CareerWise New York

CareerWise New York

HERE to HERE champions youth in The Bronx by bringing together business, education, and community leaders to build equitable avenues to lifelong career success.

Key to our work is identifying the systemic challenges students experience and leveraging our resources and expertise to do something about it. Establishing and incubating ambitious and far-reaching initiatives that can transform the way we think about work and learning–and ultimately change how we collectively develop talent–is one of the ways HERE to HERE mobilizes people and organizations to create paths to rewarding careers for young people.

HERE to HERE launched and incubated the HERE to HERE Business Council and CareerWise New York with the intention to scale both into self-sustaining entities supporting youth talent development in The Bronx and NYC. 

As a result of both initiatives’ proven track record of success, in August of 2020, 25+ CEOs from NYC Fortune 100 companies came together to launch the New York Jobs CEO Council. The Council absorbed the HERE to HERE Business Council and CareerWise New York, which is now an independent nonprofit organization aligned with the new Council. 

The launch of the New York Jobs CEO Council is a great investment in New York’s future. The Council will scale work-based learning opportunities by partnering with the City University of New York (CUNY) and NYC Department of Education (DOE), as initially modeled by CareerWise New York. The establishment of the Council will additionally create opportunities for partnership between educators and employers that reimagine the local talent development system so that it works better for New Yorkers and NYC employers. 

The Challenge

A few years ago, HERE to HERE saw a challenge: the responsibility of educating tomorrow’s workforce falls largely on our schools, who for all their efforts, cannot prepare young people for the new labor market using traditional approaches. Businesses have difficulty finding employees to effectively fill skilled positions, and young people are not given enough opportunities to explore their own interests.

If the shared goal is for students to be on the path to a family-sustaining career by the time they are 25, it is clear that educators, employers, students, and community-based organizations need to work and partner differently.

The Solution

• In January 2018 we launched the HERE to HERE Business Council. The initiative brought together visionary CEOs and Chief Human Resources Officers from NYC businesses with the goal of changing underlying talent development systems, which often serve as barriers to student success.
• We studied the Swiss Vocational Education and Training System to establish a modern youth apprenticeship initiative here in NYC that gives businesses a hand in shaping young talent and provides the education system with an applied-learning environment for students. 
• In partnership with CareerWise Colorado, we launched CareerWise New York in September 2019. CareerWise New York created an applied-learning environment for students, focused on growing NYC industries, such as IT, financial services, and business operations. For employers, CareerWise New York offered them a direct role in developing work-ready talent and a talent-acquisition strategy to innovate and grow their business.
• Our first cohort included 86 students across 17 companies and the second cohort of more than 85 students began their seven-week virtual summer training in July 2020. 

The Impact

• Our students are building a robust professional network and gaining important professional skills.
• Educators are both engaged and seeking to embed and scale–in the design of their schools and programs–youth apprenticeship and work-based learning initiatives.
• Employers are focused on the value of having young people in the workplace and understanding the importance of creating a supportive working environment, particularly for young people of color.
• Occupation competency plans, developed with employers across industry sectors and firms, are modeling an effective way to organize talent development systems.