When Leida Mendoza arrived in the U.S. from the Philippines in 2011, she was close to getting an engineering degree, but when she got to Chicago in 2016, she wanted to get credentials to get a job as quickly as possible. After some research, she decided that network technology would be a good fit for her background and her career goals.
She found Wright College through friends who were already students there, and it was close to home. Working full-time while she took classes, Leida earned her degree in three semesters. Many of her previous college credits transferred in, so she was able to concentrate on IT-related classes and earned her associate degree in May of 2018.
While in her last semester at Wright, one of her professors encouraged her to go to a panel information session on apprenticeships at Accenture. Leida had heard of Accenture, but didn’t really know the scope of what the company did. Inspired by the information she heard from Accenture staff as well as Wright College students who were also Accenture apprentices, Leida decided to apply to the program. She got an apprenticeship offer just one day before she graduated from Wright College in May, and started working that July.
The apprenticeship is a full-time commitment, but Leida is loving the challenge and learning on her feet. She works mainly with databases, managing SAP environments and is involved on the security end of the system as well.
“It’s very hard, but I like what I’m doing. The foundation I got at Wright really helps me now in my day-to-day activities in the project.”
As she learns, she’s got a support system of supervisors and other Accenture apprentices from Wright College. At the end of the year-long apprenticeship, Leida is hoping for a full-time job offer from Accenture. Then, she plans to continue her education and pursue a bachelor’s degree in Information Technology.