Plinio Ayala

About Plinio

• I grew up in a rough neighborhood in the South Bronx and realized early on that careers create opportunities because I saw people leave those neighborhoods when their parents got a job.
• One of my teachers saw potential in me and put extra effort into helping me grow that potential—this resulted in a scholarship to a school in Manhattan.
• After graduating high school and college, I decided to take my credit card with a $1000 limit and go to Puerto Rico to start a business in refrigeration and air conditioning.
• After a couple of years, I sold that business and moved back to the Bronx and was set on using the money I had produced to find a career that would help other people.
• I ended up finding a job helping others write their job resumes, but I still wanted to help people on a much larger scale.
• I started working with Per Scholas, which originally refurbished used computers for much lower than the market cost and taught the technology to others.
• Half the original class we hired left after a few months because they now had the skills needed to succeed elsewhere—we realized this was our opportunity to train people in IT for career success.
• We shifted the objective at Per Scholas to focus on workforce development and I eventually moved into the CEO position—we currently train about 10,000 people and hope to keep growing rapidly!