Featured, Grow with Google, Student Success

Google Udacity Scholars Land Careers in Tech

Since 2016, more than 73,000 people across Europe have explored new career opportunities with the Google Developer scholarship; 21% have already landed new jobs in tech.

Since Google and Udacity first launched the groundbreaking Grow with Google scholarship in late 2016, an astounding 73,000 scholars from across Europe, the Middle East and Africa have learned new cutting-edge skills in a range of Udacity’s programs. It’s an incredible figure that provides a real insight into the positive gains Google and Udacity’s initiative is making to address the digital skills gap in Europe. Most importantly, it has supported many individuals to learn new skills, grow their careers, and change their lives. This is a part of Google’s programme called Grow with Google, a series of training, tools and events to equip people with the skills they need to succeed in the digital economy.

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Featured, School of Data Science, Student Success

How Dunya Turned Her Marketing Past into a Data-Driven Future

The inspiration to learn new tech skills can come from many places. For Dunya Oguz, it came when she started her first job after college. Dunya moved from Turkey to study economics at McGill University in Canada. When she graduated, she landed a marketing role at a fast-paced startup and quickly got inspired by the tech savviness of her colleagues. Soon, Dunya was exploring how she could build her own skill set, particularly in data analytics and SQL. That’s when she found Udacity and enrolled in the Data Analyst Nanodegree program. Within a matter of months, she realized she’d found a subject she felt really passionate about, and started applying to roles in data analysis. She started getting responses—even before she’d graduated the program!

Udacity Data Analyst student story

Now, Dunya works as a data analyst for a Canadian startup that builds mobile free-to-play games. She’s super excited about her work, and sees opportunities to grow her career in a thousand different directions. This is Dunya’s story.

Featured, School of Data Science, Student Success

Richa Changed Her Whole Life in One Year! Here’s How She Did It.

We’re already into the second week of 2019 and want to share another story of how our students have built new skills, landed new jobs, and totally changed their lives. So let us introduce you to Richa Maheshwari.

Last year was a great year for Richa. She began married life, she moved from India to Malaysia, and she made a major career move—from journalism to working with data—after studying with Udacity! We recently got the opportunity to chat with her to learn how she changed the direction of her life so successfully in just twelve months.

Featured, Self-Driving Car Engineer Nanodegree program, Student Success

How Nicola Started Off 2019 in His Dream Job

It’s 2019, it’s a brand-new year, and it’s the time when many of us start planning major changes in our lives. Whether you are thinking about learning new skills, changing your career, or landing a fresh opportunity at your employer, this is the time of year to make that happen.

Udacity New Skills Student Success Quote

Nicola Poerio changed his life when he landed a new role in the self-driving car division of his employer, Fiat Chrysler, without any previous work experience in autonomous systems engineering. All after building his skills with Udacity.

Nicola had been working in the automotive industry for over ten years as an engineer. He’d built a career he calls “satisfactory” at Fiat Chrysler, one of the world’s biggest automotive companies. And he’d done well in his work, taking on new projects and management responsibilities along the way.

career change, Featured, Student Success

A Moving Career Change

20 years of hard-earned experience managing the logistics of military relocations led to a programming career helping other military families move more easily!

While it’s not necessarily thought of as a conventional “career,” 20 years of organizing regular house moves for her military family (including four children!) has been a LOT of work for Kimberly McCaffrey. She has managed a constant cycle of organizing movers, schools, housing, and logistics, in whatever location the Navy sent them next. When her husband decided to retire, Kimberly knew everything was about to change, and so she started on an exciting new journey—embracing her childhood fascination with computers and launching a career as a programmer. Along the way she won a hackathon, and is now building a new app focused on a subject she knows very well—helping military families relocate!

We were lucky enough to chat with Kimberly to hear about her experiences learning to program, and what she plans to do next.

Featured, Student Success, Year in Review

2018: A Year of Student Success

Join us as we catch up with Udacity students previously featured on our blog, to see what they’re working on today.

The end of a calendar year is traditionally a time for both reflection and prediction. At Udacity, our reflections and predictions focus on you—what you’ve done, and what you’ll do next.

Below, we revisit twelve Udacity students previously featured on our blog, to discover how things are progressing in their lives today.

Featured, Machine Learning Engineer Nanodegree Program, School of AI, School of Autonomous Systems, Student Success

The Race to a Machine Learning Career

This Udacity Nanodegree program graduate enacted a full-scale career change to become a Machine Learning Engineer.

Meet Robin Stringer. Robin worked as a journalist, a translator, and a marathon race guide for visually-impaired athletes, before a conversation about coding caused him to reevaluate his long-term career plans.

While he was working for a para-athletics non-profit in New York, he began learning Python online, and in the course of doing so discovered Udacity’s programs. He moved to Seattle and took the opportunity to pursue his coding studies full-time, with the goal of pulling off an audacious career change. After studying some of Udacity’s free courses, he started the Self-Driving Car Engineer Nanodegree program and got his first taste of machine learning. After a lot of work, he successfully landed a full-time role as a machine learning engineer.

We chatted with Robin to learn how he made his career change happen.