Investing in STARs: My Reflections on MacKenzie Scott’s Milestone Gift to Opportunity@Work

When I co-founded Opportunity@Work 7 years ago, we saw many signs of a disconnect in the U.S. labor market. Across the country, I’d heard from hundreds of employers that they “can’t find the talent we need.” Yet at the same time, over and over, I heard from people working in those same communities, saying: “I know what I can do, but no one will give me a chance.”

We listened to what we heard, we learned from many promising initiatives, community leaders, industry innovators, and we dug deep into the data on how Americans from every background gain skills, build careers, and earn more. We tested, succeeded or failed, and built new insights.

Low-wage is not low-skill: millions of low-wage workers have skills today for middle-wage jobs. Skills are the currency of the labor market, mostly gained on the job. Our economy needs skills, and 70 million American workers are STARs: ‘skilled through alternative routes’. STARs have valuable skills, but not bachelor’s degrees. “Screening out” skilled workers without degrees from upwardly mobile jobs leaves STARs talent undervalued in regions and industries less dynamic, and reduces opportunities for veterans, communities of color, and in rural America. It hurts us all. 

Fast-forward to today, Opportunity@Work is grateful to announce that we’ve received a grant of $20 million from Yield Giving, the groundbreaking philanthropy founded by MacKenzie Scott. 

This remarkable investment and generous gift affirms the vital role STARs play in building our economy. It recognizes Opportunity@Work’s work to build awareness of STARs as a category of talent, insights to spark action by employers and policymakers, and launch a movement to Tear the Paper Ceiling. It brings us closer to fulfilling our mission of building a skills-first labor market that works for STARs—one where “if you can do the job, you can get the job”. 

Personally, I’m proud of what Opportunity@Work has accomplished and I’m grateful to the hundreds of organizations who are our essential partners - businesses and industry leaders, educators and workforce institutions, state and local governments, policymakers, tech innovators, investors and philanthropists, community and labor organizations, STARs leading and showing the way.

MacKenzie Scott’s Yield Giving joins other philanthropic partners to invest in STARs hiring and economic mobility. Opportunity@Work will deploy and leverage this investment over the next four years to:

• Equip industry and public sector employers to hire STARs into good, in-demand jobs;
• Shift employer behavior to include the STARs talent in regional and industry networks;
• Integrate STARs skills and ‘screen-in signal’ data into talent technology platforms and offer onramps for a wide range of STARs-serving networks to mainstream STARs hiring.

Watch this space. During the next 6 months, Opportunity@Work will work closely with partners to develop a nationwide initiative (launching January 2025, TBD) that enlists regional, industry, technology, and civic institutions to remove barriers and unlock breakthroughs for STARs economic contribution and mobility. Work is solving problems; STARs are problem solvers. We’ll need all our talents in the years ahead. We need to change assumptions, business practices, and public policies to rewire the labor market to value everyone’s skills, however those skills are gained. This problem was created in divided silos, sometimes by accident. We’ll solve the problem together, on purpose.

You can learn more at opportunityatwork.org.