Monster funding rounds and high-profile partnerships characterize Guild Education’s busy last 12 months. The education upskilling company cemented its unicorn status with a $150 million Series E financing round in June, bringing its valuation to roughly $3.75 billion. And, earlier in 2021, Guild announced a partnership with Target to offer 340,000 of the retailer’s U.S. frontline workers a debt-free education-assistance program.
Guild has quickly become one of Denver’s biggest technology companies. How has the company maintained its culture and mission while growing at the rate it has? Guild’s mission is to unlock opportunity for America's workforce through education and upskilling. That mission guides what we do as a company. The people we recruit or who come to work here are attracted to that mission. As we’ve shifted to remote work, we’ve increased org-wide communication and transparency efforts to keep all employees connected and focused on our broader goals.
What’s been your biggest 2021 accomplishment? Two notable examples come to mind: One for the workers we support, and the other for our own Guild team. This year, we’ve been able to launch new partnerships with three incredible companies — Waste Management, Target and Sunrun. That’s demonstrated a greater understanding of the role education and upskilling play for companies. It’s also meant more access to education for those companies’ workers, which is incredibly important. We’re also proud that Walmart, who we partner with, expanded access to its education and upskilling program by eliminating the $1 a day fee for employees, making the program 100% paid for by Walmart and as a result, more accessible to more associates. At Guild itself, we were thrilled to open the doors of our onsite early childhood care facility. The Beehive is a first-of-its-kind example of integrating work and family, providing Guild employees with high-quality, affordable child care at their place of employment. This milestone addressed accessibility barriers to work-life balance and helped to further support for our working parents.
Are you in the stage of the life cycle you expected to be at this time? There was a war for talent and a skills gap before the pandemic, but Covid-19 has accelerated those trends. The pandemic has had a disproportionate impact on members of America’s workforce who lack access to education. The gap in unemployment between those with and without a bachelor’s degree is now twice what it was in February 2020. With more companies recognizing the need to support employees in more ways than a paycheck, our efforts to connect workers to education and upskilling opportunities are more vital than ever before.
How would you define your company’s “new normal”? Since the start of the pandemic, we have experimented with different models of fully remote work and using our office as a convening space (when it’s been safe to do so). We know we aren’t going back to a world before Covid-19, but we will still have physical office locations for “heads-up” intentional and cross-functional work. Guild employees will be able to complete “heads-down” work that is independent. This combination allows for more flexibility, maintains ideal parts of a hybrid workforce and ultimately will follow public health recommendations as they evolve.
What’s your next big move? Right now, about 70% of U.S. companies report major talent shortages. At the same time, there are more than 80 million Americans who lack a college degree or skilled training, and those people are four times more likely to be displaced from the job market. Workers want more to advance their career, and employers are stepping in to compete for talent. We want our work to continue to be at the center of that and drive progress. Guild’s core mission is to solve these challenges, while helping to unlock economic mobility for America’s workforce. As we meet that challenge, we’re investing in our technology and payments platform, as well as continuing to build our robust support services that we provide to workers and expanding our learning marketplace.
What’s your No. 1 piece of advice for aspiring entrepreneurs? In the early days of founding Guild, one of the most important lessons for me was to seek out partners and investors who believed in the company’s value as much as the value of their investment. At Guild, we believe talent is equally distributed, but opportunity is not. I have been incredibly lucky to work with investors who believe the same. Additionally, the mission must remain at the forefront of everything that you do as a company. As a certified B Corporation, our commitment to doing well by doing good serves as our true north for helping adults unlock economic mobility and has driven me since Day 1 of founding Guild.
Guild Education
Category: Established
Location: Denver
Top exec: Rachel Carlson, co-founder and CEO
