Meet the cohort of grantees:
Accelerate Montana's Validated Skills
Lead: Accelerate Montana
Description: Pilot statewide adoption of LERs among employers of all sizes in the construction trades and technology industries across urban, rural, and tribal communities.
Alabama Talent Triad
Lead: Competency-Based Education Network (C-BEN)
Description: Leverage Alabama’s comprehensive skills-based talent marketplace — which uses the lifecycle of LERs to connect job-seekers to employment and education opportunities — to scale state-wide pathways from entry credentials to middle skills jobs across four industries.
Central Ohio Talent Network
Lead: ASPYR
Description: Power new modes of early career talent and employer matching at scale via LERs that leverages a work-based learning solution powered by SchooLinks, a market-leading college and career readiness platform.
ColoradoFWD
Lead: The Colorado Workforce Development Council
Description: Address urgent direct care and behavioral healthcare talent shortages by using LERs to efficiently match skills and talent to opportunity, promote economic mobility, and empower learners and earners.
Student Worker Employment for Skills-Based Success
Lead: Arizona State University
Description: Empower students seeking work to gain meaningful student employment through a scalable LER-driven job marketplace while reducing barriers to hiring for employers.
Scaling a Statewide LER Ecosystem in Indiana to Advance Skills-Based Hiring and Economic Mobility for All Hoosiers
Lead: Western Governors University
Description: Determine how to sustain and scale a comprehensive LER ecosystem that provides the human capital needed to drive a robust, forward-leaning economy through public-private partnerships.
Pittsburgh Regional Upskilling Alliance’s LER Initiative
Lead: Council for Adult and Experiential Learning (CAEL)
Description: Create an end-to-end LER solution that connects the learner journey from initial engagement through credential attainment to fulfilling employment and bridges the gap between talent and employers in the region.
Advancing a skills-based ecosystem.
In 2023, Rockefeller Philanthropy Advisors, with support from Ascendium Education Group, the Charles Koch Foundation, Strada Education Foundation, Walmart and other funders, launched SkillsFWD — a bold initiative to advance skills-based hiring and economic mobility through the development and application of digital learning and employment records (LERs).
What are LERs? They’re digital records of a person’s jobs and skills acquired through education, credentialing, in the workplace, and through service and life experience. The records are verifiable and secured according to web standards, and are controlled by users, who can curate and use them to pursue educational and employment opportunities as they see fit.
Our Objectives
SkillsFWD grantees are expected to align their interventions and desired outcomes with the five objectives of the initiative:
Launch LER lifecycle infrastructure that successfully connects learners and workers to education and workforce opportunities, and lay the groundwork to scale lifecycle LER infrastructure across the learning and working ecosystem;
Define and demonstrate a clear value proposition for one or more stakeholders to develop, issue, use and adopt LERs;
Generate insights, outputs and outcomes to demonstrate the success of proposed LER ecosystem interventions, such as progress towards interoperability and progress through the lifecycle, from developing and issuing digital records to adoption and use;
Identify outstanding needs for additional research, technical assistance and coordination to enable mass adoption of skills-based hiring systems that utilize LER tools; and
Inform state and national policy changes needed to overcome barriers to equitable LER infrastructure adoption, such as recommendations related to quality assurance of digital credentials in career pathways, data interoperability, and increasing trust through policies about data privacy.
Consult the SkillsFWD Brand Guide for guidance around mentioning SkillsFWD in any external materials.
