vocational-training
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Orijin puts a classroom in prison. The next lesson is getting hired.
The agency pays. The learner studies free. Orijin’s secure tablets bring education into correctional facilities - and its acquisition of Honest Jobs follows the student through the prison gate.
DIGITALENT’s bet: buy the schools, close the skills gap
A Spanish education group has brought business, law, coding and vocational schools under one roof. Its next test is teaching people to work with AI while keeping the classroom connected to the job.
Goodwill Industries of South Florida
Goodwill Industries of South Florida is a Miami-based nonprofit social enterprise that funds training, employment and job placement for people with disabilities and other barriers to work. Founded in 1959, it runs a self-sustaining business model spanning donated-goods retail and thrift stores, technically complex apparel and flag manufacturing for the U.S. military, commercial laundry, janitorial services and third-party logistics. With roughly 3,600 employees and about $196M in annual revenue, it is one of the largest Goodwills in North America and the largest employer of people with disabilities in Florida.
Emerge Career
Emerge Career is a New York-based reentry and workforce development company that partners with governments to train and place justice-involved and low-income people into high-paying, AI-resilient skilled-trade careers such as commercial truck driving, HVAC, and diesel technology. Its technology platform combines self-paced vocational coursework, exam prep, trauma-informed career coaching, and job placement, with training delivered in partnership with licensed schools and correctional agencies. Founded in 2022 out of Y Combinator by Uzoma Orchingwa and Gabriel Saruhashi, the company has won state and city contracts from Connecticut, Massachusetts, and New York City's Next Mile NYC program.
zSpace, Inc.
zSpace builds headset-free augmented and virtual reality learning systems that let students hold and manipulate lifelike 3D objects on a laptop or all-in-one screen using a stylus and head-tracking glasses. The platform powers STEM and career-and-technical-education programs - from dissecting a virtual frog to wiring a circuit or exploring human anatomy - in thousands of U.S. school districts and 50-plus countries. Founded in 2007 as Infinite Z and renamed zSpace in 2013, the San Jose company went public on the Nasdaq in December 2024 under the ticker ZSPC.