prepare to attend job training programs and helps those programs find qualified applicants. Ruben is also the Co-Host of Breaking into Startups, a podcast dedicated to helping people up-level their careers by finding and excelling in roles in technology startups.
Rick O’Donnell is the CEO of Skills Fund, a financing platform that helps students fund their education exclusively at schools that provide a positive return on education. Rick is a tireless entrepreneur and civil servant who has founded multiple social and for-profit ventures rooted in making American lives better.
Julie Margetta Morgan is the Co-founder and Executive Director of the Great Democracy Initiative. She is also a Fellow at the Roosevelt Institute. She previously served as a senior counsel to Senator Elizabeth Warren, a senior program officer at the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, and in multiple roles at the Center for American Progress.
RC is the Director of Engineering for the Indeed Incubator, an internal venture capital-like program innovating new products for Indeed. Currently the Incubator is growing 12+ products across Austin, Tokyo and Seattle. RC has been managing software engineering teams for 10+ years and has his finger on the pulse of what employers are looking for in engineering talent.
Will Sentance is co-founder and CEO at Codesmith – a software engineering and machine learning residency based in Los Angeles, New York, and Oxford. He is the creator of Icecomm, the most famous developer platform for P2P video and data communication. Before Codesmith, Will was CEO at Ownly and a Software Engineer at Gem. Will graduated from Oxford University and Harvard University.
Lauren Ellisberg is the Compliance and Government Relations Officer at Coding Dojo, a bootcamp based out of Seattle, Washington. Lauren has focused her career on the crossroads of law and technology, finding her niche navigating the nuanced regulatory arena while bridging fast paced techies and compliance.
Brooke Valle is the Strategy Officer for the San Diego Workforce Partnership and has been actively engaged in the development of the Workforce ISA fund. Brooke leads the organization’s strategic planning, business process transformation and policymaker education efforts. Prior to SDWP, Brooke consulted for federal agencies to help implement innovative solutions to tough issues such as consular affairs, international law enforcement, narcotics, and the intelligence community.
John Ware has been the Executive Director of the Ohio State Board of Career Colleges and Schools since 1997 and is responsible for the oversight and regulation of Ohio's 250 career colleges and schools. John is also active on many state and national education organizations and initiatives. Prior to joining the Board of Career Colleges and Schools, John served as an Ohio Assistant Attorney General for education, representing numerous state education entities including the Ohio Board of Regents and the Ohio Department of Education.
Lorna Candler is the Director of the Division of Private Occupational Schools (DPOS) with the Colorado Department of Higher Education. Ms. Candler has been an attorney for over 20 years and has served the state by overseeing for-profit and non-profit private occupational education. She is also serving her first term as Vice President on the National Association of School Administrators & Supervisors of Private Schools (NASASPS) Board of Directors.
Mel McGee is the Founder and CEO of We Can Code IT, winner of multiple awards, and software engineer with over 20 years of professional experience. Mel’s love of cutting-edge computing and focus on modern tech mentorship and training has been featured in multiple books, articles, and media. We Can Code IT champions social equity through technology by offering accelerated training in software and web development through coding boot camps.
It’s often said bootcamps are really competing with graduate schools in terms of student demographics. Law, MBA, and teacher Masters' degrees are ripe for disruption given cost and duration. What about undergrad students? What if state colleges and universities are free; what happens with liberal arts schools and for-profit schools? Should bootcamps move into other 21st century skilled trades? Where is the bootcamp model iterating to next?
Are For-Profit Bootcamps Avoiding or Headed Straight Toward the Problems that Tripped up Traditional For-Profit Higher Ed?
Can one bad actor ruin the bootcamp brand? What about recent state AG enforcement actions? Do significant truth in marketing / advertising problems exist? Ongoing regulatory / licensure issues? Can for-profit bootcamps save for-profit education (are they avoiding the for-profit tarnish)? Is Title IV a savior or killer? In a nutshell, for-profit education often has a target on it from members of the media, state regulators, federal policymakers, and think tank activists; how big is the target on bootcamps?
Many early, entrepreneur-founded bootcamps somewhat notoriously first learned about the importance of state regulation when they received cease-and-desist letters from state regulators. As bootcamps push the innovation envelope, from accelerated learning models to offering job guarantees to reporting student outcomes to offering ISAs, how can they best navigate state regulatory policies that not only are different state to state but in some cases seem designed for a different type of school or different era in higher education?
Three tech education leaders with similar experiences inside large, multi-state bootcamps have found ways to make bootcamps more impactful at the local level. Today, their schools, students and local tech communities are thriving. From recruiting students, to raising capital, to navigating regulation, how did they get there, and what can their experience tell us about the next generation of bootcamps serving broad sections of the country outside the top 20 metro areas?
Bootcamps and their lending partners get asked about gov't funding all the time, but there seems to be a disconnect as few bootcamps want it but gov't seems to be pushing it. And should bootcamps even be considered post-secondary programs rather than workforce development programs more appropriately funded by the Labor Department than Department of Education?
Employer needs constantly change. Bootcamp substitutes (traditional comp sci program) continue to evolve. As labor and education markets evolve, partly in response to the emergence of bootcamps over the last decade, are accelerated learning programs adapting quickly enough to stay relevant long-term?
Local workforce funding – and for underserved populations additional funds for wraparound services– seems like a natural source of student tuition funding for bootcamps, yet many schools report it’s surprising difficult to make headway in establishing partnerships. What are the keys to unlocking and scaling workforce funding to serve more students?
We have a block of rooms reserved at the South Congress Hotel. Please call the hotel (512-920-6405) and ask for the HIR(ED) Summit Room Rate or visit this link and enter “hired” in the group rate field, select your dates, and reserve your room.
If the South Congress Hotel isn’t your speed, within walking distance you’ll find a plethora of Liz Lambert hotels at all price points:
Hotel San Jose, hipster moderate
Austin Motel, hipster budget
Hotel Saint Cecilia, movie and music star lux
Just across the bridge from SoCo (i.e., and easy 10 minute scooter ride away) are dozens of major hotels in downtown Austin.
The HIR(ED) Summit – pronounced "hired" not "higher ed" ;) – is a stakeholder leadership convening of the accelerated learning aka bootcamp industry, which barely existed seven years ago and this year will graduate nearly 40,000 students in software engineering, cybersecurity, data science, and other 21st century skills. Senior state and federal government officials, leading employers, and dozens of school CEOs and investors will be participating.