It’s no secret our teens and young adults are facing a really competitive job market. I can’t think of anyone better equipped to provide advice to our kids about determining their next steps in these uncertain times than Leah Jewell. Leah is the former managing director for employability learning solutions at Pearson. While there she built learning solutions for high school, higher education, and adult lifelong learners, specifically focused on accelerated skills, pathways to industry certifications, stacked credentials, and career preparation.
Leah recently pivoted from corporate to entrepreneur and is now the founder and CEO of two AR consulting, providing expert help in the learning and education space. During our conversation. Leah provides advice and insight on the importance of instilling a lifelong learning mindset in our kids, why work experience, even in high school, is so critical to potential employers, and why kids and their parents need to broaden their thinking about college credentials and certifications.
About Leah Jewell
Leah has been in the education and learning space for about 32 years. She came from a family of educators. Her parents were high school teachers. Her husband is a college professor, so she is surrounded by it. But Leah took the approach of being in the education space where she built learning products and solutions and services for people all the way from high school to higher education to adult learners. s a result, she really started to get into this space of what she calls the employability ecosystem, where you’re looking at all of the different ways that education and learning are connected, how employers are a part of that mix, how schools, how learners, how government, and how all of that comes together, and what that means for learners in terms of their goals and their outcomes in life, the paths that they take, and how they think about learning and education. Leah is passionate because she is such a believer in the importance of learning, but also just over the course of your life, how important that is, and also this idea that there are lots of different pathways for people. There is not just one linear way to get to the goal. Leah spends a lot of time researching and building out products and solutions and services, and talking about the future of learning and the future of education and what that’s going to mean for everybody.
Episode Highlights
- Education As We Know It Needs to Change
- Work Experience Versus Academics and Extracurriculars
- Employers Are Looking for People with Human Skills
- Exploring Different Careers While in High School
- Shifting Our Mindset Toward Lifelong Learning
- The Benefit of Open Loop Universities
- Helping Teens Choose a Path: Advice for Parents
- Job Seekers Need to Continue to Upskill and Reskill
- Leah’s Advice to Her Teenage Self
Resources
How To Keep Your Job Even Though The Robots Are Coming on YouTube
Scaling Work-Based Learning Virtually by Leah Jewell