From Carnegie Hall to Cloud Tech: How Halam Kim Found Her Path with Smoothstack 

Halam Kim’s career trajectory was nothing short of unique. A talented violist with seven years of schooling, Halam was on a traditional music path. She landed a prestigious three-year fellowship at Carnegie Hall, where she balanced performing, teaching, and even entrepreneurship programs. But despite her success in the arts, Halam was looking for a new direction. 

Halam’s transition to tech didn’t come overnight. She had previously completed a coding bootcamp that covered machine learning, data science, and blockchain. It was during this time that she met another Smoothstack participant, who would later become her husband. Together, they applied to Smoothstack after their honeymoon, hoping to transition into the tech industry together. 

What attracted Halam to Smoothstack was the program’s straightforwardness. “I was exhausted by every job requiring three years of experience for entry-level positions,” she shared. Smoothstack’s model, where no prior experience was needed, was exactly what she and her husband had been searching for. 

“The fact that we could be trained for three months in a new field, building vocabulary and knowledge, and then be pipelined toward a job—it’s something we couldn’t have done otherwise,” Halam explained. The training allowed them to go deeper into the topics they were passionate about and gave them the confidence to pursue tech jobs. 

For Halam, the cloud tech track stood out. “We didn’t know what skills would be required for which jobs, so cloud tech was a refreshingly straightforward path,” she said. It was clear that completing the program would lead to interviews and eventually a new career. 

But perhaps Halam’s favorite part of the experience was the sense of camaraderie within her cohort. The cohort model, combined with lab time, created a collaborative environment where colleagues helped each other out. “Seeing everyone get interviews and deployed made me really happy,” Halam said. “There wasn’t much competition—it felt more like a team working toward the same goal. You don’t always get that in the workspace. It made us all more productive.” 

Halam’s journey from Carnegie Hall to cloud tech shows the power of the right training program to fuel career transformation. Through Smoothstack, Halam and her husband found a supportive community, gained in-depth knowledge, and secured new opportunities—proving that the right resources can help anyone make a successful career leap.