Year Up United

choice.

Joseph was headed to Year Up, a job training program.

Believe it or not, Justine, who arrived at the Met not wanting to even talk about college, was headed to Regis College in Massachusetts.

Later, she told me she was pissed off about graduating.

The goal is open to families facing financial barriers and long distances from educational resources.

850 high school students from the Big Island are going to take advantage of the Year Up program and will enter Manoa or any other four-year institution or a two-year institution in the state.

We want to expose the students on a flagship experience, and then the end result is to come here to UH Manoa, get a great education, and at the end of the day get a great job and stay here in the state of Hawaii and contribute to our community.

That support will continue through students first years of college, aiming to help them stay on track toward a degree and a career here at home.

And this program was phenomenal where they did a really thoughtful programs matching in the corporate world.

They called Year Up.

I think they changed their name.

So it's hard to

What was the next job title you were actually given?

So from Salesforce as VP of all things fun, meaningful, and rewarding, I became the executive director at the Workday Foundation doing similar work.

helping them build and grow their foundation and corporate philanthropy with what aligned with Workday as an HR product and getting employees volunteering, contributing, and also connecting with community organizations like Year Up, bringing in young students who were had an exceptional training to sit in know how to sit in meetings like so they taught the social skills as well and these students were sometimes even better than the senior managers of the organization but they knew how to show up they knew how to hustle they did their work they were accountable for themselves which they've been

trained somebody's trained them

I was just joking, but, uh, my mom was watching him.

But anyways, yes, uh, we haven't talked before, but, uh, you did an ad read for a company called Year Up United.

Do you remember that?

No. [laughs] What, what? I don't...

Hold on.

I don't even kind of remember that.

Year Up United?

[laughs] No, y- yeah, you called it Europe, but it's, uh, it's Year, like the calendar year and up.

I spent some time at the Bridgespan Group consulting to nonprofits and philanthropy.

After graduate school, I worked at a nonprofit called Year Up United, where I had an opportunity to support a lot of young people in entry-level kind of jobs without college degrees.

And Google actually recruited me out of that leadership position at Year Up to help run their local philanthropy in the US.

So that's where I sort of started in philanthropy as a direct grant maker, was giving funding around Google's US offices, and eventually I led the Americas team, which was all of Google philanthropy in the Americas region.

I think if you can actually help somebody get a job or teach somebody to work or teach somebody a fish, You're doing God's work, whatever you believe in, right? Because like the ability to make somebody self-sufficient and actually help them get a job, help them prove themselves, get into a great job with a great mentor or a great boss is like the most important thing and is actually like generationally changing.

Because like, so I work with a nonprofit as well called Year Up, which helped, it's like bootcamp.

for kids who don't go to college and to help them get into the tech industry.

Great organization.