Our Mission

Our mission is to rewire the U.S. labor market so STARs—workers Skilled Through Alternative Routes—can regain upward mobility, enriching their careers and communities. Over the next decade, we aim to enable this for 1 million STARs by opening up 10 million jobs, boosting STARs' earnings by more than $100 billion.

Our Vision

We envision a labor market where the skills you have matter more than where you got them. When skills are recognized and rewarded, all Americans can work, learn, and earn to their full potential.

Our History

Opportunity@Work was founded in 2015, in part to support and grow TechHire, a White House initiative launched by our co-founder Byron Auguste to connect overlooked communities with technology job openings. We were originally incubated as a “civic enterprise” within New America, a think tank dedicated to bringing new ideas and voices into America’s public discourse.

In 2017, Opportunity@Work became an independent 501(c)(3) with two ambitious goals:

Develop and test platforms to provide tech-enabled solutions to solve the opportunity gap; and
Rally public, private, and nonprofit partners to rewire the labor market so that everyone can contribute their skills, talent, and energy in pursuit of a better life.

Recognizing the learning needed to solve this problem at scale, Opportunity@Work has actively led several initiatives to expand access to career opportunities for overlooked individuals.

Miguel and Vadim, STARs

Our values

We identify areas where we need help and ask each other for support.
We leverage the unique skills of our colleagues to supplement our own strengths.
We build and maintain strong working relationships to solve problems and achieve shared goals and objectives.
We seek to understand the ideas, concerns, and feelings of our colleagues.
We embrace healthy conflict when needed and challenge each other respectfully.

We strive to create a workplace where everyone is comfortable bringing their best, authentic selves to work every day.
We practice empathy and seek to understand different perspectives and experiences.
We insist on a culture of respect and recognize that words and actions matter.
We amplify, recognize, and celebrate all voices, especially those that are different from our own.
We celebrate the dignity of all work and the dignity of every worker, especially workers Skilled Through Alternative Routes (STARs).

We make sure information and ideas are clearly explained and understood.
We ask questions to gain better insights and improve concepts, ideas, and processes.
We respond to questions in a candid and complete manner.
We make sure our roles are clearly understood for a given responsibility, project, initiative, or key result.
We embrace ambiguity and take action without knowing all of the details.

We learn by doing to help solidify concepts and skills.
We commit to learning and developing ourselves and helping others develop through candid feedback.
We create time and space to learn as individuals, teams, and as an organization.
We learn from our successes and mistakes.
We learn, document, share, and use knowledge and know-how from O@W colleagues and external partners to inspire and empower action that advances our mission.

We seek autonomy and discretion over our daily responsibilities.
We identify what needs to be done and take action before being asked or required.
We clearly define problems in order to identify solutions.
We take responsibility for outcomes , even when things don't turn out as planned.
We honor our commitments and follow through on our promises.

Meet our team

We celebrate the dignity of all work and the dignity of every worker—especially those with overlooked skills.

Our people are passionate and driven, with experience, skills, and life journeys as unique as the STARs we serve. We’re looking for individuals who believe in building a labor market that’s more inclusive of STARs and want to stretch their professional skills in a collaborative, diverse, and dynamic environment.