Don Bora, Code Platoon Advocate Spotlight

Code Platoon owes much of its success to volunteers, donors, board members, and others who contribute for the mission of supporting veterans and technology.

This month, we recognize Don Bora, a volunteer board member for Code Platoon. Don’s insights from within the tech community have enabled Code Platoon to provide the best education possible for our students. In addition, Don and his company, Eight Bit Studios, have actively supported Code Platoon for projects like student videos and even a podcast about our executive team.

Thank you for being an advocate of Code Platoon, Don Bora!

About Don Bora

Don has been a professional software developer in Chicago since 1990 and has had the great fortune to work at many types of companies employing varied technologies.

After benefiting so much from his beloved city, Don decided to give back to the Chicago community. He sought out opportunities to lend his experience to those who might benefit. He began mentoring at the Founder Institute and then The Code Academy. In the summer of 2011, Don co-founded The Mobile Makers Academy and was the lead instructor, ushering much needed iOS development talent into new careers. Don also mentored at Dev Bootcamp.

Don has been an outspoken advocate for women in tech, and in general, seeks to bridge the tech employment gap by exposing the fun and creative side of programming. He frequently mentors both high school and college students who display an interest in technology and coding. Don is also a partner and co-founder of Eight Bit Studios. He loves meeting new developers, seeing their tremendous potential, and giving them the opportunity to be great.

Don Bora in his own words

I’d always been interested in military service. I had thought about joining when I was in high school, but the timing was never right for me mentally. And so, finding a way to give back to that community that I respect so much was just fantastic for me.

I think one of the things I bring to the table with Code Platoon as a board member is previous experience with a boot camp. I co founded Mobile Makers, a boot camp for mobile app development in 2012. That got me through some really, really rough patches. With students, with learning how to teach, with learning how to deal with placement issues and ongoing curriculum. And really, run a boot camp for long times. I think that I’m able to bring that experience to Rod and to the board to kind of keep top of mind the fact that we’ve got students in our care. That we’re beholden to them and their future careers, and there’s quite a lot at stake when it comes to what they’re going to do next.

So, every once in a while, I get lucky enough to be invited to come and talk to the students. Maybe Jon will have me come in and run a workshop. Or, one time, they asked me to mentor, which was a great honor and so much fun. It does me a world of good to help people who are really hungry to learn what they’re being taught. For me, it’s a mission thing. I really think everyone can code. I don’t think I’m special, or anybody who’s been doing it as long as I have, is anything special. Anybody can learn it if they’ve got the grit and determination to sit down and really learn the skills. So whenever I see anybody putting in that effort, I feel driven to help get them over the finish line.

You’ve got very few boot camps that are mission driven like Code Platoon. In fact I don’t think I know any in Chicago that are mission driven. So that makes it really stand out, and really something special. Code Platoon, what we’ve decided to do is look at the marketplace with the other technical board members, and understand what the market need is, see where it’s going, see what’s maybe going out of fashion, what’s coming in to fashion. The jobs that are hot, the jobs that are kind of not right now, and really retune the whole program to go to where the technology is going. And it’s really a credit to John as well, for taking up that mantel and learning the new technologies as they come out. It’s really impressive to see a bootcamp do that.

So I’m one of the co founders, and I help run Eight Bit Studios. I run the technology team. And, we employ about, I would say, about 80% of our technology team comes from a bootcamp. Something I’m really, really proud of. And we’re able to grow people’s careers and help them find a different path. And man, when they find that path on their own and they come to us out of a bootcamp, they are hard workers. They have found something as adults that they want to do, and it changes the game completely for them. It’s fantastic.