On this episode of the Bourbon Friday Show we had the opportunity to talk with Elaine Queathem, Entrepreneur in Residence for the at ITEN, and CEO of Savvy Coders, about the roles she plays in the St. Louis tech and innovation scene.

The Role of ITEN

One of the main roles of that ITEN takes on in St. Louis is aiding tech startups on their journey to commercialization, and then in turn connecting them with larger companies who have a desire to be more innovative.

But at the end of the day, don’t all companies want to be more innovative?

While that’s true, ITEN offers more than just a feel-good phrase for corporations to throw around. The connections that ITEN cultivates aren’t your typical meet-and-greet situations. In fact, according to Queathem, there are many times that these connections produce investments, partnerships, or a purchase.

While ITEN works with tech and innovation for startups and corporations, another one of Queathem’s passions is bringing tech and coding to individuals in the community.

The Role of Savvy Coders

Savvy Coders began a few years ago out of the need to alleviate the tech gap and to bring tech skills to people who are often underserved or overlooked when it comes to tech.

“We [Savvy Coders] really wanted to change the face of who is in tech, which means trying to get more women and people of color interested to explore their technical abilities,” says Queathem.

Each course at Savvy Coders is an 80 hour program that’s taught over the course of seven weeks. With a class of no more than 15 students, they meet up for three hours, four days of the week—an intensive program to say the least.

Savvy Coders also prepares their students by helping them with technical interview skills, crafting a resume that’s more reflective of their current skills and helping them update their LinkedIn profile.

At the end of this seven week journey, students get three weeks to prepare their final projects for Demo Day where potential employers come to see what they’ve been working on. Many times this event leads to invaluable networking connections or even potential job offers from the visiting employers.

For more information about either participating or being involved with the Savvy Coders program, go to: savvycoders.com/apply/.

Bourbon Innovation

As always, the Bourbon Friday team does their best to choose a fitting drink for the occasion.

The bottle this week was Belle Meade Bourbon.

This bottle hails from Nashville, TN, which is the same city where Savvy Coders started out three years ago.

Something that sets this bourbon apart from the rest is that it is actually labeled as a bourbon—whereas almost all other bourbon that’s distilled in Tennessee is labeled as Tennessee Whiskey, even though it’s all considered bourbon.