From night-shift security guard to software developer, a St. Petersburg veteran finds his path at CodeBoxx

ST. PETERSBURG, Fla. – Chris Clark spent his nights working security and his days wondering what he was supposed to do with his life.

A Marine Corps veteran and St. Petersburg native, Clark had plenty of ideas and no clear way to act on them. “I was spitballing ideas, but never executing,” he said.

That changed when a friend, John Adams of the advertising technology company VideoAmp, saw Clark working through some online classes and told him that if he wanted to learn, CodeBoxx was the best place to do it. VideoAmp is a CodeBoxx placement partner. Adams introduced Clark to CodeBoxx Academy Director Brian Peret, and Clark enrolled in the Academy’s AI-native full-stack development program.

He kept his third-shift job while he trained. Clark said the schedule flexibility and easy access to coaches and staff made that possible, and that the coursework was demanding without feeling out of reach. “It’s a learning structure that you can really sink your teeth into, but not feel that it’s impossible,” he said.

The skills came quickly. Clark describes his starting point as someone who “could barely remember how to do HTML on MySpace.” Four months later he was building websites, working on both the front end and back end, setting up servers, and developing and presenting products for his classmates. “Just being able to do things that I thought I had to pay people for,” he said.

After finishing the training, Clark joined the CodeBoxx coaching team, a route many of the program’s top graduates take. Working with current students meant fielding their questions, which pushed him to firm up his own fundamentals.

“It put me in a pressure point, because now they’re asking me the questions,” Clark said. “It’s not just employment. I get the passion of helping other people grow.”

CodeBoxx also prepared him for the job search. Staff sat down with Clark, reviewed the topics he would be expected to know and described the environment he was about to walk into. He said that was a first for him.

“Normally you go search 100 companies, and you get lucky if you find an interview,” Clark said. “This is the first time I ever had a school sit me down and prepare me for the interview. It’s the first time I felt like I was fully equipped.”

Peret said the Academy works to build relationships with its placement partners and to match graduates with roles where they will do well. Clark is now joining VideoAmp, the company where his friend first pointed him toward CodeBoxx.

Clark said time and financial stress had kept him from trying something like this before. “I’ve always been the person to put off,” he said. With CodeBoxx, he said, he could see a real roadmap for how to grow.

Looking back, he said he would tell anyone in the spot he was in to stop talking themselves out of it. “We all have that point where we don’t really know what we want to do, and we think, ‘Oh, maybe this isn’t for me,'” Clark said. “Stop that. Take the first step.”

CodeBoxx has a motto, “CodeBoxx for Life,” and Clark remains part of its alumni community. Peret closed their conversation by saying he hopes others will follow Clark’s path.

For more information about CodeBoxx and the CodeBoxx Foundation, visit codeboxxfoundation.org.