Fifteen New Yorkers Just Started Their AI Developer Origin Story

On September 18th, fifteen New Yorkers walked into Civic Hall at Zero Irving, some without a line of code to their name, others just getting started. Twelve months from now, they’ll walk out as job-ready AI developers with a portfolio to prove it. 

The Break Into Tech: AI Developer Scholarship is fully funded by the Zero Irving Workforce Development Project Fund, built on a belief we’ll happily repeat until it’s boring: tech is for everyone. More than 1,000 people applied for 15 spots over two months, which tells you exactly how many people have been waiting for a door like this to open.

This scholarship includes six months of learning web development, full-stack engineering, and AI application development, split between weekly in-person classes at Civic Hall and at-home study. Then six more months of Get Hired support: résumés, portfolios, interview prep, and job search coaching, all the way to an offer letter. And, as a major plus, everyone gets a brand new laptop that they get to keep after graduation.

Meet the Class

This cohort is 73% women, and nearly three-quarters are over 40, which means most of these folks aren’t dabbling, they’re pivoting on purpose, often after a layoff or a working a job with few growth opportunities. Two-thirds are getting by on under $25K a year. Not one of them has a computer science degree. And every single one of them showed up anyway.

Abby A. spent over a decade in nonprofit communications before she’d had enough of hitting ceilings: “Getting this scholarship felt like validation that this pivot was a real, structured path forward.” Shadan A. came to the U.S. as a kid without speaking English, and she’s bringing that same “figure it out” energy here: “I don’t want to simply watch this AI transformation happen. I want to build with it.” Charlene B. has spent twenty years in digital strategy, and she’s ready to go a layer deeper: “I don’t just want to use AI tools, I want to better understand how they’re built.”

Then there’s Tara D., who’s done reading the AI headlines and ready to write a few of her own: she’s “ready to stop just reading about the AI revolution and start actively building within it.” Clifford J. is here for the community as much as the code: “I’m excited about building community within a new industry. Lift each other up.” And Michelle R., who’s spent years underpaid for work she was overqualified for, put the whole thing simply: “This was an opportunity I couldn’t pass up.”

Winnie L. and Alicia L. round out the group, and between them you get two very different careers (photo editing and orchestral conducting) landing on the same conclusion: when an industry moves this fast, the smart move is to learn how to grow along with it.

How This Actually Came Together

A cohort like this doesn’t happen simply because someone wished it into existence. It took a lot of work and dedication from the candidates and the Skillcrush team; and more importantly, Zero Irving’s generous support. They made a $100,000 investment covering tuition, laptops, and career coaching for all 15 students. We handled the rest, from recruiting and selecting the cohort to designing the curriculum and building in the kind of in-person support that keeps people showing up week after week (turns out learning sticks a lot better with a Friday afternoon and real humans in a real room). If you want the fuller behind-the-scenes look into how a partnership like this gets built, we wrote up the whole thing here.

This is a Repeatable Model

What gets us most excited is that everything that went into this project (funding, curriculum, live instruction, and career support tied directly to outcomes) can travel. We can rebuild them for the next city, the next fund, the next 15, or 150, or 1,500 people ready to make this leap. Some organizations want to fund scholarships for their community, the way Zero Irving did. Others are looking inward, reskilling their own teams so current employees can grow into AI-era roles. Either way, we’ve got a version of this that fits.

We’d love nothing more than to build this exact kind of thing again, somewhere else, with a whole new class of people who thought tech wasn’t for them.

Fifteen New Yorkers just started. Check back in six months for portfolios. Check back in twelve to see them out there, job-ready, and making their case. We’ll be cheering the whole way!

Want to bring this to your organization? Whether you’re looking to fund scholarships for your community or reskill your own team for the AI era, let’s talk about what a partnership with Skillcrush could look like.

Thinking about breaking into tech yourself? You don’t have to wait for the next scholarship to land in your inbox. Join the Skillcrush community and we’ll let you know the second a new opportunity like this one opens up.