 All right, good afternoon everyone or morning as the case may be. Thank you so much for joining and being here today. On behalf of SoCAC Global and my firm Titan Partners, I wanna thank you for attending this webinar. My name is Andrea Minelli and I'm a senior advisor at Titan Partners, the strategy consulting firm that focuses on education from early childhood to lifelong learning. In much of our work, we partner with high impact organizations that are working at the intersection of mission and financial sustainability. Organizations that are driving scale and important education and learn to work solutions that are working. Today, we're here to talk about a critically important issue in the future of work, what we've called retooling the relationship between workers and employers, transformative models in the future of work. I'm joined by a group of experts that are ready to share what their organizations are doing, each representing a different model and an innovative solution and what they're doing to transform the sector and learn to work. I'd like to introduce Beth Kober, Chief Operating Officer of the Markle Foundation, Yigal Krizzambam, founder and managing director of the ETF at JFF Labs and Leila Makoreshi, Chief Business Officer of Merit America. Before I turn to them to introduce the organizations further, let me lay out a couple of ground rules, we're gonna go until 1.50, I promise you will all get off at 1.50 East Coast time so that you can get on to your next meeting. Any questions you have, please put them in the chat. We will try to address them one by one, we're not gonna have a formal Q and A, but I can assure you we'll get to them or we'll get back to you. This will be recorded and will be available on the SoCAP website tomorrow. All right, let's jump in. I'm gonna say a couple more words to set the stage. When we talk about workers and retooling the relationship between workers and employers, what and who are we talking about? There are many well-known facts, anywhere from 40 to 60 million Americans, nearly half the American workforce are working in jobs that don't earn a living wage. Many, if not most, do not have a two or a four year degree. They're trapped with little or no options. Higher ed has failed them, it's too expensive, they don't have the time, the knowledge, or the wherewithal to find alternative pathways to a sustainable job. Also, employers need people. They may not know who these people are or how to retrain or help them along the way. These are the workers we're talking about, these are the employer challenges we're talking about and these are the organizations that are solving those problems. Both coming up with innovative solutions involving the public and private sector and they're working to scale. 40 million Americans is not a small number and we need things to work at scale. So without further ado, let's get to our panelists. Beth, I'm gonna ask you to introduce yourself in your organization. Hi everybody, my name's Beth Cobert. I'm the Chief Operating Officer of the Markle Foundation and in that role, I'm very proud to lead our work with so many partners in the Rework America Alliance. Markle has been focused on workforce issues for many years, but when COVID hit, all of us sort of stepped back and said we gotta think about how to do something differently in its scale to bring things together. So we created the Rework America Alliance. It's a group of about 40 organizations including employers like Walmart, Workday Zurich, Microsoft and Google. It's worker-facing organizations in civil rights groups like the National Urban League, Unitos US, Goodwill, Rural Lisk, it's unions, it's technology companies, capabilities provider, it's incredible partners like the Federal Reserve Bank of Atlanta and McKinsey who've been with us in the tour. And what we're focused on is the workers that Andrea just described. Workers who have great skills and talent and experience but may not have that bachelor's degree that has been too much of a barrier of getting them to the right place. And so we are working on connecting organizations that reach workers to organizations that reach employers so that employers can find that great talent that can help those workers thrive and help their companies thrive. And so we bring these groups together in partnerships with efforts around how do we improve the effectiveness of career coaching that workers can get? How do we help those frontline staff better serve these job seekers? How do we help employers learn different ways to look for that talent, find that talent and advance that talent? So it's taking those things together and taking what works and spreading them across with this whole set of terrific partners including, frankly, everybody on this Zoom. So great to meet you all. Awesome, Egal, how about you next? Yeah, hi everyone. Thank you for having me, Andrea, Titan and Socap as well as my panelists, appreciate it. Egal Kersenbaum, I'm the Founding Manager of the Employment Technology Fund at Jobs for the Future Labs. We got to work on that name a bit. It's quite a mouthful, but that represents kind of the mindset that we're bringing to this work. And so we are an early stage impact investment fund that is investing in technology companies that are upskilling, training and connecting low-middle income earners into better career pathways and economic mobility. And we are housed within Jobs for the Future which is doing similar work but in a variety of different ways as well. And so that marriage together is pretty powerful and we'll talk about a few examples and how that drives impact in the market and Andrea's favorite word scale. So we're gonna talk a little bit about that. We're a team of four, so we're a small but mighty team. Our team represents individuals that we're seeking to support myself who came to this country as an immigrant, had to learn English, went to a community college then a four-year and kind of, you know, clawed my way into the impact investing role. But we're really, you know, trying to create access and opportunities for those who are like ourselves as well. So that's about me, the fund, passing it to Layla. I don't know if we love Andrea. All right, I'll just jump in with a quick intro as well. Thanks so much everyone. My name is Layla MacCurecci I'm the Chief Business Officer at Merit America where I get to oversee all of our funding streams. So our philanthropic funding from foundations that make our work possible as well as our earned revenue streams to ensure our long-term sustainability at scale. So Merit America is a nonprofit. We prepare low-wage workers for in-demand careers. Our model is unique in that it works for people to work and it's built for a national scale. But I think our Y is actually best demonstrated by our learners. So I just want to take one step back and share a little bit about Janelle. Janelle is a mother of six. I think I can stop right there and it's clear she can handle any challenge just of that one statement. She has over $40,000 in student debt but no degree. She is working full-time and earning $30,000 a year. So if you were Janelle, let's pause for a second and just imagine that that was your situation. What would you do? How would you support your family and what would you pursue? So before Merit, there actually weren't that many options out there for Janelle. She is working full-time. She has six children. She can't afford to take a setback from her work to pursue college and plus she tried that once and didn't work out for her. And she doesn't have the time or money to attend a full-time training program or a boot camp. And as Andrea said and Beth and you all referenced, there are between 40 to 60 at Merit. We use the number 53 million Americans like Janelle. So working adults who are really stuck in low-age work. And Merit is designed, we are a talent provider. So we're a training provider. We're designed specifically for these 53 million folks. We've served over 3,000 learners or about three and a half years old so relatively new as well. The majority of our learners identified as BIPOC with an 84% graduation rate. And what I'm most proud of is that our average post-program salary is $50,000, which represents a wage gain. So an increase in salary of $18,000 per learner per year. And we're just getting started. Well, we're just about four years old and over the next three years, we're on track to drive a billion dollars in wage gains across the US. Before I wrap up, I was inspired by Yagal sharing a little bit of your personal stories. I'll share this a second about myself and why I got into this work. I'm a first generation American myself. My parents were immigrants. They came from Iran and our family got to experience firsthand the results of rampant income inequality and what happens in the country where these conditions exist. So they flood the revolution followed by eight years of war. And when I became a parent myself, I have two boys, a big part of my life outside of merit. I wanted to find a way to address the income inequality that exists here at home. And so feeling like I get to do a small part in stopping history from repeating itself is sort of what drives me each day. And I'm so excited to be a part of this panel today. Awesome. I think Andrew might be having a little technical difficulties. So I may play host for this next question. We'll see how I do. I'm not a great host, but no. Okay. So I think this one will kick it to Beth to go first. But the Inflation Reduction Act among other dramatic world events is big news. How are these external factors shaping market dynamics and the workers we're all focused on? You're doing a great job pinching. So when we think about the Inflation Reduction Act and some of the other measures that have been put in place over the past number of years whether it's the CHIPS Act, the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law, the American Rescue Plan. We see this as a bit of a once in a lifetime opportunity to say there is going to be real demand for an opportunities for workers to take on roles that can lead to the kind of family sustaining wages, the growth progression, the stability that so many seek and haven't been able to access. Particularly workers of color and women for whom these jobs just have not been a viable path forward. So how can we take this opportunity? There are all sorts of features in these programs focused on these emerging in-demand fields whether it's in semiconductors, clean energy, manufacturing or infrastructure. And the question I think we think about with our partners and I know my fellow panelists think about is how can we make sure that this chance of economic opportunity, one gets captured and two gets captured in an equitable way. And there's lots of programs whether it's in tax incentives for businesses to hire from registered apprenticeship programs, whether it's grant programs, not from the Inflation Reduction Act but from the previous bills like the Good Jobs Challenge which are focused on really saying we're going to make this recovery an equitable recovery, we're going to engage. I think one of the things that's really important in all these is thinking about how do you engage the government and business, education providers, traditional providers and innovative providers like Merit America? Where can the kinds of organizations that you got funds fit into this picture? So I think there's a real opportunity for everyone to come together around this as a catalyst so that we all will be able to look back and say that was a sea change and we all did our part in making it happen. That's awesome. And a great segue to some of where my head was going with the Inflation Reduction Act which is really the large investment in manufacturing and clean energy jobs. And to your point, both the direct effects will be job stimulus, more roles going to clean energy, manufacturing, onshore, et cetera, right? But there'll be some really interesting knock-on effects that may not be as apparent. So with that investment into manufacturing clean job space, we're likely to see more entrepreneurs and innovation jump in as a knock-on effect as well. And those are the types of companies and opportunities that I'm particularly excited about finding and investing in and that can ultimately lead to impact down the line as well. And so it's exciting, it's large investments. We have companies, one of which I'll just tell you because factory fix, for example, is helping manufacturers find upscaling and connect talent to open roles, having livable jobs and wages and are doing a fantastic job and are certainly likely to benefit from these types of acts as well. So Layla, I'll kick it over to you and it looks like Shalomi is back. And she's back, cool. All right, wonderful. Yes, we completely agree Inflation Reduction Act is definitely an important step in the right direction for workers to be paid fairly. We are glad that there are incentives for companies to pay well and penalties for companies that say they will, but fail to follow through. And of course, cleaning the right incentives and environment for clean energy is not only critical for our economy, but also for combating climate change. So we're all around in the future. And what's exciting is Merit's model the way that we work, we are job agnostic. So we actually select paths, training paths that align to career paths based on criteria like really strong starting salary, upward mobility, high employer demand, recession resilience and being a good fit with our model, which is fully virtual and online. So of course we're expecting green jobs to be in greater demand as a result of the act and we're actively exploring the best way to prepare learners for them. Beth also mentioned a couple other opportunities I just wanted to highlight and share. Merit would be incredibly excited as many of our partners, if one day we got to the point where Pell Grants were made accessible to cover short term training programs like Merit, I think that would just do incredible wonders for the scaling up of all the solutions out there. And then ARPA funds, we are still working with states on implementing their ARPA funds and using them effectively to get folks trained. So that is still a live stream of work happening and then the Good Jobs Challenge from the Department of Commerce, which I think Beth also mentioned, we're in several conversations right now exploring with cities and states how we could be an implementing partner supporting larger partners using the Good Jobs Challenge funding. So I think there's an entire array of opportunities and no provider, certainly Merit on our own, can't make the changes commensurate with the scale of the problem. So figuring out these public-private partnerships I think will be a really exciting part of the solution moving forward. Leila, that's awesome. And I just wanna say it's the mark of a phenomenal panel and they really don't need the facilitator. So I was just testing you all and really giving our audience a little excitement, right? So you stop me if I repeat anything but I hopefully can just, I wanna pivot us a little just bringing off what you just said, Leila, to that idea of bringing people together in collaboration, right? Because Beth, I see Markle and the Rework America Alliance is really doing that hard work of knitting together these entities that don't talk to each other which is why we know the gaps exist, right? The funds could be out there but people don't know how to access them. They don't know how to make it work on the ground and we've got both a national issue but how to take it regionally is also really important. Could you speak to how you do that knitting? Sure, and I think this is the core problem, right? What we are trying to do is take talent, real talent with real capabilities and potential who can't have had barriers to get into these great opportunities. Usually you have companies who are saying, I need more talent. You've got training institutions, education students who say, I can help fill whatever skill gaps made exist but they're all sort of talking to each other and fundamentally they have to come together or there is no impact for the individual and no impact for the company. So we've explicitly built this concept of partnership into the Alliance and how we at Markle do our work. We are in the cities where we're working take Austin where our work on the ground is led by the National Urban League. We are explicitly working not with the National Urban League to just enhance the way they're operating but to connect them with others, with the chambers, with others in Austin to do that there and similar places. Because when you get people together what you often get is this, oh wait, I didn't know that blank, right? I didn't know that you could help source candidates if we're looking for talent. I didn't know that no really you have these programs that people could take apart of. And so it's being very explicit about saying what are the barriers in the end-to-end process from an individual who's got talent and aspiration and the career at the other end and how do you knock each of those down? How do you provide more information so an individual has confidence that they can follow that path? With help from McKinsey and the Fed and the Urban League we created a job progressions tool you can actually go find it. That helps the individual say if I'm starting off as a frontline front of house manager in a restaurant what are real careers that would get me to my next gateway job and from there to a target job? And do I need training or not? Is it accessible to me if I've been justice involved? So it's very practical. And I think the key to making collaboration and partnerships work in this space is to make it very tangible and practical. That's what the companies, the funds do because otherwise they don't have a business model. And I know, because we spend a lot of time with Merit and Record, that's what they're doing and thinking about what are the roles where training will really make a difference and we're gonna do those roles and not talk about it. So it's bringing people together, it's getting them together in the virtual or real room and saying, what are the steps we can take to get the flywheel running? And once it does, they tend to build on itself. So it's about that initial partnership that came. And Beth, I'm gonna push just a little because like how did you do it? You know, like we, these problems have existed, right? You guys have been at it and you know, with great leadership and a lot of hard work but like where's the secret sauce and the incentives really, that's what I'm asking. So sure, I think there's a couple of things. One, it is really for our role, we view our impact is the success of our partners and you gotta take yourself out of that, right? We are successful when Mikasa in Denver does more to connect workers to opportunities in Denver and uses that to get funding and to build the case why they should be a recipient of some of these great Department of Commerce grants. It's when you take our partners like MZ Burning Glass, now LightCast and they say, okay, we've got this tool that can help people create better resumes. We can put that forward. It's partners like Google and Microsoft who say, you know, this training stuff, we can do this, we have this. How do we get this out to people? How can you work with these different organizations say, you know, their goal is that they've made commitments to make this training available for free to support people. They gotta get it to people. How do you bring people together? So it's doing that. And I'd say the other piece I'll come back to is we really focus on what's the first next step you can take. That'll make a difference. Let's do that. Because that enables the organizations to start working together and they discover the second step and the third step. And it's going into them with an idea that they're each gonna take these, our partners at the Urban League, we need those, goodwill. The goal of the initial places where we started is for them to take those things back and spread them across their network. So you make it tangible, specific, and think about scaling from the beginning. Leila, turning to you, wow, that's, you know, it's powerful stuff. And I know we need those powerful umbrella organizations like Mark, all the rework America Alliance pushing everyone in the right direction. But I want to zoom down now, like a little bit more to kind of the ground level. Cause I think that's where Merit America and your value proposition really resides kind of direct frontline. Could you just tell us about what you think some of the key success drivers are? Because there are, I'm glad there is a whole ecosystem of providers who are trying to solve this problem. But you guys seem like you've been particularly effective. Could you talk about the success drivers? Yes, absolutely, really happy to. So Merit, we're focused on both scale and impact. And we have three pillars to do that. Number one is best in class coaching. Two is scalable technology. And three is a laser focus on what employers need the most. So I'll just take a moment to expand on those three pillars. We combine best in class coaching with scalable technology to teach technical and professional or soft skills. And really our secret sauce is based on our coaching staff. They're super integral to our model. I think they're what drives the difference between having really great content out there and then having folks successfully complete the content and be able to use it to access a great job. So we support our learners and folks who are coming into us from industries like hospitality, the gig economy or retail. It might be a little bit more unfamiliar with how to navigate the corporate world. They do incredible work building learners confidence, working on imposter syndrome, teaching learners to advocate for themselves in professional settings. At the same time, we know in order to be able to make a dent, we have to figure out how to transform that secret sauce that coaching that real life humans do into a model that can scale. And that's where our internal technology infrastructure comes in so that this model can be accessible even when we're serving tens of thousands of learners a year. So we're learning right now, which of our touch points need to be automated and which actually have to stay in-person, live with coaches, not in-person, sorry, virtually, but with human coaches to be effective. And what we're really excited about is once we're confident in the solutions that work, we'll make all these innovations open source and share them with the entire ecosystem so that other players can incorporate whatever they find valuable in their models as well. So essentially our learners work with their coaches online, asynchronously to fit around their work schedule, their family schedule, and we make up your training with us that the end may earn an industry-recognized certificate. For example, a Google career certificate in IT support for data analytics. And then that brings us to our third pillar, which is working closely with employers that's really critical to our success. We all know that training is only useful if it transforms to an actual job opportunity with family sustaining wages and with affordability built in. And so that's why we work with very strong P partnerships with employers and government entities who sponsor or hire our learners, companies like JPMorgan Chase, Amazon is a big partner of ours through their Amazon Career Choice Program, states like Connecticut, coalitions like 110. We really enjoyed our work working on Scale Up and Beth's team. So all these different partnerships are a critical component to making sure we're always linking learners with actual job opportunities. And because there are paid partnerships, they're really important for our financial sustainability in the long term so that we can exist at a scale that's reasonable as we grow. Lastly, I'll just mention a really exciting recent development, which is this $100 million Google career certificate fund that we helped to co-design with our partners at Google and in social finance. So in this fund, Google is actually sponsoring learners up front to access training like providers such as Merit. And then when learners receive a job above a certain salary's threshold, they repay a portion of their training costs back into, ooh, sorry about that, back into the fund at 0% interest to work partnership funding for future learners. So these are a couple of examples of how we work with employer partners and we're always looking for new, wonderful partners or just individuals to volunteer for mock interviews, which is a really fun, inspiring way to engage with our learners and get to know our model. And putting those three pillars together at Best in Class coaching, scalable technology and focusing on what employers need most. We're driving the $18,000 average wage gain per learner per year. And as I mentioned, then the North Star we're obsessed with is getting to that $1 billion mark over the next three years and working with our partners on the call today and many others to transform how we approach education and workforce development. Leila, that's so cool. And before we pivot to Yigal, who I know knows something about financing as well, I wanna push on that topic a little, that tripartite partnership with Google and social finance because to me, as I was thinking about your model, I was like, great, but how are we gonna keep finding this? How are we gonna keep finding this? And like, there's great places like Markle and other foundations and philanthropists that we know have now turned their attention to this sector, but that word sustainability, that to go with mission, tell us a little bit more about that thought around the funding of this so that in the long-term, some of these evergreen things may become more of a reality. I'm so glad you asked this, my favorite topic. This is financial sustainability of these models. Yeah, I think the short answer is we can't rely on philanthropy alone. Even if you bring your per head cost down to, three, four, $5,000 a learner times $50,000 learners a year, year after year, there's just not that much philanthropy doesn't exist in our sector to support organizations at scale. And that's why at Merit, we're really focused on earned revenue streams as well. So we charge employers who hire our learners exactly the same way they would pay a traditional staffing firm to source talent or we partner with governments or companies to sponsor learners up front for upskilling or retraining. And then of course the Google fund is a really exciting example that we hope to show a lot of success that other corporate players may replicate or maybe even policy makers will replicate that model or ideally both will replicate. So there's a constant revolving supply of funding that's really tied to impact. Like if you do your job well and someone gets in place and they have the ability to repay a portion of their costs and there's a really strong time between the funding and direct impact which we're excited about. And philanthropy will be important. We are a nonprofit and we don't wanna move up market in our target market. So in order to reach the learners we're working with we will always subsidize that they not pass on the full cost. So our philanthropic partners are incredibly, incredibly important. We work with many leading funders in the space Google.org, Ascendian, Charles Koch Foundation and many others across the board and they really do help make us accessible but we have to pair that funding with earned revenue for that sustainability and to be able to operate at scale. Great, super, super interesting. So you go on that note, using capital and creative ways for both to catalyze and to have impact. Why don't you tell us a little bit more? You might have done some of this in the intro but just the fund idea and how to use capital in a catalytic manner to really, I see your fund, correct me if I'm wrong is fueling the innovation layer. Where are the good ideas coming from? And the ones that are gonna help people progress either with learning about jobs, getting upskilled or trained and a variety of the other things. Jump in. Yeah, happy to share a little bit more on the origin story which I think we'll answer or tie in nicely to this conversation. And so the Employment Technology Fund was launched in late 2017 with the support of Walmart, Kellogg, Joyce and ECMC foundations and really they were focused on what they saw as a gap in the market and the gap was a layer of risk capital flowing to early stage technology companies that were serving the needs of low wage workers. There was plenty of capital and innovation and entrepreneurship focused on white collar workers as you probably not too surprised about but there was a gap. And so they say, hey, we're, you know been funding in traditional ways. Let's try something new and innovative. How do we pool together capital? So if you've ever worked with five foundations getting them to do something together is an innovation in and of itself. And so, and I think a lot of that was thanks to some folks on this, you know on this call as well. But so that was the first innovation. Second was using philanthropic capital to take that risk position in for profit technology companies to drive impact. That is, you know, more acceptable or more common now I would say, but back in again late 2017 that really wasn't the norm. There were a few entities out there doing that. And I think, you know through our demonstration of ETF we've been able to crowd in other sources of capital as well as other funds that are doing similar work. And I think that was one of the, you know theories or theses behind ETF as well was a demonstration effect of how do we get others to follow suit and to use philanthropic capital to drive innovation and technology investments. And so we launched in late 2017 with all of that in mind. The other pieces that were really important for us at the time was supporting entrepreneurs with lived experience with the problems that we're trying to solve. In addition to that was using our capital in a way that would drive innovation and impact in geographies and cities that was overlooked and underserved. And so from kind of a macro fund level thesis we were really focused on innovation. So driving and building the ecosystem of entrepreneurs building technology companies that serve in the needs of low middle wage earners crowding in non-traditional and traditional sources of capital to drive change as well as supporting entrepreneurs from diverse backgrounds and underserved communities that would lead to higher impact solutions in our view. So that was a pilot fund we launched we made some investments in 2018 and to our surprise or to our hypothesis there was a market there. The market was actually fairly robust. There was impact, there was financial return. And so we decided to double down our efforts and scale the fund as well and our support of entrepreneurs. And so I just want to finish and I saw you come up with me but I think what's interesting as we step back and kind of reflect on the early days is that the impact of COVID has been wild, right? There's a bunch of different impacts but acutely in my work there's been a much more focus and appreciation for essential workers, frontline workers. And along with that has come a much higher degree or more entrepreneurship and innovation targeted to solving issues for these individuals. At the flip side there's been a lot more capital flowing into the space as well. And so that gap that we talked about initially has kind of evolved in a way, right? Like the ecosystem has evolved and where I think ETF still has a unique voice and all of us still have this role to play is really around finding and supporting the highest impact best outcome solutions in the market. And there's a lot of money now just kind of spraying but it's really around like who's bringing the rigor, the pedagogy and having the outcomes that are really desired by all of us. And I know Marin America is doing that for sure. Others, certainly our portfolio companies are doing that. But I think that's an interesting evolution of the space. So I'll stop. Super, super interesting, Yol. And I'm so glad you brought up that point. And I came off mute honestly because where I was gonna go with you just to push a little further was the talk a little bit about this decision to embed within JFF. And when we talk about networks and partnerships, what Beth was talking about, what Layla was referring to, I see, I believe a little bit of a rationale for why you live where you live. Right. No, of course. And so initially when we launched, as I was describing, we launched by ourselves. And so in 2019, we were acquired or merged with Jobs for the Future. And the rationale there was really that, capital is a commodity, anyone can give capital. But how do you provide the expertise, the networks, the partnership building for early stage companies to help them scale? And so that was really the theory behind ETF joining JFF. And it was how we could better serve our entrepreneurs. And by better serving our entrepreneurs, we understood that they would be able to scale their companies and drive impact to a higher degree. And so we've done that, we've embedded with JFF. We're now, you know, JFF's de facto impact investment fund. And we are leveraging all corners of JFF to support our entrepreneurs. For example, we have a Center for Apprenticeship and Work-Based Learning that helps support one of our portfolio companies on ramp. We have some of our work-based learning and corporate partners and things like that supporting our portfolio companies. So too many examples to provide maybe here, but certainly that hypothesis has borne fruit and we're, I don't know what the expression is, but it's been a good marriage so far, so. Yeah, that's great to hear. And I think what I wanna emphasize to our listeners is having been close and observed some of the people and doing their work on the phone. This is hard work, like let's not kid ourselves. This is really hard. From the thinking part to the conceiving part to carefully constructing your models and what you're thinking about, whether EGAL is talking about funding people that have the lived experience, whether Layla's talking about, I mean, gosh, how hard it is to even find and reach the individuals that need the help as much as they want it. It's hard sometimes to reach them or what Beth is talking about. She made it sound pretty easy. I don't know. Getting all those people to the table to agree. I do think we can all agree, COVID and the times have made people look around and say, we have to cooperate more. We have to solve this problem. And I don't wanna throw our higher ed colleagues under the bus, but higher ed in this country has not served this population. And so I think everybody is just kind of saying, what do we do? So we now have these nascent ideas, more than nascent. We're serving thousands, tens of thousands. Layla, what are the obstacles, Beth? What are the obstacles EGAL? What are the obstacles to scaling? Why can't I snap my fingers? I'm very impatient. And why can't we reach a million tomorrow? I know this is a complicated question, but before we hit our lightning round, I wanna talk more about obstacles to scale so that people can hear what still is on your mind. Can you share a couple? Yeah, Layla, go ahead. Okay, a couple of thoughts. So prior to Merritt, I worked at Coursera where scale was not a challenge at all, overall. Tens of millions of learners, incredible experience. And yet when we looked through the data that people who are benefiting EGAL mentioned this in his previous remarks, so people who are benefiting from the solution that exists at scale today are not the population of people who need it the most, right? It's someone who might be transitioning from an investment maker to a software engineer. Oftentimes folks already have some level of credentialing in higher education. And I think the challenge of scale with a really impact-focused model is really about sustainability. We just can't, again, this is an issue that's so obsessed with, bring them back to it again. The philanthropy on its own doesn't exist to find a model at scale, especially a direct service-oriented model that's not just a technology solution. And at Merritt, we think it's a combination of tech plus touch. At least for now, we're not at a place where tech alone with no human interaction, we don't think or we haven't seen success at widespread scale for the learner population we're working with. There's just so many complicated human dynamics and so many years of systemic racism that have brought us to where we are today. So we do think a people element is really important, but we can't just do it with people because that's too expensive and we can't get to scale. So if we bring in technology to make the solution more viable, more scalable, more accessible, then the question becomes how do you operate that at scale? How do you fund it at scale? And if you're focused on an impact mission-driven model, we have to have earned revenue be a part of the picture. So our goal is to get to 80% self-funded and only 20% philanthropy. The 20% will still be a very large number when we're at scale, but really important to bring in those earned revenue streams. And that challenge, that obstacle brings us to where does that earned revenue come from? We think if we're providing a valuable service to a company by going out, spending the time and money to recruit learners, to train learners and to support them in their job application process that we should be compensated for that service that we're providing exactly the same way staffing firms get compensated for the service that they provide, where it just happened to be focused on a much more diverse talent pipeline. And that's not easy. It's not easy to convince a company, hey, you have no problem paying grandstand or roundabout half, we're doing the same work and actually more because we have to recruit and train in-house just cause we're a nonprofit that doesn't mean you shouldn't pay for that service. And we've actually learned that when companies do pay us because we've tested the model both ways, it's a better experience for the learner. They have a better recruitment onboarding process and experience, and we're better able to serve the company's needs because we can assign a customer success manager who really focuses on what that specific recruiting team that specific talent acquisition team needs and tailor our service to their needs and priorities. So it's really a win-win for the company, for the learner and for us because we can be sustainable and grow. But it's definitely an obstacle but it doesn't happen easily at the same time. I think you've identified with a lot of specificity for our listeners, some of the things that are on your minds. Beth, Yagal, anything to add on the scale question? So plus one to everything that Layla said, I think the other part is trying to find this balance, right? When we go and work in communities, we know that Austin is different from Minneapolis, is different from Atlanta, is different from Los Angeles. Yeah. So those organizations, those communities want the thing that is most tailored to them. On the other hand, there are many things that are common between all those places and what the needs are and what the employers are. So there's this real balance between being responsive and tailored and actually listening particularly to the voices of the people in the community about what they need and what is important to them without going too far along in customizing everything because then you're gonna get caught in both the time and complexity and challenge of execution. So what you're trying to find is a way to customize efficiently and effectively. If you think about scale and the concept of manufacturing, you think about Henry Ford and the Model T and it was black. Black, everyone was the same car. That's how you got scale. In the world of technology, you can do a lot more things, but there's a balance there and it's trying to get that balance right that is tricky and hard and necessary, but not too much. And how do you get organizations to understand that and again, they have to own this. They're the ones who are gonna, the employers have to own it for them to commit to hiring people and advancing them and workers in the organization that support them have to own it to feel like this is really a program designed with me, not just for me. And that's when they embrace it and can really bring people to it. So you gotta get that customization responsiveness right without each one being custom made. Yep, so true. Thank you so much. You got any reflections on scale before we go to our lightning round? I'll be quick. From an entrepreneur perspective, I mean, there's a myriad of challenges to scale that we'll do another panel on, right? From ETS perspective, what we would really like to see is capital that's sitting on the sideline be a little bit more catalytic in their thinking. And so you have billions of dollars in endowment capital, you have billions in dollars of university money, asset manager money, high net worth money, that's sitting on the sideline, Kennedy, and we could be, not me, but I mean, if you want, not me, but we as a broader field could be using that money to really drive impact and innovation and change. And it's hard, high risk investing that takes time. And so you need a long window, but that's really what I would see to scale some of these solutions more broadly. Fantastic. Okay, learners and listeners, that was a call to action from our three panelists if I ever heard one about what's needed to scale. So just to close, we've got just really three to four minutes left. What do you, in one minute or less, where are we gonna be in five years? Are you optimistic? How do you see the future? Beth, let's start with you. I'm always optimistic. So I'll say yes. I think the future will feel very, hopefully, will feel very different in terms of how employers think about the benefits to them of the investment in their workforce, how workers will have accessibility to both the training and the funding they need to pursue it, but an understanding about what's really gonna help them achieve their goals, and that this whole process will be much more fluid as opposed to, because you're gonna have to like five years from now we're gonna be talking about what are the next five years jobs? Will it fill these clean energy roles or we'll be starting, but what's coming next? And so I think we need this much more permeability between I'm working and learning, but at the same time in a way that fits with my life as opposed to I do all of one, then I do all of the other, and I do all of one. That won't work for workers, that won't work for companies, and that won't work for the country. Great, Yigal, how about you? Yeah, real quick. I mean, I think I've probably seen too much and been too many places to be fully optimistic from a macro perspective to be totally honest, but from a, you know, my day to day, what inspires me and makes me optimistic is spending time with my entrepreneurs. I mean, these are the people that are really solving the challenging problems. They're the ones innovating, they're the ones dedicating their lives to really creating something scalable and high-impact, and that gives me serious hope, and in five years I expect all of them to be massive companies having generated massive impact. We'll be watching them, that's for sure. Layla, bring us home. All right, happy to. So in five years, we hope there'll be a world in which people can build careers based on merit and not just money. And that means affordable pathways that merit and so many others are working on will be accessible for anyone regardless of their education background or their socioeconomic background. So we've talked a little bit about college today that will continue to be the right path for some, but for those who don't have the time or money, we do hope and I do, I am optimistic that accessible programs will continue to scale. And I'm optimistic very quickly for three reasons. One is we're seeing more and more companies remove college degree requirements, which is a critical, critical step to moving the needle on folks coming in through these alternative pathways. Second, I do see lots of continuing potential and public-private partnerships working with state and local governments to bring models like merits to scale. Governments are such great connectors and sources of knowledge on the specific needs of their constituents. And I think we're sort of in a moment right now focused on workers and workforce development and I'm optimistic we can continue to leverage the public-private partnerships for scale. And then lastly, just pointing out that we're, we're just one operator in an ecosystem. We've talked so much today about partnership and I think we are, I'm optimistic that there are so many opportunities for us to come together and share our best practices and also our mistakes. So we don't make the same mistakes. Things like open sourcing our technology, collaborating on policy, et cetera, just to make sure that those 40 to 60 million Americans who are stuck actually have a viable path forward. And most importantly, I just to close, I think I'm mostly optimistic because I get the chance to talk to learners like Janelle every day, who I mentioned at the beginning. I'll just close out with what happened to Janelle after she graduated. Now she is a technical project coordinator making $50,000 a year. So $20,000 wage increase. And she said, these are her words. I'm doing work that I love in a role with actual upward mobility. And she just bought a new home. So if you can't find optimism there, I'm not sure where to find it. What a great way to end. I wanna thank our panelists. Thank you so much. Thanks to our audience. Thanks to Socap Global. You can probably see and join all of these people at the Socap Conference, October 17th to the 20th in San Francisco. I know there'll be opportunities to access it online. But thanks again to everyone and have a great day.