This story is part of CNBC Make It's Ditching the Degree series, where women who have built six-figure careers without a bachelor's degree reveal the secrets of their success. Got a story to tell? Let us know! Email us at AskMakeIt@cnbc.com.
Ayana Dunlap had her dream job picked out before she even graduated high school.
She would spend her adult life somewhere exotic behind the front desk of a hotel in a designer suit helping guests, just like the polished women she met on vacation with her mom.
For a while, Dunlap lived out her childhood fantasy. She landed her first front desk job when she was 18 at a small hotel near Cheltenham, Pennsylvania, right before graduating high school, and continued to work at hotels well into her 20s.
"I thought I found my forever career," she tells CNBC Make It.
In college, she chose to pursue an associate's degree in business administration, thinking the concentration — and the shorter timeline to graduation, compared to a bachelor's degree — would bring her one step closer to becoming a hotel manager. Dunlap graduated from Montgomery County Community College in Blue Bell, Pennsylvania in 2016.
Now, the 29-year-old laughs at the plans she made almost 10 years ago.
Dunlap was one of the millions of hotel and restaurant employees who lost their jobs in 2020 at the start of the Covid-19 pandemic, and were pushed into new careers as furloughs and lockdowns dragged on.
Even though she doesn't have the job she wanted as a kid, Dunlap found a different vocation she loves: technology.
Dunlap has been working in tech since 2020. Currently, she's the assistant vice president of operations and information technology at the Bank Policy Institute, a public policy, research and advocacy group that represents U.S. banks in Washington, D.C.
She's earning about $125,000 in her role, according to financial documents reviewed by CNBC Make It — a salary that Dunlap says would have been "unimaginable" at this point in her career, had she stayed in hospitality.
Here's how she pivoted her career and earns six figures without a bachelor's degree:
Getting into IT without experience
Dunlap jokes that she was working in tech long before it became official, as her older co-workers would come to her for computer help at nearly every job she's had.
She moved to the Washington, D.C. area right after college and spent several years working for Widewaters Hotel Group & Magna Hospitality Group on their sales team, out of different hotels in the DMV area. Right before the pandemic started, she worked as a senior sales manager out of the Hilton Garden Inn Tysons Corner.
"I was the youngest person on my team, and always getting pulled to unfreeze computer screens, edit documents and refresh WiFi connections," she says. "But I didn't mind it, I always thought it was fun."
Dunlap didn't consider turning her knack for computers into her career until she was laid off from her sales job in June 2020.
Weeks after losing her job, she remembers sitting cross-legged on her bedroom floor, venting to her friends on FaceTime, feeling "anxious and unsure" about what to do next.
"I spent years working in the same industry and building up my career, only for the pandemic to put it on an indefinite hold," she recalls.
One of her friends mentioned a free online course that she had seen advertised on Google: a 15-week IT support course from Per Scholas, a national tech training non-profit headquartered in New York.
As part of the course, Dunlap would receive three certifications: A Google IT support certificate, CompTIA Security+ certification and CompTIA Network+ certification. Another benefit: Per Scholas partners with employers across the U.S. to recruit and recommend candidates from their boot camps for open tech roles.
Dunlap started the Per Scholas program in August and graduated in November with an offer for a hybrid job in hand as a tier 2 technical support engineer at designDATA, an IT services and consulting firm headquartered in Gaithersburg, Maryland.
While working there, Dunlap was tasked with helping organizations prepare to return to the office, by setting up their desktops, routers and printers on-site.
One of those organizations, the Bank Policy Institute, would make Dunlap an offer she says she couldn't refuse.
Skills worth six figures
After weeks of helping the Bank Policy Institute prep for their return to the office, its president and CEO, Greg Baer, invited Dunlap to work with them full-time.
Dunlap was hesitant to leave designDATA, having worked there for just under a year, but those doubts dissipated as soon as she received her offer letter.
The Bank Policy Institute wanted to give her a better title — Assistant Vice President of Operations and Information Technology — and more money. Dunlap's starting salary would be $80,000, which was "competitively more" than what she was making at designDATA (she declined to share her exact salary).
Dunlap started her new role in August 2021. She's received two raises since joining the Bank Policy Institute, based on job evaluations and taking on more responsibilities. The first, in 2022, bumped her salary to about $98,000. A subsequent raise, effective in January, raised her annual compensation to $125,000.
The IT and AV support skills Dunlap learned in the Per Scholas program — problem-solving, understanding different operating systems and diagnosing software or hardware faults — played a big role in her ability to transition into tech without a bachelor's degree. But so did the soft skills she picked up while working in hotels, namely communication and customer service.
Customer service, in particular, is a "game-changer" that can help you stand out from other candidates competing for the same tech job, Dunlap adds.
"I think a lot of people forget that being patient and friendly is so important when you're helping people with stressful computer issues," she explains. "I was told, directly, that having that skillset, just by working in hospitality, was a huge bonus."
Dunlap's biggest piece of advice for others hoping to land a high-paying job without a bachelor's degree? Don't underestimate the value of your transferable skills.
"Sometimes, society deems people who don't have a four-year degree as uneducated, but just because you choose not to pursue that doesn't mean you can't educate yourself in other ways and bring value to the table. You can read books, take boot camps online, there are so many ways to improve your skills," she says. "If you take stock of what you're good at and lean into that, you'll go far in your career."
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