Success Story: The Alternate Path of Apprenticeship

At the age of nine, Emerson Iaquinto fell in love with computers.

By the time she turned 12, she was serving as her family’s personal IT expert. Even though she was completely enthralled by the power of computing, she had not fully considered it as a potential career. This changed once Iaquinto matriculated into the Governor’s Science, Technology, Education, and Mathematics (STEM) Academy at Landstown High School in Virginia Beach.

The STEM Academy gave Iaquinto the opportunity to teach software engineering concepts to other high school students. This helped her develop an early mastery of the craft and cemented her love for programming. By the time she was accepted to Virginia Tech, Iaquinto knew that her life’s work would be in the IT industry.

During her Senior year, Iaquinto began work as the sole System Administrator for a law firm. It was a challenging role that required hours of system oversight, dedicated project management, and many sleepless nights. These hurdles didn’t stop Iaquinto from striving for excellence. By the end of her tenure, she designed and developed a major in-house software system with a 15-year life cycle. Then unexpectedly, the COVID-19 pandemic forced Virginia Tech to transition to online learning. After some time, Iaquinto felt like her technical knowledge outpaced her coursework. This inspired her to drastically change her trajectory.

Iaquinto moved halfway across the country to Texas where she joined a RA program and became a software engineer apprentice for an organization called Smoothstack. The organization provides IT services to Fortune 500 companies and government agencies and the organization creates “net-new” talent through its hire-train-deploy approach.

Its experienced team provides services in Application Development, Cloud, Digital Platforms, Data Engineering and Artificial Intelligence, and Cybersecurity. For Iaquinto, hands-on, practical training mixed with related targeted instruction seemed more promising than the traditional path. The move enabled her to fully immerse herself in software development and refine her skills.

Iaquinto expects to complete the program by September of this year, describing the process as “absolutely amazing.” She feels like an entirely new professional, and she now describes twists and turns in her tech journey as simply “necessary.” She looks forward to finishing her RA program and aspires to a leadership position within the IT industry.