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Meet Richard, CEO of Coding Dojo

Richard loved being a student at Coding Dojo so much that he eventually became their CEO. Initially, Richard was working at Boeing on the business side and realized he wanted to take a more active role in solving more technical product challenges. In order to make sense of it all, he enrolled in a coding bootcamp called Coding Dojo – and never looked back.

Richard attended Coding Dojo’s 12-week program at the beginning of 2014, and launched his first product – a SaaS platform called Mentor 2.0 – shortly thereafter. While creating his platform, which sought to connect professionals with mentors in their field who could help guide them to the next level, Richard had the opportunity to meet with professionals at enterprises like Costco to pitch them on his idea. However, he chose to put Mentor 2.0 on hold to return to his previous employer, Boeing, as a Product Manager.

“I loved my new job [as a software PM] because it was fast and got you talking to multiple groups, evaluating the product,” Richard said, “I really had a great time.”

After spending a few months back at Boeing, Richard applied for an incubator program created by Coding Dojo Founder Michael Choi, and became increasingly interested in the business workings of the company. Eventually, Michael asked Richard if he would be interested in running the show, and the rest, as they say, is history. Richard became CEO of Coding Dojo in June of 2014, six months after first enrolling as a student.

When asked why Richard chose to attend Coding Dojo in the first place, he cited the rigor of that particular bootcamp. “I found [out that] Coding Dojo teaches three full stacks, and no one else was able to do that,” he said. “During my interviews to be accepted into the program, I learned that this bootcamp was started as an internal program for engineers and was later ramped up after Michael discovered it was a successful learning model,” he said.

Because of its origins in trying to help a company’s internal engineers get better, Richard said the focus of Coding Dojo is different than a lot of the other programming bootcamps out there. “They were never in it for the money from the beginning,” he said, “because they were just trying to solve a hard problem with a lot of rigor — that’s one thing that really differentiates us.”

In describing Coding Dojo, Richard called it rigorous, immersive and intense. While Richard recognizes that this level of intensity can be a lot for some to handle, he said the right students come out learning a lot and being fantastic, well-rounded coders.

“I have a very different background compared to other people, which helped,” Richard said. “For me [the intensity] was ok because I had a military background. I love the immersive, focused environment.”

And Richard truly believes in the effectiveness of the immersive-learning model. However, he makes an important note that it’s not just about being immersive, but also about being experimental:

“I think that’s the key distinction … because you can be immersive, but not experimental. You can’t just be told what to do, you have to be able to build things and test them out. You make mistakes and you correct them until you get it right. When immersive, experimental, and informational come together — that’s when you get the best learning environment.”

The way Richard talks about education is the way some people talk about their morning coffee, or the FIFA World Cup. He truly loves the process of discovering the most creative and effective teaching solutions. Education is a vital part of his life. This is due, in part, to his background of being raised in China, where education is a fundamental part of moving up the economic ladder. To Richard, that’s what makes him much more appreciative of his important role in the educational market. “We work hard to offer our students great programs that can change their lives,” he said.

For Richard, the process of changing lives is something that fulfills childhood dream. “When I was younger, I wanted to do something extraordinary, but I didn’t know what it was yet,” he said. “My father was an entrepreneur and he always pushed me to go all out. He told me to never under-estimate the human potential, [and] I really hope that the writing on my tombstone it says all used up — that’s what I care about, being all used up and giving [life] everything I got.”

This passion for innovative education and going “all out” means Richard remains focused on providing great outcomes for Coding Dojo students, who come from various backgrounds. While some students have 15-20 years of software development experience, others come from completely different careers. However, rather than citing this diversity as a weakness, Richard sees it as key to the success of each class. “When you have students of different backgrounds, people get to see how others solve problems differently and they get to learn from each other, which is truly valuable,” he said.

If Richard could do anything differently about his own education, he said that he would have taken a class at Coding Dojo much earlier, rather than waiting until he was 28. “You’re never too old or too young to experience the language of the 21st century” he said.

A vital piece of advice Richard offers to anyone looking to test out their coding muscles: be patient. “Everybody’s different and anybody can code, but it’s like learning a foreign language, so some people are going to have an easier time with it than others.”

In addition to patience and persistence, Richard notes the importance of knowing where to find the right information in a world overwhelmingly full of it. Richard said that is one more value that Coding Dojo offers its students: the ability to make mistakes, quickly realize it and then correct them.

Because of his bilingual and multi-cultural background, coming to the U.S. from China, Richard is keenly aware of the global big picture and sees how the world is shifting toward technology. Richard compares the need to learn coding skills in the 21st century to the need for a young Chinese boy in the 20th century to learn English if he wanted to succeed in the world of international commerce – different skills for different times. Richard notes that in today’s world the language of possibility is now coding. “Everybody should be involved or have some sort of concept of coding,” Richard says, and for him, Coding Dojo just happened to be his favorite way of achieving that knowledge.

Quick Facts //

What is your favorite book?

My favorite book is Man’s Search for Meaning by Viktor Frankl. The author is really tough about freedom, which is the fundamental premise of the book. He says that the only freedom we have in this world is the attitude we have after something happens to us. I like to ground myself from a spiritual perspective, so I don’t get lost in the bigger picture of why we’re out here.

What’s one thing you’re excited about right now?

We are all very excited at Coding Dojo about expanding to a new campus in Burbank, near Los Angeles. In addition, we have a fantastic online platform that we’ve been developing since 2011. We have spent thousands of hours creating the platform and its content, so we’re going to have a re-launch of our online bootcamp. By the end of this year we will also be offering more coding languages comprehensively. I think I’m most excited for the re-launch of our online platform though — it will definitely be a game-changer.

Lastly, I’m excited about how active we are in pursuing scholarship programs, and having the largest amount in female scholarships, which totals $2,500. We’ve seen a consistent increase of females in our cohorts, and are working to continue closing the gender gap in the programming industry.