May 29, 2026
FEATURE
Detroit’s rising developers are supported by the Apple Developer Academy and inspired by their city
Marking its fifth commencement, the academy in Detroit has empowered over 1,800 learners since 2021 to build apps, businesses, and community
Lively, ambitious, gritty, resilient. That’s how four Apple Developer Academy graduates describe Detroit. Home to the only developer academy of its kind in North America, the city inspires the academy’s students — many of whom were born and raised there.
This year marks the Apple Developer Academy’s fifth commencement in Detroit, completed in collaboration with Michigan State University (MSU) and the Gilbert Family Foundation. Since launching in the heart of the Motor City in 2021, the academy has welcomed more than 1,800 students across its free programs, including the full nine-month experience and the Apple Foundation Program, an intensive four-week app development course. This year, the academy’s fifth cohort of learners includes 200 Detroiters who have been equipped with app development and business skills to set them up for careers in the evolving app economy and other technology-focused roles.
There are 19 Apple Developer Academies around the world that aim to increase opportunities for app creators, designers, and entrepreneurs. As the first and only academy in the U.S., the program in Detroit offers a free, intensive nine-month program focused on custom-built curriculum in coding, design, marketing, project management, and artificial intelligence technologies. More than 70 percent of learners who start at the academy go on to complete the program. Free, intensive four-week courses on the fundamentals of app development are also available through the Apple Foundation Programs at the academy, offered by MSU, Henry Ford College, and the College for Creative Studies.
Saamer Mansoor was part of the academy’s first cohort, which took place amid the backdrop of the COVID-19 pandemic — a time when the Detroit-based developer noticed glaring systemic gaps. “Problems are essentially opportunities, and I was looking for ways that I could contribute,” he says. “I wanted to build something meaningful during COVID since I’m not a frontline worker.”
At the academy, one of Mansoor’s first assignments was to identify a problem that affects a minority group. He and his teammates quickly realized they had something in common: They each had a family member or close friend who was deaf or hard of hearing and faced barriers in interpretation, transcription, and accessibility every day. That’s the moment the idea for their app, BeAware Deaf Assistant, was born.
To build their app — which harnesses Apple’s Neural Engine to provide both real-time transcription and translations using machine learning — the team consulted with the Deaf and Hard-of-Hearing communities and solicited feedback. Since its release, BeAware has been translated into 25 spoken languages and even used as a transcription tool by institutions like the George Washington University.
“Professors started reaching out wanting to use it in classrooms with hard-of-hearing students,” Mansoor says. “The original app was designed more for one-to-one communication, not one-to-many environments, so that feedback directly inspired us to create ConferenceCaptioning.”
As more professors, event organizers, and institutions started reaching out to use the technology in classrooms, conferences, churches, and large events, Mansoor and his team realized there was a much greater need for a well-designed one-to-many platform built specifically for live audiences. That led to the creation of ConferenceCaptioning, a separate product focused on live event accessibility and multilingual communication. The product doesn’t need the internet to work and is designed with critical event production reliability and integration in mind.
Courey Jimenez — a 2026 academy graduate and Swift Student Challenge winner who’s attending this year’s Worldwide Developers Conference in person — credits the academy with teaching her to think outside the box through flexible frameworks like challenge-based learning, which invites students to tackle real-world problems and co-own their learning journeys. “I had never heard of challenge-based learning prior to coming here. It taught me to dig deeper into the research and to be OK with pivoting if my idea shifts along the way,” says the Detroit native.
Jimenez was in a mid-career pivot when she enrolled in the academy after learning about it from a high school friend. Her initial intention was to learn how to code in Swift. But then she got a taste of project management and decided to pursue that path. Jimenez credits the academy with supporting her regardless of where her interests led. “In certain boot camps, you don’t get to explore much. You pick a path and you stick to it. At Apple, they encourage you to do the research and to dig into what speaks to you,” she says. “It really opened my perspective on how I could influence the tech space.”
Project management provided Jimenez with the best of both worlds. “I get to touch a little bit of everything,” she says. “I’m supporting the coders. I’m supporting the designers. I’m also making sure the overall vision of the app is looking the way I want it to look.”
This holistic understanding went into building Sign & Says, a PECS app that incorporates simple American Sign Language signs to facilitate communication for users who may prefer signs to pictures. The app — which is now on the App Store — comes with a care card feature that trusted supporters and teachers can use to log a user’s triggers, behaviors, and coping mechanisms.
And though the app was initially intended to support younger users, Jimenez has started testing it with a wider demographic requiring alternative ways of communicating, including her uncle who has suffered three strokes. “What started out as a passion project turned into something much bigger,” she says.
Briaca Duesette also cites her community and upbringing as the inspiration behind her company, Animation Discovery Studio. Though Duesette initially enrolled in the academy to study coding and design, learning about animation blew her mind.
“I’m just now finding out these things that I’ve been watching my whole life are not just cartoons, but animations that I can create on my own and be funded to do it,” she shares. She instantly knew she wanted to go back to the Detroit neighborhood where she grew up and support the next generation of visual storytellers.
For alum and lead coding mentor Nick Gordon, the connections he made at the academy remain his greatest takeaway. “The true value of the academy is community,” he says. At the Apple Developer Academy, Gordon grew more confident in his leadership skills, quickly becoming a role model and organizer for others.
“I like helping people and letting them know, ‘You can learn this with the right resources,’” Gordon says. “When I was growing up, I’d always say, ‘Why am I not smart enough?’ But when I got to college, I realized that with the right resources, I could push myself further. That translates to the academy.”
His goal is to pay it forward to the city that raised him through the nonprofit he cofounded, DevsCreate313, a community-powered organization that aims to strengthen Detroit’s tech ecosystem through hands-on learning. “With the right opportunities, people can really push themselves over obstacles,” he says.
Opportunities for Detroiters include the Renaissance program, which offers 50 second-year students advanced training, mentorship, and collaboration opportunities with local organizations to provide real-world, hands-on experience and specialized workforce training.
Jimenez hopes the Apple Developer Academy continues to shine a light on Detroit. “There’s a lot of talent here, and there are a lot of people who may initially be glossed over,” she says. “Opportunities like this one give those people a chance to grow and refine their skills to contribute positively to the tech space. And that’s something that I think Detroiters should know about.”
Duesette echoes that sentiment, recalling that access to creative tech education was “nonexistent” when she was growing up. But that’s about to change.
“Within the second year of building my company, I realized I wasn’t just building a company — I was building infrastructure for creative tech,” says Duesette, who sees no limit to the potential of the city’s rising talent. “The future is going to be super innovative, super creative, and super imaginative. What the Apple Developer Academy is creating in Detroit, as far as innovation, is next level.” Not only next level, but also lively, ambitious, gritty, and resilient.
Apple is part of every stage of the student journey, whether it’s exploring the fundamentals of app development in Apple’s global Foundation Program, improving their skills at Apple Developer Academies, or taking their apps to the next level as professional app developers. Learn more at developer.apple.com/academies.
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