Karen Graduates with Honors

Once her children reached school-age, Karen was ready to go back to school herself. “My husband had a good job,” she says, “but we didn’t have much wiggle room in our finances.” Family time was important to her, so a customer service job working odd hours didn’t make sense. She also didn’t want to take years away from her family to earn a graduate degree. Then she learned how WIOA could fund her education, and she knew it was her chance to get the higher-paying job she was after.

Her Career Services Specialist “Jamie was great to work with and was always there encouraging me along the way,” says Karen. “I looked forward to our meetings, her job searching suggestions, and how easy she made it to enroll.”

In addition to WIOA’s funding, Jamie helped Karen enroll in and work through her online courses, which had the flexibility to work around her family life. The rigorous billing and coding courses “were hard to learn and I would get frustrated,” Karen says.

She strongly feels that kids these days are so lucky as they can learn coding from a very young age, due to the availability of specialized online coding classes for kids. She regrets not having one such opportunity in her young years. However, keeping all those thoughts aside, she completed her course by concentrating on her goal to make a better life for her family.

After almost nine months, she graduated with honors! “I passed with a 96%. Super surprised with the score, but such a relief to see the hard work and sacrifices pay off,” she smiles. Since then, Karen passed her CPC exam, currently the gold-standard in medical coding, and found a job in the field that works with her family’s schedule.

“I highly recommend this program to anyone who feels they need a boost to get out of a challenging job or financial situation and have a higher quality of life,” she beams. Congratulations, Karen!