Imagine a country where all Americans can work, learn, and earn to their full potential. That’s the goal of the nonprofit social enterprise Opportunity@Work.
Created in 2015 by co-founders Byron Auguste, Karan Chopra, and Tyra Mariani, Opportunity@Work looks to empower over 1 million Americans, creating $20 billion+ per year of additional earnings for Americans across the country by 2025.
How do they plan to do it? By transforming hiring practices, expanding learning pathways, and pioneering talent financing.
“If employers want to solve the skills gap, the solution is to hire for skills mastery rather than resume history,” says Auguste.
Opportunity@Work is helping to build a hiring channel that focuses on skills and competency instead of pedigree and history, empowering job seekers who are looking to make a change in the process. They are also helping people access the training they need to level-up, either in their current job or in a new career, as well as creating risk-sharing and income sharing financial models for the workforce that are based on outcomes, not on history.
By helping employers think outside the box when it comes to finding and hiring employees, Opportunity@Work hopes to help match talent to opportunity in today’s workforce and beyond.
MORE: Byron Auguste on Episode One of The Table, a bi-partisan brainstorming discussion about the global economic forces that are impacting communities across America and how society’s perceptions of opportunity and the American dream are changing.