Mandy Arola

Mandy has been following developers & tech companies at meetups since 2016. She is NSS’s chief content wrangler, a.k.a. marketing manager. When she’s not writing blogs, managing social media, pestering instructors & graduates for content, or attending meetups, you can find her traveling the world or at home with her beloved dog Lola.
Find me on:

Recent Posts

From Traditional Education To Hands-On Learning | Graduate Spotlight
Feb 15, 2018
A recent high school graduate, a recent college graduate, and a teacher...these three Cohort 21 graduates decided to give hands-on learning a try. Malcolm wanted to pursue his new-found passion, Fang wanted to combine his biomedical engineering skills with the logic and creativity of coding, and Matt wanted to leave teaching and pursue a career where he could still make a difference. Read More

Topics: Student Stories, Hiring?

Exploring Space Through Data With NASA Datanauts
Feb 14, 2018
When you think of NASA, you probably think of the space race, walking on the moon, or a potential mission to Mars. NASA is built on exploration and as a result of that, they have collected lots and lots of data. They currently have over 39,000 data sets! With all of this data and declining funding, NASA is turning to the community to find answers through Datanauts. Read More

Topics: Community, Analytics + Data Science

Making A Difference Through Development | Graduate Spotlight
Feb 9, 2018
This week we meet two cohort 21 graduates, Dan Certa and Dr. Teresa Vasquez. Both created capstones that make life a little easier for their users, whether it’s a busy parent or an adult with autism. Read More

Topics: Student Stories, Hiring?

Global Game Jam Sparks Creativity
Feb 6, 2018
During the last weekend of January teams from around the world gathered for the annual Global Game Jam (GGJ), a 48-hour game hackathon. This year’s theme was “Transmission.” Over 42,000 jammers made 8,600 games at 800 sites in over 100 countries! In Nashville, over 100 game fans gathered to imagine, design, and build 25 different games. Several NSS students and alumni participated in the fun-filled weekend. Read More

Topics: Student Stories, Community

Learning The Craft of Full Stack Development | Graduate Spotlight
Jan 30, 2018
The path to a career in web development is different for everyone. Today we talk with two graduates from Evening Cohort 5. Sharon Smith brought her career full circle and Heather Thacker was looking for a new challenge. They spent a year together with their classmates learning the craft of full stack software development. Read More

Topics: Student Stories, Hiring?

Community Minded | Graduate Spotlight
Jan 25, 2018
I’m excited to bring you another round of graduate spotlights for the next few weeks! We graduated 40 new developers this month and they all have their own unique stories about what brought them to NSS, the things they learned, the capstones they created, and their goals for the future. This week we talk to three alumni from Cohort 21 who all came from careers where they served their community or country. Read More

Topics: Student Stories, Hiring?

Find Your Place In Technology | Megan Freeman - Cohort 9
Jan 22, 2018
Megan Freeman went through NSS’s web development bootcamp as a part of Cohort 9. She left a career in business dentistry to purse software development. Her six months at NSS laid the groundwork for her first job in tech by exposing Megan to current technologies. This made it easier for her to go deeper and learn more on the job. Read More

Topics: Alumni, Student Stories

Take A Risk... Start A New Career | Bryan Duplantis - Cohort 9
Jan 15, 2018
Bryan Duplantis had a long career in the television industry before he decided to give software development a try. Prior to bootcamp, he had no knowledge about software development and no understanding of the work that goes into building a website. He is now a technical business analyst and IT support manager. Read More

Topics: Alumni, Student Stories

Is The Effort Of Designing For User Experience Worth It?
Jan 11, 2018
Designing for user experience can save time and money. But how do you build support for designing for the user? Consider the return on investment, or ROI, of UX. A great video that breaks down the ROI of UX is from Dr. Susan Weinschenk. She shares how UX addresses the top 3 reasons software projects fail and several benchmarks to use when measuring ROI. Read More

Topics: UI/UX

Day Cohort 21 And Evening Cohort 5 Graduate to Kick-Off 2018
Jan 10, 2018
On Tuesday we graduated 25 new full stack Ruby developers and 15 new full stack C#/.NET developers. Check out their websites and podcasts. Read More

Topics: Student Stories, Hiring?