Goodwill Industries International is the umbrella organization for a North American network of about 150 autonomous, community-based Goodwill nonprofits. Founded in Boston in 1902 by Methodist minister Edgar J. Helms, it runs the classic model of collecting donated clothing and household goods, reselling them through thrift stores and, increasingly, online, and using the proceeds to fund free job training, career services, and support programs. The parent body sets brand standards, coordinates national partnerships, and runs shared initiatives such as the online marketplace GoodwillFinds and the Goodwill Digital Career Accelerator, while local members deliver services on the ground.
OpenClassrooms is a Paris-based online education company that turns coursework into jobs. Founded in 2013 by Pierre Dubuc and Mathieu Nebra out of the tutorial site Le Site du Zéro, it offers hundreds of free courses plus accredited, mentor-supported degree and apprenticeship programs in fields like data, AI, cybersecurity and web development. A certified B Corp with roughly 2.5 million monthly users, the company pairs project-based online learning with real-world work placements and a network of thousands of expert mentors, positioning itself as an education-to-employment platform rather than a video-course catalog.
Podium Education is an Austin-based edtech company that partners with colleges and universities to close the gap between a degree and a first job. Its flagship product, the Global Career Accelerator, is a for-credit, fully online program in which undergraduates of any major work on real projects for companies like Intel, L'Oreal, OpenAI and the GRAMMYs, build in-demand skills in data, marketing and coding, and collaborate with peers from dozens of countries. After acquiring the early-career talent platform Untapped in 2024, Podium now also connects its students directly to employers, turning coursework into a hiring pipeline.