Jerome Hardaway

Empowering veterans through code.

After five years in the U.S. Air Force, Jerome Hardaway continues to serve his country by helping veterans pursue paths of active duty in technology careers.

As founder and executive director of #VetsWhoCode, Jerome champions a “crawl, walk, run” approach that trains vets to level up their careers as they enter the civilian workforce. #VetsWhoCode leads a free, 15-week coding curriculum that teaches them open source and serverless technologies – long-term skills that will serve them well, even as the Web continues its rapid evolution.

Jerome speaking with the The ReadME Project:

“My generation of veterans has problems finding good jobs in the civilian sector. Police, fire departments, and EMS are the only recommended opportunities to use their skills and make any real money. Every other job requires extra training and a pay cut from what we made in the service, and it takes us up to 24 months on average to get back to where we were financially. We have to worry about whether we have the financial bandwidth to start over, and the only real advice is to put your GI Bill toward college. But I knew there had to be another option out there. … We teach them SEO, design psychology, user experience, user interaction, design systems, web performance, frameworks, and web accessibility. By focusing on deeper learning in a part of the industry that isn’t going anywhere soon, and then adding serverless tools to their skillset, they become a hireable asset to any team.”

Jerome Hardaway is a GovFresh Gamechanger.