Guild Education: Unlocking Opportunity for America's Workforce
Guild Education is an education platform with a mission to unlock opportunity for America’s workforce through education and upskilling. Recognizing the need for upskilling to prepare for the future of work, Guild upskills workers and prepares companies for the future. The industry-leading technology platform enables the nation’s largest employers-including Walmart, The Walt Disney Company, and Chipotle-to offer strategic education and upskilling to their employees.
Connecting Employees to a Learning Ecosystem
Guild connects employees to a learning ecosystem of universities and learning providers. These include institutions such as Oregon State University; historically Black colleges and universities, such as Paul Quinn College; community colleges, such as Rio Salado College, Southern New Hampshire University, and eCornell; and organizations that offer certificates in technical skills, such as Salesforce Administration and GoogleIT. Tuition is paid by the company. Guild serves working learners from all 50 states, including 54 percent who are students of color and 56 percent who are female.
Platform and Services
Guild’s payments and technology platform, curated learning marketplace, and advanced education and career coaching come together to help working adult learners advance in their education and career, debt-free. Guild is transforming how forward-thinking employers build talent to drive business innovation and growth. Guild’s Talent Advantage offers a range of transformative education and skilling experiences, supported by actionable talent insights for employers and personalized coaching for employees. Guild partners with the nation’s largest employers to unlock human potential and fuel organizational growth. At Guild, the belief is that together, a future of work that works for everyone can be built.
Addressing Skills Gaps and Career Transitions
It takes a mindset shift to solve the gaps in the licensing and credentialed roles in healthcare. Elite athletes train for years for a moment that lasts seconds. In sports, careers peak in your late 20s or early 30s, and then it ends. Guild brings education and skilling to Team USA and America’s workforce.
The Guild & Team USA Learning Network
As a Team USA Paralympian and eCornell student, Dani has spent her life outperforming expectations, first as a child athlete, then by balancing elite competition with career development. Team USA athletes are ready to compete at the top of their game. Often, the margin between winning and losing both in business and in sport can be razor-thin. Employers know this pressure well. That same principle of steady, skills-focused guides Guild as the Official Education, Skilling, and Career Mobility Provider for Team USA.
Read also: Community Arts: Transformation & Inclusion
Leadership and Vision
Guild Education was founded in 2015 by Rachel Romer and Brittany Stich with the goal of making education more accessible and equitable. Stich has since left Guild and is now a White House Fellow. They created a platform for continuous education that employers pay for to upskill their workforce at no cost to employees. Along the way, the innovative company disrupted the traditional online education market on its way to a $4 billion-plus valuation.Guild founding CEO Romer was unavailable for an interview as she is still battling the effects of a stroke, though she remains involved as a board member. The company recently named Bijal Shah as CEO.
Education Content and Programs
Guild aggregates education content from over 70 learning providers to offer 2,000 programs across 100+ fields of study, including preparatory programs like high school completion, college prep and English-as-a-second language. Education providers include eCornell, Louisiana State University, North Carolina A&T State University, Purdue Global, Southern New Hampshire University, Spelman College, University of Denver, and Oregon State University Online to name a few.
The Online Education Market
The fast-growing Guild is part of the global explosion in the Online Education market which is projected to reach $185 billion in 2024, rising to $279 billion by 2029, according to Statista. Yet the user penetration in the Online Education market is only 14.9% of the population, providing ample room for growth in the future.
Differentiators
One of the key differentiators between Guild and other online education platforms like Udemy and Skillshare is that the company is a for-profit “Public Benefit Corporation” and certified “B” corporation. These designations ensure that the company operates in a responsible and sustainable manner to generate social and public good. Another point of difference is the company’s business model. Guild created a totally new and novel payment model that is centered on the employer paying upfront for tuition free education from the get go for the employee and Guild will also ensure that our learning partners are certified and have very high quality outcomes and will provide coaching and other support and assistance for these learners on their journey.
Employer Partnerships
Guild partners with some of the largest employers in the country such as Walmart, Target, Disney, Providence Health, PNC Bank, Hilton, PepsiCo, Tyson Foods, and Chipotle. Its AI-enhanced learning platform helps ensure employees are provided with the right content that will lead to the best results.
Read also: The Guild Education Model
Outcomes and Impact
When we think about outcomes, we think about it in terms of economic stability, and career mobility. Those are things that we really look at. And when we talk to our learning partners, a lot of the quality and curation that we do with our learning is focused around persistence and completion of that learning.
Reach and Growth
According to Biestman, more than six million employees have had access to Guild through their employer over the last 12 months. Olympic & Paralympic Committee and the LA28 Olympic and Paralympic Games, to provide a first-of-its-kind opportunity for Team USA athletes to receive education and career development opportunities to support their long-term career success. Those developments have allowed the company to grow to some 900 employees. Such growth has attracted $643 million in venture funding across seven rounds to date. Its most recent $175 million Series F financing round was in 2022 led by Wellington Management with additional participation from Oprah Winfrey and Bon Secours Mercy Health, an employer partner of Guild.
Brand Building
Guild enlisted transformation agency Collins to help them in that goal. As AI penetrates every sector, a seismic shift in workforce skills is seemingly inevitable. Guild completed a transformation program in partnership with Guild. Together, they engineered a sort of business pivot that has thrust them into an unlikely, but crucial role-preparing the backbone of America’s workforce for the impending AI technological renaissance.
Read also: Workforce Development Strategies
tags: #guild #education #platform
