The ever-shifting work and learn landscape has made selecting an education and training program a more high-stakes choice for students and workers than ever before. Meanwhile, businesses struggle to understand what the 334,000+ credentials available to US workers mean, making it difficult for them to make smart, efficient hiring decisions and often leading them to default to proxies for skills (like a college degree) that both exclude potentially qualified workers and sometimes result in bad hires.
With hundreds of thousands of credentials available in the U.S. alone, and little easily-accessible data available about the majority of them, the credential marketplace is confusing and chaotic. While many initiatives are working hard to bring order and understanding to this key piece of the nation’s economy, coordination among efforts has been challenging to track. To improve coordination and collaboration, more than 30 funders joined a discussion hosted by JPMorgan Chase & Co., Lumina Foundation, Markle Foundation, and Schmidt Futures in fall 2018 to consider key questions about the credential marketplace. To understand the scope of work currently in action, the group began work on a map that describes the work of several initiatives, identifies the key players, and lists the mileposts they seek to reach with projected timelines.
Join Workforce Matters at 1:30 pm eastern on Friday, May 10th to see an overview of the resulting Guide to Key Initiatives for the Connected Learn and Work Ecosystem, hear from several funders who are currently investing in this space, and learn about two programs that have multiple initiatives featured in the guide. Our speakers will include:
- Scott Cheney, Executive Director, Credential Engine
- Andrew Dunckelman, Head of Economic Opportunity, Google.org
- Sarah Steinberg, Vice President, Global Philanthropy at JPMorgan Chase & Co.
- Jason A. Tyszko, Vice President, Center for Education and Workforce, U.S. Chamber of Commerce Foundation’s Center for Education and Workforce
- Holly Zanville, Strategy Director for the Future of Learning and Work, Lumina Foundation
In addition, Danielle Goonan of the Walmart Foundation will join us to talk about how this work aligns with the interests of Workforce Matters’ Employer Practices working group.
This program is free to attend, but you must register in advance: please click here to register. Please Note: Workforce Matters events are reserved for grantmakers who work for a private, independent, family, corporate, or community foundation; a corporate giving program; or a United Way as well as individual philanthropists and trustees of philanthropic organizations.
