A Wakefield High School alum is raising awareness about free programs to help disadvantaged students launch careers in high-demand fields.
Deontae Murphy, a 2011 Wakefield graduate who now works for Amazon Web Services, spent three days last week speaking to more than 100 Arlington students in small group sessions. Mostly speaking to those in underrepresented groups, he shared details about free training programs, certifications and tuition assistance that can lower the cost of higher education and open doors to tech careers.
As a first-generation college graduate who grew up in South Arlington, Murphy shared how these opportunities can help students tackle the challenges he faced.
“I just want to let kids know, like, ‘Hey, I went to Wakefield. I was there in your shoes,'” he told ARLnow. “If I had someone educate me about this at 17, when I was a senior at Wakefield, I feel like my career path would have been more of a straightforward point, instead of the ups and downs and the trials and tribulations I had getting to this point.”
Challenging perceptions in tech
Murphy’s emphasis on accessible career pathways stems from his own winding journey to success.
After graduating from Wakefield, Murphy says he struggled to find his footing in college, transferring schools and switching majors multiple times before stepping away to work in his family’s business. In his late 20s, he returned to school, earned a marketing degree, and landed an internship at an Amazon fulfillment center — a move that ultimately paved the way for his current role as a marketing representative for AWS.
Still, Murphy says that if he had known about the resources and programs available to him earlier, his journey could have been smoother and more direct, helping him avoid some of the challenges he encountered along the way.
“So, if a kid says, ‘Hey, my parents can’t pay for me to go to college, I have to work immediately after high school,’ well, you should at least be aware that if you work at Amazon, Starbucks and UPS, you have an option of getting free education because you’re a full-time employee,” he said. “So if you have to work, you still have the option of furthering your education.”
Wakefield teacher Wendy Maitland, who helped launch and now runs the school’s Amazon STEM lab, said most of her students plan to attend college, with many starting at Northern Virginia Community College before transferring to a four-year school. However, she noted that financial barriers and lack of familiarity with higher education can sometimes make the path more daunting for her predominantly low-income, first-generation students.
“It’s helpful to have people from [the] industry come and share about what they do for a living and their journey from high school to their current position, especially people that look like them,” she said. “Because most of the students we work with, their family members are not in the same type of careers.”
Maitland said she and other teachers have introduced students to alternatives like NOVA’s data center operations program, which can lead to high-paying jobs in tech. But she said getting students to embrace these options can be difficult because many don’t see them as achievable or feel unsure about pursuing careers they perceive as requiring advanced technical skills.
“A lot of kids have these roadblocks in their mind that they can’t do it. ‘I’m not a good tech person. I’m not good in math. Oh no, I’m not interested in that,’ when they haven’t really understood the position or the job,” she said. “So, I think more exposure about what those job tasks entail would be helpful.”
Students find hope in new opportunities
Daniel Garciaguirre, a junior at Wakefield, said that before attending Murphy’s session, he was worried about having limited options to pay for college and didn’t think there were many routes or organizations that could help him right after high school.
“What really, like, opened my vision was when [Murphy] said that Amazon, when you work there, they pay for your tuition. I really didn’t know that, so now I’m really intrigued,” Garciaguirre said. “I feel like it’s the economically best decision I could take right now.”
Diego Fernandez, another junior, said he had been set on going out-of-state for college, despite the higher costs, and was frequently stressed about how to pay for it. After Murphy’s presentation, he said it “made it less stressful to think about” paying for college.
“I have different plans of how I’m gonna, like, try to pay for college, but if those plans don’t work out, then it’s nice to know that there’s a different route that’ll put me in pretty much the same position with more experience instead,” he said.
While Murphy has focused much of his outreach on underrepresented communities, he emphasized that these resources are for everyone.
He plans to return to Wakefield in the future with more information about similar programs from other companies, and to follow up with students who sign up for certifications through the AWS Skills Center.
“I’m not going to be able to reach hundreds of students in just three days, but if I can spark interest in even a few to say, ‘Hey, I don’t have to jump straight into the workforce. I can explore the option of furthering my education,’ that would be a success,” he said.
Available resources
A list of some of the resources spotlighted in Murphy’s sessions at Wakefield High School is below.
- The AWS Skills Center in Crystal City, offering free cloud computing certifications
- Amazon’s Career Choice program, which covers tuition for full-time employees pursuing a range of degrees and certifications.
- Target’s tuition assistance program, which offers up to $5,250 annually for non-master’s degrees to full-time and part-time employees
- Starbucks’ College Achievement Plan, which covers 100% of tuition for online bachelor’s degrees through Arizona State University
- Northern Virginia Community College’s one-year Career Studies Certificate in Data Center Operations, which provides hands-on training for telecom and data center jobs
- Year Up, which connects participants with jobs at companies like Apple, SpaceX and Capital One through a year-long training and internship program.
