Rebecca Biestman
April 10th, 2023
Guild began with a mission to unlock opportunity for America’s workforce.
To fulfill that promise, our company has always embraced growth and change.
Today we are excited to share our latest evolution to support the millions of people we aspire to serve.
We are bringing forward our vision for a world where opportunity is as abundant as talent — with new products and a new brand that demonstrate that focus.
In doing so, we’re fully embracing our belief that creating career mobility and harnessing untapped potential are defining challenges of our time — and that education and skilling are the pathway to opportunity.
We are meeting this moment when the importance — the urgency — of our work has never been more apparent.
In the next two years alone, 375 million people will need new skills. There are tens of millions of open jobs with employers struggling to fill them — even as four out of every five workers say they face significant challenges to develop skills and advance their careers. With unemployment at historic lows, employers are already struggling to keep roles filled and develop reliable talent pipelines, and these problems are only going to accelerate in the years to come.
Our journey so far
Eight years ago, Guild’s work started by reimagining traditional employer-backed education benefits to create access to degrees and skilling for everyone, especially for those who historically were unable to access those benefits. We were purpose-built for the most marginalized members of the workforce.
From there, Guild partnered with forward-thinking employers to become a differentiator for companies committed to upskilling and reskilling their workforces, because they understood the necessity of building their workforces from within, retaining and recruiting a diverse and representative workforce, and creating career pathways for their talent.
We created a best-in-class learning marketplace of providers equipped to serve working adult learners.
We built a rigorous and thoughtful curation process so that our members can distinguish which programs best serve their aspirations — and that they can trust the outcomes of the institutions they work with.
Along the way, Guild became a catalyst for tens of thousands of Americans eager to unlock new opportunities and leading employers looking to solve business-critical problems.
“We believe talent is everywhere — and that we have an obligation to ensure opportunity is too.”
Rebecca Biestman, Chief Marketing Officer at Guild
The opportunity to catalyze progress
We know that the workforce is contending with a generational challenge. But we are optimistic about the pathways to change. And that’s why Guild is evolving, once again, to meet the moment.
We believe talent is everywhere — and that we have an obligation to ensure opportunity is too.
Many of our members arrive with their own stories about being failed by the system — poorly served by an educational institution, crippled with debt when they’re not even set up to succeed.
To enable long-term outcomes for our members, we’re embracing a bigger mission of career mobility.
Guild’s progression and focus on career mobility will allow us to address these issues head-on and nurture an environment where talent can grow.
Today we’re sharing two exciting areas of investment in this pursuit — with many more to come in the months ahead.
We are proud to introduce Career Accelerator, a unique, self-serve solution within our Career Opportunity Platform that gives Guild members access to on-demand interactive content and activities to help them achieve mobility.
In addition, Guild is enhancing our coaching capabilities to include more specialized knowledge to help learners advance their careers.
Combined, Guild is pairing scalable product expansions with enriched, and personalized, human support to help our members keep professional goals top of mind throughout their entire journey to progress in their career.
“To enable long-term outcomes for our members, we’re embracing a bigger mission of career mobility.”
Rebecca Biestman, Chief Marketing Officer at Guild
This is an opportunity movement
We are also delighted to mark this shift with a new brand that will help us drive an opportunity movement with all our employer and learning partners — and the members we serve.
First, our name will now be Guild.
Education continues to be key to our mission, but it’s a pathway to the outcomes we want to support: career mobility, economic stability, and the opportunity for all of our members to achieve more.
Our vision for career mobility continues in our visual identity.
Our new logo deliberately calls to mind the pathways and connection points that embody our work; the ways we’re helping our members discover career possibilities and supporting our employer partners as they create cultures of opportunity.
The graphical elements you will see from Guild symbolize the unique, personal journeys of our members. These may take turns or have setbacks, but they’re continuously evolving, unfolding, and unfurling — with more potential waiting to be unleashed.
Our photography is anchored in a visual style that centers on our members’ stories of transformation and growth at the center of our brand. To learn more and explore how we are bringing this to life, please visit our new web site — www.guild.com.
We believe our new brand will help us grow — while staying true to what has already made Guild a powerful change agent and trusted partner to our employer and learning partners.
Solving the problems that face our country’s workforce — and creating broader economic resilience — requires us to challenge traditional thinking and try new things. We believe our brand should reflect that.
Ultimately, these changes are just the beginning.
Our hope is that over the next decade of our work millions more people will join this movement: To connect talent with opportunity.
Together — whether you are a learner, employer or learning institution — we’re here to help you keep your talent rising. Please get in touch to join.
Let’s get to work.
