Strada collaborates with students, policymakers, educators, and employers across the U.S. to strengthen the link between education and opportunity.
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We prioritize policies, practices, and programs that help ensure postsecondary education provides equitable pathways to opportunity.
We advance our mission through research, grantmaking, social impact investments, public policy solutions, Strada-supported nonprofit organizations, and strategic initiatives.
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We fund organizations working across the full spectrum of educational experiences during and after high school. Our grantees work to ensure that people have enduring pathways to success at any stage in their educational and career trajectory, and through any entry point.
We focus our investments on practices that have been proven to remove barriers to success: guidance; resources to make education and training affordable, and connections between education and work through work-based learning and career-relevant curriculum.
We make grants across the following four program areas:
Universities and colleges continue to be powerful engines for economic mobility and centers of innovation in teaching, learning, research, and civic engagement. We focus on identifying, testing, and expanding bachelor’s degree programs and models that deliver success beyond completion. Most of our current funding in this area is through the Beyond Completion Challenge.
We support workforce-readiness solutions, non-degree credential programs, and other offerings to provide tangible, timely, and cost-effective pathways to good careers — and progress toward future credentials and degrees when sought. We seek to support public-private partnerships to expand access to successful, quality credential programs, combine credentials toward a degree, and ensure that students who complete credential programs are connected to good jobs.
Community colleges provide affordable and open access to higher education, serve high percentages of first-generation students and people of color, and offer a wide spectrum of certificates and degrees. We support partnerships between colleges and employers that build pathways between credit and noncredit programs and advance meaningful work-based learning. We also support programs that help students combine various programs and certificates toward a degree, as well as efforts to increase four-year degree programs at community colleges in areas of particular demand.
HBCUs have a proven record of removing barriers to degree completion and postgraduate success and have the potential to produce more high-earning graduates, to develop more entrepreneurs, and to decrease student debt. We support HBCUs through the Strada Scholars program, which helps students build rewarding careers and prepare for a wide range of leadership roles. Most of our current funding in this area is through the $25 million HBCU Strada Scholars initiative, the largest single commitment in Strada’s history.
Higher education’s measurement of student success is in the midst of an evolution. For nearly five decades, success efforts focused on access, then two decades with completion as the horizon for success, and now the focus is extending to student outcomes beyond completion.
Credit for prior learning helped Loyce Shelley see herself in a new way — and complete her degree.
Deborah Santiago’s parents always made clear she and her three siblings would go to college.
Long before COVID-19, America’s most vulnerable students were struggling to access not only education and skills training, but the social connections that open doors to great careers. Aimée Eubanks Davis, founder and CEO of Braven, says the pandemic’s disproportionate impact on low-income and minority communities has also laid bare inequities in the education-to-workforce ecosystem. It’s time, she says, to level the playing field so all college graduates can secure strong first jobs that lead to long-term career success.
Strada partners at the Community Education Coalition in Southeast Indiana are engaging with educators, employers, policymakers and community organizations to improve postsecondary education and build a talent pool that will serve area businesses for decades to come.
Strada cast the net wide in 2019 to identify and support seven new partners who are creating opportunities for learners across the country to move seamlessly between education and meaningful careers.
The high stakes for students from underrepresented backgrounds.
I know it’s difficult to believe, but the best part of my job in philanthropy is not giving away money. That’s fun, to be sure, but much more rewarding is building relationships and collaborating with Strada Education Network’s grant recipients, creating stronger pathways between education and employment.
In Fall 2019, Strada gathered its grant recipients in Indianapolis for its first-ever Grantee Forum to share best practices in improving pathways between education and careers.
Employers in San Diego collaborate with educators and workforce development partners to quickly identify, train, and certify talent for jobs now and in the future.
Minnesota, Massachusetts, Ohio, Pennsylvania, Louisiana and Wyoming to Use Strada Education Network Data to Strengthen Pathways Between Education and Careers
Strada Education Network is hosting a series of Employer Forums around the country this year, highlighting successful collaborations where employers, educators, and policymakers are working together to improve the education-to-career ecosystem.
When Texas A&M University-Corpus Christi really listened to employers, it discovered a painful truth: While its mechanical engineering students had the technical skills needed to get hired, they lacked the communication skills to work successfully with non-engineer colleagues. They could get a first job, yet were challenged in being retained. Even those who were retained found it difficult to advance in their careers.
Strada Education Network improves lives by forging new pathways between education and employment.
Through Strada’s recent work in the state of Hawaii, industry collaboration is driving innovation and strengthening the talent pipeline in Maui County’s healthcare system with an ambitious goal in mind: bring key stakeholders together to improve health outcomes for residents of the islands while creating pathways to in-demand healthcare careers for aspiring students.