Stephen Yadzinski

Vice President, Strategy & Growth

Stephen Yadzinski is the vice president for Strategy & Growth at Jobs for the Future. He works with JFF leaders and teams to identify new opportunities, establish new partnerships, and transform JFF programs and service lines to meet an evolving and dynamic education and workforce ecosystem, leveraging the fields of design, technology, and innovation to further our mission.

Passionate about technology’s role in creating business-aligned education and workforce social impact, Steve also served as the interim executive director of Education Quality Outcomes Standards (EQOS), a nonprofit that JFF acquired in February of 2022. The EQOS vision is to become the most user-friendly source of trusted information on the quality of short-term education and training programs and credentials in the United States.

Previously, Steve served as JFF’s senior innovation officer, as well as chief technology officer and founder of Innovate+Educate’s Employment Tech division, which was created to address the critical need to improve workforce readiness for high-demand jobs in key U.S. industries. Under Steve’s leadership, the division grew to include organizational psychologists, data scientists, user interface designers and developers, and other specialists who worked to create leading-edge mobile technologies, assessments, and labor-market insights that connected Americans living at or near poverty with education, training, and quality jobs.

A graduate of the Rochester Institute of Technology, Steve lives with his wife and two children in Santa Fe, New Mexico, and enjoys backpacking and skiing in the Sangre de Cristo Mountains near his home.

Driving diversity in recruitment with strengths-based assessments that combine behavioral data and innovative technology.

Better paths to skill development, employment, and career advancement for the skilled trades, strengthening the talent pipeline for 40M U.S. jobs.

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Harnessing both technology and human interaction to provide training in essential frontline workplace skills.

Unleashing the power of virtual reality to offer a supplementary method of helping people with autism spectrum disorder.

Matching people to optimal careers, professional development, and jobs by using behavioral assessments, surveys, and support.

AI-powered skill testing platform that automatically grades any tailored skills assessment, and ranks candidates according to job-related skills.

Career fit assessments that help people discover what they do best and connect them with careers that match their natural skills, abilities, and personalities.

Companies are partnering with technology providers that offer proven solutions for finding and transitioning frontline workers to careers in IT and software development.

Extended reality training that transforms how we transfer knowledge, reduce the time we need to learn, and develop essential leadership and communication skills.

Mursion simulations focus on the complex soft skills for professionals to master to be successful in high-stress careers.

Today’s workforce needs leaders with strong communication skills, who can learn and lead. Immersive Learning unlocks this capability.

Interplay Learning meets workforce training challenges and addressing skills gaps in the trades with VR-enabled technology.

Floreo’s research-based immersive technology for people with autism spectrum disorder and educators to support learners

It’s easy to see examples of our country unraveling—it’s a fabric we’re committed to rethreading and reimagining as we recover together.

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Worker-Focused Career Navigation: Overlooked Tool in Our Recovery Toolbox.

The partnership illustrates how universities and employers can work together to create new education pathways.

The EQOS Quality Assurance Framework helps learners and workers, education institutions and postsecondary training providers, private investors, governments, and others identify high-quality opportunities that lead to equitable economic advancement.

JFF and Penn Foster are teaming up to offer a unique educational platform that will remove barriers to upskilling, create new career prospects for low-skill individuals, and strengthen the corporate talent pipeline.

The value of immersive technology is clear: It helps companies, educators, and training providers prepare workers more effectively and more quickly by providing an efficient way for people to acquire the skills they need for jobs in our rapidly changing economy.

It's really exciting to be part of something that has so profoundly affected individuals and communities and organizations.

These different ways of evaluating people, some of the traditional bias and the traditional barriers that exist simply fall away.

I would expect companies—want to get to that next layer down into how they [candidates] do the job.

We've been able to triple incomes in a year. But more importantly, we're able to spark transformation and growth through our coaching using PAIRIN.

Career Navigation Technology 2020, our new market scan funded by Walmart Foundation and sponsored by Tyton Partners, focuses on the millions of workers too often overlooked or underserved by traditional approaches to career navigation.

UVA Edge helps employers invest in the long-term career success of workers without college degrees.

By educating and developing talented young people and by connecting them directly with established designers and executives from our team, we’re able to expose them to the multiple career paths that exist within our incredible industry.

JFFLabs is featuring mission-driven startups building innovative tools and resources to help workers and businesses adapt in the face of the COVID-19 pandemic.

With support from the Workday Foundation, JFFLabs took a deep dive into the complex and evolving market of alternative education and training options for adult learners.

JFFLabs Market Scan | To be prepared for the work of today and tomorrow, we need more than just the right skills. We need an infrastructure that supports continuous and transformative learning throughout a lifetime.