OAKLAND, Calif. -- There are a dozen reasons why Jahmil Eady was an unlikely computer coder.

In college, Eady was a media studies major with a concentration in film. Her loves were "history and art and English," as she told the New York Times. She didn't attend a university like MIT or Stanford, with a powerhouse reputation in the computer sciences.

Perhaps most notably: in a technology industry dominated by white men, she is an African-American woman.

But her life was changed forever by a modest fellowship to attend a little-known computer training program. And thanks to a bold move by New York City's new mayor, that fellowship program is set to grow -- significantly.

Today, Eady works as a junior applications developer at Fox News. More importantly, she has gone from being yet another underemployed young person to a full-time employee with a good salary, health insurance and a 401(k).

Christine Beaubrun, a graduate who went from working at the front desk to front-end engineering at Intel, has a similar story. So does Lavoisier Cornerstone, a rapper turned developer who now works as a developer at a start-up, and teaches kids to code on the weekends.

How did Eady, Beaubrun, and Cornerstone beat the odds? How can others like her do the same? Click here to read more.