Insider Brief
- The Schultz Family Foundation is investing over $3 million in AI-powered career navigation tools to help young people with limited education or experience access better career guidance and opportunities.
- Anchor funding will support the development of CareerNet by Renaissance Philanthropy, which will create task-specific AI benchmarks to drive innovation in AI-driven career support platforms.
- Additional grantees include CareerVillage, Basta, and CodePath, all focused on expanding scalable, AI-enhanced tools to boost economic mobility and workforce readiness for youth across the U.S.
PRESS RELEASE — The Schultz Family Foundation announced it is investing in a groundbreaking project to train artificial intelligence platforms to provide users with better career discovery and navigation information, tapping into the growing popularity of large language models to close the opportunity gap for young people with limited education and experience.
The Foundation is supporting Renaissance Philanthropy with anchor funding to design CareerNet, which will use the development of task-specific AI benchmarks to harness the competitive spirit among AI developers to produce cutting-edge techniques and innovative algorithms for a range of commercial platforms that will improve results for people seeking guidance in how to identify, build and advance their career.
The Foundation support of CareerNet is among more than $3 million in investments to support AI-powered career navigation tools across four organizations, including CareerVillage, Basta and CodePath.
Over the last year, the Schultz Family Foundation has worked to understand the current career navigation ecosystem, from the barriers to access and the resources available, to the skills needed to support young adults on a path toward long-term success. The Foundation has found that many youth today face barriers to the tools and resources needed to learn about, prepare for, and secure economically mobile careers.
By investing in organizations that are already spearheading transformative initiatives that support economic mobility for young adults and economically vulnerable populations across the United States, the Foundation aims to further advance youth access to cutting edge navigation tools that will empower their entry into the workforce.
“AI’s influence and technology is rapidly transforming the way each of us work and live and we believe there is a significant opportunity to leverage this technology to address the gaps in career navigation, help young adults build critical job skills, and provide helpful insights to successfully navigate job markets,” said Vivek Varma, chief executive officer and vice chair at the Schultz Family Foundation. “Each of our grantees shares our dedication to creating greater opportunity for young adults, and we are proud to be investing in the expansion of their work in order to increase the economic mobility of young people across the country through innovative AI solutions.”
The Foundation’s investment in CareerNet seeks to build upon Renaissance Philanthropy’s deep experience in education-focused competitions among AI developers. Renaissance Philanthropy will partner with CareerVillage.org, a platform that has crowdsourced career advice, answering 60,000 questions for more than 3.5 million young people, to create key performance benchmarks for AI platforms. Renaissance Philanthropy will also partner with The Learning Agency to implement this AI benchmarking effort.
“I am excited to leverage the potential of AI benchmarks and help create AI tools that will help more young people identify their strengths and explore meaningful career paths,” said Kumar Garg, President of Renaissance Philanthropy. “AI coaching tools can help level the playing field by listening, adapting, and advising young people on futures they may never have imagined possible. The ultimate goal is to help ensure every young person has access to the kind of thoughtful career support that opens doors and expands possibilities.”
The Foundation’s other career navigation investments announced today include:
- Career Village, a technology nonprofit that crowdsources career advice for youth at a wide-reaching scale, will be using the grant to support the next phase of growth for Coach, a revolutionary platform that harnesses the power of AI and sector-wide collaboration to offer cost-effective, scalable career support. Coach is specifically designed to help young people and offers services that range from helping users find internships to assisting with resume writing and conducting mock interviews.
- Basta, a nonprofit supporting first-generation college students seeking first jobs, will expand its investment in AI-driven career navigation tools to tackle systemic underemployment for early-career job seekers. With this investment, Basta will integrate a new “job match score” into Seekr, its popular career navigation tool, powered in part by data from the American Opportunity Index. With these new capabilities, early-career job seekers will be able to upload their resume and the tool will highlight available “best fit” positions that align closely with their profile.
- CodePath, an organization dedicated to reprogramming higher education to create the first AI-native generation of engineers, CTOs, and founders, will invest in continued national expansion of its suite of courses; personalized, timely career support; and immersive work experiences that put young job seekers on a path to meaningful and economically mobile careers. CodePath will work to deepen partnerships with higher education institutions in the state of Washington while continuing to develop and integrate AI tools to bolster their student support services.
