A Concorde Success Story

Sometimes, you change your life by design. Other times, those life-altering moments come about by sheer happenstance.

At the start of 2015, Gillian Peters was coming out of a rough period in her life and was desperately trying to put the pieces back together when she found herself one day rather aimlessly combing through subject matter on Google. That's when the 2005 graduate of Winter Park High School ran across an ad for Concorde Career Institute - Orlando and the proverbial light bulb went on over her head.

Always an interest in health care

Peters, a native of Trinidad who moved with her parents to Winter Park when she was 15, had an interest in health care ever since taking care of an elderly family acquaintance years earlier ("I found it brought me joy as much as it did him," she said). Perhaps Concorde was the opportunity she was looking for to make a new start.

"I went down and talked to the admissions people, and they were all really nice and helpful," she said. Initially, Peters said her intent was to go into nursing, but after consultation, she decided her best option was to become a medical assistant.

Liked the small class sizes

Peters started the Medical Assistant program at Concorde in March of that year and said the student-centered, real-world training she received was just what she needed to get her quickly to a career that would change her life forever.

"I really liked the fact that it was a small class setting," Peters said. "It was easier to learn. When you go to a traditional school, a lot of times, you get unwanted information you don't really need. With Concorde, you get just the information you need - and all the information you need - to be ready to start your career."

"I have a couple of associates who went to other schools, and they didn't get the hands-on training I got."

Peters finished in November with a perfect 4.0 grade-point average, and the next February, she walked across the stage with her graduating class.

"I almost cried," she said. "To go through the things I've gone through... to actually see myself accomplishing something like this... I was like, yea me!"

Becoming a Medical Assistant

Peters was hired as a Medical Assistant straight out of her externship. She had to leave that job to care for her two young nieces when her sister, who's in the Navy, was deployed to the Middle East. But when the sister returns in January 2017, she said she plans on continuing her education by pursuing a bachelor's degree in nursing.

"By taking that stepping stone of going to Concorde, I proved to myself I was capable of being a good caretaker of patients and doing the job," she said. "Without that, I'd still be second-guessing myself."