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.