Tracy Palandjian (MBA 1997) and Gerald Chertavian (MBA 1992)
(Photos by Susan Young)

When Google announced a $100 million fund to expand skills training and job placement programs for low-income Americans, two HBS alumni were standing by: Tracy Palandjian (MBA 1997), cofounder and CEO of Social Finance, and Gerald Chertavian (MBA 1992), founder and CEO of Year Up. The initiative tackles training for the nearly two-thirds of American workers who lack a four-year college degree.

Palandjian’s Social Finance is designing the initiative and managing the investment program, which is funded by Google philanthropy and loan repayments by students. (As an example, a student might contribute flat monthly payments of $100 so long as their annual income exceeds a threshold amount of $40,000.)

Chertavian’s Year Up, along with Merit America, will train students with content from Google career certificate courses in IT support, data analytics, project management, and user experience design. In addition to hard skills, the training partners will provide support and guidance in soft skills such as collaboration and communication. “Skills and competencies are important, but so is building up a person’s social capital,” Chertavian told the New York Times.

Palandjian’s Social Finance hopes to add more training partners this year; an independent research firm, MDRC, will evaluate the performance of the initiative. Over time, Google hopes to fuel total wage gains of $1 billion for 20,000 training program graduates. “We’ll allocate more funds to whoever is delivering better results,” noted Palandjian. “It’s all about impact.”

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