community-college
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John Pimentel and the business of making the unlikely ordinary
Before co-founding 280 Earth, John Pimentel helped build wind projects and rebuild California freeways. His career keeps returning to the same awkward question: how do you turn a promising idea into something people can actually use?
Oakland had the talent. BRIDGEGOOD built the first assignment.
A furniture-store meeting became a nonprofit design studio with a practical answer to a familiar problem: how do you get experience when nobody has hired you yet?
Mission College
Mission College is a public community college in Santa Clara, in the heart of Silicon Valley, part of the West Valley-Mission Community College District. Founded in 1975, it offers associate degrees, university-transfer pathways, career and technical certificates, ESL and noncredit courses to a diverse, largely working-adult student body. Through its Mission Promise program it offers free tuition to district residents and wraps students in support services - food, childcare, mental-health counseling and more - to remove the barriers that keep people from finishing.