Jacob Martinez finished a 12-week HVAC course through WorkTexas in 2022. At 25, without a college degree, he now services the Houston Astros’ ballpark as an HVAC technician, earning $60,000 a year with full benefits. “WorkTexas gave me the skills and confidence to go out on my own path,” he has said. “I’m building for my future.”
Mike Feinberg’s Program Tracks What Happens Next
Zaman Al-Mansri enrolled in the WorkTexas welding program at 18, after one semester of community college didn’t work out. His tuition came through a WIOA program for out-of-school youth, routed through the Texas Workforce Commission. Cecily Salas, 23, studies commercial electrical work, funded by a TRIO grant through the same commission. Neither case is unusual inside WorkTexas; together they describe how most participants actually get there. Feinberg treats stories like theirs as the real measure of the program, not the certificates behind them.
Different Trades, Same Follow-Up
All three enter WorkTexas’s five-year tracking system, in which career coaches check on employment, wages and job satisfaction long after a course ends. It’s the same commitment Feinberg sums up with a phrase he carried over from his KIPP years: work hard, be nice, an idea his online shop still sells alongside WorkTexas’s newer mission. More on how the tracking works is on his about.me page and his TXSVF bio.