Janis FontaineWest Palm Beach Center for Arts & Technology launches free AI, cybersecurity training for teens.
Not every teen wants to go to college, and others can’t afford tuition.
The West Palm Beach Center for Arts & Technology connects high school students and underemployed young adults with training programs that can lead to careers in the culinary arts and construction.
Now, organizers are preparing to launch a new, free technology course for high school juniors and seniors in the Historic Northwest District, with priority given to students who live there.
“This is not a computer class,” Executive Director Claudia Kirk Barto said. “This is an immersive technology program taught by industry professionals.”
Tech pros Julius McGee and Bobby Dorlus are leading the program, which is now registering students.
The self-described “tech nerds” said one of their first challenges was getting used to being the only Black person in meetings.
“I didn’t see a lot of people who looked like me,” McGee told students in the Palm Beach Lakes High School’s Rams eSports Academy.
Julius Edwards, the director of PB Lakes’ academy which started as an after-school club with 10 students in 2019, invited the team to talk about the tech program. Edwards’ program has grown into a career and technical education pathway serving hundreds of students. The Center for Arts & Technology’s Barto hopes those students will take advantage of the new training.
The focus of the curriculum is AI, cybersecurity and coding, the team’s areas of expertise. McGee and Dorlus are the founders of Jortty.com, a cybersecurity business that uses AI to protect seniors from cybercrime. “It all started with the idea, ‘How do I keep my mom safe on the internet?’” Dorlus said.
McGee, a Chicago native, has a master’s degree in software engineering and was an executive at Apple and Google. He’s the founder of Nerd Alert, which has made more than 10,000 tech support house calls across South Florida.
Dorlus didn’t go to college. He became a Red Hat certified engineer, a credential that requires passing a four-hour, hands-on exam repairing a damaged computer.
The Lake Worth High School grad told students: “Certifications are your way in the door. Certification shows you have the skills. It’s hands-in-the-dirt, practical knowledge, and those are the assets that can make you money.”
With his certificate in hand, Dorlus spent 20 years working as an engineer in Silicon Valley, including 10 years at pre-Elon Musk Twitter, where he ran one of the world’s largest computer clusters. He returned to Palm Beach County to give back to the community.
Changing fast to keep up with technology
Barto recruited McGee and Dorlus to write the curriculum.
“They’re the geniuses behind this idea,” Barto said. “Technology is changing so rapidly, the curriculum that we created six months ago before I had all the funding isn’t the same curriculum that we’ll launch with.”
The program can accommodate 20 students. Everything, including laptops and software, is free.
Barto, the daughter of late 1960s Florida Gov. Claude Kirk, secured grant money from Comcast, the Community Foundation for Palm Beach and Martin Counties and the Children’s Services Council to pay for it. She welcomes additional investors, grantors, volunteers, mentors and interns, and says local employers might find their next staff member among their students.
“Students will be prepared to pursue tech internships, apprenticeships, entry-level support roles, freelance projects, and college/certification pathways,” McGee said.
This includes jobs in IT support, working on the help desk and troubleshooting computers, software, and basic networks; work as junior web and digital content support, building websites, portfolios, and digital experiences; working in AI as an automation assistant creating chatbots, simple AI agents, and no-code workflows; and jobs in cybersecurity and tech entrepreneurship.
But for the things AI can’t teach, like how to shake somebody’s hand or to look somebody in the eye, Barto said, humans are needed. “Partnering students with folks in the community to serve as mentors while they’re going through this program is critical.”
As AI technology explodes, many are asking where humans fit into the story.
“We are the orchestrators,” McGee said. “The creatives. That’s what sets us apart. You need to know how to quarterback the project. That’s the part AI cannot do.
“We’re the secret sauce,” Dorlus said.
What is the Center for Arts & Technology?
Small opportunities are often the beginning of great enterprise, the Greek orator Demosthenes said, and that’s the impetus behind the Center for the Arts & Technology.
The West Palm Beach nonprofit formed in 2018 during then-West Palm Beach Mayor Jeri Muoio’s administration with financial support from Pittsburgh entrepreneur Bill Strickland. He won a MacArthur Fellowship, commonly called a genius grant, in 1996 for his work in arts education and job training.
The West Palm Beach center is one of a dozen centers across the United States modeled after Pittsburgh’s Manchester Bidwell Training Center.
They share a mission: Offer arts education to historically underserved high school youth, targeted job training, and support for unemployed and underemployed adults.
In 2024, Barto, a Palm Beach County native and the mother of three grown children who lives in West Palm Beach, took over as executive director.
Barto has been active in community service since Hurricane Andrew spurred her into action in 1992. She had volunteered to deliver food after the storm and saw the supplies were going to waste.
“Food was spoiling on one side of U.S. 1 and there were people in need on the other,” she said. “I thought there has to be a better way. Someone needs to know and fix it!”
Barto took the advice her father had given her and started at the top. She called the White House.
“They directed me to Sen. Bob Graham’s office and they directed me to the Florida Relief Center that had been created at the fairgrounds. I marched myself out there to fix it! Within the week, I was hired by United Way, and that started my nonprofit career,” Barto recalls.
Most recently, she served as president of Junior Achievement of the Palm Beaches and Treasure Coast. Now, her focus is on the center.
“There’s a huge influx of companies moving to Palm Beach County that need workers of all skill levels. We need to be preparing the future, finding employees for these companies,” Barto said.
To that end, the center plans to open in a building at Eighth and Sapodilla avenues in the Northwest District, Barto hopes, by the end of the year.
“Our friends at Beacon Ridge Capital are giving us space in the historic building that they’ve been renovating,” Barto said.
In the interim, the new tech program will meet at Rohi’s Readery, right around the corner in the Styx Promenade.
Recipes for Success
Recipes for Success, the center’s culinary arts program meets in Extraordinary Charities’ commercial kitchen, about 3 miles away. The six-week, 72-hour program prepares students to work in a commercial kitchen or catering business. All ages are welcome, including neurotypical and neurodivergent students.
Through the center, “We find the funding and the students and connect them,” Barto said.
Barto also finds mentors and potential employers for the culinary grads through the Palm Beach County Chefs Association, which includes chefs from the county’s top restaurants and country clubs, including The Breakers Palm Beach, Trump National Golf Club in Jupiter and Amrit Ocean Resort in Riviera Beach.
A new six-week culinary arts program begins at the end of October.
The tech program is registering now. Classes will meet weekly beginning Nov. 11 and run through May. The deadline to register is Nov. 9.
Dorlus and McGee are excited about the next chapter in their careers.
Dorlus said, “I thought, let me come back home and let me find a way to contribute to my community directly and that’s why I’m here. One of the things that we’re really proud about is the support that we’re giving to West Palm Beach, specifically around teaching the next generation how to be prepared for the next level of engineering.”
McGee agrees a bright future is waiting for these kids. “Right now, we don’t know where AI’s going,” he told them, “but you are the next generation of engineers and technologists, and I’m telling you, you all are at the right time to really take this to the next level.”
For Barto, it’s simpler: Helping children achieve their dreams fulfills her.
“There’s something about when that light bulb goes off,” she said. “I just love seeing that connection.”
For more information about all of WPBCAT’s programs, visit www.wpbcat.org.
