We all have those topics that friends know not to bring up at a party, because it will get us worked up, and down the rabbit hole (when all anyone wants is to listen to the dulcet tones of Megan Thee Stallion or Japanese Breakfast). For me, it's how we approach developing the workforce and building our careers. I've spent the last 6 years talking to Gen Z'ers looking for jobs during a pandemic, jaded millennials feeling trapped and struggling to switch industries, HR professionals with limited budgets and big demands for more diverse talent, and changemakers eager to foster the next generation of leaders, with no clear idea of how to do so. What is abundantly clear to me is that the infrastructure of career development, particularly for young people who may have limited networks or information access, is broken. In 2017, I co-founded Second Day (secondday.org) with two friends to make social impact careers more accessible to young, mission-driven talent. We match predominantly first-gen, low-income, BIPOC students to paid internships at nonprofits and social enterprises and provide them with a highly presonalized professional development experience to ensure that they thrive in their current work and have the tools they need to look ahead.I developed a robust, recurring sales pipeline of social impact employers, doubling our earned revenue year over year. In a time where there's been a lot of buzz around the struggle to attract Gen Z talent, we tripled our application numbers in 2022. We hear time and time again that our professional development is transformational in helping people land their next job or internship (97% of students found Second Day more helpful than any other resource they had access to). Most recently, I have launched forward, a tech platform that revolutionizes the way that job seekers and employers connect. Forward uses a combination of skill-based hiring and values-driven curation to facilitate more meaningful and productive matches between professionals and companies. Beta coming this year!So if you catch me at a party, ask me about why I think job boards don't work. Ask me why I hate the way we structure job descriptions. Or better yet, ask me why I believe that values-driven job matching is the future!
Listed skills include Strategy, Research, Event Planning, Leadership, and 11 others.