The Workforce – Rachel Carlson
Presented by
Rachel Carlson
Ceo and Co-founder of Guild Education
“I have to optimize for student outcomes and Guild getting paid,
and the cool thing is we attach those two. We only get paid when
our students progress through their programs.”
Leaders in the public and private sectors have been trying to plan the
future of America’s workforce for decades. Retraining frontline
workers has been one of the biggest issues in employee preparedness.
Then the Covid-19 pandemic hit. Big new questions arose: Where can
workers be found? Will employers still try to incentivize workers to
get education and training? What can be done to entice employees to
come back?
Enter: The Workforce, Punchbowl News’ effort to identify four
leaders who are focused on leading the country back to economic
stability and ensuring there is a well-prepared workforce that will
allow America to remain competitive. This week we are profiling
Guild Education CEO, Rachel Carlson.
Presented By
Our people make the difference. We’re proud to support associates by
offering jobs at all levels – and investing in our workforce through
training and skills development so that all jobs lead to careers.
Earlier this year, we announced a five-year, $1 billion investment in
career training and development. And we’re paying 100% of college
tuition and books for nearly 1.5 million eligible associates. Learn
how we’re creating a path of opportunity for associates to grow their
careers, so they can continue to build better lives for themselves and
their families.
Learn More
THE BACKGROUND
A passion for education runs in Rachel Carlson’s family. Her
grandfather, Roy Romer, the former Democratic governor of Colorado,
has spent much of his professional life pushing to expand higher
education. In 1997, Romer co-founded the online Western Governors
University with 18 other governors. For her part, Carlson dropped
out of college to join the 2008 Obama campaign in her native
Colorado, where she helped organize the Democratic convention and
manage surrogates. Carlson experienced her first taste of true human
resource management and challenges in 2009 after joining the Obama
administration. She worked in White House personnel before returning
to Stanford to finish her undergraduate degree. Carlson went on to
receive a masters in education and business administration.
While at Stanford, Carlson ran a research project focused on
community colleges. “I love the mission of our community colleges. I
love the students that attend our community colleges, love the
people who work at them, but I have no reverence for the system,”
she said. “It turns out we built that system in the ‘50s for young,
white men returning from war, predominantly. It doesn’t work for
today’s heterogeneous, diverse population of all ages who mostly
already have a job and are coming to the college for reskilling or
upskilling and are not coming for a coming of age experience.”
Carlson found only 300 out of 7,500 colleges in the United
States were creating high-quality, low-cost outcomes for working adult
learners. The real issue Carlson discovered was that these schools
were having a hard time growing their student body because it was so
expensive to advertise online and attract students. The way companies
reimbursed employees was also cumbersome. The vast majority of
frontline workers were paying for tuition upfront on credit cards or
by taking out payday loans and then had to wait months for their
employers to issue reimbursements. “The outcomes were really
devastating … We heard of people who missed rent and we heard of
someone who had their house foreclosed on while they were waiting [for
tuition reimbursement],” she said.
Enter Guild Education. Guild works with companies to create programs
that help employees get free college degrees. It also works with
employers to help retain their workers. Carlson and her team built a
payment system that connects employers with universities to simplify
the payment system. They also developed a team of coaches to work
directly with employees to help them evaluate their options.
Projected change in jobs by education required, 2020-2030
Source: BLS.Gov
8.9%
Doctoral or professional degree
16.4%
Master’s degree
9.9%
Bachelor’s degree
10.5%
Associate’s degree
5.1%
High school diploma or equivalent
Current
Since launching in 2015, Guild Education has skyrocketed. Carlson’s
company is now valued at $3.75 billion, and she is one of the richest
self-made women in the country. Forbes estimates her net worth at $500
million. Carlson’s focus on getting companies onboard has also paid
off. Chipotle and Target have joined the growing number of companies
spending more on education benefits and programs that allow for
debt-free degrees. (Walmart, which is sponsoring this project, has
also partnered with Guild).
It’s been a learning process. Carlson recalled when Chipotle initially
rolled out its tuition reimbursement program for frontline workers
before Guild Education worked with them. The first problem was getting
employees to use the program. The second was the complicated life
choices and the outcomes weren’t always positive.
“We dual track the students’ success outcome in terms of what they
want, which is often economic mobility, promotion, more stability in
their schedule, a salary job. We typically don’t hold higher education
accountable for these. We track those in addition to retention and
completion.”
– Rachel Carlson,
CEO and Co-Founder of Guild Education
Carlson believes that employers paired with the right schools can help
the 88 million Americans who need to go back to school. And part of
Guild’s strategy is to have coaches work directly with employees to
understand whether or not they truly need to go back to school, or
even if they are ready. Guild set up its whole system to optimize for
student outcomes. The company only gets paid when its students
progress through their programs.
“I’m most passionate about the success outcomes of the employee and
how they define it,” Carlson said. Through its partnership with Guild,
Chipotle found that employees that go through its program are 7.5
times more likely to be promoted on the job and 7.5 times more likely
to be promoted within their company than the employees who don’t.
“We dual track the students’ success outcome in terms of what they
want, which is often economic mobility, promotion, more stability in
their schedule, a salary job,” Carlson said. “We typically don’t hold
higher education accountable for these. We track those in addition to
retention and completion.”
Presented By
There is no better place to learn, grow and build a career than
Walmart. We’re building associate opportunity brick-by-brick and
investing in the future of every associate who walks through our
doors. Through a three-tiered approach to training and upskilling,
Walmart is creating a future-focused environment where associates
can thrive. Whether it’s part of training classes, on-the-job
learning or beyond Walmart’s walls with Live Better U, our
associates have the resources to build a career.
Since 2015, we’ve invested more than $5 billion in training,
education, higher pay and expanded benefits for U.S. associates to
prepare for careers at Walmart or wherever their professional
ambitions take them.
Learn More
PEOPLE TO WATCH
United States Secretary of Commerce
Gina Raimondo
Commerce Secretary Gina Raimondo is focused on breaking down
silos on workforce issues in the Biden administration in order
to ensure America remains competitive on the global scale. In
her previous role as governor of Rhode Island, she worked to
revitalize the state’s training programs by working closely
with businesses to ensure that the skills being taught in
those programs met the workforce needs.
Read more about Sec. Gina Raimondo.
Best Buy CEO
Corie Barry
Corie Barry became CEO of Best Buy in June 2019 after being at
the company for a decade. She has overseen the company’s
growth strategy, digital and technology, global finance,
investor relations, and risk and compliance areas during her
tenure. Barry has been instrumental in leading the company
through the pandemic and rethinking how it will use its
stores, reskill its workforce, and continue to focus on its
digital growth.
CEO and President JFF
Maria Flynn
Maria Flynn leads JFF, a nonprofit focused on transforming the
American workforce and education systems. She’s a longtime
leader in workforce policy and has focused on the role of
technology, employment pathways for underserved communities
and employer engagement. Flynn launched JFFLabs in 2018 to
help bridge the divide between education and the workforce and
highlight the growing role technology can play. She also
previously worked at the Department of Labor overseeing the
development of workforce training programs, among other areas.
FUTURE
Going forward, Carlson believes there needs to be a much closer
relationship between education and career. For Guild, that means
helping create economic stability for workers, which translates to
education infused across the entire lifecycle of an employee’s career.
“The ‘four and forty’ is done,” Carlson said, meaning the model of
four years of college and forty years of work. “The labor data tells
us … that the half-life of a skill is now four and a half years in
America and that means we’re all going to need to be reskilling or
upskilling about every four to five years,” she said.
And while there’s been a lot of movement in this area by the federal
government and the private sector, Carlson believes there is still
more that can be done. Carlson said she would like to see the United
States stop taxing workers when they receive education programs from
their employers. And vice versa, Carlson said that the private sector
needs to start funding more education for workers as though it is a
right, not a privilege. “Learning is the only future-proof skill”, Carlson noted when it comes to America’s competitiveness going
forward.
Median annual earnings by educational attainment, 2020
Source: BLS.Gov
110160
Doctoral degree
76800
Master’s degree
78020
Bachelor’s degree
55870
Associate’s degree
39070
High school diploma
Presented By
THE WORKFORCE
Government and the private sector are rethinking their roles in
preparing for the future labor market needs. And Covid-19 has
only added to the urgency as we are undergoing the most severe
worker shortage on record.
