Ariana Reed

After graduating from high school and attending some college, Ariana Reed worked as a home health aide in the healthcare field for several years. She enjoyed her work but decided she wanted a more stable career to secure a better future for herself.

Ariana decided to try pursuing a career in tech. She loves learning, and the fact that the IT field is always changing and requires constant learning appealed to her. As a child, Ariana had always enjoyed taking things apart to see how they worked, but she otherwise had no formal tech experience.

Ariana started applying to online coding classes before she came across Per Scholas' remote IT Support course. She liked that the Per Scholas course was very structured and that it covered a lot of material in a class setting, despite being remote. Ariana felt that this was a big factor in helping her stay committed to completing the course.

"It is a structured learning setting, even though it was online," she said. "You get the experience of being in contact with other learners. You get the training – we did a lot of labs that gave us hands-on training. We had lots of resources under Per Scholas, even with the remote setting."

Because it was remote, Ariana's class was made up of a diverse group of people from various locations. "There were people from different backgrounds, age groups, and locations in my class," Ariana recalled. "You got to experience people who lived in different locations and get their input. There were people in my class who were more advanced, and they were great at helping out the rest of us. We could always go to our peers for help, and we learned a lot from each other."

Ariana also liked her instructor very much, and appreciated that he gave the learners the tools to help themselves going forward. "[My instructor] was very knowledgeable," Ariana reflected. "He had the answer to most things, and the very few things he didn't know off the top of his head, he would use his searching skills to find for us right away. He also encouraged us to use and improve our searching skills to find answers for ourselves…it's really great now to be able to use Google to find anything I need."

After graduating from Per Scholas, Ariana started working as an IT Support Specialist at DaVita Kidney Care, a position that allows her to blend her interests in tech and healthcare. She is actively using the skills she learned at Per Scholas to help her adapt quickly and be self-sufficient in her job.

Going forward, Ariana would like to further her tech education and skills and earn more certifications. She would eventually like to work as an independent contractor and is interested in pursuing a career in cloud security.