Juha Mikkola is co-founder of Wyncode Academy, which Knight Foundation supports. Photo provided by Wyncode Academy.

Every Wyncoder’s journey culminates in Pitch Day. After an exciting, challenging and often life-changing nine weeks, Pitch Day is where Wyncoders present a full stack Web application they built from the ground up during their final two weeks of training. The event acts as a rite of passage for the latest crop of Wyncoders to join Miami’s growing tech scene as entry-level developers or entrepreneurs.

On Thursday, Wyncode’s Pitch Day VII is going to be extra special as two Wyncoders who will be pitching, Henry Arbolaez and Arielle Dickey– Louis, received the Future Leaders of Tech Scholarship in partnership with Knight Foundation. After having witnessed the transformative power of learning to code, these two Wyncoders will announce the next two scholarship recipients for Wyncode’s January cohort.

After receiving hundreds of applications, a selection panel made up of Widny St. Louis (Wyncode grad and developer, TouchSuite), Kiesha Moodie (Teach for America, which is also supported by Knight Foundation) and Brian Brackeen (CEO, Kairos) will meet prior to Pitch Day to narrow down the the five finalists to the two award recipients. Here are the five finalists:

1. Jermaine Lang 2. Aldrin Bustos 3. Andrea Donnell 4. Robert Tassy 5. Stefan Sobers

Pitch Day VII has a star-studded lineup of panelists to help select the best Web application from Cohort 7. These panelists include: Matt Haggman, Knight Foundation’s Miami program director; Josh Siegel, the chief technology officer at CareCloud, a leading provider of cloud-based practice management; Marian Phelan, the CEO of Hashrocket, one of the country’s elite Ruby on Rails companies; and Melissa Krinzman, who as managing director of Venture Architects brings 20 years of experience in advising private companies and nonprofit organizations.

We encourage prospective students, hiring partners, Wyncode alumni, and the Miami tech community to join us Thursday to experience innovative projects and find out the recipients of the Future Leaders of Tech Scholarship at Pitch Day VII.

Wyncode’s Pitch Day VII takes place Thursday, Nov. 19, at The LAB Miami in Wynwood. RSVP here.