Meet the CBK Team: Veronica Barrington-Davis

We sat down with one of our newest CBK team members to learn about her non-traditional journey to tech and her experiences as an instructor.

Tell us about your background and your journey to CBK.

Veronica: Thanks for giving me the opportunity to talk a little more about my journey into tech. So, I attended Rutgers University and my background is in mathematics. I got introduced to coding in college, where I took a Python class and a CSS class. While I was there taking programming classes, I understood the material, but didn’t really stick. I didn’t understand enough. At the time, I chose to focus on math instead of tech — but a seed was planted.

After graduating, I worked for a retail company for a few years. A few months after I left that job, a friend of mine was talking about web development. And I was like, “Okay, what’s so exciting about web development?” He was talking about learning about HTML, CSS and Javascript and I just figured that I could do it too.

I had some foundational knowledge so I decided to do some self studying on HTML and CSS before I fully invested in [learning programming]. I learned the basics from Udemy and YouTube. Once I got to more complicated languages like JavaScript, I decided that I needed to take an in-person course. So, I went to a web development boot camp for eight months. It very hard and intense but I truly appreciated that time.

After I completed the bootcamp, the Career Services person recommended Coded by Kids, and I was like, “Wow! That would be awesome, because I do love to share my knowledge.” I was a trainer at my other positions and have taught dance for young girls. Sharing my knowledge is very, very important to me. So I decided to give it a try and that’s how I got here.

“I want students to know that there’s room for them in tech and innovation. Whoever you are, there’s room for you to expand.”

You joined CBK recently. How has the experience as an instructor been so far?

Veronica: I started in May 2021 as an instructor-in-training. Most of my time has been focused on reinforcing my programming knowledge and learning classroom management…