Stephanie Lentell starts her day at 5 a.m. An Air Force Veteran, military spouse, and mom to four children, Stephanie wants to pivot from a teaching career to the technology sector. But because of her family responsibilities, she was unsure if she could make time for or afford a career change. 

“I ruled out a full-time program because I have four kids between six and fourteen years old, and my husband is in his own full-time program,” Stephanie said. “One of my kids is medically complex. When the nurse calls, I need to go. I need the flexibility to be present for my family while doing something for myself.”

Stephanie helps her children get ready and drops them off at school. She then tackles the housework. Her husband, a recently retired Navy Senior Chief, is also home undergoing a career change. 

“When my husband retired from the Navy, I was going to work,” Stephanie said. “But the Covid-19 pandemic obliterated my teaching prospects. Schools were locked down, my kids needed to stay home, and education became an unpredictable and increasingly stressful career path. I had to figure out what to do.”

Stephanie always enjoyed technology. So she decided to pursue a new career in tech. After trying some workshops, she discovered the coding world to be challenging and exhilarating. She taught herself the fundamentals of HTML, CSS, and JavaScript. Then she decided to join a remote coding Bootcamp.

“I decided to apply for the Code Platoon Evening and Weekend Program, but I missed the deadline for Bravo Platoon,” Stephanie said. “I emailed (Greg Drobny, Code Platoon’s Student Outreach Manager) and asked what I could do. He sent me Intro to Coding and offered to help me find another option. We never spoke, but I could sense Greg’s passion for helping Veterans like me.”

When Charlie Evening & Weekend Platoon was announced, Stephanie applied and was accepted. 

Still, Stephanie worried about how she would pay for the Code Platoon program. She already used her GI Bill benefits on degrees in education, and military spouse benefits were not an option. But Stephanie learned that she qualified for the Veteran Rapid Retraining Assistance Program (VRRAP), which pays for Veterans unemployed by Covid-19 to receive retraining for in-demand careers. 

After finishing her household responsibilities each day, Stephanie now works on her Code Platoon projects. When her kids come home from school, Stephanie helps them with their homework, takes her son to therapy sessions, and makes dinner. 

“If I’m in a waiting room, I usually have my laptop with me. That’s definitely part of the balancing act,” Stephanie said.

Three nights per week, Stephanie attends live remote classes until 10:30 p.m. She also has class on Saturday from 9 a.m. until 6 p.m. While she’s in class, her husband watches the kids.

“My husband and I work together,” Stephanie said. “He has class during the day, and I have class at night. My instructors, Tom and Chad, are also so supportive. They help me balance class and my family.”

After graduation, Stephanie hopes to find a remote job to continue being present with her family. She is especially interested in virtual learning technology after seeing her kids’ pandemic home-schooling.

“Existing virtual learning platforms aren’t designed for the kids,” Stephanie said. “They are designed for the grown-ups teaching them. But I think we can make virtual learning better. That’s my favorite thing about technology–it’s constantly evolving.

“When I went to college, I learned to teach one subject, and that’s it. After Code Platoon, I can combine tech with anything. I’m working towards being a software engineer, but there are so many other directions I can explore. I’m so excited for the opportunities Code Platoon opens the door for.”

Kayla Elkin is the Marketing Content Specialist at Code Platoon. In this role, she utilizes her marketing, writing, and editing skills developed by previous positions in higher education and educational technology. Kayla has degrees in English and Sociology from Clemson University and completed the Study in India Program (SIP) at the University of Hyderabad. She lives with her partner in northern Chicago.

Sometimes multiple areas of interest collide into one topic, making my research easy and fun. Such is the case here with Gene Grabeel and Women’s History Month.

Given world events at this moment and the fact that a great deal of my education has to do with 20th Century European history, I’ve spent significant time revisiting Cold War developments. So, imagine my surprise when I discovered that it’s Women’s History Month and that there is a connection between this month and the Cold War.

A little-discussed operation until recently, the Venona Project began before WWII’s end and picked up full-steam as the Iron Curtain descended across Europe. Many military leaders saw the writing on the wall, so to speak, regarding US-Soviet relations and began taking steps to address their distrust of Joseph Stalin with intel-gathering projects like Venona.

One of those leaders was Colonel Carter W. Clarke. Clarke ordered mathematician and cryptanalyst Gene Grabeel to create the Venona Project. This project was kept classified until 1995, after which time many secrets about the Soviet’s influence in the West came to light. Grabeel was a fundamental part of the Venona Projects and the information it discovered. 

Following college, Grabeel worked as a home economics teacher for teenage girls, which she found rather less than satisfying. In December of 1942, despite the incredibly vague job description, she took a job with the Signal Intelligence Service. Her initial duty was to decode Soviet ciphertext, and in less than two months, she founded the Venona Project under Colonel Clarke. 

This was the start of Grabeel’s 36-year career with the Signal Intelligence Service, and the incredible legacy she created. Grabeel and her cryptanalyst team deciphered codes that lead to the discovery of Soviet spies in the Manhattan Project, top government officials who were passing information, and great insight into the Soviet Union’s general intent and operations. 

Through a “brute force” approach using IBM punch card machines and good ol’ fashioned mathematical-influenced analysis, Grabeel and her colleagues made a significant discovery:

…the former home ec teacher and her colleagues divined that Arlington Hall had messages passing along five different Soviet communications systems. One, the most voluminous, had to do with trade—often about materials being sent from the U.S. to Russia through the Lend-Lease program. Another carried regular diplomatic communications. In time, the code breakers discerned that the other three were spy systems: GRU, or military intelligence; naval intelligence; and the NKVD, the forerunner of the KGB.

The real breakthrough came shortly after when Grabeel and others discovered that some Soviet spies involved in espionage operations had repeatedly used their encryption keys. While not quite equivalent to leaving your password to a secure facility up for a national television audience to see, it was a definite blunder in spycraft. It allowed the American intelligence analysts to make a significant crack in the code.

The importance of this discovery cannot be overstated. Had it been a one-time code-break that resulted in something like the Rosenbergs being caught, that would be significant in itself. 

The Venona Project continued on in almost complete secrecy for more than three decades and led to many leaps forward in understanding Soviet operations. 

Because of their work, we learned more about how the Soviets advanced their nuclear program. More than could have ever been learned via spying. The dedication of Grabeel and co-workers Angeline Nanni, Mary Jo Dunning, and others who worked on the project allowed for breakthroughs that have impacted everything from modern computers to ongoing geopolitical situations. 

In 1995, Grabeel was recognized by the CIA as an “American Hero.” After passing away in 2015, she was memorialized by a highway marker in Virginia. While that seems vastly inadequate recognition for her contributions to the world of computing and espionage, it’s in a way quite fitting for someone who was described as quiet and unassuming. 

So, this Women’s History Month, we pay homage to the hard work of Gene Grabeel and her associates. Their contributions to both the coding and international security worlds are worthy of high praise.

Code Platoon doesn’t just teach Veterans and military spouses how to become full-stack software engineers. We also help prepare them for a career in software development. We call it our Career Services Roadmap.

The Career Services Roadmap is an individualized plan for Code Platoon students that takes them from the classroom to their new careers. The Roadmap is a commitment between the student and Code Platoon to work together as they successfully transition from the military community into the tech world. 

The Roadmap Starts During Bootcamp

Code Platoon’s Career Services Roadmap begins while students are still in Bootcamp. Our Beyond Tech curriculum is an informative and engaging eight-part lecture series where students learn unspoken rules and expectations for their new career paths.

Beyond Tech topics include overcoming “imposter syndrome,” the importance and advantages of diversity in the workplace, financial literacy, and how to best navigate the job hunt.

In addition to Beyond Tech, Code Platoon works with students to draft and edit their resumes and create brand statements and LinkedIn profiles. Students are provided with resume coaches and mentors to help them tell their stories to prospective employers.

The Roadmap Continues After Graduation

Once the student graduates, the Career Services Roadmap leverages their newly acquired skills to secure career opportunities. Graduates must commit to continuing to participate in the Career Services Roadmap. That commitment includes weekly check-ins with our career services team throughout the job search. Graduates also participate in ongoing homework and interview prep sessions.

In return, graduates partner with dedicated career services team members throughout their job searches.  Career services team members help students navigate their job searches to become competitive by developing individualized plans based on their career goals and background. The plan includes personalized job target lists and application trackers.

Participants also have access to career services classes on networking, salary negotiation, interview follow-up, and other topics. This access continues even after the graduate secures their first job.

Graduates also have access to exclusive employer “intro” sessions. These sessions with our employment partners highlight available career opportunities and introduce the hiring team filling those roles. These sessions are exclusively for Code Platoon graduates.

The Roadmap Works

How do you know that our Career Services Roadmap and contract work? Look at our outcomes.

Eighty percent of our graduates found jobs in software development within six months of graduating. The median starting salary of those graduates was $72,000 and, after 24 months, the median salary grew to $96,000.

Rich Luby has more than fourteen years of experience in disability and inclusion training, initiative development, and workforce development for healthcare organizations, educational institutions, and Fortune 500 companies. Rich recently leveraged these experiences to build out career development programming for national startups in tech education. He leads with an empathetic nature and attains results through collaborative approaches.

We’re showcasing the final group projects from the recently graduated Papa Platoon. During each Code Platoon Full-stack Software Engineering Bootcamp, our students form teams to create a capstone project that showcases the coding, development, and teamwork skills learned in the program.

First up is codeForward  – a micro-networking application for Bootcamp graduates and professionals to network and grow their careers.

Check out codeForward, presented by a team of Papa Platoon graduates, including an Army spouse, an Army Veteran, and two Marine Corps Veterans.

The next project, Secure Aid, is designed to help with the enormous humanitarian need in Afghanistan. Secure Aid aims to connect Afghans in need with aid organizations securely. A team of two Air Force Veterans, a Navy Veteran, and an Army Veteran created Secure Aid.

Wandrr is for travelers who want to dig deeper into the history of the places they visit. The app allows users to reveal the hidden history of sites and identify historic gems with a simple map interface that includes links to articles and user-generated content about the locations.

A team of two Army spouses, a Navy spouse, and a Navy Veteran showcase their coding, engineering, and teamwork skills in their capstone project, Wandrr.

The next group project from Papa Platoon is The Daily Planter. The app team includes Army, Navy, and Air Force Veterans.

The Daily Planter is an app that makes gardening easier. The Daily Planter allows home gardeners to calendar their plantings, track soil test results, and identify pests. It also provides weather information to alert gardeners to frost warnings and other events that may impact their garden.

Chore Store is for families with school-age children to help manage children’s household chores and allowance. Chore Store features a family-friendly interface that appeals to both children and parents.

The Chore Store team includes two Army Veterans, a Navy Veteran, an Air Force Veteran, and an Army spouse.

The final project in our showcase – Food Byte – was developed by five Veterans and highlighted their coding, development, and teamwork skills. 

Food Byte is a web app that allows users to search for the “best steak taco” or other food items in the area. The app provides users with the top ten highest-rated foods, regardless of the restaurant. Users can also post reviews and earn rewards on the app.

Check out Food Byte presented by our Papa Platoon graduates.

Imagine there is a great opportunity for Servicemembers, but they have to know about it themselves because no one in the military tells them about it until they are ready to end their service. Such is the case with SkillBridge. Transitioning  service members in their last 180 days of service and approval from the first O-4 field grade commander in their chain of command are eligible to participate in a DoD SkillBridge-authorized program.

Skillbridge programs are designed to prepare Servicemembers to transition into the civilian world by providing employable training and the skills necessary for meaningful employment. The DoD Skillbridge program is not a funding mechanism.

But SkillBridge is a tricky animal for a few reasons. Here are a few tips to prepare you for the Skillbridge process.

The first challenge of the Skillbridge process is timing. As many have discovered, the problem is that by the time most military personnel learn about the opportunity, it is too late to participate. Many Skillbridge opportunities, like Code Platoon, require several months in advance to prepare. If they only find out about SkillBridge in their last 180 days, they will not have the time they need to successfully find and apply to a program.

So, here are the three most important steps for approaching SkillBridge. 

Step one – Learn about SkillBridge 

There are many different types of Skillbridge programs in different industries. Contact your base’s education center and find out about opportunities that best match your skill set. Then, start conversations with your chain of command and find out everything you can about the approval process (and, ideally, tell everyone you know about it).

Step two – Find a Program

Once you’ve learned the process from your education center, you must find a program that matches where you want to take your career after your military service. Once you’ve decided to embark on this path, then it’s time to narrow down what you want to do with it.

For those who wish to enter into the tech field, learning to write code should be high on the list of considerations for direction. Code Platoon is the only school of its type that exclusively serves the military and Veteran community, so it’s a natural fit for those choosing that path. 

Step three – Apply and Approval

Applying to any program takes time and mental energy. The Code Platoon application process is no exception.

To be accepted to Code Platoon, students must complete a series of coding challenges that demonstrate their willingness to, at least to a small degree, teach themselves enough to get started. Self-starters are who succeed not just in our program, but also in the coding world in general.

We recommend that the average student with some coding experience allow for a few weeks of preparation in order to do well on the application challenges. If you are a total beginner to coding, we suggest completing our free, self-paced Intro to Coding course before starting the challenges. This could add a few weeks to the process, but will definitely help in completing the challenges. 

Don’t forget to allow for command approval as part of your application process. Code Platoon can accept you, but your chain of command must approve your participation. Code Platoon does provide an Introductory Letter from Code Platoon and a template for command approval to help in the process.

Code Platoon runs three full-time cohorts per year, which means start-dates are typically in the January, May, and October time-frames. With cohorts lasting 15 weeks, the need for one of those date-ranges needing to fit in with a Servicemember’s last 180 days in service, the length of the application process and the preparation needed, realistically one needs to plan at least 9 months in advance to attend Code Platoon.

The software development world is growing rapidly. For those who can write code — people who learn the fundamentals of relevant coding languages like Javascript, Python, C++, and others — the opportunities in that world are extensive. 

Using SkillBridge to take advantage of a program like Code Platoon is an amazing chance to launch your career in this field with hands-on, viable, and employable skills before you even leave the military. You are set up for success while still being an active duty Soldier, Sailor, Airmen, or Marine. 

Reach out to your base education center and also to us for more details, as SkillBridge is not something you want to miss out on.

Greg Drobny is a former Airborne Infantryman, PSYOP Team Chief, political consultant, professional mil blogger, and is Code Platoon’s Student Outreach and Recruitment Manager. He holds a BA and MA in history, as well as a Masters of Science in organizational psychology. He is married with four children who keep him more than slightly busy and is passionate about helping Veterans find their paths in life and develop the skills needed to pursue their goals.