Break Through Tech

What does it take for work based learning to really ‘work’? After 10 years of designing, delivering, and innovating experiential learning opportunities for undergraduate students across the country, we’re setting our sights on the next 10 years – and the hundreds of thousands of students who need access to these transformational experiences. Judith Spitz, Ph.D., founder and CEO of Break Through Tech, walks us through her key insights for academia and industry as the labor landscape evolves with technology. Read the full article now.

The Break Through Tech Fellow Community is a lifelong network of talented technologists who are redefining what innovation and excellence look like in a tech-enabled world. Connected through shared values and a commitment to inclusive impact, this community supports one another through peer learning, collaboration, and mentorship. Together, fellows are reshaping industries, challenging systems, and expanding access to power and opportunity—today and for generations to come.

From teaching herself machine learning through YouTube videos to building AI models that solve business challenges, Riddhima Medatwal is proving that early opportunities can shape the future of a career. “Working on real industry problems through AI Studio, learning Machine Learning Foundations with a cohort of awesome people, and having mentors from the field changed my understanding of what was possible at my stage.” Read more about her journey. ↓

Break Through Tech AI Program fellows took 1st and 2nd place in the 2026 WiDS Worldwide Global Datathon. We are proud to celebrate the achievements of our fellows who rose to the top of a global competition that brings together a community of data scientists, students, and researchers to tackle high-stakes challenges. This year’s challenge, developed with Watch Duty, focused on predicting wildfire spread and arrival times using only the first five hours of data. The scale of this competition underscores the magnitude of this accomplishment: • 21,000+ model submissions over five months • A truly global field, with participants from cities around the world, from California to Kigali to Guangzhou • Final rankings separated by margins as small as thousandths of a point, where even the slightest improvement made the difference Among this global field, Break Through Tech teams led the way: 🥇 1st Place: BTT_Mapping Swetha Upadrasta (San Jose, CA) Marcello Borromeo (Phoenix, AZ) Anjali Dev (Santa Barbara, CA) 🥈 2nd Place: BTT_Heatwave Ayooluwa Wojuade (Baltimore, MD) Rishik Reddy Yesgari Yesgari (Edison, NJ) 🥈 2nd Place, Student Track: BTT_Blackline Charlotte Huang (Santa Barbara, CA) Krrish Kohli (Long Beach, CA) These teams were formed through the Break Through Tech AI Program, bringing together undergraduate students from universities across the United States to collaborate and build together. We are proud of all Break Through Tech teams who participated in this year’s Datathon, and extend our congratulations to every team who competed, especially our fellows for this incredible achievement. https://lnkd.in/gnimRbf3

 “This is our moment to build something new, not simply new programs or new credentials, but new pathways, new signals of readiness, new models of partnership, and ultimately a stronger bridge between human potential, economic mobility and opportunity.” Read our recent founder’s letter to see how Break Through Tech is building the workforce infrastructure for the AI economy. We'd love to hear your perspective: What should "career readiness" mean in the age of AI? https://bit.ly/4fcVIlz 

Break Through Tech is entering a new chapter.  A decade ago, we welcomed our first cohort, five students who walked into rooms they weren't always expected to be in. Since then, Break Through Tech Fellows have carried their skills, their perspectives, and their ambition into classrooms, engineering teams, boardrooms, and communities across the country. As AI is redefining what employers expect from early-career talent. Degrees alone are no longer enough. Experience, applied skills, and evidence of readiness increasingly determine who gets hired—and who gets left behind. We believe this is a moment to build on the last decade of our experience, not new programs alone, but the actual infrastructure the AI economy requires. New pathways. New signals of readiness. New models of partnership between employers and institutions. New ways of measuring what readiness for work really looks like. It's about building the systems that determine who gets the opportunity to shape what comes next. Read our Founder's Letter to learn more about our vision for the years ahead. https://bit.ly/4fcVIlz

We've spent ten years proving what works and we’ve helped tens of thousands of student technologists turn potential into opportunity. Independence gives us the ability to take what we've learned and build the systems, partnerships, and infrastructure that the AI era now demands. Today marks Break Through Tech's first day as an independent nonprofit. To mark this moment, our founder and CEO Judith Spitz, Ph.D., reflects on how we got here; from a handful of The City University of New York students to fellows across 40+ states at over 200 colleges and universities, and lays out our vision to become the nation's leading engine for AI-era workforce infrastructure by 2030. This next chapter has been made possible by visionary philanthropists and industry partners – including Melinda French Gates’ Pivotal Ventures, Griffin Catalyst, Strada Education Foundation, Verizon, Accenture, and many others – who believe that talent is everywhere, but opportunity is not. Read Judy's vision for what's next: https://bit.ly/4fcVIlz

As we continue the 2026–27 AI Program, we want to highlight our fellows who are actively progressing through Machine Learning Foundations (MLF). Congratulations to all the fellows for staying engaged in the course and building their skills in machine learning, AI, and data science. Week by week, they are moving through labs, collaborating with peers, and strengthening the foundational knowledge that will support their future work in the field. A huge thank you as well to our coaches, lab instructors, and course support teams. Your guidance, mentorship, and behind-the-scenes effort are what make this learning experience possible and impactful. We are excited to see our fellows continue growing throughout the program and creating their own AI agents by the end of MLF.

This summer, our Sprinternship™ program is in full swing across the country. A Sprinternship™ is a short-term, paid micro-internship that bridges the gap between college and careers through short-term, paid, company-hosted tech projects during academic breaks. Over just a few weeks, our fellows worked in cohorts to tackle meaningful challenges alongside industry advisors and company partners. This past month, fellows contributed to projects like: • Global Trade Management Tool (Origen Tech) • AI Analytics Platform (CVS Health) • AI Monitoring & Self-Healing for Airflow Pipelines (CVS Health) • Automated Candidate Ranking Tool (Giant Eagle) • Green Infrastructure Asset Tracking Modernization (NYC Department of Environmental Protection (NYC DEP))

Want to share your tech journey? We want to highlight the voices of our fellows and alumni. Share your story and get a chance to be featured in a LinkedIn article! Tell us how Break Through Tech played a role in your journey, what challenges you overcame, and what it took to get here. Share your story today and inspire the next generation of tech talent! Fill out our fellow spotlight form: https://lnkd.in/g-3_vmyM