Mamadou Ndiaye

Director

As associate director on JFF's Back on Track team, Mamadou Ndiaye helps design, document, codify, and scale Back on Track programs aimed at increasing the quality and quantity of pathways to postsecondary credential attainment and jobs for older youth who have left school without a credential or who have obtained a diploma or GED but are not "college ready.” His work spans districts, states, national youth-serving networks, intermediaries and community colleges—all identified as key scale sectors for Back on Track designs.

Mamadou is currently the lead staffer providing technical assistance and coaching in Opportunity Works, a JFF/Aspen Institute Social Innovation Fund (SIF) initiative supporting a group of community collaboratives that are implementing Back on Track programming for opportunity youth.

Mamadou has more than 15 years of experience in program design, program management, and systems development in the area of alternative education for off-track/out-of-school youth and adults. As a senior program manager at CollegeBound Dorchester, a nonprofit community-based organization in Dorchester, Massachusetts, he helped design a college prep program serving students who have dropped out of Boston Public Schools.

Mamadou is also co-founder and board member of X-Cel Education Services Inc., a Boston-based nonprofit that helps adults enroll and succeed in postsecondary education.

He holds a bachelor's degree in management from Northeastern University and a master's degree from the University of Massachusetts–Boston.

JFF, along with partners Per Scholas and General Assembly, is leveraging Per Scholas’ evidence-based training programs to propel young adults into high-need IT jobs.

How to Balance Youth-Centered and Demand-Driven Talent Development

In a fast-changing labor market, a broad set of behavioral skills are key to long-term career advancement for young adults.

LEAP is an initiative to increase employment and educational opportunities for young people who have been system involved. Five LEAP sites are implementing JFF’s Back on Track model.

This brief offers a look at actionable strategies developed by nonprofit organizations that community colleges can follow to increase learner retention, completion, and job placement rates through short-term and online workforce training models.

Out of Jobs for the Future's (JFF) collaboration with Google to scale its Career Certification to nonprofits and community colleges, insights from these organizations to effectively implement those training have emerged and are outlined in our Key Questions and Considerations table. In support of our findings, we also share a profile of Dress for Success® Worldwide, one of the organizations JFF recruited and supported to implement the Google Career Certificates.

Impact Story

Talent for the Future: Back on Track Pathways

Influence

Design

Invest

Scale

Juan left high school and became homeless. But he has skills and drive and found a Back on Track program to help him prepare for a career in IT. JFF helps employers leverage an untapped workforce of low-income young adults like Juan who can fill their talent gaps.

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Employee experience technology that empowers young workers from low-income backgrounds for success. When young people who face barriers to success have the support they need to thrive at work, our entire economy benefits. A new generation of technology helps make that possible.

We want to know the conditions—the processes, relationships, and policies—that will allow this technology to optimally meet the goal of helping young adults thrive at work.

Impact Story

Opportunity Works

Design

Scale

A national effort that paved pathways to college and career success for 2,000+ youth who were out of school and work—and proved the impact of JFF’s Back on Track model.

Impact Story

Young Adult Talent Development Network

Scale

Influence

The Young Adult Talent Development Network is comprised of leaders of more than 35 national and local organizations that are leaders in young adult talent development and employer engagement.

The workforce of the future needs prepared leaders with strong communication skills, who can learn and lead, creating a model for work that’s collaborative, inclusive, and productive.

I am a person of African descent, a person “of color,” and I work on improving education and career outcomes for low-income youth and young adults across the country—the majority of whom are also persons “of color.” I have long

2014 has ushered in a new era in the world of high school equivalency assessments. These assessments offer an alternative route for students who, for one reason or another, could not complete a high school diploma. And we are not

Of Executive Functions and Postsecondary Success

Paul Tough’s new book, How Children Succeed: Grit, Curiosity, and the Hidden Power of Character , is about the importance of character in preparing students for success in education, employment, and life. Specifically, he describes the critical role of de

Is it realistic for opportunity youth to be introspective when considering a future job and career? Or should immediate needs, like supporting a family, take precedence over a general satisfaction and purpose? JFF explores this idea.

If high schools and colleges joined forces to successfully implement the early college model, they could provide a path to college success for millions of low-income and first-generation students.

Build a Better Future with 'Bridges' to College

So many young people hoping to enter college or career training face serious obstacles to achieving their dreams-poor academic preparation and little postsecondary guidance, to name just two. It's discouraging to see the same problems across the country.

How Lifelong Learning Can Help Grow and Keep Jobs in the United States

Much ink has been spilled describing the rapid pace of change in the U.S. labor market and the resulting disaffection and frustration it has caused low-income and working-class populations across the country. Already, because of automation, the U.S. manuf

The Chronicle of Higher Education recently interviewed Byron Villagran a former high school dropout who then enrolled in and graduated from a school run by the Los Angeles Conservation Corps . At LACC, Byron’s educational aspirations were reignited and to

A newly released FSG publication, Collective Impact for Opportunity Youth proposes how communities across the country can improve the life trajectories of the nearly 20 percent of our 16- to 24-year-olds, who are not connected to either education or the

Education is hailed as the greatest equalizer in American society. The fact is for entire generations of Americans, access to good and meaningful educational opportunities has historically been a ticket to well-paying jobs, greater participation in civic

In a March 2010 article in the Harvard Business Review , Rosabeth Moss Kanter, a professor at the Harvard Business School, writes: Progress requires institutional change to reinvent not just products and services, not just organizations and industries, bu

"It broke me up into pieces and put me back together." That’s how a young woman described her experience at Training Futures in Northern Virginia when I visited there in 2009. She was enrolled in an internship at a local

The confetti has been swept up, the cheering quieted, and the headaches dissipated. New Year’s celebrations? No, the release of the PISA 2012 results . While some countries celebrated their glowing results, others, like the United States, swallowed pangs

A New Framework for Solving Youth Unemployment

It’s encouraging to see some good news emerging on the unemployment front lately. The overall unemployment rate, which peaked at 9.9 percent in April 2010, fell to 6.1 percent in August 2014. But for 16-24 year olds looking for work,

In February 2014, President Obama announced My Brother’s Keeper, a civic call to arms to government, individuals, leading foundations, and corporations to each contribute to help young men of color get the support and training they need to become producti

Youth Weigh In On Solutions to Their Own Economic Challenges

What are the problems in America we should focus on? The National Council of Young Leaders, a diverse group of young people, have offered up their perspective as it relates to poverty in the country.

A recent NPR report has raised doubts about the value of a GED as an equivalent of a high school diploma and most importantly its value in the labor market. The report quotes a top lieutenant of the Los Angeles

Helping Youth Transitioning out of Foster Care Succeed in College: What We Learned at the Center for Fostering Success

Young people who are transitioning from foster care aren’t faring well in college. There must be effective supports to help make their transition more successful.