Scaling Impact: Merit America's Success Story

Work Forces

Connor Diemand-Yauman and Rebecca Taber-Staehelin are the co-founders of Merit America, a national nonprofit dedicated to creating fast, flexible pathways to family-sustaining careers for Americans stuck in low-wage jobs. The conversation delves into the challenges and successes of Merit America, exploring how their innovative coaching and financial models are making in-demand careers accessible to those left behind by the traditional education system. Join us for an in-depth look at how Merit America is transforming the landscape of workforce development, promoting economic advancement through targeted, practical training and support.

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Transcript

Julian Alssid: Welcome to Work Forces. I'm Julian Alssid.

Kaitlin LeMoine: And I'm Kaitlin LeMoine, and we speak with the innovators who shape the future of work and learning.

Julian: Together, we unpack the complex elements of workforce and career preparation and offer practical solutions that can be scaled and sustained.

Kaitlin: Work Forces is supported by Lumina Foundation. Lumina is an independent private foundation in Indianapolis that is committed to making opportunities for learning beyond high school available to all. Let's dive in.

Today we're joined by Connor Diemand-Yauman and Rebecca Taber-Staehelin, the leaders of Merit America, a national nonprofit organization committed to creating fast, flexible pathways to family sustaining careers for Americans stuck in low wage jobs. Connor brings rich experience from the worlds of online education and social impact, from co-founding Philanthropy U, leading strategic initiatives at Coursera, to then engaging in global education projects. A lecturer at Stanford University's Graduate School of Business, his work has influenced learning outcomes worldwide and earned him recognition from Forbes 30 Under 30. Rebecca brings over a decade of experience working in the consulting, government, education technology and nonprofit sectors. After starting at McKinsey and serving as an advisor and chief performance officer for the Delaware Department of Education, she joined Coursera to lead partnerships reaching underserved learners worldwide. Together at Merit America they're tackling one of today's most pressing challenges, making in-demand careers accessible to Americans left behind by the traditional education system. Thank you both for joining us today.

Rebecca Taber-Staehelin: Thanks so much for having us.

Julian: So great to have you here. And we'd love to just start us off by hearing a bit about the story around founding Merit America and really how do you differentiate Merit America from other educational and workforce programs?

Rebecca: So I'll jump in there. Connor and I each had reasons that took our winding careers to the startup Coursera, a startup that was founded to make the world's best education accessible to anyone in the world from the phone in your pocket, you can learn from the world's best universities. I was brought there having worked on K-12 education in the state of Delaware, coming from a family that valued education and a series of experiences in some of our highest poverty schools in America. Connor can share more, but he was brought there having grown up in Ohio with a family that was also very education-centric and a mother who had worked her way into the middle class through education. And when we got there, we teamed up and were really focused on how we could bring the online courses to anyone in the world so that anyone anywhere could transform their life. And we loved the work that we got to do there, but there was one moment that stood out to us, actually many moments where we were in an Uber one day talking about our work at Coursera and actually talking about some of the limitations, talking about how so many people were signing up for courses, but so few people were completing. And we were seeing that the vast majority of people who were signing up were actually coming from the positive side of the digital divide. People who already had degrees, they already had good careers, but maybe they were looking for a promotion, not a life-changing education experience. And we're talking about all these issues and our Uber driver interrupts us and says, excuse me, sorry, I heard you talking about Coursera. I actually just finished a course and here we are talking about how hard it is to complete. And we're like, yeah, wow, this guy finished. And he said, but then nothing happened. I finished the course and nothing happened and here I am and I'm still driving for Uber. So is there anything that you suggest I do or anything we can do about that? And I'll toss it over to Connor to take it from here.

Connor Diemand-Yauman: Yeah, I think this really drove the point home that access, even access to the world's best content coming from top universities, is not enough. Access does not equal opportunity. And that was a real unlock for Rebecca and me because we were enamored with the idea of unleashing world-class content on the world. But as we learned in that Uber ride, just providing someone access to the content without helping them understand what to take, how to apply it, how to complete is insufficient. And this was reinforced also by another project that we worked on at Coursera that was called Learning Hubs. And these were learning hubs across US embassies around the world where folks could take Coursera courses, take online courses together with the community. And even this light, light facilitation, this light coaching resulted in outcomes going through the roof in terms of completion, in terms of self-reported value of the content. And so over the years, and of Rebecca and I working together and getting to really see the promise and pitfalls of the current landscape and content, we began to see the opportunity to serve folks who needed a little more than just online coaching. And this led to an exploration of a problem that looms large in the United States, which is 53 million working adults in this country who have, most of them have some college, they have a job, but they're stuck in this low wage work with no real way out. And so you asked how are we different from other programs or what are the core facets of our model? So one story of one of our learners, just to illustrate this point, Sandra. So Sandra is a single mom. She's an immigrant. She was working at a Sweet Greens where she worked her way up to general manager. She was maxing out her hours. And yet despite being really good at her job, despite going as high as she could in this job, she wasn't able to get ahead and she wasn't able to make a family sustaining wage. Now, when you think about a learner, an individual like Sandra, there aren't a lot of options for her despite being incredibly hardworking, despite being very motivated to leave that job. She can't go back to college because she doesn't have the time or money. She can't do a high priced bootcamp. She's not able to take long periods of time away from her work or big loans. And so what she needs is a fast, flexible option that allows her to advance her career and build her wealth over time for her and her family. And that's the focus of Merit America. That's how we're different. We are for working adults. We're for folks who have a job, but don't have the time or money to be able to do a higher price bootcamp or go back to school. And we are positioning ourselves. And today we are the largest provider focused on this segment of working adults in the country. Having just served our 10,000th learner, and released a study with UVA showing that our average wage gains for our learners are from about $26,000 starting to $50,000 post-program.

Kaitlin: Well, congratulations on reaching your 10,000th learner and the success rate. That's so exciting. Building on that exact point, actually, Connor, what are some of the successes and challenges you've faced launching Merit America?

Rebecca: When we think back to those earliest days, our idea from the beginning again was, how do we create a pathway to the middle class for tens of millions of people who are stuck in low wage jobs? And so there are a few things that we know we needed to do well, where the current system has had real failures. One is design a program that combines flexibility with support. So you have all of the good of go at your own speed from your home, all the things that online learning has enabled, but you're not on your own. It's not staring into the abyss of, when can I get these things done? So combine flexibility and support. The second is come up with a mechanism that individuals could pay for this, where so many programs right now, they require you to spend tens of thousands of dollars and just cross your fingers and hope for a great outcome, versus really having a model which we've rolled out where you only pay when you get a successful outcome. And then the third is figuring out how to scale it. So create something that is capable of massive national scale. And so, you know, one of the early days stories that comes to mind on this, are we combining flexibility and support in the right way? We set out with a model that said 80% of the learning will be online at your own speed, but 20% of the time will be synchronous with a coach, with your peers, we'll have nudges and all the support. And the very first week of our very first pilot, we rolled that out and we said, everyone has to get everything done by 5 p.m. on Sunday. And as of 4 p.m. on Sunday, zero out of, I think it was 15 initial pilot participants had submitted anything. And we were thinking, oh my God, we're gonna have to go back to the drawing board. 80-20 is way too much online. We need more support, we need more structure. And at 4:09, the first person submitted their materials, 4:15 another, 4:23 another, and by 4:59 p.m., 100% of the pilot participants had gotten everything done. So we realized pretty early on that we had cracked a model of flexibility plus support that could really work for people, second low-wage work. And then over the years to come, we've developed a financing model with similar tweaking to figure out how do you set something up that allows for sustainability while also meeting our learners where they are, and then also designing for massive scale so that as we went from 15 learners to 10,000 and in the not too distant future, hopefully 100,000, we have something that the impact can stay the same because we don't have to fundamentally change the model to accommodate that growth.

Kaitlin: Just building on that briefly, Rebecca, regarding the point about scaling from 10 or 15 to 10,000, what were some of the key, I guess, scaling moments along the way, whether it was technology or certain decisions maybe along the way that guided that scale?

Connor: One of the key moments related to your earlier question, one of the real struggles and turning points for the organization was around COVID. Prior to COVID, we were a hybrid program. Folks were meeting up in libraries or coffee shops with their coaches for about, you know, 20%, 10 to 20% of the program time. And then March 2020 hits, and this program that's doing very well that is predominantly clustered around Washington, DC and Dallas, Texas has to shut down and we are no longer able to meet in person. And this was a really scary moment for us. Remember it was early March and it was our first meeting as a team where we were fully virtual and folks were scared. We didn't know if we were going to survive as an organization. We didn't know how we were going to have to change our program model. And Rebecca and I, we planned this really fancy presentation around the different, you know, the risk register and the different strategies and how we're going to navigate this, this shift and continue to invest in our learners. And I was sharing my screen, my presentation at the time, and I passed it over to Rebecca and I said, you know, Rebecca's now going to talk about the second part of our strategy. And I left my, I intentionally left my screen share on. And so then Rebecca starts talking. And as she's talking, I open up a new browser, I open up Google, and the team is horrified. They're like, Oh, my gosh, just kind of know that his screen is that his screen is being shared. Rebecca and I, we, you know, we had coordinated this. So we were we were doing, but opened up a browser, went into Google and typed in things inspirational CEOs say during difficult times. And it was this moment of just of real laughter and relief and this recognition that Rebecca and I don't have all the answers. You know, we are figuring this out in real time with you all. And it's been that spirit of vulnerability and candor and humor that I think has been really characteristic of our leadership over the years. And that was a real turning point for us both in our model and culture.

Julian: Wow. Yeah. It's incredible to me is how you have built this to scale and how you're beginning to demonstrate that scaling. And I'd love to hear a little bit more, maybe kind of going back, Rebecca, to what you were talking about a little bit earlier. Tell us a little bit more about the coaching and finance models.

Rebecca: So our coaching model is really designed to do three things. It's designed to help our learners complete their technical third-party certificate. It's designed to help them develop the professional development skills they need for a new career, to access and succeed in a new career. So everything from resume writing, cover letters, interviewing, communication on the job. And then the third thing it's designed for is to really help with the mindset shift. And this is something that we saw to be really important in our piloting and early days, which is making sure that our incredibly talented learners know that they are where they are, stuck in a low-age job because the system has failed them, not because of any personal failure. They're there because higher education has become more inaccessible, more expensive. It wasn't really designed for someone to get a college degree while working two jobs and supporting a family. And so they're every bit as worthy and capable of succeeding in a professional career as anyone else. And so those are the three things we focus on. And I can share more about, you know, the logistics of how we do it. We've got there's small group coaching, there's large group coaching, there's on-demand coaching, there's nudges. You know, everything you think of when you hear coaching is in our coaches toolkit. But one of the more important learnings over time has been we don't think if we were selling a coaching program, if it was come to Merit America for best in class professional coaching, most people wouldn't actually sign up for that. They come to us because they want a data analytics certificate, IT, cybersecurity, UX, Java, project management, all the tracks that we offer. But when you ask them on the back end what they valued most in the program and what was most essential for making that shift from the $26,000 pre-program wage to the $50,000 post-program wage that we saw with our study with UVA, they all say it was the coaching. So we really actually see our technical tracks as the Trojan horse for this coaching. And if there's anything our listeners should think when they hear Merit America is coaching at scale to help people stuck in low-wage jobs access great upwardly mobile careers.

Kaitlin: Well, and so building on that point, I'm wondering...you talked a little bit about that report. When you think about measuring success of your program, what are some of the metrics you pay attention to as you've scaled? And what are the metrics you'll continue to track, I guess, as you said, you hope to reach 100,000 learners, right? What are the things that are top of mind for you?

Connor: When we think about outcomes measurement, we try to really ground ourselves in the perspective of the learner as a consumer and have real empathy for how difficult it is to make a decision in the current higher education and workforce landscape. This is the only industry where folks are asked to make the largest purchase of their lives for a product they don't know if they will get, which is the certificate. They don't know if they're gonna complete, and most of them won't. It's a coin toss if they will. And then even if you get the product, after years of time and money, you don't know if the product will work. You don't know if that degree is actually going to get you a new upwardly mobile job or increased wages. And so when we think about that experience as a consumer, we want to take the risk away from our learners. And that starts with how we measure success and impact. Specifically, our North Star at Merit America is near-term wage gains. We wanna know what were folks making before they started Merit America and what are they making in the months after completion? This is a metric that we cannot fudge. It is very difficult to cook the books. And this is why we have set out from the beginning to be the first nonprofit unicorn driving a billion dollars in wage gains back into the economy through the pockets of hardworking Americans. And we're hoping that by working with policymakers and other companies and workforce development agencies and organizations that we'll be able to have a more ROI-focused transparent set of metrics that can guide the overall system.

Julian: Rebecca, would you also please tell us a little bit about the finance model.

Rebecca: So when we set out to build our financial model, we know we wanted to do two things. We wanted a model that could scale, that would not require us to rely entirely on philanthropy or sources that have limited other organizations from scaling in the past. And we wanted a model that was so incredibly transparent and learner friendly that we could set a new standard for what it looks like to finance post-secondary education options. So what we designed was a model by which learners pay nothing to go through Merit America, but they sign an agreement and that agreement says if and when they are earning above the salary threshold, they'll pay back fixed monthly payments up to a total cap. It's about $95 a month for most tracks, up to $5,700 across five years. So you're looking at paying a little more than $1,000 a year if you're successful at a time when our successful learners are showing an average one-year wage gain of about $24,000. So the goal in doing this was to say, how do we create a way to de-risk this? Our participants are already investing their time in Merit America. How can we make it so they're not also investing their dollars unless they have the outcome that they are looking for? And we're excited that this model has been so successful and so learner friendly that actually one of our biggest issues now is folks think it's a scam. They think it's too good to be true. And if you Google Merit America, you'll see some Reddit threads with people saying, is it a scam? Is it legit? And so part of what we have to do is say, no, it's real. We're doing this because we are a nonprofit. We care about this mission. And we wanted to create something that was unlike anything that exists otherwise.

Julian: So recognizing the fast pace, ever changing nature of work, what's your approach to continuously improving Merit America and remaining aligned with the workforce opportunities?

Connor: I think there are a few ways that we think about this. And the first is really grounded in our values and how we can, as an organization, be incredibly dynamic, fast-moving, and experimental, as fast-moving and dynamic as the labor market into which we are placing our learners. And that means that we are having to constantly reinvent ourselves with our level of growth. I mean, we were 15, serving 15 people about five years ago, and we are now just having served our 10,000th learner. And this means that every few months, we are like a snake that is shedding its skin and reinventing our work, how we do it, and continually changing while doubling down on our culture and those values and the aspects of our model that we believe are, have been and will continue to be our core differentiators. And that specifically is our coaches. Our coaching is our secret sauce. It has been the secret to our success from the beginning. And so while we are continually reinventing ourselves and our model, it's also doubling down on the things that are working in our core to our work. And coaching is number one on that list, but it is a, it's a, it's a very fun struggle that will never end. Rebecca and I were talking about the quote yesterday. It doesn't get easier. You just go faster. And that's really what it feels like as we continue to do this work and grow and hit levels of growth that really haven't been achieved in our space today.

Kaitlin: Your comments about the coaching model really stand out to me and ring true to me just based on the experience that Julian and I had working at Southern New Hampshire University around their competency based model and just that the coaching piece is, I think, just such a huge element of how this works well. Like there's the content and there's offering these different programs, but then it's like, how do you reach people, as you've said, where they are, and truly help them along their individual barriers or obstacles or points of pain? And so I really appreciate your acknowledging that, and also recognizing that as you scale, there's always kind of new obstacles, but that you're seeing excitement at every stage of this. It's really exciting and inspiring to hear. As we transition toward the latter half of our podcast today, I'm wondering what are some practical steps our audience can take to become forces in the future of work and learning from your perspectives?

Rebecca: Early on in our journey, we spoke with a social entrepreneur who actually had started an amazing organization in Africa and is now leading a major nonprofit herself. And, I remember her early advice was become obsessed with the problem you are trying to solve. Know it better than anyone. Stay super close to the people you are trying to support and really understand what their experience looks like and how you can design for them. And I think the, ultimately when we look at what has led to Merit America's success, it's this deep, deep empathy for and connection with the learners that we work with who not only are participants in our program, but are also our teammates. We have double digit percentage of our team, our graduates of our program. We've got an alumni council, so their voice is in everything we do. So I think that's principle number one. The second thing that's really served us is making sure that from the onset we were designing everything from scale. So while we were doing things with 15 people that obviously you can't do with 10,000 people, making sure that there was a clear through line for how that program could get to 100,000 people so we didn't face the cliff that so many nonprofits face where they've done something that works with a couple dozen or a couple hundred people and then they have to completely reinvent the model again for thousands or tens of thousands. And I actually remember with that first 15 person pilot, when it came time to match the learners with their coaching groups, we had them all send us their schedules and I have a video of our first teammate, you know, printing out and lining up all the schedules to figure out, okay, it's six to eight p.m. on Tuesday night, a good time for everyone to meet. And at that moment, she turns in dead bands to the camera, this will not scale. And it was a funny moment because it just showed how in everything we were doing, we're constantly figuring out, well, which aspects of this do we need to automate, design technology and processes for, while again, making sure that that core intervention, a coach with a small number of learners, supporting them on their learning journey was designed for the national impact we wanted to have.

Julian: It's interesting as you're speaking, Rebecca, I'm thinking that as we've been doing this podcast and having this sort of listening tour with leaders around the country, it seems to me that a lot of the scaling is really coming from new organizations that are kind of building it from scratch. What lessons can sort of the legacy organizations learn from you? What can universities and colleges and some of these bigger, more established places learn from this little engine that could?

Rebecca: One funny memory from our early stages, we actually tried to do this from within Coursera. So we knew that online learning is a huge part of this work and we wanted to see other nonprofits take what we saw with those learning hubs and other experiences and create programs that were high quality, accessible and scalable. And we were working with one major nonprofit and trying to encourage them to do a pilot of this new approach that could be much more scalable and more accessible. And I remember sending my fifth follow-up email to them and getting a reply that said, minus Rebecca, this feels a few years away from where we are. So they thought they took me off the thread, but they had actually kept me on. And that was just such a good moment. I had such empathy for organizations that are out there that it's really hard to take what you're doing, keep the trains running day to day, but also have these big swing experiments of new ways to do things. And yet I think that is the surest path towards success. So figuring out, how are you constantly carving out a chunk of your time and resources and talent to identify new models that can be as impactful, if not higher impact, more scalable, more affordable, and most importantly, better designed to meet the needs of our users? So the colleges and universities that we think are gonna win the war on talent and enrollment and completion are those that don't just keep up with their 10-year strategic plans, but are looking around and saying, what can we learn from entities like Merit America? We'll be...We're an open book. What you can learn is coaching really matters. If you design a program around coaching and around flexibility, you can see tremendous results in the metrics that matter most. So that would be our overarching advice.

Connor: Yeah. And like we were saying before, center on the learner. Really try to understand what are the problems that they are trying to solve and don't operate from a place of what do we have or what can we provide based on our current structures and faculty, and instead re-center on what do they need. And I think if we were to all center on the needs of and the challenges of folks across this country who want better jobs, who want higher wages, I think every workforce and higher education system would be a lot better off.

Kaitlin: So as we close out our podcast today, how can our listeners learn more and continue to follow your work?

Connor: Easiest way to learn more is to come onto our website. If you want to be a STAR student, we highly encourage you to sign up to be a volunteer interviewer. So all of our learners have to go through mock interviews with folks from our community. And it's such a great way to give back, to meet some exceptional working adults who are on this journey and to learn more about our work. And of course you can reach out to Rebecca or me directly through all the channels. But we are always eager to chat with anyone who is as obsessed with this problem as we are.

Julian: Well, thank you so much for taking the time to speak with us, and we too will look forward to tracking Merit America and your important work.

Rebecca: Thank you.

Connor: Thanks for having us.

Kaitlin: Thank you so much. That's all we have for you today. Thank you for listening to Work Forces. We hope that you take away nuggets that you can use in your own work. Thank you to our sponsor, Lumina Foundation. We are also grateful to our wonderful producer, Dustin Ramsdell. You can listen to future episodes at workforces.info or on Apple, Amazon, and Spotify. Please subscribe, like, and share the podcast with your colleagues and friends.