New Skills ready network: The Team Reflects Back on Five Years

The New Skills ready network (NSrn), launched by JPMorgan Chase & Co. in 2020 as part of its larger $350 million New Skills at Work program, supports the design, implementation, and scale of high-quality career pathways in six cities across the U.S. with an emphasis on providing more access and opportunity for students traditionally underserved by our educational systems. Boston, Massachusetts; Columbus, Ohio; Dallas, Texas; Denver, Colorado; Indianapolis, Indiana; and Nashville, Tennessee were each selected into the network and leveraged their respective grants of $7 million to advance work in four priority areas: strengthening the alignment and rigor of career pathways; designing, implementing, and scaling real-world work experiences; building seamless transitions to support postsecondary success; and creating access and opportunity within pathways for greater numbers of students.

As one of ESG’s longest running networks, New Skills has been staffed by a deep bench of experts. We sat down with three members of that team—Heather Justice, Senior Director; Leslie Sale, Senior Associate; and Caroline Turner, Associate—to discuss how we impact the work, and how the work impacts us. 

Foundational to this work is an underlying belief that simply providing opportunities to students is not enough; there must also be intentionality and meaningful connection between those opportunities to actually impact long-term student outcomes. In your words, what is the promise of pathways?

Heather: The promise of pathways is about giving every learner the tools and support to confidently navigate their own career journey and achieve economic success. For some, that might mean sticking with an interest sparked in high school; for others, it could involve adapting to a changing job market, reskilling, and finding what fits best at different points in their lives. At its core, this promise is about more than just getting students started—it’s about helping them move forward faster and more purposefully toward their goals.

Leslie: Personally, pathways represent the educational experience I wish I had. As a high school student, I remember struggling to find relevance in my day-to-day school experiences, and as a result, found school to be mostly an exercise in compliance. While I was fortunate to have mentors and experiences that guided me towards fulfillment, having access to meaningful career advising paired with more hands-on, work-based learning experiences would have been transformative for me. Now, as a professional in education policy, I am motivated by helping other students have an educational experience that fosters a love of learning, self-discovery, and a concrete path to opportunity. I see pathways as a way to redefine the educational experience for so many students to just that end.

Caroline:  When pathways are done well, they promise that students don’t just graduate from high school; they graduate ready, with real options, real support, and real opportunity to achieve their career goals and lead a choice-filled life. 

How has your past experience informed your work in New Skills?

Heather: I came to New Skills after serving as the Director of College, Career, and Military Preparation at the Texas Education Agency. Before that, I led CTE policy and implementation at the state level and spent time in the classroom as a CTE teacher in Tennessee. For the past 15 years, I’ve experienced pathways from both the state policy lens and lived them day-to-day with students. Throughout it all, I’ve believed deeply that pathways should be intentionally designed for all students, not just a select few. They should create opportunities to and through postsecondary education, not limit exit points, especially not based on an adult’s assumptions about what a student can or can’t achieve. I’ve been incredibly fortunate to be in the room when employers share what they need and when school leaders talk candidly about the real challenges they face and to witness the power of bringing different stakeholder groups to the table. 

Leslie: Before joining ESG, I served as Policy Director for the Virginia Department of Education where I had the opportunity to work on a wide range of educational initiatives, building compelling cases for policy change and understanding the right enabling conditions for execution; but I was often disconnected from the deeper work of the program execution, and local implementation was a black box. It wasn’t until New Skills that I really had an opportunity to observe, first-hand, all that goes into having a policy take root and grow. I have a new-found appreciation for how demanding local implementation work can be generally, and especially for pathways, which require strong, effective, cross-sector partnerships, aligned academic advising, and support systems.

What has changed in your beliefs or perceptions about pathways since joining this team?

Heather: Implementation is hard, and just because you build it, doesn’t mean they will come. Having seen pathways through many lenses, I think sometimes I take for granted how complex the implementation and design of the system can be, especially when we have systems and structures at the institution and school level that aren’t conducive to coordination and collaboration. We also have accountability systems that don’t incentivize school leaders to build pathways but instead split attention and focus on metrics that often pit college and career against each other rather than working in harmony. We have three systems: business, K12 education, and higher education. Creating seamless transitions for students requires treating these like one system. There is no “hand off” between systems; rather, it is everyone moving in the same direction and sharing the effort from start to finish.

Leslie: Before New Skills, I did worry that asking students to select a pathway in such formative years may limit exploration and options; however, seeing how many of our New Skills sites implemented career exploration work in middle school–some even elementary–giving students a chance to discover and build on their career interests and aptitudes without being restrictive has changed my mind. And, once on a particular career path, students retain choice in how they approach their postsecondary training aligned to their individual timeline, needs, and goals, and the content and skills they develop along the way still offer  a whole world of occupational opportunity.

What makes you hopeful of the growth of pathways across the country?

Heather: Changing hearts and minds takes time, but there is momentum at all levels to make education work differently—from parents demanding it to governors mandating it—and that hasn’t been the case before. 

Caroline:  There’s a noticeable shift in how people talk about student success—not just in terms of graduation rates, but in terms of long-term opportunity and economic mobility. Pathways are increasingly seen as a powerful vehicle to achieve that, especially because they offer a practical and equitable solution to the disconnect between education and the labor market.

What is the greatest lesson you have learned working on the New Skills initiative?

Leslie: Work moves at the speed of trust and requires much more than coalescing around a common goal. Partner buy-in and true collaboration takes time to cultivate; but the realities of staff turnover and transition, especially over extended periods of time, can really impede those efforts. While nurturing relationships and taking the time to set up systems for long-term institutional capacity do not always feel like the most exciting or tangible to-do, its importance for building to and maintaining momentum can not be overstated. 

Caroline: Context matters;what works in one place won’t always work in another, and pathways can’t be designed with a one-size-fits-all approach. But that doesn’t mean we can’t learn from one another. One of the most powerful things about the New Skills ready network is how it brings together states and cities with vastly different demographics, labor markets, and economic needs, all united by a shared belief: that student outcomes can be transformed through high-quality, accessible pathways. Despite their differences, each site contributes valuable insights, and together, they show what’s possible when cross-sector partners commit to reimagining what readiness can look like. The collective learning and collaboration across the network is where real innovation happens.

What is the legacy of New Skills?

Leslie:  New Skills has offered states and localities a clearer roadmap for how to think about and execute the many moving parts of pathways. It has also proven that many of the challenges and complexities associated with the work are common, and having the ability to tap into expertise of other local organizations or other peers across the country, can provide the space to step back, jointly problem solve, and share learnings. Most importantly, New Skills has demonstrated that pathways work is ultimately fruitful and worthwhile, with so many more students having access to opportunities they might not have otherwise had. 

Heather: I think the legacy of New Skills is the infrastructure and systems change that accompanies programmatic implementation. To Leslie’s point, New Skills created a roadmap for how to create high-quality career pathways to support student success. It outlines the partners who need to be included in the work and highlights the importance that relationships play in implementation. At the end of the day, our legacy is the students. 

To learn more about the New Skills Ready Network, and to hear directly from the sites about the progress they have made in their work over the last five years, click here.