00:01.25

Olivia Lara-Gresty

Hi everyone, welcome back to Tech and EdTech. I'm Olivia Lara-Gresty, and I'll be your host for today. I'm really excited to introduce and welcome Sarah Leoni to the show. Sarah is the founder and CEO of Ziplines Education, where she and her team work to bridge the gap between traditional education and the rapidly evolving demands of the job market by providing accessible, affordable, and practical learning experiences that align with the industry's needs. Sarah, welcome. Great to have you here today.

00:25.92

Sara Leoni

Hi, thank you for having me. Appreciate it.

00:28.87

Olivia Lara-Gresty

Yeah, we're really excited to kind of get into what you're doing with Ziplines. And before we get into that, I always really like to you know dig in a little bit to understand you know you're so the people that I'm working with, their story. And so I'd love to just hear a little bit more about your backstory and what led you to this particular career path and your current role, and you know, founding Ziplines.

00:48.73

Sara Leoni

Yeah, no, that's great. I appreciate that. So, I always like to start with the fact that, you know, I grew up as an athlete. I played Division I softball at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas.

And so much of that experience really is the foundation for who I am as a CEO. And we weren't just any team. I mean, we were a pretty incredible team. We were ranked top 10 the entire time i was i was there. We went to the College World Series, we finished third in the nation, not first, unfortunately, but definitely made it to the big show. And I share that primarily because, you know, when I think about how I show up as a leader, I am incredibly team-oriented. Everything for me is about the team and really making sure that we are developing people and bringing the right folks into the mix. And then obviously super competitive. So when I think about, you know, what are we trying to accomplish? I mean, outside of the fact that we want to deliver against our mission, like I definitely play to win. I think that's just something important to kick things off with. In terms of my career, I started my career both being part of and then leading marketing teams at big brands here in Silicon Valley, Visa, E-Trade, Yahoo, eventually finding my way through to education. And in my first foray into education, I was recruited by actually a former Chief Technology Officer I had worked with, who went on to become CEO at a company called Book Renter. It was the first textbook rental company. And you know, in a sort of GM slash you know marketing role, I was able to grow that business. My team and I grew that business from two to 50 million in about three years. So really a huge opportunity to cut my teeth on not just figuring out go-to-market, marketing side of things, but really understanding how to run a business. And, you know, the one thing I'll say is through that experience, I definitely saw the significant challenges that higher education faced.

And really, more importantly, the opportunity to help institutions bridge what is a massive and growing gap that is, you know, ultimately aligned to a huge market opportunity. And that is, you know, upskilling the millions of workers who need new digital skills, right? Who need new experiences. In a world that's now obviously very heavily driven by and transformed by digital transformation.

03:31.97

Olivia Lara-Gresty

Yeah, I really appreciate you sharing, you know, just all the way back from that athletic experience, because I do think that we'll get into this a little bit, but there's a lot of sort of discussion on, you know, is it a battle between some of these more alternative pathways towards higher education and upskilling and then also some of those you know, the sort of traditional pathway with the associate's degree or that four-year college. And so just really thinking about you're touching a little bit on some of the social aspects and community aspects are really important to not just an educational experience, but I think a workforce readiness experience as well.

So I definitely appreciate you sharing some of that. And before we get into that too, too much, I think that our audience would really love to hear a little bit more about, you know, what you see when it comes to workforce readiness and how the what the role of education would be to evolve to meet those demands. We started touching on that, but if you could share a little bit more on that, when that would be helpful?

04:27.95

Sara Leoni

Yeah, I mean, I think the world of workforce education is in a completely new place, right? With how quickly generative AI is shifting um the workforce as we know it, jobs, the skills that we need to develop. I think we are in such an interesting time. I think that it brings huge opportunities um as well as significant challenges. And so I think you know, figuring out how to weave a path through that, both if you're the side of the learner who's trying to develop skill sets to stay relevant, right to really thrive, and then that of educators um where you know, typically in the past you know, curriculum, you know, and especially the world that we are focused in, which is, you know, more digital first, you know, skill learning, there's always been a need for us to stay really agile and make sure that we are constantly updating the curriculum to stay relevant. But like that has, you know, we think about how that has accelerated, you know it's it's just changed how we need to really think about solving this problem.

05:49.52

Olivia Lara-Gresty

Yeah. And I appreciate actually you bringing up the educators in that space. And I'm curious, any thoughts you have on what educators can be doing to better understand the workforce itself, because it might look really different from what the workforce is that they came into when they were studying themselves. So, any thoughts on how you know educators can play a role in understanding the new options that their students have in this space for upskilling?

06:17.09

Sara Leoni

Yeah, I mean, I think, you know, there's lots of categories of educators, right? So I think there's organizations like ours that are already super hyper industry-focused, spend a lot of time talking to people in the workforce. You know, folks who are hiring them in the workforce. I think that is um such an incredible aspect, important aspect of what we need to do to ensure that relevance.

I think it goes beyond that now, right, into really trying more to read the tea leaves around what's coming and how we can ensure that as we're developing um these learning experiences, as we're helping people build the skills, that we're really being laser focused on what's going to enable them to have the biggest impact.

I think a flip side of that is if you're a higher education institution, you know, I mean, like, I think that they've been impacted um historically, by how quickly things have shifted, right? And I think there's a lot of discussion and dialogue around whether or not a degree is really setting folks up for success in industry, for jobs, right? For careers, is probably a better way to say it. And I like my perspective is there's still a ton of validity behind a four-year degree. I think in order for institutions to prepare you know graduates for the workforce, there's clearly a stronger alignment that needs to be built between what faculty are teaching, right? What faculty are preparing these students for? And I think realistically, you know that sort of change order, right, that kind of change management is not something that happens very quickly in the world of higher education.

And so, you know, I mean, I again, I think this is where for us it provides you know, really interesting opportunity to be able to counterbalance some of those, you know, some of those challenges that they face and to provide really important solutions for that particular industry. Because I just think, given the nature of how they operate, it's just going to be a really significant challenge for them to not just key pace, right? Like I mean, I think to some degree, some of what is still being integrated into some of these undergraduate, and even I would say master's programs, is like you know dinosaur-type skills. And not to say like, I mean, I'm a big believer in, it's not just about the digital skills, right? It's about the durable skills.

And I think that has traditionally been an area where I think institutions have really tried to shine. But I think it's that connection of those durable skills to more industry-focused, you know, job career skills, digital skills that will help translate into, you know, better careers, better social mobility for the learners that we're serving in the market.

09:32.52

Olivia Lara-Gresty

Yeah, and you know I've ever, as I've learned a little bit more, so in my years in the classroom, we always talked about soft skills. And so when I entered the edtech space, it was, you know, we're referring to them as durable skills. And I think that alone is one sort of aspect where you can see that lag you were kind of mentioning towards being able to kind of understand the market better, and the kind of reality of the situation. But I think what you're also touching upon there is that there's, think there's a great benefit. And as you mentioned, you know universities in higher education has been working towards supporting durable skills for a long time, but there is also that component of helping the students also see how those can be applied and helping them envision themselves in those roles, which I think that um your team has done a lot to support with that. And so I'm kind of curious, as you kind of look into this space of the experience gap that we're sort of referring to, what do you see as the most pressing barriers that learners would face in improving their readiness for those real-world roles?

10:32.64

Sara Leoni

Yeah, look, I mean, I think experience is hard to come by, right? You look at so many jobs, and they want people to come in with some level of experience. And I think that institutions are starting to do a better job, not all, some. I see some doing an exceptional job of building you know workforce readiness into programs, whether it's through internships or work-based programs that are embedded as part of the you know, the institutional practice. But I think, you know, this has to become, it has to become more clear to folks that are going through these educational experiences that they need to be able to show to an employer that they have the skills, that they have the knowledge, that they have the confidence to be able to apply that in the workplace. And I think a lot of times, that confidence comes from actually doing it, right? Actually putting those skills into practice. And, you know, I think there's some outside of, you know, traditional internships, which I think are really valuable for some set subset of learners, I think you know the reality is we need more options, right? Apprenticeships is obviously a really interesting opportunity, but it serves a slice of the market. How do you scale something like that? I personally haven't seen that scaled well to where you can really have, you know, a significant impact. And, you know, I mean, internships are not created equal. It depends on the organization. It depends on the hiring manager, or right? So I think one of the things that we talk a lot about at Ziplines is, you know, how do we help people think about how to get those experiences, like get creative on it, you know? And some of that comes in the form of what I would say is more just, you know, application while learning, right? And being able to showcase those sets of applications to an employer with, you know, I think the important piece is being able to translate that, right? Translate that learning experience into the work experience. So being able to showcase how they're thinking about things, how they would build a strategy, how they would leverage tools.

We also talk to a lot of folks about, look, there are so many small businesses around the country that need resources, right? They don't have whether it's you know somebody who can help them build a go-to-market or manage a social media campaign, or leverage AI to create efficiencies in some of their workflows. You know, part of what we do is recommend to our learners that you know they find those small businesses. They find, even if it's a friend, a family, knock on doors, offer up your services, and do it at no cost, right?

You don't have to soak in a ton of money, I mean, a ton of time to be able to capture some really valuable transferable experience that you can talk to as part of an interview process. So I don't like I don't think that there's any silver bullet here, right? I think people have to get really creative. I do think you know with the tools and technology that's available to folks now, that's becoming easier and easier, right? I think it's becoming really easy for people to become, you know, solopreneurs, right? And almost like, hey, look, here's how I would start my own business, and the website that I would develop. And you know how I would think about integrating a CRM and automating workflows. Like there's a lot that you can do with zero cost invested, be able to showcase you know not just your skills, but you know the, your perseverance, your grit, you know your can-do attitude in order to get stuff done.

14:53.28

Olivia Lara-Greasty

And I think you made a great point that you know not all internships are created equal. And I was actually recently at a Career and Technical Education Conference where some students were brought in to speak about their experiences, and some had, you know, some great internships, some not so much. And I recall one student, this was just a couple of weeks ago, was mentioning she was super excited. She really wanted to be in the real estate industry.

And when she got there, she had very little mentorship, and she felt that her, in that experience, she felt like her mentor actually didn't like her job. And so from that, she kind of walked away, really unsure about the experience. She then actually had a different real estate industry, you know, project experience, and went back to loving it. But I'll just say that it was so dependent on you know, just one person's attitude. And I think that not everyone can get an internship, and even then it's not always gonna be you know the experience that the student might want. And I was curious, you know, we talk about other alternatives to kind of preparing for that real-life experience, and there's definitely a lot of movement around simulations.

And I know that your team had acquired “Clicked” in about last year. So I was curious what you're seeing the response to those experiences, if you could talk a little bit more about you know how that's changed Zipline's kind of offerings, and what the response has been.

16:12.75

Sara Leoni

Yeah, yeah. I mean, it's still very new. We just launched our first, what I'll call, experiment about a month ago as part of our Salesforce course. So I think jury's still out, right? I think the idea of it is to provide, you know, really much more of what feels like a work experience. Where you are working in teams, you're collaborating, you're not solving a problem on your own, right? You have to work together to be able to form opinions and push things through. I think what's interesting is, you know, I think we all know how valuable that experience can be and how much you can learn from it. I also think that it's not typically a comfortable learning experience for a lot of folks, right? I think people come into a program many times, and they want to be able to go through it. And you know, I think we take a very, very human-centered approach here at ZipLines. So everything is supported by whether it's a learner success advocate or a live instructor.

But I think there's a need to help also, you know, people understand the importance of getting into these uncomfortable situations, right? Having to deal with very real-world type of experiences, and how do you articulate the value of that to people on the front end of the process? And so, you know, long story short, I think i think that some form of those simulations is absolutely critical to being able to not just learn, but to you know, to really be able to figure out how to apply those in as real-world of a setting as possible.

But I also will say that I guess the TLDR is there's got to be a mind shift change on the point of learners or job seekers that, you know, to get into something comfortable, it's got to get uncomfortable first. Otherwise, you know, you just may never get those experiences that get you that leg up.

18:26.63

Olivia Lara-Gresty

Yeah, that's a great point of advice that, you know, it's not, there's a certain level of resilience, and we spoke about resilience as a durable skill, but that just kind of going through some of these courses or some of these internships or whatever the work experience is, is actually a great way to, I think, experience and and kind of push oneself to get through, get some of that durability and resilience. But then I think showcasing it as well is difficult, as well. And I wanted to actually ask a little bit about that. From your experience, what do you think is an effective way for learners of all ages and all kinds of levels to showcase their skills that are gained through simulations, or you know, internships, or micro-credentials, especially if perhaps our traditional resume is falling short?

19:14.69

Sara Leoni

Yeah, yeah. I mean, I definitely, there's a couple things. I mean, you know, one of the things that we have found is that, you know, the credentials do matter, right?

So I think that's one thing when I look to, you know, folks that are seeking opportunities to learn and gain skills, right? You know, a credential is only as good as the brand that's behind it, right? The trust, the validation behind it. And it's a key reason that we partner with universities. Some of their faculty have an opportunity to go through our curriculum, participate in our programs, give us the thumbs up before we are integrated into those experiences. And like we hear over and over again from learners that are coming out of the program, how obviously, you know, the translation of the skills is important, but also the credentials is important.

20:14.68

Sara Leoni

When we talk about, you know, how do you take the learnings, the application from a course like ours or any other course, I think one is, you know, we spend a lot of time in the career side of our experience talking about, you know, those transferable skills, right? And how do you articulate those transferable skills? How do you make sure that you are telling a story that helps people understand, you know, the problem, how you approached it, your solution, and then specifically, what tools you use to potentially get to that solution or to execute that solution. And again, I think there's a, there's a lot that can be done, a lot that can be unpacked that doesn't have to just be, you know, a project as part of a course, there are ways to unpack that, to create something really meaningful for the employer, right. To showcase to the employer, and that's one of the things that, again, we work to articulate to our learners. I think everybody, to and you know, brings different experiences to what that might look like. And I think that there's there's tools and other mechanisms that we would love to build as part of our product to be able to help them do that in a more effective way, right? We're not there yet, but I think there's a lot of opportunity there.

21:41.86

Olivia Lara-Gresty

Yeah, and I think that that's actually helpful for our listeners to know as well, is to think about what' you know what's out there for them right now, but also when they're looking to get some of those those credentials, you know what are the the organizations that are providing those? Where are they looking? What is the kind of future roadmaps that they can trust that if I'm working with this team?

As you mentioned, I think there is value to think about the brand behind the credentialing and having those industry or university-recognized courses, is that one level, but also a team that supports, you know, the full employee or job seeker in that search is really helpful. So I think actually as we get towards that future outlook, you know this is a question that's on everyone's mind. And I think that it plays into what we're talking about right now really well. But AI is, you know, increasingly part of both learning and hiring. And so I'm curious what you see or how you see AI making the biggest near-term impact when it comes to upskilling and career preparation.

22:55.00

Sara

Yeah. I mean, I think possibilities are endless, right? I mean, I think we're just figuring out how to leverage these new technologies to create incredible experiences, better outcomes. I think there’s so many ways to approach it. And I think each company, organization, team will do this differently based on their mission, and you know how they approach learning. I think when we think about things like our what we want to develop as part of our experience is an incredibly authentic learning experience where you feel like you're learning from a mentor, right? Where it's not just a talking head. It's not just, you know, taking a textbook and putting it into a video. It's really embedded with a lot of real-world experience and knowledge, right? People's unique experiences in the workplace, experiences building teams, and experiences hiring teams, and so for us, that won't change, right? I think what will change is how do we wrap around um technology to, you know, create better and more timely answers to questions? How do we leverage technology to provide faster response times around, you know, potentially things like grading or you know, as we think about like what opportunities are there for, you know, quote unquote tutoring, we are, we're still in the formulation phase. I mean, there's definitely pieces that we're already starting to implement around, you know, predictive analytics with regards to risk assessment for our learners to be able to build tools and platforms that integrate responses that are based on, you know, our own unique sort of agent, if you will. So I think you know, I think the possibilities are endless.

I think what I would urge people to consider is that you know as AI, as technology becomes a more and more integral part of our work lives, having that human interaction cannot be displaced, right? I can't like, I think that we are in a really unique and important position given the fact that we're not just an asynchronous learning platform. And again, there's a time and place for that but I think people, as we get as we infuse more technology and AI, and we hear more about AI displacing jobs and you know, as as we learn more about, you know, what's going to happen to entry-level roles, like people are scared, right? They're terrified.

And so, you know, part of what we want to be able to do outside of all of the amazing automation that we can create with AI is to also use it to free up our people to do things that are going to have a bigger impact on the learners that we serve. And like that's what I get really excited about, right? It's like, oh, you can automate all those repeatable tasks. You can automate answering these simple questions. And now we can free up time to really have those conversations around helping people understand and articulate their skills, right? So anyways, I think it's i think we're it's definitely a really interesting time for those of us in the learning space.

26:44.90

Olivia Lara-Gresty

Yeah, and I appreciate that. And I think that something I hear all too often is, you know, AI is a solution, what's the problem? And so it really sounds like your team is taking the time to really make sure that you're actually defining the problem statements first for the instructors, for the learners, and then actually go from there to solving it, which are supporting it And I think as a former teacher, I definitely appreciate the the nods towards supporting teachers and, you know, any instructor or teacher what they really want to be able to do is support each student individually as much as they can while also scaling that. And so taking the pieces of that, that are supporting them in ways of using AI to actually do that, I think, really can have benefits across the board. And it really is what many are looking for. So I think that's a great, you know, those are all great steps in really supporting your learners in their end goals.

27:40.90

Sara Leoni

Yeah, thank you.

27:41.15

Olivia Lara-Gresty

With that, I wanted to just ask, you know, if you could share, like, there's so many updates that you're mentioning that are on the way or are kind of in the process here. And so where would you suggest that our listeners would go to follow what you all are doing with Ziplines Education, or where can they learn more about, you know, the next steps and and kind of learn more about the experiences that your learners are having?

28:04.12

Sara Leoni

Yeah, I mean, I think it's a good question. I think one always start with our friendly website, LinkedIn. There's a lot that we put out and talk about, you know, try to create dialogue around there. I think, again, we're you know we're where at the sort of infancy of of beginning to do that, but there is a lot of important dialogue that needs to happen around the world of education and around how we support people through this, you know what is what I would consider kind of a tumultuous time that's not going slow down, right? So I would say that's probably the best way, outside of just getting to know people on the team. You know we're always open to spending time with new folks and um and learning from other people in the industry and what people are doing. And, you know, just I think especially where we're not competitive with folks, understanding like where technologies that they are building, interesting things that they're bringing to market. You know, we're always really excited to hear about those things as well.

29:20.35

Olivia Lara-Gresty

Yeah, and I think that, you know, those are all great suggestions, but you haven't even mentioned, I've been to your website before, and I think that from a learner's perspective, it's always great to see what other learners are experiencing. 

29:31.39

Sara Leoni

Yeah

29:38.99

Olivia Lara-Gresty

And I've seen you guys have some really great, you know, learner profiles and just sharing not only what they've liked about programs, but also the results that they've achieved. And so anyone out there that's debating on you know if a micro-credential or any of these options are worth it, I think that that's definitely a great place to go to see some of the experiences and some of the results that have been gained.

29:51.73

Sara Leoni

Yeah, absolutely. No, I appreciate that. I appreciate that. I think, you know, we have served thousands, tens of thousands of learners at this point. And, you know, a core part of our mission is that learner centricity and making sure that we are really laser-focused on the outcomes that we can help them achieve. And, you know, when talk about outcomes, it's not just completion rates, right? Its outcomes, its job outcomes, its happiness on the job. You know, we get a lot of folks that come through that just feel like they've they've lost they've they've lost a piece of themselves, you know, when they go to work. And if we can help people feel more confident in their jobs, if we can help them feel more relevant, more prepared to take on new and different um opportunities, like that's where I feel like we really win and we can help people shine. So yeah, definitely yeah definitely come to the website and check things out.

30:59.21

Olivia Lara-Gresty

Well, thank you so much, Sarah. I think that I've learned a lot today, and I appreciate and hope our learners have as well. And we really thank you for joining us on the podcast.

31:07.73

Sara Leoni

Yeah, thanks for having me again. I appreciate it, Olivia.