In this episode of The New Stack Makers,  TC Currie is joined today by Heather Terenzio, cofounder and CEO of  Boulder-based Techtonic Group, which was named “2017 Innovative Company of the Year” by the Colorado Legislature for their unique, outsourced apprenticeship program. 

“Genius can come from anywhere,” said Terenzio, cofounder and CEO.  It turns out, she said, that once you remove barriers to employment, the top candidates for their apprenticeship program are people who come from groups currently underrepresented in the tech industry. 

Unlike expensive college degrees or code schools, the Techtonic apprentices are fully paid while they learn.  Techtonic’s innovative apprenticeship program is the first-ever, Department of Labor (DOL)-registered Software Developer Apprenticeship program in the United States. 

Terenzio started the program because she came into coding from civil engineering. "I realized that people from any background can learn to code.  It’s just a matter of screening for the right aptitudes," she said.