inFocus: Building Pathways to Work

With a steady paycheck and benefits, employment can create greater stability for individuals and their families. It can make rent more manageable, provide room to save, improve access to quality healthcare and childcare, and give families more confidence to plan for what comes next.

Opportunities are not equally available to everyone. Where someone lives, the schools and training available to them, whether they can afford to take an unpaid internship, and how employers evaluate education or a criminal record can all shape which opportunities are within reach. These barriers do not reflect a lack of talent or ambition. They reflect systems that have historically limited access to stable, well-paying careers for people of color, people from low-income communities, people returning from incarceration, first-generation college students, and others who have often been excluded from professional networks and pathways to advancement.

Building a more inclusive economy means addressing those barriers directly. 

Across GreenLight Fund communities, residents identify the barriers making pathways to opportunity harder to access locally. GreenLight works with communities to bring in proven organizations that help close those gaps, creating stronger connections between local talent and the education, experience, employment, and advancement opportunities that can lead to greater financial stability and long-term opportunity.

This is workforce development inFocus: connecting people with the training, experience, employers, and support that can turn an opportunity to work into a pathway toward economic mobility.

Getting a Foot in the Door

Early work experience often shapes what comes next. A first job or internship can help someone understand a profession, build relationships, and gain the experience employers look for when considering candidates for future opportunities.

That is especially important for young people entering a labor market where experience is often expected early. In summer 2025, 2.5 million Americans ages 16 to 24 were unemployed and actively looking for work.

• In the San Francisco Bay Area, Genesys Works gives high school students technical and professional training followed by paid internships with major employers. During 2025–2026, the organization served 201 students and every program graduate completed high school, with 96% of alumni enrolled in postsecondary education.
• GreenLight Philadelphia has several organizations approaching this transition from different points. YearUp United combines skills training with professional experience for young adults; 66% of enrolled participants in 2025–2026 were employed or attending college. Basta works with first-generation college students who have already earned or are completing degrees, helping them build professional connections and translate their education into strong first jobs. The organization aims to reach 11,000 learners in Philadelphia over the next four years.

In each case, the goal is not simply preparation. It is creating a real connection to what comes next.

Building Skills for Growing Careers

Early experience can open the door, but long-term opportunity also depends on whether people can build skills for the careers where employers are hiring.

Technology and healthcare illustrate the opportunity. Computer and information technology occupations are projected to have about 280,000 openings across the country each year over the coming decade, while healthcare and social assistance is projected to lead all industry sectors in job growth.

GreenLight portfolio organizations are helping residents access those growing fields.

• In Boston, Per Scholas provides tuition-free technology training alongside professional development and employer connections. In 2025–2026 graduates and participants of the program entering technology jobs earned an average starting wage of $29.64 per hour.
• In Philadelphia, Hopeworks combines technology training with paid internships and real-world work experience. During 2025-2026, 89% of participants retained employment 1 year after placement.

Other GreenLight communities are building pathways into healthcare. 

• Health Career Connection will connect 215 Denver students with paid healthcare internships over the next four years. The program pairs hands-on experience with professional development and connections to employers, helping participants build pathways into healthcare careers.
• EMS Corps in Greater Newark prepares young adults for careers as Emergency Medical Technicians through paid training, mentorship, and employment support. In 2025-2026 the third cohort graduated 100% of program participants, with 77% of licensed graduates obtaining full-time employment.

These programs are responding to growing fields while making sure more people can see themselves in, prepare for, and enter those careers.

Reopening the Door to Employment

For people returning home from incarceration, barriers to employment can include gaps in work history, employer screening practices, limited access to transportation or technology, and restrictions tied to a criminal record. Those challenges can make it harder to secure an interview, find stable work, and build a path toward long-term employment.

A Bureau of Justice Statistics study of people released from federal prison found that one-third did not find employment at any point during the four years following their release. That makes a quick connection to work, followed by support to stay employed and advance, particularly important.

• Center for Employment Opportunities (CEO) provides exactly that kind of pathway. GreenLight has invested in CEO in Atlanta, Charlotte, Cincinnati, Detroit, and Philadelphia, where participants begin with paid transitional work and receive support to gain permanent employment. In 2025–2026, average wages for permanent placements across those communities ranged from $15.14 per hour in Charlotte to $16.01 per hour in Atlanta, well beyond minimum wage in those cities. 
• GreenLight Baltimore’s newest workforce investment, First Step Staffing, similarly focuses on people facing significant barriers to employment. Its model combines rapid job placement with transportation, coaching, and support to move toward more stable work. Over five years, the organization aims to employ 1,100 Baltimore residents who will collectively earn $15.9 million in wages.

These programs address the systemic barriers that can prevent people from securing stable employment, even when they have the skills and determination to succeed.

Supporting Work That Strengthens Communities

Some workforce investments create a ripple effect because the people building stronger careers are also providing services their communities need.

• In Kansas City, All Our Kin helps family childcare educators strengthen their skills and their businesses. In 2025–2026, 132 educators participated in training, 20 became licensed, and their work impacted 1,320 childcare slots.
• Through The Literacy Lab’s Leading Men Fellowship, young men in Atlanta and Cincinnati receive paid experience providing early-literacy instruction to students while being introduced to careers in education. In Cincinnati, 75% of students demonstrated measurable literacy growth during the program in 2025-2026.

Those outcomes matter on both sides of the equation: workers gain experience and earning potential while communities strengthen their childcare and education workforce.

Connecting Local Talent to Opportunity

There is no single route to a good career, and the workforce needs of each GreenLight community are different.

What connects these investments is the effort to make opportunity more reachable: an internship that becomes a first professional network, training that leads directly into a growing industry, a transitional job that reopens the path to permanent employment, or support that helps an existing worker build a stronger business.

GreenLight is helping create those connections in cities across the country.

The result is not simply more people finding jobs. It is more people gaining the skills, experience, income, and support needed to build lasting careers and greater financial stability.