Mar 28, 2023

Braven

Braven supports untapped students from college to career by partnering with universities and employers to offer a two-part experience that begins with a credit-bearing college course followed by a post-course experience that lasts through graduation. Fellows emerge from Braven with the skills, experiences and networks they need to land a strong first job and get on a path to economic freedom.
Source: Diana Phuong, Executive Director of Braven Bay Area

Mission

Braven empowers promising underrepresented college students with the skills, confidence, experiences, and networks necessary to transition from college to strong economic opportunities, which lead to meaningful careers and lives of impact.

Vision

The next generation of leaders will emerge from everywhere.

AN OVERVIEW

Braven supports untapped students from college to career by partnering with universities and employers to offer a two-part experience that begins with a credit-bearing college course followed by a post-course experience that lasts through graduation. Fellows emerge from Braven with the skills, experiences and networks they need to land a strong first job and get on a path to economic freedom. To date, Braven has worked with 6,100 students across 5 universities (San José State, Rutgers University-Newark, Lehman College, National Louis University, and Spelman College) and in our stipend-based national BravenX program. In the 2022-2023 academic year, Braven launched at Northern Illinois University and City College of New York.

The Accelerator Course: The course is a hybrid online and in-person career-acceleration experience that students take for credit during their sophomore or junior year. Fellows complete weekly online modules and assignments to develop in five professional competencies: operating and managing, problem solving, working in teams, networking and communicating, and self-driven leading. Volunteer professionals from local employers, called Leadership Coaches, facilitate the in-person time and lead teams of 5-8 Fellows through weekly Learning Labs, sharing real-world application and feedback.

The Post-Course Experience: Post-Accelerator Fellows receive additional opportunities to develop leadership and career-readiness skills, engage in an enduring network, and stay on track to securing strong internships and jobs through 1) 1:1 on mentoring delivered by professionals in their field, 2) networking events, career panels, and job skills sessions run by Braven, and 3) access to internship and employment opportunities facilitated by Braven.

Employer Partnerships: Across the entire Braven experience, shared-value partnerships with employers play a key role. For employers, these partnerships provide access to new sources of future talent as well as hands-on inclusive leadership development for current talent. For Fellows, these partnerships build up strong professional networks and open doors to strong jobs and internships.

In the Bay Area, Braven Fellows are persisting in college and achieving exciting levels of internship and job attainment.

  • Persistence: 90% of our Fellows have graduated from college on time (within 6 years).
    Jobs: In 2022, 254 Braven SJSU Fellows graduated from college. This new class is outpacing their peers nationally in strong economic opportunity attainment by 17 percentage points (64% vs 47%) within six months of graduation

Internships: 69% of Braven college graduates have at least one internship during college, compared with 61% of all college graduates and 62% of students from similar backgrounds.

What Collaboration Looks Like

Braven staff regularly engage through the Steering Committee, Policy Committee, and Workforce Committee connecting with other organizations in the coalition to amplify our collective work in this space. We have engaged with our local policymakers through the coalition, including attending the NCCPC Mayor’s Circles. On the Policy Committee and Workforce Committee, we work to ensure that the college-to-career space and post-college outcomes are a focus of coalition advocacy, as true equity for underserved populations can only be achieved if they are able to use their degrees to achieve economic mobility.

Benefits Derived as a Result of being an NCCPC Member

Being a member of NCCPC helps us keep a pulse on all things happening in the state legislature and Governor Newsom’s administration with regards to college access and success.

GOALS FOR 2022 AND BEYOND

We believe that Braven is a nonpartisan solution for fostering economic mobility, and see policy and advocacy work as a critical lever to foster systems change over time. In order to scale with integrity, we plan to spend 2023 continuing to study and tweak all components of our model. One thing we are really proud of at Braven is our commitment to data and evaluation, building a strong evidence base around our model that we can use to build support. We hope to develop structural solutions at San Jose State University so that we can serve more students there over the next few years. We also hope to expand to up to three schools in the Bay Area in the next few years, and are in exciting discussions to make that happen. To support our efforts to scale and serve as many students as possible, we are working to get our model, outcomes, and policy ideas on the radar of state and federal policymakers. Our policy work focuses on advocating for increased funding for existing higher education programs that benefit our partner colleges and universities, ensuring that career is a focus of new and existing higher education funding and programs, and enhanced transparency about post-college outcomes to help students and families make informed decisions.

Through our work with NCCPC we are excited to connect with policymakers to advocate for more funding for higher education and student support services and to support enhanced career data as part of the Cradle-to-Career Data Collaborative. We are also excited to connect with other organizations in the Bay area who are passionate about college access and success for underserved populations. We would particularly love to connect with other organizations in the college-to-career space to advocate for federal and state policies that prioritize career success and encourage more transparency in outcomes related to post-secondary achievement.

Why NCCPC and Why Now

Now more than ever we need to ensure that students from underrepresented backgrounds are able to access, afford, and complete college, and then turn that degree into a lever of economic mobility for themselves and their families. NCCPC brings together all of the great organizations doing this work in the Bay area so that we can learn from each other and have a stronger voice in policy circles. By working together we not only amplify impact, but we ensure that we are not duplicating efforts. NCCPC’s work focuses directly on the students, making sure that the needs of first-generation and low-income students are heard and addressed. Their work is so crucial in that it centers student voices which too often go unheard in higher education policy discussions.

As California continues to rebound from the pandemic and experience unusual economic fluctuations, students need more support than ever in making decisions about college and career. NCCPC and all of its collective organizations provide these supports.

LEARN MORE!

Website: https://bebraven.org/
Twitter: https://twitter.com/bebraven
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/bebraven/
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/braven-org/
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/BeBraven/

You can read more about the impact Braven is having in the Bay Area at https://jobsreport.bebraven.org/bay-area.