Darren Pham

Closing the Opportunity Divide Through the High Expectation Model

Fremont, California resident Darren Pham is a systems engineer at eBay. Before entering the technology industry, Darren Pham attended and completed the Year Up program.

The inspiration for the program originated from a big brother relationship the founder has with his young charge. Established in 2000, Year Up enrolled its first class comprised of 22 students in 2001 on the fifth floor of the Hancock Tower in Boston.

The Year Up program is designed to prepare its students both academically and professionally. The program’s High Expectation model is at the core of helping students reach their potential.

The mission is centered on making sure that its students gain the skills, experiences, and support needed to function in higher education and professionally in a trade. It strives to encourage students to respect others, build trust and honesty, and embrace diversity and hard work.

The one-year program provides intensive training to under-served, but talented, youth between 18 and 24. Students enrolled in the program can take advantage of college coursework for credit, hands-on experience, corporate internships, and support. This model combines professional and personal development to get the student to a place of self-sufficiency.

Who Can Apply to Year Up and How Does it Benefit Students?

For more than five years, Darren Pham has been working as an IT professional in California. Over the years, he has worked for companies like eBay and Splunk. Darren Pham began his career in tech shortly after completing an intensive IT training and development program through Year Up Bay Area.

Dedicated to helping young adults reach their full potential, Year Up provides young adults with the experience and skills they need to succeed. In doing so, the program works on closing the Opportunity Divide, a gap created by the unequal spread of opportunity throughout the United States.

The program is open to individuals between the ages of 18 and 24 years old who have either a GED or high school diploma. The maximum age of applicants is increased to 26 for young adults who have served in the Armed Forces. Beyond this, applicants must have a legal right to work in the country and not hold a bachelor’s degree. They must also have a specific interest in working in the business or tech industries.

Young adults who are accepted into the Year Up program can enjoy a high rate of employment and internship placement. According to the organization, roughly 90 percent of graduates in the Bay Area earn around $45,000 a year or are enrolled in college full-time within four months of completing Year Up. Meanwhile, 100 percent of qualified students are placed into internships through the program. These individuals are in good standing and show career readiness.

The Difference Between Powerlifting and Olympic Weightlifting

California-based IT professional Darren Pham served as a systems engineer and event management team member at eBay. In this capacity, he was responsible for everything from creating strategies with securities teams to leading IT-related projects and integrating monitoring systems. In his free time, Darren Pham maintains an interest in health and fitness and is fond of Olympic weightlifting.

Many people use the terms powerlifting and weightlifting interchangeably, but the two sports are quite different.

Olympic weightlifting or weightlifting focuses on performing two overhead lifts known as the clean and jerk, and the snatch. The clean and jerk is a two-part lift that begins with cleanly bringing the bar to the shoulders, then jerking the bar above the head. To perform this lift properly, athletes cannot stop the bar at any time when moving it from the shoulders to over the head, nor can they press the bar out when jerking it upwards. Meanwhile, the snatch involves picking a bar up from the ground and smoothly raising it to an overhead position.

Conversely, powerlifting does not involve any overhead lifts. Rather, the sport focuses on the deadlift, squat, and bench press. Squats are performed with a bar over the shoulders and involve creasing the hips in line with the knee until athletes create a parallel line. Meanwhile, deadlifts are performed by picking up the heaviest barbell from the ground and standing straight up with it, and bench presses are done while lying flat on a bench and descending a bar before lifting it back up to its starting position.

Year Up Closes the Opportunity Divide

Bay Area systems engineer Darren Pham first gained experience in the IT sector through his participation in the training program Year Up. After graduating, Darren Pham was able to secure a position with e-commerce retailer eBay. Year Up was established to address a phenomenon known as the opportunity divide.

The opportunity divide refers to the ratio of skilled workers needed to the number of young people who are not employed. Many of these young people don’t have access to higher education or job training programs due to their backgrounds. Programs such as Year Up close this divide by working with private sector companies and providing highly motivated youth with the skills and experience to excel in the workforce.

Year Up students learn essential technical skills that apply to areas such as customer service and IT. Participants also build competency in in-demand soft skills such as communication, collaboration, and time management.

After six months in the classroom, Year Up participants take on a six-month internship at some of the largest companies in the world, including Accenture, Amazon, and Capital One. According to one program evaluation, more than 80 percent of graduates are gainfully employed after four months of leaving Year Up.