Cybersecurity is the stable, prosperous, career that Hai spent 15 years looking for.
Hai is the first generation in his family to be born in the United States – and to go to college. “I was born in Little Saigon, in Orange County, and was raised by a single mom. Her college education in Vietnam was interrupted when she came over as a refugee, so I was stumbling my way through an education and a career,” he said. “I did a lot of random things, and I think prior to Calbright I’d lived many lives.”
He graduated college during the 2008 recession with a literature degree, “and that wasn’t a good time for anybody trying to find gainful employment. So I took any and every job I could get my hands on.”
He took sales jobs cold calling clients from a call center. He was a loan officer for a mortgage business. He did marketing and copywriting. He tried entrepreneurship. It was incredibly stressful, and there was a lot he had to learn about building a career. “I didn’t know how to negotiate for a salary,” he said. He was supporting his family, but he wanted to do better.
A mentor in an entrepreneurship program told him that it was possible to go into cybersecurity even without a technical background. Hai decided to try it.
“Growing up, going to school, I was never good at any of the STEM categories,” he said. “Math, no, engineering, no, science, no. Very limited exposure to technology classes in the schools that I went to. So I was definitely jumping into the deep end of the pool here, but I’m glad that I did.”
He enrolled in a cybersecurity boot camp, and realized that boot camp wasn’t going to be enough. He needed more education, and a more personalized education.
Another mentor told him about Calbright, so he enrolled. That was when things started to come together.
“I originally thought the Cybersecurity pathway was the right fit, since I’d done some self-learning with that, but I was not ready for it,” he said. “I talked to the counselors and said ‘Hey, can I take a step back and do the IT pathway first? They said yes. They made it very easy, it was no problem, so I did that. I took the IT Support pathway.”
It took him some extra time, since by then he was working a new job, as well as being in bootcamp. But that was no problem either – Calbright doesn’t penalize students for taking extra time. “I really appreciate the time that Calbright gave me to get it done,” he said. “I completed the IT pathway, and I still use those skills daily. Then I took the Cybersecurity pathway, and completed that. And I’m hoping to continue my journey in more programs with Calbright.”
Calbright taught Hai a lot of things the boot camp didn’t. Not just technical skills, but how to communicate technical information to people who aren’t in tech themselves. “You can teach the facts, but then being able to apply them is a whole different thing. Calbright is definitely on to something when it teaches you that.”
“You can teach the facts, but then being able to apply them is a whole different thing. Calbright is definitely on to something when it teaches you that.”
Hai now works as a senior member of a medium sized cybersecurity company. “And I owe a lot of that to Calbright,” he said.
“A lot of people who went to school for four years to get their cybersecurity degrees but didn’t have hands-on real life exposure or the right expectation setting don’t make it in the industry,” he said. “Calbright provided a lot of what I think of as connective tissue, the hands-on labs, the real experience, the support structures. That helped me stay the course. My success now was hard won, and I certainly didn’t do it alone. I had faculty at Calbright who were there to answer every question, not just about the technology but about the career.”
He recommends Calbright to people like him, who don’t have a technical background but who want to take a chance on themselves.
“As adults, it’s very scary to not be good at something,” Haid said. “It’s very scary to tell other people that you’re going to do something big. Calbright is very well positioned to provide a soft landing, a safe space, to individuals who need a second shot. This is not my first path, I kind of found this path, and I’m really glad that for individuals like me who are thinking of changing course and trying to find a better life for themselves, that something like this can exist.”
