Three Solutions to Support Young Adults in Accessing Best-Fit Career Pathways

I’m thrilled to share some exciting news: New Visions for Public Schools will be the home of the Pathway Gap Project, launching this September 2026!

Our Vision

Our vision is a New York City where every young person can clearly see, navigate, and access best-fit career pathways, supported by shared civic infrastructure that helps the adults advising them guide the way.

The Collaborative

Today, more young adults are following flexible, nonlinear paths to the world of work, including students who enroll directly in workforce training, those who attend college first and later pursue training, and those who use workforce programs as a stepping stone into higher education and long-term careers. As these pathways grow in both interest and complexity, the system has struggled to keep pace, leaving an estimated 108,000 young people who are both out of school and out of work without a clear roadmap to economic mobility.

A cross-sector collaboration involving more than 75 organizations—including public agencies, workforce providers, intermediaries, funders, school networks, frontline professionals, and young people—came together to identify and co-design practical, system-level solutions to this need. This collaboration, named the Pathway Gap Initiative, resulted in a proposed solutions package that will launch in September 2026 right here at New Visions.

I’m especially proud that New Visions was chosen to be the home of these solutions thanks in part to our work on the Career Directory. That track record of building trusted, widely-used tools for the field is exactly why we’re being asked to lead the next chapter, and we couldn’t be more excited for this next phase of development.

Solutions Package

Here’s what we’re building. The Pathway Gap Project at New Visions will be composed of three interconnected strands of work:

1. Practitioner capacity-building: Lead the creation of a new website that serves as a navigational compass for youth-serving professionals, connecting them to the tools, resources, and professional learning they need to support NYC young adults as they transition to non-college postsecondary pathways and workforce opportunities. This new site will include vetted advising and career exploration resources with implementation guidance, professional learning opportunities, and advising frameworks.
2. Pathway navigation tools: Lead improvements to the existing New Visions Career Directory, including technical enhancements, user experience redesign, and the integration of program training dates. Unlike college, workforce program schedules vary widely (some operate on rolling admissions vs. established cycles; some have lengthy application requirements, and others are walk-in). Collecting and adding training dates to the Career Directory will facilitate better planning.
3. Systems coordination: Facilitating coordination across partner organizations to ensure the content and resources within these two websites are representative of the best and most current thinking in the field, achieved through helping to support cross-sector committees, shared training, and coordinated dissemination. This work will be critical in fostering alignment to reduce duplication of effort across the NYC ecosystem, promote the adoption and scaling of shared tools and best practices, and build toward the long-term sustainability of the initiative, including eventual public funding.

Implementation Team

New Visions is fortunate to have a great team of stakeholders working on this. The Pathway Gap solutions will be implemented at New Visions, with additional stakeholders playing a central role in the success of the initiative. The team at New Visions will be composed of a Project Lead, a Resource and Training Manager, and a Data Coordinator, as well as the technology (Sysdaar) team for product management, design, and software engineering work.

The systems coordination work will be implemented with a cross-organizational Quality and Standards Committee—composed of young people and practitioners, designed as an ongoing structure to collect feedback, evaluate tools and content, and support dissemination of the tool—and an Advisory Committee—composed of funders and systems leaders, and supported by Andrea Vaghy Benyola from Workforce Professionals Training Institute and Cheyanne Deoporsaud as co-chairs, and Katie Napolitano as consultant.

Timeline

We’re currently in the planning phase, with formal launch slated for September 2026. Here’s what’s ahead:

• September–December 2026 — Design + requirements gathering
• January 2027–June 2027 — Build of version one of the educator tool and redesigned Career Directory, including training dates solution
• Summer 2027 — Version 1 Launch
• September 2027–March 2028 — Adoption and implementation support; feedback gathering, design, and build for version two
• Spring 2028 — Version 2 Launch
• Summer 2028 — Planned transition to public funding

We can’t wait to bring this to life. Stay tuned for more updates soon!

Want to be part of this exciting project? Check our Careers page for opportunities.

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