How We Work
About Life2Launch
Young people navigate life, learning, and work through systems never designed to work together. Resources, experiences, skills, and opportunities are spread across schools, workforce programs, employers, and communities.
Led by youth, Life2Launch is building shared life and career navigation infrastructure centered on the young person. Our LaunchPad helps young people understand themselves, explore possibilities, build real-world skills, connect to experiences, and capture what they learn along the way.
Oregon is our proving ground. We are working to connect existing education, workforce, and community resources into shared navigation infrastructure, while keeping local programs and relationships intact.
Nationally, we are designing for connection and portability. LaunchPad can work alongside the systems states, schools, and organizations already use, allowing young people to carry their profile, portfolio, skills, experiences, and credentials across transitions.
Why Now:
Changing Workforce + Skills
Employers need people who can demonstrate skills and adapt as work changes. Yet skills developed across school, work, and life are often difficult to recognize, verify, and carry into new opportunities.
Fragmented Resources + Opportunities
Thousands of valuable programs, tools, learning resources, and opportunities already exist. They remain spread across organizations and platforms, making them difficult for people to discover and use when they need them.
Disconnected Systems
Education, workforce, employers, government, and communities each hold pieces of the journey. People are left to navigate between systems that often use different tools, data, requirements, and measures of success.
Unequal Access to Navigation
Access to guidance, relationships, resources, and opportunities still depends heavily on where someone lives, attends school, or who they know. Those with fewer networks often face the greatest navigation burden.
Changing Education + Career Pathways
The path from education to work is becoming less linear. States are expanding career exploration, work-based learning, credentials, apprenticeships, and other pathways, increasing the need for navigation across them.
AI and Changing Work
AI is changing how people learn, find information, demonstrate capabilities, and prepare for work. Young people need support using these tools while developing the human judgment and agency to navigate continued change.
What We’re Building
A shared life and career navigation infrastructure centered on the person.
Rather than creating another standalone program or resource, Life2Launch connects the people, tools, learning, experiences, and opportunities that already exist around a common navigation journey.
Life2Launch Institute
The nonprofit steward of the shared infrastructure, focused on partnership, governance, trust, standards, research, and implementation learning.
Life2Launch PBC + LaunchPad
The public benefit company builds and operates LaunchPad, the digital navigation layer that helps young people navigate resources and opportunities, build and demonstrate skills, and carry their profile, portfolio, experiences, and credentials with them.
Oregon Implementation Timeline
The P3 brings partners together around implementation. Life2Launch Institute stewards the shared principles, standards, and public-purpose governance for how the infrastructure serves Oregon. Life2Launch PBC owns, builds, and operates the technology. Southern Oregon Workforce Investment Board (SOWIB) provides the first regional workgroup and learning model for broader Oregon adoption.
LaunchPad Beta Roll Out | September/October 2026
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OES Work-Ready Badges, demonstrated employability skills
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Career Interest Profile, supports graduation requirements and exploration
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Profile + Portfolio, captures and shares learning, skills and experiences
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Microcredential Wallet, stores and carries earned credentials
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Resource Hub, connects existing Oregon CIS, regional, state and federal resources
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Admin Portal, supports implementation, participation and reporting
Rollout Requirements:
Partnership + Governance
Stakeholder MOU, roles, decision-making, funding, pilot scope, evaluation, and civic stewardship
Resource + Platform Readiness
Resource stewardship, LaunchPad Hub, profile/portfolio, wallet, OES badges, Career Interest Profile and admin portal
Safety + Trust
School readiness, FERPA/COPPA, Oregon privacy requirements, accessibility, security, data governance, and AI safeguards
Implementation + Learning
School/workforce onboarding, admin access, reporting, participation measures, youth experience, employer usefulness and pilot evaluation
Standards + Portability
EdTech alignment, Open Badges, CLR, credential governance, verification and youth-owned portable records
Fund In Real Time Strategy:
Life2Launch Institute has stewarded more than $600K over five years of youth-led life and career navigation research, testing, and development. Life2Launch PBC translated that work into the core LaunchPad technology platform.
With the foundation built, the next phase moves through a Public + Private + Community Partnership (P3) that brings Oregon partners into implementation, governance, funding, and shared learning.
Funding moves alongside implementation. Capital is secured in stages to meet school-readiness requirements, support regional rollout, and build new capabilities based on what youth, communities, education, workforce, and employers need in practice.
First Capitalization Goal:
$570k Fall 2026
Funds School Ready + Regional Implementation
Capital becomes more blended in 2027:
Philanthropic + Public Capital: access, stewardship, implementation
Private + Enterprise Capital: technology and scale
Earned Revenue
Operations, expansion, and reinvestment
Oregon Youth Navigation Fund Stewarded by Life2Launch Institute 501(c)(3)
Public, business, and philanthropic capital for youth access, implementation, civic stewardship, and shared infrastructure.
Life2Launch Public Benefit Company Technology + Enterprise
Private and enterprise capital to build, operate, and scale the digital and AI infrastructure, generating revenue for long-term sustainability and reinvestment.
Institutional Services: Administration + insights, providing a potential transition pathway for existing school and workforce career-navigation budgets (CIS Oregon sunsetting)
Opportunity Marketplace: Employers and foundation fund opportunities, with youth, schools, and community organizations earning rewards for participation and contribution.
White Label + Licensing: Customized infrastructure
Implementation + Integration: Partner deployment
Infrastructure Partnerships: Regional + industry networks
You’re Invited: Become an Oregon Launch Steward
Oregon has an immediate need and a regional partner ready to begin. The next step is to bring the P3 together around the first implementation.
Join The Southern Oregon Workgroup
Bring youth, education, workforce, employer, and community needs into the September implementation process.
Become an Initial Capitalization Partner
Help fund school readiness, regional implementation, and continued development toward the first $570K capitalization goal.
Help Establish Shared Standards
Shape governance, school readiness, resource stewardship, data, AI, credentials, and portability requirements.
Contribute Resources + Opportunities
Connect existing regional, state, and national resources, learning experiences, and employer opportunities into the shared infrastructure.
Gratitude to our current Public + Private + Community Partnership (P3) stewards supporting this work:
Youth & Community
Oregon Association of Student Councils, High Desert Partnership, KROC Center, CAIRO, P:EAR, UpLift Leadership and many other CBOs
Education & Career Readiness
Oregon ACTE, Oregon Employability Skills
Workforce
WTDB Workforce Readiness Committee, SOWIB
Business & Entrepreneurship
Oregon Entrepreneurs Network, Oregon Startup Conference
Standards & Interoperability
1EdTech, Impact Entrepreneur, Context Institute
Contact
Like what you see? Get in touch to learn more.
Civic Governance and Stewardship
Denise Waldron, Life2Launch Institute, denise@life2launch.com
Oregon Employability Skills
Cherie Clark, Oregon Employability Skills, oregonemployabilityskills@gmail.com