Meet The Black Woman Behind The Tech Academy Helping People Learn New Skills And Secure High-Paying Jobs

Mary Awodele launched MyTechBestfriend, a career development machine hoping to change the narrative for minority involvement in tech, in September 2020.

The initiative was launched during an important period of history as hundreds – possibly thousands – of people in states across the US were unemployed due to companies losing money because of Covid.

Some took part in the ‘Great Resignation’ and left their jobs to venture off into a different path while others simply wanted to learn new skills while working from home.

Awodele’s own entry into tech began as a specialized systems administrator before going on to work as a ServiceNow engineer, business analyst, and more recently a promotion as a tech consultant, according to AfroTech.

As her career continued to rise she decided that she wanted to help others secure dream roles in the tech sector and within four months of launching her venture clients were reportedly already securing high-paying tech jobs at Pinterest, PlayStation, and Deloitte, among others.

In a tweet she made last year, she wrote: “My student just got an offer for ServiceNow CMBD Librarian (Hardware Asset Manager) at T-Mobile making $85k a year fully remote with a $5K bonus.”

She integrated career development frameworks such as resume reconstruction and certification readiness into her initial offerings but by March 2021- Awodele was offering to integrate additional content and training onto her program.

Now MyTechBestfriend houses 12 IT certifications in Oracle, ITIL, AWS, Azure, Splunk, ServiceNow, and Salesforce, as per the company website.

Applications for MyTechBestfriend are quarterly and provide new course offerings to students each term. Students will have opportunities to learn about both the technical and non-technical aspects of tech through the duality of course catalogs. 

“I want to help minorities secure high-paying careers and increase minority wealth,” Awodele told AfroTech.

“There are a lot of jobs out here in web development, regular software developers, or cybersecurity. Within each of those areas, there are so many niche spaces and so much more talent.

“You can really maximize your salary within those unconventional spaces. Getting people into unconventional careers in the tech space to increase their demand, make them super competitive, and increasing minority wealth, particularly within Black homes, is the main focus.”