Braven’s partnership with higher education is more important than ever as low-income and first-generation graduates are entering the job market during the global pandemic. Braven works with large, four-year institutions of higher education—referred to as ‘the mighty middle”—to prepare under-represented college students for a successful career.
“They have worked their way to and through college and earned the right to compete for strong jobs,” said Kasia Kalata, director of communications and marketing at Braven.
To date, Braven has worked with 2,700 students within four universities: Rutgers University-Newark, San José State, Lehman College and National Louis University.
Working onsite—currently virtually—with a team, the two-part Braven experience is open to any undergraduate on a participating college campus. The program begins with a credit-bearing college course, followed by a post-course experience that lasts through graduation.
First, the fellows take an accelerator course, which is an online career-acceleration experience, during their sophomore or junior year. Fellows complete weekly online modules and assignments to develop five professional competencies: operating and managing, problem solving, working in teams, networking and communicating, and self-driven leading. To greater enrich the program, volunteer professionals from local employers, called leadership coaches, lead groups of five-to-six fellows through weekly learning labs, sharing real-world application and feedback.
After this accelerator course, fellows receive additional opportunities to develop leadership and career-readiness skills, engage in more networking, and work on building internships and jobs through Braven and networking events.
“Fellows emerge from Braven with the skills, experiences, confidence and networks they need to land a strong first job and get on a path to economic freedom. It is open to all students so long as their schedules allow it,” Kalata said.
Braven ultimately hopes to alleviate the challenges faced by first-generation college students.
“Before COVID-19, an African American with a bachelor’s degree was twice as likely to be unemployed as their white counterpart, and a bachelor’s degree holder from a low-income background started their career earning only two-thirds as much as those from higher-income backgrounds,” Kalata said. In fact, only 25% of the US’s 1.2 million first-generation or low-income college enrollees are predicted to land a strong job after graduation, she added.
“Students from humble beginnings are equally as talented,” said Kalata. “But unlike their wealthier peers, no one had prepared them with the soft skills needed for their launch from college to career. These include interview prep as well as access to a network of local professionals.”
That is why Braven’s goal is to teach these skills like any other academic course. Preparing for the workplace is not necessarily intuitive and students need to learn how to work in teams and problem solve.
According to a 2019 LinkedIn Talent Trend Report, 92% of talent professionals say that “soft skills” matter as much, or more than hard skills.
However, Kalata did note that soft skills are just one piece of the puzzle. Braven also has the responsibility to connect with people at companies who are willing to open their doors to the fellows.
Touting early success, Kalata noted that 95% of Braven’s fellows graduate from college, 73% have at least one internship during college (compared with 49% of first-generation seniors at large state universities), and 70% of fellows have a fulltime job within six months of graduation.
When Covid-19 hit, Braven transitioned its programming to a fully virtual platform. As part of the transition, Braven now offers fellows a space to connect with their campus and national peers and share how they’re feeling.
“For instance, we created channels on instant messaging platforms so that they can connect in real-time and hosted a national webinar for fellows that allowed them to meet new peers, share ways to move forward during challenging times like these, and discuss best practices for learning virtually,” Kalata said.
In addition, the company launched the Braven career booster to support the more than 500,000 low-income and first-generation college seniors who graduated into the new economic environment. The booster is a two-week online bootcamp that supports graduating seniors to navigate the job market.
Additionally, the team piloted BravenX, the semester-long, cohort-based course for students associated with college success organizations.
“We’re seeing that it is working well and may help us reach fellows in regions that would be expensive and perhaps not cost effective to build due to scaling ability,” Kalata said.
Moving forward, Braven is looking to grow into six new metropolitan markets with large public university systems over the next 10 years. And Braven will continue to partner with these colleges to help change the problems of diversity and inclusion in the workplace. The goal: create a generation of diverse leaders.
“To accomplish this, we need systemic changes that will enable Braven to flourish—this includes greater transparency around career data, increased public funding for rigorous career support in the undergraduate experience, and more paid career accelerating opportunities for young people that are designed to lead to real jobs,” Kalata said.