👷What 350+ Education Leaders Said About the Future of Skills. Early Bird Pricing, Back to School Summit.

Hello 👋

The global skills economy is accelerating and splintering in ways that challenge legacy models of education, training, and credentialing. At the inaugural Global Skills Week in March, over 350 leaders convened to share concrete strategies for navigating this shift, from embedding career navigation in K-12 to redesigning postsecondary programs and scaling regional upskilling efforts. But this was just the beginning. The 2025 Back to School Summit this September builds directly on that momentum, bringing together top thinkers to operationalize bold ideas into cross-sector solutions.

Key themes (and standout examples!) that will carry forward into September’s Summit:

🥇 Degrees to Skills: Institutions such as UVA and WGU are redesigning advising and credentials to meet labor market demand, while American Student Assistance’s Early Career Navigation Council is helping learners explore real-world pathways into solid jobs.

🌐 AI as Core Infrastructure: American University shared how it has restructured 40+ courses and built campus-wide governance around generative AI, while OpenAI showcased early institutional pilots shaping AI-native learning models.

⚙️ Industry at the Center: From JFF’s CREST initiative placing workers in climate-aligned roles to Alabama’s statewide Talent Triad linking credential data and employer needs, new public-private models are gaining traction.

Catch up on the insights in the full Global Skills Week summary and join us in September at the Back to School Summit, to turn insight into action.

💪 Power Moves

💡 GEMS Education partnered with Microsoft to introduce learning companions for their school network.

🚀 Meta partnered with the Indian Government to develop an AI skills assistant, offering learners customized support through WhatsApp.

💻 Udemy launched a new AI-powered learning platform that offers personalized pathways for learners. 

💰 Education Funding

🎮 Attensi, a Norwegian gamified training platform, has raised $25M to enhance their workforce’s skills through engaging and AI-enabled methods. 

💻 The Corporate Governance Institute, an Irish e-learning and certification, raised $3.4M to enhance its course portfolio and expand beyond its current 70 global delegates 

💡 Didask, a French workplace digital learning solution provider, raised $11.2M to enhance its LMS, expand across Europe, and roll out a new “Knowledge Assistant” designed to support anytime learning. 

ᯅ HTX Labs, a US-based XR training platform provider, has raised $5.8M to scale its XR training platform and deliver a virtual classroom for training engineer maintainers. 

💸 Renvent Holdings and LeftRight Capital, two US-based private equity firms, have acquired CurrIQūnetto, a curriculum management provider for higher education institutions.

Thank you for reading. Have a great week ahead!
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