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Be part of the movement to level the playing field
Equal access to professional opportunities may start with helping them get the right education, but it ends with who they know. Even with all our work to elimnate hiring bias, the fact remains that companies and people hire the people they know/are exposed to. In short, they hire through their networks.
A 21st century mentorship program
7 out of 10 jobs come from networking
Companies, universities and recruiting are going remote
But many students from underrepresented backgrounds rely on these in person connections to buld their networks and do not have networks to fall back on, leaving them vulnerable to under or unemployement
Why is a person’s first job so important to the rest of their lives?
40%
of college graduates take positions that don’t require their degree.
75%
of these graduates will be in the same spot 10 years later.
$10,000
first year salary loss compared to students who are fully employed
This number is set to grow. And it will impact students from disadvantaged backgrounds most. Quite simply we risk a Lost Generation if we do not fix this.
Our goal is to provide 100,000 students from underrepresented backgrounds
Guidance from professionals to help students with their career direction
The chance to build their networks because the pandemic has eliminated the traditional ways to do so
Professional sponsorship and empowered mentors who can flag them for open positions
Coming together in the midst of a global pandemic
Over
50
Students
From
15
Universities
During
1
Summer
To solve for
a problem
an opportunity
Why we built this
The initiative is designed to rise to the challenge of the times. We rethought how underrepresented students can have equal access to professional opportunities and built it to help these students in a digital, post-Covid age.
The 100k Mentor Challenge is a place where students from underrepresented backgrounds can connect/grow and where professionals can dramatically change the lives of everyone they touch.
Meet the students behind the movement
Nicholas P.
He is a Data Scientist and Algorithm Engineer with a Bachelors degree in Mathematics from the University of Rochester.
Juliette M.
She is a UX/UI Designer and Marketing Strategist with a degree in Art and Marketing from the University of California, Berkeley.
Louis D.
He is an Engineering Project Manager with a Doctorate of Philosophy in Computer Science from the University of Notre Dame.
Our Foundation
The ProMazo National Foundation is a 501c(3) organization whose mission is to understand where the workplace of the future and higher education intersect. There has been too little investment in the transition from college to the professional world to set our young people up for success, meaning that many of our brightest students stumble just when they should be lifting off.
The ProMazo National Foundation aims to change that. Through cutting edge research on how people can find their jobs/the future of the workplace, exploring new ways to deliver education that makes students more prepared for the next step, and developing cutting edge partnerships to deliver new ways of connecting industry to their future employees, we are going to fundamentally shift the conversation and make sure every college student is able to reach their full potential.
About ProMazo
ProMazo believes the intellectual firepower of the 19 million people attending American universities represents a vast, diverse and untapped talent pool. To tap into this incredible group, ProMazo has developed a platform and methodology that fuses the brightest software developers, machine learning gurus, communications experts and designers from universities with corporate work teams to solve challenges across a company’s IT, Finance, Marketing and Communications departments. Not only can companies get work done, but through these remote work engagements, ProMazo gives companies access to a new type of workforce that is diverse, technically skilled, and adjustable without the premiums traditionally associated with a variable workforce.
ProMazo is also committed to supporting the next generation of talent, because while ability is equally distributed, opportunity is not. Through its apprenticeship programs, coaching, software tools and work engagements, ProMazo diversifies the distribution of quality jobs and helps eliminate the Diploma Paradox (one of the causes of the $1.7 trillion student debt crisis). By guiding companies away from the traditional recruiting process and the use of "biased” evaluation tools (i.e. GPA, Alma Mater, Interviews etc), ProMazo provides an avenue for college students to showcase their talents while earning their degrees... DEBT FREE.
We are supporting our Foundation in this initiative by providing all of the underlying technology to operate the program and enabling the student teams to quickly get their ideas into the field. We are blown away with what they have been able to to create in just one summer. We look forward to getting the chance to mentor the next generation ourselves and spreading the movement!