Marty Mordarski

(Credit: Marty Mordarski)

Name: Marty Mordarski
Current Job: Cleveland Campus Director, Tech Elevator 
Favorite restaurant in town? Dante in Tremont has been a favorite for many years running, but my wife and I have really enjoyed a new restaurant that recently opened in our home town of Olmsted Falls, Gibbs Butcher & Brews. It's a "cousin" of the Gibbs Butcher Block which is famous for its unusual and amazing gourmet sausages (big fan of the cranberry apple turkey!).
Favorite thing about Cleveland? What makes ice cream cake so amazing? The vanilla ice cream? The chocolate ice cream? Layers of chocolate crunch and fudge? The gel icing and frosting on the top and sides? 

Yes. 

To me, each of those things might be amazing on its own but that doesn't compare to what happens when you put them all together. I think that's my favorite thing about Cleveland. I think it's really challenging to answer this question without reciting a list of attractions and amenities that includes everything from the lake, its parks, its sports teams, its restaurants, its cultural diversity, its neighborhoods, or its toughness and resilience.

But if I'm being completely honest, the one thing I probably love most about Cleveland is that it's home. I've lived, studied, and worked here my entire life, and I don't have the words to adequately articulate exactly what this town means to me beyond what's naturally implied by that one simple word. 

Q: Marty, how has Tech Elevator adjusted to moving from a classroom setting to an online setting? A key element of the Tech Elevator learning experience is the ability for students to collaborate in real-time with instructors, staff, peers, mentors, and employers, so the biggest challenge in shifting our programming online was to maintain an environment where that collaboration could continue. Granted this will always be a work in progress, we are excited that we successfully transitioned all of our classroom training, career readiness programming, and employer engagements to a live remote environment, including building a virtual campus community where our students have the opportunity to connect and work with each other and our staff in real-time.

I have so much admiration for our instructors and campus team members who've worked so incredibly hard to quickly adapt and stay focused on providing our students a high-quality learning experience through this transition. In part, because of those efforts, our students' academic performance has been on-par with, if not better than, our typical results. 

Q: Where do you see the future of coding boot camps? We are increasingly working directly with employers to create pathways for incumbent workers to quickly add new skills that allow them to fill tech roles within their companies. While we can and will continue supplying employers with candidates from the general public through our program, our impact can be multiplied when we can take current employees (who are already a proven commodity in terms of their skills, culture fit, and institutional knowledge, etc.) and layer on the ability to code. This can include non-technical employees, new hires, or developers who need to modernize their current skills. 

Using this approach, employers can more effectively fill open roles, retain top talent, and also create new career opportunities for people in the community as old roles are vacated and need to be filled. Furthermore, this approach can be used to enhance an employer's diversity and inclusion efforts by tapping into populations within their workforce who might be currently underrepresented within tech.

Q: One of the criticisms of Tech Elevator and boot camps, in general, is the cost. Why should folks look to move into software development, attend your school? The average starting salary for our graduates is $59,000 and their average increase in annual income is $23,000. That difference not only represents what could be an immediate and signifiant return-on-investment, but for many of our students, it's life-changing.

Most of our students are career-changers. Most have some post-secondary education which could include an Associate's, Bachelor's, or sometimes even Master's and Doctorate degrees. Many may still have student loan debt on top of mortgages, car payments, families, and other responsibilities; however, their current occupation may be unstable or unfulfilling. They feel like they've plateaued. They don't feel challenged enough, their skills may not be as relevant as they once were, and they know they are capable of so much more. Plus, in over a quarter of cases, our students were previously unemployed.

A coding bootcamp like Tech Elevator gives people the opportunity to launch into a more challenging career with greater potential for growth and long-term financial stability that is accessible in a fraction of the time and at a fraction of the cost they may need to invest in other educational pursuits. 

Our students may also explore several financing options to help subsidize the cost of tuition. Tech Elevator is an Eligible Training Provider underneath the Workforce Innovation & Opportunity Act, and students may be able to access substantial grants through their local Ohio Means Jobs workforce offices. Plus, Veterans may be eligible to for funding through the GI Bill. And, we just made a 3-year $1 million commitment to provide scholarships to students from underrepresented groups in tech through our new Represent Tech scholarship program. 

In terms of why software development and why Tech Elevator...the Bureau of Labor Statistics projects that through 2028, the number of people employed as software developers will grow at over 4-times the national average of all other occupations. We also happen to be living in a time when the world's reliance on software applications is arguably higher than ever before in history. That, combined with the outcomes our program has consistently delivered, make this field and Tech Elevator an appealing option for many. We have consistently been ranked as one of the leading coding bootcamps in the country based on our audited outcome data related to graduation and placement rates. We believe this is a function of our thorough enrollment process, the quality of our curriculum, the experience of our instructors, the breadth and depth of our network of companies that have hired our grads, and the comprehensiveness of Pathway Program (TM), our parallel career readiness and coaching program. 

Q: You previously ran PCA Cleveland, what attracted you to Tech Elevator that convinced you to make the move? It feels like all roads have led me to here...this moment in time...a perfect intersection of where I've been and where I want to be as a professional. 

Throughout my career, I've been fortunate to work for mission-driven organizations in positions where I've worked to inform and inspire others to make positive change. At PCA, the primary vehicle was through workshops focused on building and sustaining youth and high school sports cultures that promote the development of kids as better athletes, and more importantly, as better people. Prior to that, I spent almost 20 years at ERC where I led research initiatives, like the NorthCoast 99 application and evaluation process, with the goal of sharing best practices to help employers build better workplaces that attract, retain, and develop great talent. In both cases, while I might deliver a workshop or produce a report, I may not get to see the direct impact of those efforts. I might never know if any given employer or coach or program implemented any of the best practices we'd share and suggest.

Not only does the mission of Tech Elevator align with my own personal and professional goals, but here I have a chance to apply all my knowledge and experience in a way that directly impacts the people with whom I'm working. 

For the first time in my career, I get to see the results of my work first-hand. I get to see how the work we do helps individuals tap into their passions and unrealized potential, learn relevant and in-demand skills, and elevate into new, more meaningful careers in tech. I also get to see first-hand how connecting our students with employers helps them fill hard-to-fill roles with talented and motivated people who possess the right foundational skills and a strong growth-mindset. 

The work itself is incredibly fulfilling and inspiring...and the bonus is I get to work with an amazingly talented, unselfish, and dedicated team of people committed to our mission and to the success of all our students. 

Q: You've talked a lot about helping to create opportunities for others. Can you talk about a the biggest opportunity you've missed personally or professionally? I was a member of the Cleveland Bridge Builders (CBB) Class of 2012, and one of the many mantras that was repeated throughout the program that really hit home for me was the phrase, "Slow down to speed up."

Especially early on in my career, I tended to focus more on things like building lists of tasks versus building relationships with the people with whom I was working. So I think the biggest missed opportunity for me through the years has been the chance to get to know my coworkers and other colleagues and friends on a different and more personal level. It doesn't get easier the older I get - especially with my wife and I having three kids and a growing list of activities and responsibilities that require more of what would have been "free" time in the past. But in the years since CBB, I've been more mindful of how I work with others and have tried to prioritize time focused on stewarding those relationships more than I did in the past.