Preparing A Successful Future for Our Kids {Sponsored Post}

A successful future for our kids is a dream we all have. Our partners at Steppingblocks share how to make that dream become a reality. Sign up for a free 7-day trial here.

Alice: Would you tell me, please, which way I ought to go from here?

Cheshire Cat: That depends a good deal on where you want to get to.

Alice: I don’t much care where.

Cheshire Cat: Then it doesn’t much matter which way you go.

– Alice in Wonderland

Like most students, Alice set out on life’s journey with no destination or a  compass. There are 500 students for every academic counselor in the United States. The average student spends 38 minutes total, over four years, with their academic advisor. Students are woefully unprepared for the real world. Steppingblocks hopes to solve this crisis.

Steppingblocks is the world’s most advanced career/education navigation platform. This digital career counselor provides students with the real world data they need to inform them on the best paths for their future, and it surrounds them with resources to facilitate that journey. Students can use a financial analyzer to understand the viability of their path based upon projected salaries, tuition costs, and student loan fees. To offset these costs, students search thousands of applicable scholarships (based on their unique characteristics), internships, and jobs. They learn more about careers through customized content streams. If a student has no idea what interests them, they can take a short 20 question assessment that matches their Myers-Briggs personality to the most applicable majors or jobs.

Convincing students to plan for their future is a monumental task. A missing piece is a powerful tool that students actually want to use. Students can browse the paths of millions of professionals within their target fields while using a fun and interactive platform. “We have made it our business to make data engaging, fun, and digestible for our end user, the student,” Steppingblocks CEO Carlo Martinez.

This platform was built based on the personal struggles of our founding team. Steppingblocks CEO, Carlo Martinez, moved to the U.S. from Colombia and attended college at Georgia State University. He was devastated when he was unable to obtain a job after graduation. To make ends meet, he resorted to selling perfume before stumbling into a job as a bank teller. Eventually, Carlo rose into the executive ranks of his company and became an expert in data analytics. Carlo was astonished at the power of data and technology. He wanted to harness this power to help students similar to himself. 

The breakthrough moment for Steppingblocks involved a student at Georgia Gwinnett College. She did not know where to go after graduation and had limited access to advancement opportunities. She could see where the most recent graduates from her school with her major wound up after using Steppingblocks. On the platform, she gained a skill set in website development and found an internship listing for a Fortune 500 company. With the internship secured, she was on her own corporate journey. “This was our ‘wow’ moment when we knew we had to get this in every student’s hands.”

The Steppingblocks management team is composed of diverse professionals with one common theme, a passion for empowering students. CTO, Levi Perkins, grew up on a chicken farm and majored in Poultry Science. While developing data models for the Department of Agriculture, he discovered a natural talent for data analytics. He served as a predictive analytics professional at the Atlanta Tech Village before joining Steppingblocks and helping develop the platform. During development, Carlo and Levi met a former investment banking and private equity professional, Rob Gannaway. Rob was amazed by the platform and its potential social impact. He joined Steppingblocks on the spot and is helping scale Steppingblocks across the country. We are educating our kids but not necessarily preparing them for the real world. Sign up for a free 7-day trial here.

Thank you to our partners at Steppingblocks for sharing their expertise about making sure our kids are prepared for a successful future.