Guild officially drops “Education” from its name as the company doubles down on investment in career opportunities for all employees, broadens reach beyond learners
DENVER, April 12, 2023–(BUSINESS WIRE)–Guild, the leader in opportunity creation for America’s workforce, today announced a corporate rebrand along with its new product, Career Accelerator, and enhanced and specialized career coaching services to accelerate career mobility for employees across the country. The company, formerly known as Guild Education, is now simply Guild, reflecting its evolution from modernizing traditional tuition reimbursement programs and focusing solely on education to driving career mobility for all employees with access to Guild, including the more than five million Americans who had access to Guild’s Career Opportunity Platform™ in the last 12 months.
The company is expanding its strategic focus to deliver support and resources for people to acquire greater career and economic opportunities while enabling employers to support the advancement of their employees. This expansion will help drive impact for people like Peyton, a UCHealth employee who earned her phlebotomy technician certification—a role with many on-ramps to future mobility within healthcare.
Persistent talent shortages, widening economic inequality, and a growing skills gap are making the pathway to the middle class grow increasingly out of reach for too many Americans. Career mobility has become the requirement to close the gaps and fuel economic advancement for the millions of Americans who are vulnerable to being left behind.
“Since day one at Guild, we’ve talked about education and skilling as the means of opportunity creation, and economic mobility as the ends,” said Rachel Romer, Guild’s CEO. “With our new product, Career Accelerator, and our expanding career coaching, we’re thrilled to be advancing our mission of unlocking opportunity to serve millions more U.S. employees seeking to advance their careers. Alongside innovative employer partners who recognize their responsibility to support the advancement of their employees, we are building a movement that lifts up the moral imperative to accelerate access to opportunity for America’s workforce.”
To guide Guild into this new era, the company hired Rebecca Biestman late last year as its Chief Marketing Officer. Biestman spent the last decade leading go-to-market and social impact teams for B2B SaaS technology organizations like Dialpad and RMS and joined Guild from Reputation. Biestman began her career specializing in brand marketing for consumer packaged goods and retail, working for both Earth Essentials and Gap, Inc. (Gap Digital).
“Our new corporate branding and voice puts our members’ journeys and life-changing outcomes at the heart of the stories we tell. It’s a canvas for sharing data and insights that wake people up to the urgency for career mobility,” said Rebecca Biestman, Guild’s Chief Marketing Officer. “The new brand will help us grow while staying true to what has made Guild a powerful change agent in our space – with a brand ethos that combines our role as a trusted guide and partner, and the rebel-with-a-cause spirit we’ve used to challenge traditional thinking around opportunity creation.”
As part of the rebrand, in partnership with transformation consultancy, COLLINS, Guild reveals a new logo and design that embodies the pathways and connections the company is helping employees discover. It recognizes everyone’s journey is personally defined, can take turns and even setbacks, but is always unfolding with more potential waiting to be unleashed.
“Rachel Romer and the remarkable people at Guild have a big and important vision for unlocking a future of career mobility – and at scale – for America’s workforce,” said Brian Collins, Co-founder of COLLINS, the transformation consultancy based in San Francisco and New York City. “It is clear to me that if anyone can make such powerful, meaningful change happen, it will be Guild. We were privileged to work closely with Rachel and her team to help them build a bridge to that future in a way I believe will not only be transformational but immediate.”
Despite the importance of career advancement to working adults, Guild’s internal research shows the most common barriers preventing employees from reaching internal mobility – whether a promotion or a new role – are related to navigating career opportunities and hiring processes. That’s where Guild’s new product, Career Accelerator, and specialized career coaching capabilities come in. The combination of the two supports the end-to-end journey to career advancement for employees and provides access to career opportunities at scale.
Guild can now reach employees who are looking beyond education and skilling for more support and resources to achieve greater opportunities in their careers. Career Accelerator, accessed through Guild’s Career Opportunity Platform™, is available to both Guild members (those who have engaged with Guild’s platform and begun exploring opportunities for career advancement) and learners (those who are enrolled in an education or skilling program), expanding the impact to employees and employers alike. In the retail sector, Guild has found members were 1.6x less likely to leave their employer over the last 12 months than employees who had not engaged with Guild’s platform.
Career Accelerator provides on-demand, bite-sized, and interactive activities that allow members to consume proprietary content and acquire career advancement skills at their own pace. The self-serve solution gives employees the resources to achieve confidence in their ability to navigate the job search process and fill in-demand roles at their employer. Career Accelerator includes four modules designed by career experts to address the most requested career readiness skills from Guild’s members: navigating a job search, guidance for developing resumes and cover letters, networking, and interviewing. For employers, Career Accelerator unlocks workforce insights on internal career mobility so employers can build pipelines of internal talent for in-demand roles.
To complement Career Accelerator, Guild has also enhanced its career coaching capabilities to include more specialized knowledge to support members in gaining insight into the roles they want to pursue and develop strategies to get there. These include exploring career interests, preparing for interviews, and making career transitions with confidence. Guild is pairing scalable product expansions with enriched personalized human support to help individuals keep professional goals top of mind throughout their entire education journey to advance in their careers.
“We believe scalable, equitable approaches to career mobility require empowering all employees with the navigation and guidance to drive their own career paths forward, which is what we’ve aimed to do with Career Accelerator and enhancements to our coaching capabilities,” said Bijal Shah, Guild’s Chief Experience Officer and Head of Platform. “Three-fourths of U.S. workers said they would likely leave their current job if offered additional education or career opportunities elsewhere, so it’s critical that employers meet employees who are seeking new career opportunities with guidance and direction, or their next employer will.”
This work and commitment are coming to life at innovative employers like Chipotle. “At Chipotle we’re dedicated to providing career opportunities for our teams and creating the pathways to help them achieve it,” said Tawanda Starms, VP of People Experience and Chief Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion Officer at Chipotle. “Our partnership with Guild is helping us do just that. The addition of Career Accelerator provides valuable resources to guide employees on their career journey and connect them to their next opportunity.”
You can read more about the new brand here and see it come to life here. Screenshots of Career Accelerator can be found here.
About Guild
Guild’s Career Opportunity Platform™enables forward-thinking employers to invest in their employees, unlocking life-changing opportunities for personal and professional growth through education and learning programs, career development, and one-on-one coaching. Guild partners with the nation’s largest employers — including Walmart, Chipotle, Discover, Hilton, Target, The Walt Disney Company, and healthcare systems like Providence Health and UCHealth — to create cultures of opportunity that will help them attract and retain top talent, and build the workforce of the future. Guild offers a marketplace of curated education and learning programs designed for the success of working adults. Layered onto that is support, guidance, and resources at every step to help ensure the new skills employees are building translate into career pathways that are in demand at their companies — all without paying for tuition or career services on their own. For more information, visit guild.com.
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Contacts
Ricki Eshman
press@guild.com
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