Iron Yard Names Mary Dunlap Its Little Rock Director

April 20, 2015

The Iron Yard has named Mary Dunlap its Little Rock campus director.

For those unfamiliar with the Iron Yard, it's a prominent, national coding school that will begin courses in Little Rock this spring. It was lured to Arkansas by IA and Kristian Andersen of Gravity Ventures and Studio Science.

The Iron Yard Little Rock will offer:

  • Front-end engineering, which will provide the skills to create fully functional websites and Web applications;
  • Rails engineering, where students will learn how to build fast, production-quality full-stack apps;
  • Mobile engineering, providing the skills to create iOS and Mac apps.

It was featured last month in Arkansas Business. Its arrival in central Arkansas is being heralded as a significant moment in the evolution of the state's tech startup ecosystem. A sample from the AB piece:

The Iron Yard school was launched in 2013 by Peter Barth as a way to retain startups graduating from his Iron Yard Ventures accelerator program in Greenville, South Carolina.

“If we wanted our portfolio companies to stay in Greenville, we had to fix the talent pipeline,” Barth said.

He knew that providing a homegrown pool of talent would help convince graduating startups to remain upstate.

Little Rock had been on the Iron Yard radar, Barth said, but Gravity Ventures co-founder and serial startup founder Kristian Andersen of Conway introduced him to Innovate Arkansas, and expansion to Arkansas was accelerated.

Andersen, a mentor to the ARK Challenge accelerator of Fayetteville and Little Rock and a consultant to IA, said developing local tech talent is the next step in the growth of the state’s tech startup ecosystem and believes the Iron Yard will serve as that “game changer.”

“The Iron Yard is the largest coding academy in the U.S. and arguably the most successful,” he said. “Getting it in Little Rock is a seminal moment for the state. The Iron Yard will fill huge gaps in Arkansas. We don’t have enough tech talent, and it will fill that need while creating lots of opportunity for upward mobility.”

Dunlap comes to the Iron Yard from Little Rock's Agency 501, and she also worked with ARK Challenge 2013 alum WeGreek. She tells the AR Scene that classes could begin as soon as May 25.

Meanwhile, the Iron Yard has set up shop in the Arkansas Capital Commerce Center on River Market Avenue in downtown Little Rock.

Stay tuned. More to come...

 

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