GLADEO: Regional Career Pathways Portals

Gladeo is an inclusive, online, research-based career navigation platform for the future of work. Our platform helps learners from diverse backgrounds discover their potential and make informed decisions about middle- and high-skill career pathways, including non-degree pathways to employment. On Gladeo’s media-rich, interactive platform, learners can watch inspiring videos of relatable role models, take a personal assessment, explore career pathways within a region, and connect to recommended skill-building courses, education and training programs, internships and jobs, online, for free. By providing free, online access to high quality career guidance, Gladeo is breaking down barriers to socioeconomic mobility in the U.S., building inclusive, scalable on ramps to high-paying, middle- and high-skill careers in sustainable industries. By partnering with workforce boards to create region-specific career pathway portals, Gladeo is creating meaningful collective impact and collaboration across workforce stakeholders in education, workforce training, employers, and public services.

Gladeo is addressing workforce skills shortages/gaps, income and wealth gaps, and a fragmented workforce ecosystem. Of employers surveyed, 45% report struggling to fill roles due to lack of skills. In 2019, 16 million people were under-employed, while 7 million jobs remained unfilled due to widespread skills gaps. Due to COVID-19, more than 40 million Americans have lost their jobs. And the workforce continues to be stratified by race, with Black and LatinX Americans grossly underrepresented in higher-paying careers. Two of the biggest unsolved problems for young and unemployed people isn’t that there aren’t enough educational opportunities, resources, or jobs, it’s that (1) learners lack awareness of potential career pathways, and (2) there’s no scalable method for guiding the right learner to the right resources once they’ve decided on a pathway. In order to succeed, all learners need access to current, career pathway-specific advice, as well as personalized guidance on the right skill-building and training programs, resources, and opportunities. The current one-on-one career guidance delivery model, i.e. overextended school counselors and case managers at government-run career centers is unable to meet the scale of need, and is only exacerbated by the social-distancing constraints due to the COVID pandemic.

Gladeo is a:

(1) Virtual Career Day (already deployed in 50 states)

• Users can take a career quiz to help identify career paths they’re interested in.
• Our career profiles, digitized from hundreds of informational interviews, provide information like a typical day at work, education/certification requirements, career progression maps, tips on how to land your first job, and links to helpful resources.
• Our career videos use research-based solutions to make role models relatable, effective, and cultivate “growth mindset”.  They guide our strategy including attributes and diversity of interview subjects, authentic stories about experiences, challenges, education, and successes, and involving underrepresented learners in our content creation process.

(2) Regional Program Finder and Career Navigation Dashboard (pilot in LA)

• Each career profile will be tagged with relevant competencies and connect to regional programs.
• Users will be able to create their own personalized account
• Depending on their profile and career pathways they are interested in, they will receive on-going relevant resources and opportunities

What’s unique about our solution is that we create these regional portals in partnership with workforce and economic development organizations and regional labor market data and regional resources will be distributed through this single platform to K-12 school districts and job centers. 

Underserved and underrepresented HS students: These students do not have access to relatable role models, informational interviews, and well-resourced HS counselors. Gladeo illuminates career pathways they might not be aware of in a Gen-Z friendly, inclusive and approachable way. If you come from a group that’s historically underrepresented, like African Americans in tech, Asian Americans in media, or women in STEM, it can be paradigm-shifting to see someone like you doing something that you never thought possible. We are building this narrative and people power to disrupt biases, to break stereotypes, to counteract cultural and gender self-stereotyping, and to change the social consciousness of historically underrepresented and excluded groups in America. By creating content with our target population, we ensure that our career platform is relatable, inspirational and empowering to our target audience. 

Unemployed/displaced workers: Through partnership with regional economic development/workforce development boards, we communicate the economic data that these boards collect, such as 1) most in-demand regional career pathways 2) most in-demand regional skills and competencies. Through Gladeo, we are able to help displaced workers figure out which competencies and associated programs needed to upskill and then connect them to employers looking for talent with those competencies.

Through Gladeo’s career assessment, career profiles and videos, Gladeo enables learners to make informed decisions about which pathways and jobs best suit them. Through Gladeo’s regional program finder, learners can access high-quality, affordable learning, skill-building and training opportunities associated with their desired career pathway. Through Gladeo’s resource recommendation engine, learners will also receive more resources and opportunities that will help them with their career development journey - including, but not limited to, internship opportunities and networking events.

2 full-time

2 part-time

2 contractors

We believe that in order for Gladeo to successfully build a more diverse, equitable, and inclusive organization and workforce, these values must be prioritized at every level of the organization, from (1) Gladeo team, the staff, Gladeo League, and Boards have diverse personal and professional backgrounds and embody these values; (2) content strategy, involving underrepresented learners and ensuring that we not only highlight diverse people, but also authentic, relatable life experiences that help learners identify with and vicariously learn from role models; to our UI and UX design, ensuring that our tools are accessible and useful for an under-resourced learner; and also our approach to distribution and the partners we convene in K-12 public schools, community colleges, Centers for Employment Opportunity, probation departments, community-based nonprofits, and public libraries to ensure our platform is accessible to those who need it most, including low-income populations, the formerly incarcerated, and the digitally unconnected.

As children of immigrants who pursued careers in entertainment, we understand what it’s like to overcome the doubt of lacking relatable role models and having no one to ask for career guidance. These personal experiences plus our volunteer work helped us develop a nuanced understanding of the barriers that block low-income, first-generation, and historically-underrepresented people from successfully navigating upwardly-mobile careers.

Our team is highly experienced in:

1) Content Production, with combined 25+ years experience in film/TV industry:

https://www.linkedin.com/in/gracecho/

https://www.linkedin.com/in/chomichelle/

Sample work:

https://gladeo.org/spotlight/tv-writer-watch-and-listen-raamlas-story

https://gladeo.org/spotlight/creative-director-watch-and-listen-chrissis-story

https://gladeo.org/spotlight/video-game-designer-watch-and-listen-akiras-story

2) Successfully designed and launched a user-friendly tech product with large user adoption and positive user feedback.

3) Success navigating government, education, and building strong partnerships with workforce stakeholders

Gladeo has partnered with the Los Angeles Economic Development Corporation (LA EDC) to create “Gladeo for Los Angeles” portal, a “virtual career center,” providing free, high-quality, virtual, on-demand career guidance for millions of Los Angeles County residents who are exploring career pathways, seeking training and education, or trying to re-enter the workforce.

LA EDC’s mission and experience bringing together the power of the private sector with education and government to guide economic development and create more widely shared prosperity makes them the ideal collaborative partner for our project. LA EDC conducts extensive research on emerging regional industry trends and collects data on worker competencies and in-demand skills for career pathways. Their valuable research and work has been grossly underutilized in the past and has only reached a limited institutional audience through print reports and local events. Through this partnership, the LA EDC can communicate pivotal information in a user-friendly, engaging way through the Gladeo’s use of creative media and technology.

LA EDC will also help distribute the portal through their already established distribution channels which include K-12 school districts, job centers, community colleges and non-profits.

Gladeo has also partnered with several LA Employers including Rodamco Westfield and Vituity. Diverse employees at employers in LA are volunteering their time to share their career story and vital career information that transfers “insider” knowledge about their career.

Gladeo is a free, online career day and personal career navigator that helps students and unemployed workers navigate middle- and high-skill career pathways by providing inspiration, career matching, mapping personal skills gaps, and personalized recommendations for educational and training programs, skill-building courses, resources, networking opportunities, internships, and jobs.

Gladeo is free to learners and makes money by helping colleges, MOOCs, products, and employers connect with highly motivated learners. Gladeo also sells premium subscriptions to workforce boards and community colleges who want to reach learners through custom targeted portals.

We would like to partner with other regional workforce development boards around the country to leverage  meaningful collective impact and collaboration across workforce stakeholders in education, workforce training, employers, and public services. 

We would also like to partner with more employers across industry sectors to interview their diverse employees stories and post their work-based learning opportunities.