A Tennessee-based remote technology education hub that supports Blacks and other underrepresented workers interested in technology careers has closed $10 million in growth financing to drive the expansion of its tuition financing programs.
Pivot Technology School, launched by two Black entrepreneurs, plans to increase access to its program through the use of Income Share Agreements, which will be offered to students as a result of this capital. To do so, Pivot has partnered with tuition finance management platform Leif.
Founded in 2020 by Joshua Mundy and Quawn Clark, Pivot’s mission is to “empower minority students with in-demand technical skills, in an industry that historically lacks racial diversity, and build a 100 million dollar business.”
“There are less than 3% of minorities that have tech careers, and we want to change that paradigm and create pipelines of highly trained talent to these organizations. We want to expose as many adults as possible to coding and data analytics,” Mundy told Forbes.
Pivot offers Cyber Security, Data Analytics, Web Development and training in 20-week, virtual, boot camp-style cohorts.
“Our mission is to create and grow incentive-aligned avenues that empower a highly diverse demographic to break into the technology industry,” said Clark in a press release.
In addition to teaching students, the EdTech startup is also tapping into corporate America workplaces that need to upskill their current workforce to gain new tech knowledge and tools. Besides offering up-skilling to a company’s current employees, Pivot also encourages its corporate partners to diversify their ranks by hiring Pivot graduates.
On that end, the school has partnerships with Shipt, a division of Target and Amazon. Shipt sponsored full scholarships for 32 students for Pivot’s 20-week program, where they will learn core competencies—ranging from backend development to data analytics, Forbes reported.
Of the 32 students,19 are current Shipt employees, and 13 are external candidates.
“We’re an agile team with a great culture and have plans to expand by adding the very best talent to help impact our growth, which is why we invest in programs, like Pivot, to help creative individuals motivated to move into tech careers gain the skills and experience needed to move our company forward,” Mike Calvo, the chief technology officer at Shipt, told Forbes.
