- I've been through it all.

Bad home life, health issues, bouts of homelessness.

I've had my college career derailed twice.

Having options like Apprenti or just the bootcamp in general meant that I could be successful without a college degree.

(upbeat music) My name is Kait Matthey, and I'm a software engineer at Kroger.

(upbeat music) I spend my day working on the applications that support our stores and how they deal with customers.

I may work with Java for most of my day, but I also get to work with a SQL database.

I get to spend a lot of time talking about the overall architecture of the project and I even get to help mentor other new developers when they come in.

(upbeat music) My first year at Loyola was one of the best years of my life.

Unfortunately, I discovered quite a few health issues along the way.

I was getting sicker by the day.

I decided to see a specialist and I was diagnosed with interstitial cystitis.

I had to make the decision between paying for cab fare to get to the hospital or paying for my tuition.

I chose my health over the school that I worked so hard to get into.

(upbeat music) The entirety of the time that I had spent recovering and getting myself healthy, I was freelancing doing what I loved but it just wasn't sustainable.

So I decided to return to my second love, which was programming.

That's when I decided to look into bootcamps to see if I could streamline my career a little bit.

(calm music) Apprenti is a program that you still have to do everything that you would do to get into bootcamp but you don't pay for bootcamp.

They match you with an employer before you go to bootcamp.

So you're guaranteed a job afterwards and that takes care of the financial burden.

(upbeat music) When I interviewed, my employer didn't know my gender, they didn't know my name.

They had no information on my educational background.

They had no information on my work history.

All they had were my initials, and they got to determine if I was going to be a good personality and cultural fit.

And that was enough for them to invest in me.

(upbeat music) We focused on full stack development and how to create what you see on the web or the application as well as everything that backs that up and makes it work.

There's an immense amount of opportunities in every area of this company.

We do sell groceries but we also have an entire logistics team.

We have warehouses, we have customer loyalty programs.

We have technology in all of these areas.

(upbeat music) You're kind of forced to be a lifelong learner.

Technology is changing so fast and employers do a really good job of making sure that they help you keep up with that.

Whether it's individual training programs or even higher education.

And that's something that I've taken advantage of at my own company is the ability to finish my degree so I did get to go back to Loyola, my dream school and Kroger is helping me finish that dream.

(calm music)