There’s at least one worrywart in every learner cohort at Per Scholas St. Louis, the no-cost tech-training nonprofit at Cortex. So say the instructors of the most recent IT Support course. It had 13 students, and the worrywart among them, the instructors say, was 27-year-old Jonai “Serenity” Whitehorn.
She had grown up in Florissant. She remembers, as a kid, watching her tech-savvy dad take apart his desktop computer and thinking to herself, I want that. She begged for her own PC, which she got at age 12, and became a “huge nerd.” She went straight from high school into tech internships and learned by doing, but she craved more foundational knowledge and higher-paying work, and so found her way to Per Scholas. She enrolled in its 15-week tech-support course. It was “very intense,” she says—so intense that she even opted into some free counseling provided by the nonprofit, just to get through it. But get through it she did. At the graduation ceremony on Feb. 27, instructor Zell Davis says that he appreciates worrywarts: Their discomfort drives them to be successful. “I’m looking very forward to seeing what she’s able to do,” he says.
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One thing she has already done: Land a tech job.
Per Scholas’ internal metrics suggest it’s an engine of upward economic mobility. A national nonprofit championed by The New York Times Communities Fund and supported financially by heavy hitters such as Google and the Lilly Endowment Inc., Per Scholas provides no-cost training in areas such as IT support, cybersecurity, and data center technology, all while offering wraparound services to students who need them. The nonprofit now has a presence in two dozen cities; it gained a foothold in St. Louis in 2022, at Cortex. It has since graduated more than 400 students here, the leadership says, and those students have an 84 percent placement rate. Most learners come in making about $19,000 a year, and on average they double or triple those earnings after graduation, according to Keisha Mabry Haymore, the managing director in St. Louis.
One question is whether this can continue in an age of rapidly improving artificial intelligence. In just the last several months, AI tools such as Claude Code leapt forward, markets got spooked, and the fintech company Block, founded by St. Louis native Jack Dorsey, announced it would lay off 40 percent of its workforce (or 4,000 workers) in an AI-powered reboot.
Yet Per Scholas is not trying to train its learners to out-code Claude Code or outpace large language models such as ChatGPT. Rather, it aims to train students to learn and use those tools with judgment and oversight in order to be more useful to employers. Just as the St. Louis–based nonprofit LaunchCode has done with its Hire Human initiative, Per Scholas works backwards by systematically asking employers what skills they need and then revamping its curricula accordingly. The small-batch nature of the courses—typically, three-and-a-half months in duration—makes such adjustments easier. Per Scholas also offers alumni cost-free upskilling for two years after graduation.
It goes further than just training, though, by trying to eliminate distractions that prevent it. Whitehorn says she relied not only on the program’s virtual “learner support” (the counseling mentioned above), but also took advantage of vouchers that covered the cost of her technical certification. In addition, she was approved for a zero-interest loan to cover the cost of living during her course. (According to one internal study, those loans boosted graduation rates by 13 percent.) Other services on offer include loaner equipment, transportation vouchers, and career coaching.
Matt Modica, the vice president and chief information security officer at BJC, says he likes how Per Scholas focuses on the whole person. “It’s not just, These are the skills you need for cybersecurity,” he says; it’s also about teaching the “weird uniqueness” of corporate culture to those unhabituated to it. Modica was part of the group at Cortex’s Global Center for Cybersecurity that, years ago, sought to build a talent pipeline in the local community. They pushed to bring Per Scholas to the district, he says. (St. Louis benefactors such as the Bellwether Foundation, the William T. Kemper Foundation, and the Hermann Family Foundation also supported the move.) After the nonprofit set up shop, Modica then built a business case for BJC to hire from the pipeline, got that new headcount approved, and hired two graduates in cybersecurity. He was so pleased with the results, he says, he recently joined the local advisory board.
Serenity Whitehorn has seen her own results. On Feb. 27, as her graduation ceremony is about to begin inside a second-floor room in a building at Cortex, she shares some news: She has earned her A+ certification. “Yesterdayyy!” she says in falsetto. “So exciting.” Her long-term aspiration, she explains, is to be a mainframe engineer. But for the time being, she is gearing up to start her tech-support job at Frontline Managed Services.
During the ceremony, the instructors give out special “Core Values” awards. “Integrity means doing what’s right even when nobody is looking,” Davis says to those gathered. “There was a young lady in this class that we knew…. was going to make sure she did the right thing, no matter what. She’s already leaning down because she knows her name’s about to be called. Serenity!” Applauded by the whole room, Whitehorn walks up to her instructors and does a little stutter-step dance before bearhugging McCain.
Outside in the hallway, McCain is asked about AI, humanoid robots, and the future of tech-support roles such as the one Whitehorn is about to assume. Those jobs will evolve as technology evolves, McCain argues, but the interaction between humans and machines will always need managing by humans. She estimates that half of what she taught in the recent IT support class could be automated within a few years. But even then, she adds, new tech will have emerged, and there will still be a need for a human in the loop to see whether it’s working in real life and to adjust it as needed. “You’re going to have to have the oversight, so I’m not worried about robots taking over,” McCain says. “Nope.”
