A nonprofit is teaming up with companies to get help get low-income New Yorkers into the tech field.  Education can be a barrier, but the program is substituting college courses with workforce development and training.

For more than five years, Jovanni Luna worked 60 hours a weeks at two jobs so he could barely get by.

“In the mornings, I would work full time doing concierge in a luxury building in Brooklyn, and then in the afternoons, I would do Best Buy,” Luna said.

Between both jobs, Luna would make roughly $40,000. And college, at the time, was not a possibility. 

Luna had gone for one year, but it was too expensive, and he needed to pay off tuition to go back.

“Having those two jobs, I felt like it wasn’t really going anywhere, and I needed a change in my life,” Luna said.

That change came when he enrolled in Pursuit, a four-year fellowship program he heard of through a co-worker. 

After the first year of technical training, a fellow is matched with a paying job at a company as a software engineer.

“It’s not about what you did in the past. It’s about what you can do,” said Pursuit Co-Founder Jukay Hsu.

Hsu co-founded Pursuit 11 year ago. The program is able to run through its investors and an income share agreement with its fellows.

Fellows have no upfront costs. 

They pay a percentage of their gross earnings for 48 months when a fellow gets their job if it’s $50,000 or more. If they don’t have a job, or if their salary falls below $50,000, they pay nothing.

Hsu’s says this partnership’s goal is to find talent that may be overlooked.

“There’s a lot of homegrown talent in the future of New York tech companies,” Hsu said.

But often college degrees become barriers for New Yorkers to make a living wage. The U.S. Census reports roughly 60% of New Yorkers do not have a four-year degree.

“Whether or not one has a college degree is such an important part of what we’re working to solve,” Hsu said.

Luna had to drop out of college for financial reasons. He is now in the third year of the program. 

Luna matched with the company Foursquare and makes a six-figure salary, only working 40 hours a week.

“The impact that Pursuit has had on me has been really great,” Luna said.

Luna said it his responsibility to recommend people to the program so they too can overcome barriers to earn a living wage. 

To celebrate his new career, Luna did something he always dreamed of and would not have been able to do in the past, go to Disney World. And he took his whole family with him.

“I've been able to, to make a lot of lifestyle changes in a very positive way,” Luna said.