Showing up matters. 

“Ninety percent of succeeding in your life is just showing up and staying working at it. Just show up, and the rest comes pretty easy,” said Scott Thigpen, director of Engineering & Construction Services and chairman of the Apprenticeship Program Committee in the Salt River Pima-Maricopa Indian Community.

The Apprenticeship Program held a ceremony on August 12 at the Courtyard by Marriott to recognize new journeyman graduates. Along with the graduates, friends and family members beamed with joy. Laughs bounced off the walls as people let out a joke or two. The room was filled with love and best wishes.

The Community’s Apprenticeship Training Program offers several different areas of study. The mission for the committee is “very simple: It’s to put people in jobs, jobs that they enjoy and that give them the opportunity to support their families, themselves and the Community,” said Thigpen. 

The graduates represented six different career programs: IT help desk technician, medical billing and coding, dental assistant, medical assistant, pharmacy technician and HVAC technician. Each graduate earned a certificate and a keepsake in recognition of their hard work and dedication to the program. 

Juan Acosta Jr., 2025 IT help desk technician journeyman graduate, said he learned new skills throughout his apprenticeship, such as “being able to provide quality customer service to the Salt River Pima-Maricopa Indian Community and its employees.” 

To earn journeyman status, students must complete many hours of on-the-job training. For many of these students, graduation is a big deal. 

Acosta added, “[The recognition luncheon] means a lot. It means the Community saw a need and created these apprenticeship programs for Community members to learn and grow. I am grateful to be a part of it. I would like to thank [the] SRPMIC Council, Human Resources and IT Department for making this possible.”

For 2025 dental assistant journeyman graduate Teya Johnson-Tiger, the goals for graduation were remarkable. “I didn’t have an O’odham person on my care team, so being able to be that for future generations [is significant], and also [for] previous generations to know that we deserve to be in these spaces,” said Johnson-Tiger. She also shared “helping people, getting them out of pain, doing the patient education – it’s really changing someone’s life.”

Council member Jacob Butler shared some encouraging advice for the new graduates as they continue in their careers. “Showing up day in and day out putting in the good work will help you in your professional career, but also in your own life,” he said. “We wish nothing but the best for the journeyman graduates!”