CareerVillage has received a $10 million multiyear grant from NextLadder Ventures to expand career guidance for young people, the San Francisco nonprofit announced on October 22, 2026. The two-year grant will fund the biggest upgrade yet to Coach, its AI-powered career coach launched in 2024. Coach will expand to text messaging, SMS, and WhatsApp, and will be built into learning platforms schools already use. It will also check in with learners who set goals. Coach has served more than 150,000 people in over 120 countries, and 90% of users report improved career readiness. The grant will also fund randomised trials to test whether Coach helps people find jobs and raise their earnings.

An open call for organizations that support adults through major economic transitions About the project When someone loses a job, faces eviction, or tries to figure out what benefits they qualify for, what actually happens? What decisions do they face, what guidance would have helped, and where do things go right or wrong? The voices of people experiencing these challenges are often missing from the decisions that affect them most. NextLadder Ventures, a new fund investing in transformative technologies, and Cortico, a nonprofit, are partnering to listen - through recorded small-group conversations, hosted by trusted community organizations providing direct support and resources, with the people navigating these pivotal life moments firsthand. What comes out of those conversations will shape where NextLadder invests - in tools and resources best designed to help people through those difficult moments. Participants - the people most directly navigating those moments - will have their voices included in a public Story Bank, a searchable public archive of real, lived experiences from a diversity of communities, for anyone working to understand and improve economic mobility. Conversation participants will explore questions like: * Tell Cortico about a moment when you needed help navigating a job loss, benefits application, or financial crisis. What happened? * What decisions did you face, and what guidance would have made a difference? * How do you use technology - apps, online tools, AI - to help you navigate these moments, if at all? Its approach Cortico, a national nonprofit dedicated to bringing underheard voices into public life, is leading this effort in partnership with NextLadder Ventures. Cortico brings people together in recorded small-group conversations. Through a balance of human listening and technology, Cortico helps partners make sense of what they hear, surfacing patterns, themes, and insights across conversations while keeping real voices at the center. The result is a living record of what communities are saying in their own words. Cortico has worked with 300+ partners across the country, in cooperation with the MIT Center for Constructive Communication. Who Cortico want to collaborate with Cortico is looking for organizations already serving working-age adults at or below 200% of the federal poverty level: workforce development programs, libraries, legal aid and benefits-navigation organizations, social service agencies, and others doing this work on the ground. By joining this project, you'll amplify and centralize the voices of your community as part of a public Story Bank - a living resource for the organizations, entrepreneurs, investors, and policymakers building tools to help people navigate crises or moments of opportunity. You'll also join a national network of organizations doing this work, and keep access to your community's conversations and insights long after the project ends, for your own advocacy and programming. What Cortico is asking Choose one person from your staff or community to be a conversation facilitator. Cortico train them fully - no prior experience needed. Facilitators can expect to spend a total of 4-6 hours including a 90-minute orientation and conversation time. Help recruit 4-6 local residents per conversation from your network for 1-2 small-group conversations, reflecting NextLadder's focus population: working-age adults at or below 200% of the federal poverty level navigating a crisis or opportunity moment. Cortico handles everything else: conversation guide, facilitator training, analysis, and outputs. What you & your community get. Beyond surfacing underheard voices in your community, here's what your participation includes: * A program grant of $1,000-$2,000 tied to your conversation commitment (1 or 2 conversations), which you can use toward facilitator and participant compensation * Facilitator training that gives your staff practical listening and facilitation skills they keep long after the project ends * Full support from Cortico: Cortico handles the technology, transcription, and analysis so you don't need any in-house infrastructure to participate * Your community's real voices and insights surfaced from conversations for your own advocacy and programming * Named credit in the final report and public-facing outputs * Info session 1: Monday, October 19 from 1:30 - 2:15 pm EST [RSVP HERE] * Info session 2: Wednesday, October 21 3:00 - 3:45 pm EST [RSVP HERE] * Info session 3: Tuesday, October 27 from 1:30 - 2:15 pm EST [RSVP HERE] * Info session 4: Wednesday, October 28 from 1:30 - 2:15 pm EST [RSVP HERE] Cortico is recruiting on a rolling basis through Friday, November 13, 2026 at 11:59pm ET. Reach out anytime at [email protected].