A tech apprenticeship program helping middle America find jobs without college

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• Judy Woodruff:

  Even before the pandemic sent shockwaves through the U.S. economy, innovation has always been a key to success in business.

  Economics correspondent Paul Solman looks at one businessman whose determination to locate his technology company far from Silicon Valley led to a new twist on a very old business model, the apprenticeship.

  It's part of our Work Shift series.

• Ankur Gopal:

  My grandmother's not the type of woman that you say no to.

• Paul Solman:

  Nine years ago, tech entrepreneur Ankur Gopal's 86-year-old grandmother asked him for an iPhone.

• Ankur Gopal:

  I said, grandma, why do you want an iPhone? I'm downstairs, you're upstairs. Just yell at me whenever you need something.

• Paul Solman:

  But he obliged.

• Ankur Gopal:

  And, sure enough, I was doomed to be her tech support.

  (LAUGHTER)

• Ankur Gopal:

  But, as time went on, she became more comfortable with the technology and very proud, so proud that when my friends would come over, she would look at them and say, you have an iPhone 3. I have an iPhone 4.

  (LAUGHTER)

• Paul Solman:

  To Gopal, it was an epiphany. He could teach almost anyone to master modern technology.

  He's spent the years since proving the point, not in Silicon Valley, but in his native state, whose economy he's been trying to transform.

• Ankur Gopal:

  I came to Kentucky, where my parents lived,in Owensboro, Kentucky, and worked out of their basement. Very cliche.

• Paul Solman:

  And the big idea?

• Ankur Gopal:

  That we can solve skilling and growth problems, as well as the equity problem that we face in America, by creating jobs and skills for people that typically were left behind from the tech economy.

• Paul Solman:

  Gopal's firm, which builds mobile apps for major corporations, is based in Louisville, a city of 600,000 earnestly trying its own transformation, its Main Street hotel featuring in-your-face contemporary art from facade to front desk, from lobby to basement to bathrooms.

  Just blocks away is Interapt, which Gopal staffed initially with college grads.

• Ankur Gopal:

  But, as we started seeking people to come move from Boulder, Colorado, New York, San Francisco, to Kentucky, we realized it was a hard sell. And you know what? I'm just going to have to find people who like living here and then scale them up.

• Paul Solman:

  And by people who like living here, he means those who already do. So, he offered locals a simple coding test with instructions.

• Ankur Gopal:

  We took 50 people; 35 of them passed; 35 of them are still working the tech economy now. That's five years later.

• Paul Solman:

  Interapt now employs about 300 people, and is expanding to other cities.

  And that's what makes this a story for the "NewsHour"'s Work Shift series on jobs without college and a story that's attracted media from The New York Times to "The Daily Show," which sent comedian Hasan Minhaj…

• Hasan Minhaj:

  Its only brown correspondent.

• Paul Solman:

  … to coal country, where he bonded with early Interapt hire Alex Hughes.

• Alex Hughes:

  This is a really long time for a hug.

• Hasan Minhaj:

  It's OK. I'm here now.

• Alex Hughes:

  Well, we actually had to do that three or four times..

  Bro, this is getting weird.

• Hasan Minhaj:

  OK.

• Alex Hughes:

  But it was hilarious. It was a lot of fun.

• Paul Solman:

  But where Hughes came from wasn't so funny.

• Alex Hughes:

  When the coal industry went down, it had a massive impact of the entire area.

• Paul Solman:

  Including his business services firm, which went bust.

• Alex Hughes:

  I had been unemployed for six months.

• Paul Solman:

  When he heard about Interapt, looking for applicants. In his 40s, Hughes applied and was accepted.

  Didn't you think you might be aged out of coding?

• Alex Hughes:

  They were going to have to kick me out.

• Paul Solman:

  The training at Interapt is based on two precepts, says Gopal.

• Ankur Gopal:

  Number one, everyone has to pass. So we have to put in the time, hours to make sure that there's no one left behind and they all cross the finish line.

• Paul Solman:

  That's why Interapt's program is 2,000 hours, a full year, qualifying it as a U.S. Department of Labor-certified apprenticeship, and not just a coding camp.

• Ankur Gopal:

  The second thing I said is that we have got to pay people while they learn, and not ask for any of this money back that we're investing in the training, because you can't expect someone to learn something hard and take time out of life if they're worried where their daughter's next meal is coming from.

• Alex Hughes:

  I'd always been interested in it. But I couldn't afford to go back to school because I had a family.

  This control board here is our Wi-Fi connector. So that's what connects us to the network.

• Paul Solman:

  Hughes now leads a team designing mobile apps for Louisville-based GE Appliances, a major Interapt client.

• Alex Hughes:

  The phone talks to the cloud, then the cloud talks to this appliance, and we can make changes.

• Paul Solman:

  And the Interapt apprentices have grown more diverse.

• April Hickman:

  I came into the program from a homeless shelter.

• Paul Solman:

  April Hickman, raised in foster care, now in an actual apartment with her two youngest daughters, emergency housing arranged by Gopal's staff. She had spotted a Facebook ad for Interapt's apprenticeship program while living in the shelter.

• April Hickman:

  I just kept Googling until I actually found an application. Somebody called me right back and said, we had to kind of go through a coding test.

• Paul Solman:

  Were you scared?

• April Hickman:

  I was nervous. You all is crazy.

• Paul Solman:

  But she passed.

• April Hickman:

  And I was like, yes. And so I was so excited. Like, I was crying. I was like, yes.

• Ankur Gopal:

  We started with a very rural population. Then we went with 100 percent African American population, same metrics, same results. The common thread between two people that you would think were very fundamentally different, they all had the drive.

• April Hickman:

  This was everything for us. This was our shot. Even if we had to sleep in a trunk some daggone where, I was making it through that class. Like, I was not giving up.

• Paul Solman:

  Of all the foster kids you have known, given the same kind of opportunity, same kind of training, what percentage of them could do what you do?

• April Hickman:

  Oh, gosh, a great number, because it's problem solving. And if there's one thing that we're good at, it's problem solving, because we have had to.

• Woman:

  With the GE Appliance SmartHome.

• Paul Solman:

  Melanie Trass, who manages client relations, says the company's openness to hidden talent gives it a distinct edge.

• Melanie Trass:

  Since we are targeting those communities where people are being left behind, we are highly diverse within our organizations.

  So many clients are seeking that. It's part of the texture right now across America, upskilling, reskilling, and giving people a seat at the table where they normally may have not had a pathway. So we help create the path.

• Alex Hughes:

  This is one of the first appliances that I got to work on.

• Paul Solman:

  At GE Appliances, Alex Hughes and apprentice Corey Thomas were meeting with the executives in charge of Interapt's contract.

• Shawn Stover:

  Our relationship with Interapt is one of those ways that we find diverse thought and resources right here in our backyard.

• Paul Solman:

  V.P. Shawn Stover first hired Interapt to work on the Opal Ice Maker.

• Alex Hughes:

  The Southern states, we like our ice chewable.

• Paul Solman:

  Chewable.

• Alex Hughes:

  Yes.

• Paul Solman:

  So can I defile this particular drink, but I want to see what this is like. Oh, yes.

  You're not jeopardizing your teeth in any way here.

• Alex Hughes:

  Right.

• Paul Solman:

  So, now a new, more challenging assignment, an app for GE Appliances' camera-equipped oven.

• Shawn Stover:

  I can use artificial intelligence, object recognition to put something in the oven, press start and it just cooks it.

• Paul Solman:

  Starting with pizza.

• Irena McDowell:

  A lot of different pizzas too, so it's the vegetarian pizzas vs. the…

• Corey Thomas:

  I'm curious on how that would work.

• Irena McDowell:

  Right, right.

• Paul Solman:

  Engineering director Irena McDowell was giving Corey Thomas his marching orders.

• Irena McDowell:

  What does the user want? Do they want it less done or do they want a more done pizza? And then being able to send that information to the cloud, right? Would you like to see the cheese bubbling?

• Paul Solman:

  Oh, yes, the cheese bubbling?

  Ironically, Corey Thomas' last job, before Interapt, also involved making pizza as a line cook in a joint near his parents' house.

• Corey Thomas:

  It's called Tony Boombozz. I'd say, most of the time, I was there, it was minimum wage.

• Paul Solman:

  And now you're designing apps for people who would be cooking pizza?

• Corey Thomas:

  I am ecstatic, pretty much.

• Paul Solman:

  Pretty good for a kid who hated high school, shunned college, spent three unhappy years in the Army.

• Ankur Gopal:

  We have taken the C, D and F student in the back of the high school and put them in a vocational coding program. And they have been the top performing in the class.

• Paul Solman:

  To Ankur Gopal, such students are fruit just waiting to be plucked.

• Ankur Gopal:

  Two-thirds of the people don't have a college degree. So, to us, that's untapped potential.

• Corey Thomas:

  This is going to let us flip a switch, see what happens in-app.

• Ankur Gopal:

  We said, let's go and find the people that could still be very good at a job in the tech field. And that's exactly who we find.

• Paul Solman:

  Find and train.

  For the "PBS NewsHour," Paul Solman.