Join Us in Accelerating the Skills First Movement
The Center for a Skills First Future helps employers put skills at the center of hiring and advancement—unlocking talent, fueling growth, and creating opportunity. We provide the tools, guidance, and shared language to make skills-first practices the standard.
Skills Action Planner
Skills Action Planner
Evaluate your organization’s progress in adopting a skills-first approach. Our interactive tool helps you identify strengths, gaps, and actionable steps to implement a skills-based approach effectively.
Resource Library
Resource Library
Access research, tools, and employer examples to implement and sustain skills-first talent strategies across the employee lifecycle.
Skills First Credential
Skills First Credential
Demonstrate expertise in skills-based workforce strategies. Equip yourself with the tools to drive impact across hiring, development, and retention.
Vendor Database
Vendor Database
Find vetted solutions and community support for skills-first implementations—from sourcing and assessment to upskilling and mobility.
Hear from Taylor Dunne, San Diego Regional Economic Development Corporation
Taylor Dunne of the San Diego Regional EDC shares how skills-first hiring gains real traction—by starting from within. In this spotlight, she emphasizes the power of aligning HR and technical teams, identifying internal champions, and rethinking how organizations recognize and value skills beyond traditional proxies.
Hear From Rose Sikder, OKTA
Rose Sikder, of OKTA explains how a skills-first approach unlocks potential in today’s workforce. In this inspiring message, she shares how leading with skills—not assumptions—helps businesses find untapped talent, support upward mobility, and future-proof their teams.
Hear from Steven Flenory, WB Games
Steven Flenory of WB Games shares why skills-first hiring isn’t just the future—it’s the now. In this short spotlight, he highlights how prioritizing skills over outdated proxies helps employers tap into overlooked talent, improve retention, and build stronger teams.
Hear from Josh Tarr of Workday
Josh Tarr of Workday shares how their internal gig program sparked a skills-first transformation. By focusing on real skills over résumés, Workday saw faster hiring, better candidate experiences, and stronger acceptance rates. His advice? Start small, use your data, and make skills a company-wide priority—not just an HR project.
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19x
Removing degree requirements unlocks 19x more candidates (JFF, 2023)
30%
Skills-first hiring reduces cost-per-hire by 30% (SHRM, 2023)
42%
Companies adopting skills- first decrease turnover by 42% (McKinsey, 2023)
Featured Resource
Overview
Announced in July 2025, NextLadder Ventures is a $1 billion initiative set to run for 15 years to help support low-income Americans with AI skills for future employment opportunities. The initiative was founded by a coalition of major philanthropies, including Ballmer Group, Gates Foundation, Stand Together, Valhalla Foundation and individual funder John Overdeck.
The initiative seeks to enhance economic mobility, specifically aimed at empowering frontline workers and low-income Americans, by funding entrepreneurs and organizations, both nonprofit and for-profit, that develop tailored, human-centered technology to assist those navigating critical life challenges such as job loss, housing instability, or health crises.
The approach is focusing on three areas:
- Human-centered augmentation
- Prioritizing tools that ease burdens on rather than replace frontline professionals so they can serve more people effectively.
- Diverse capital tools
- Offering grants, equity investments, and revenue-based financing to meet the needs of both nonprofit and for-profit organizations.
- Ethical, community-informed design
- Ensuring solutions are shaped by the needs of those they serve, with strong commitments to safety, privacy, and trust.
Background
The creation of NextLadder Ventures reflects a shared recognition among major funders that while innovative ideas exist to help people in vulnerable circumstances, most of these solutions are underfunded and under-scaled. In the past, each participating funder was making contributions to economic mobility, yet these investments were not transforming promising prototypes into systems-level change. By pooling funds, technical expertise, and sector credibility, the coalition can work to increase its impact.
The focus on AI reflects the belief that emerging technology, if guided by ethical, human-centered design, can amplify the effectiveness of frontline workers such as public defenders, social workers, and parole officers. The initiative represents a deliberate effort to redirect AI innovation toward social good, ensuring tools are developed for those on the frontlines of serving Americans in vulnerable situations.
Technical Partnership
Anthropic serves as NextLadder’s inaugural AI partner, offering Claude model access, technical expertise, and dedicated support to grantees.
Resources
Associated Press. (2025, July 23). Funders commit $1B toward developing AI tools for frontline workers. AP News. https://apnews.com/article/5c84fa707ba8275a7afb2bc5245c286d
Gates Foundation. (2025, July 23). NextLadder Ventures to advance economic mobility with $1 billion in philanthropic commitments. https://www.gatesfoundation.org/ideas/media-center/press-releases/2025/07/nextladder-ventures-economic-mobility
Philanthropy News Digest. (2025, July 23). Funders commit $1 billion toward developing AI tools for frontline workers. The Chronicle of Philanthropy. https://www.philanthropy.com/article/funders-commit-1-billion-toward-developing-ai-tools-for-frontline-workers
Stand Together. (2025, July 23). National philanthropies join forces to advance economic mobility and access to opportunity in America. https://standtogether.org/newsroom/strong-safe-communities/national-philanthropies-join-forces-to-advance-economic-mobility-and-access-to-opportunity-in-america
TechRadar Pro. (2025, July 23). A new Bill Gates charity foundation is spending $1bn to boost AI tools for at-risk Americans. https://www.techradar.com/pro/bill-gates-charity-foundation-is-spending-usd1bn-to-boost-ai-tools-for-at-risk-americans
Anthropic: https://www.anthropic.com/
Founding Investors
Founding Partners
