Holberton School Students Named Winners of Globant Global Challenge

SAN FRANCISCO, March 31, 2020 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- Holberton School, the tuition-deferred college alternative educating the next generation of digital workers, announced today that two of its students from Colombia have won the The Great Mission, Globant Escape Game Challenge.

“‘The Great Mission' is this year’s version of Globant’s Escape Game initiative, designed to engage the world’s brightest minds in a fun, challenging and creative scenario to test and refine their mathematical and problem-solving skills,” said Andrés Giolito, Country Manager of Globant Colombia. “The first team that abandoned the Room was team ELECTROS from Holberton School Bogotá. They were selected among 1000 pairs that participated in this initiative.”

The students will be headed to New York for this year’s Converge 2020, where they will network with some of the world’s top tech employers and influencers.

Globant, an IT and software development company operating in Argentina, Colombia, Uruguay, the United Kingdom, Brazil, the United States, Peru, India, Mexico, Chile, Spain, Romania and Belarus, offers a global “Escape Game” challenge. “The objective is to create online challenges where a winning pair per city reaches the semifinals. The semifinals take place in an escape room, in which the first team that solves the puzzle wins the possibility of attending Converge 2020, our conference covering the latest international trends taking place in different countries around the world.” Globant is known for being not only a great place to work, but also in need of hiring a great number of software engineers to meet demand for its products and services.

With a meteorite close to reaching planet Earth, Jimmer Hernandez and Johan David Muñoz of the Bogota campus solved four online challenges to win the challenge. In 2016, Holberton student Sravanthi Sinha was accepted into one of the most prestigious engineering internships in the world, NASA's Frontier Development Lab with the SETI Institute in Mountain View, California. The interns gathered from around the world from top universities such as U.C. Berkeley and Cambridge and teamed up to help NASA plan for a potential cosmic armageddon, an asteroid strike on Earth.

“We are so excited for these two brilliant students and proud of the incredible work they did for this challenge,” said Sylvain Kalache, co-founder, Holberton School. “This win is further proof that the Holberton curriculum, based on peer-learning, is paying off and that our students are able to think critically. They are able to think outside the box because they have been taught how to learn.”

"We were students of electronic engineering in our seventh semester at the national university of Colombia when we decided to join Holberton,” said Hernandez and Muñoz. “We found Holberton to be an excellent complement to our career because it allowed us to practice our engineering skills on a daily basis with high-level challenges, and it allowed us to learn soft skills interacting with professionals from so many knowledge areas. These skills helped us keep our minds sharp and fit for the challenges that we were presented with throughout 2020, especially the Globant challenge, which we managed to win. We are grateful for the prize."

Holberton provides Silicon-Valley grade peer-learning and project-based software engineering training around the world in only two years. Students acquire practical skills and an understanding of theory through hands-on learning closely advised by mentors from the world’s leading technology companies. Students who have graduated from Holberton’s flagship school in San Francisco have gone on to be employed at top-tier employers like Apple, LinkedIn, Google, Amazon, Tesla and more.

In September 2018, Holberton opened its second location in New Haven, CT. The school has since opened campuses on three continents, including schools in Bogotá, Medellín, Barranquilla and Cali, Colombia; Tulsa, Oklahoma; Tunis, Tunisia; Beirut, Lebanon; and Puerto Rico.

Holberton boasts a remarkably diverse student body. Its automated admission process reduces human bias, resulting in one of the most diverse learning institutions in the technology industry. The school charges no upfront tuition. Instead, graduates are asked to contribute a percentage of their salaries to the school for the first three years of their post-Holberton employment, giving back to the next generation of software engineers.

Applications to Holberton are open to people with any educational background and of any age or gender. To learn more about Holberton School enrollment and opportunities, visit https://www.holbertonschool.com/admissions.

About Holberton School
A world-class education should be available to everyone–regardless of background, gender, or ethnicity. That’s why Holberton’s college alternative program is free until students find a job. Graduates have gone on to earn six-figure salaries as engineers at leading employers, including Apple, Tesla, NASA, Google and LinkedIn. Holberton trains software engineers in both practical knowledge and theory utilizing project-based and peer learning. Students learn how to become lifelong learners and leaders in their fields. Holberton is supported by professional advisors and investors from the technology and entertainment industries, including: Grammy award-winner NE-YO; actor and social activist Priyanka Chopra; acclaimed author, journalist, and educator Esther Wojcicki; and technology visionaries LinkedIn CEO Jeff Weiner, Yahoo! founder Jerry Yang, Docker founder Solomon Hykes, and Upwork CEO Stephane Kasriel. Holberton has campuses in San Francisco, CA; New Haven, CT; Tulsa, OK; Medellin, Bogota, Barranquilla and Cali, Colombia; and Tunis, Tunisia, Go to www.holbertonschool.com to learn more.

Editorial Contact
Anita Chatterjee for Holberton School
anita@a-gamepr.com