College Board Forum 2024: Start early with career exploration

Clare Bertrand, College Board, joined WorkingNation to share her thoughts on creating an ecosystem to introduce young people to career paths
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Career exploration is important because it introduces students to careers that they both know and don’t know, says Clare Bertrand, executive director of career strategy and partnerships with the College Board. “If we start helping students understand the knowledge and skills that they are building…it opens up the pathways for them.”

Bertrand joined WorkingNation’s editor-in-chief Ramona Schindelheim for WorkingNation Overheard at her organization’s convening – College Board Forum 2024 – in Austin, Texas.

She says College Board is part of a greater ecosystem of organizations to “build a better infrastructure for students to find where they want to go. We want them to have access to high-quality information and high-quality credentials.”

Bertrand continues, “College Board is really joining a lot of other organizations and other nonprofits, other institutions to help students get better information about career, to get access to better credentials, and also get access to better pathways that lead to quality jobs.”

She explains, “Students, of course, are always going to be interested in, ‘What am I going to do when I grow up?’ And that’s a really great way to help a student make a decision about postsecondary.

“We know that college is a career pathway. We know that community college is a career pathway. Anything you do after high school is a career pathway. What we want to do at the College Board is really help students understand that fact – feel that their education is much more relevant to their own future. And also understand, ‘What am I going to be thinking about or how am I going to get a return on investment?’ And where I’m going after high school.”

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