When Chad LeBlanc and his wife moved to Indianapolis in 2018, LeBlanc was eager for a career change. After spending nearly two decades in retail, he was working as a trainer for a travel company’s contact center when a higher-level business analyst role opened up. LeBlanc jumped at the opportunity to transfer his retail management experience to this new field. The technical ramp-up was complicated, and he needed know-how, such as understanding code and other aspects of the built systems. He also needed project management skills. “Getting to the position I’m at now required a lot of extra expertise in the base systems that we use on a day-to-day basis,” LeBlanc explains. “The very first class I took was an Agile learning class. Now I’m into HTML, CSS, JavaScript — and it was, I would say, a good rabbit hole to fall into,” LeBlanc says. “It really helps with my job currently, because I get to now work closely with my development team and really understand where they’re coming from.” This newly acquired expertise, supported by the twelve certifications LeBlanc has earned, has already proven valuable. As LeBlanc shared, this led to a significantly larger raise: double the amount he would have otherwise received. “What I've been able to explore using these programs has opened up a world of opportunities that I'd never even thought was possible,” he says. Verizon has a goal of helping 50,000 individuals prepare for jobs of the future by 2030, offering technical and professional pathways to accelerate skill building for in-demand tech careers. The Verizon Skill Forward program offers tuition-free training to help people advance their careers and improve their economic mobility. Participants can access more than 250 courses spanning 84 unique professional certificate programs to pursue high growth jobs across the in-demand areas of AI, business, coding, communication, finance, IT and more. To sign up or learn more, visit Verizon Skill Forward. An individual user's experience may vary and results are not guaranteed.

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