← ASU+GSV Summit
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Foreign.
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We're here at the ASU GSV Summit 2026 with Julie Lammers. She's the president and CEO of Brightbound, formerly known as American Student Assistance, one of the nation's leading nonprofit organizations focused on career readiness for middle and high school students. Julie has more than 15 years of leadership experience at Brightbound, over overseeing advocacy, philanthropy, policy, research, marketing and strategic communications. It's amazing. Welcome to the podcast.
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Thank you very much. Appreciate it.
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So Brightbound is an amazing organization. People may not recognize the name because it is a recent rebrand. Brightband you recently rebranded from American Student Assistance to Brightbound. That's a big identity shift for an organization with a long history. Tell us about the shift and what prompted it.
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Yeah, so historically our focus was on a lot of higher ed issues, specifically around higher ed financing. And at that time American Student Assistance was a little bit more corporate, sounded more like a bank, and it made more sense. Right. We have been around since the late 50s and so we had a lot of built up goodwill with that name. And so it was a big decision to decide to change. But about nine years ago, we shifted our mission significantly to focus on young people starting in middle school, really trying to think about how are we giving them a much longer Runway to make decisions about post secondary education, really focusing on career readiness issues, high school work based learning, and career navigation in a different way. And so focusing our attention on youth, primarily teenagers. We decided we really needed a refresh to our brand that better reflected who we were and the kids we wanted to serve. And so we launched the effort to change our name and Brightbound is our new identity going forward.
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The logo is great. I love those sort of squiggles and swirls. It's really, it looks amazing. Excellent. And so let's focus on this new mission. Right. Middle and high school students are making huge decisions. It's a very fast changing workplace environment right now. I think there's a lot of confusion among adults, let alone middle and high school students. There's not that much research or not that much information around. What does your research tell you about how poorly prepared many young people are about these decisions and what's the cost of this poor preparation and the fact that they don't get that much guidance from schools.
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Yeah. So fundamentally, one of the issues that we're trying to solve for is when we, when our old mission, 10 years ago, eight, 10 years ago, when we were talking, talking to a lot of kids in higher education, they were talking about the fact that they had made a lot of Poor decisions about why they were there in the first place. So we were seeing a lot of changes in degree, changes in major changes in schools, excessive debt as a result. Because we were using post secondary education as a time for career exposing. It's a very expensive time for career exploration and it's not one that most young people can really afford to make, make mistakes or take risks and try something new. So getting it right the first time is really important. And so we really had this, this thought around, how can we make sure young people have a better sense of who they are and what they want at a much earlier age? We don't see a lot happening in the middle school space right now that allows young people to understand themselves and their career goals. And we know from a lot of research that kids begin to foreclose opportunities for themselves if they haven't been exposed to it by eighth grade, particularly when it comes to STEM activities. And so we are really focused on how are we widening the aperture of what's possible for kids, expanding their opportunities beyond their local communities. A lot of kids hone in on careers because it's what someone in their family has done or someone in their local community. And so really trying to figure out how are we making sure kids are aware of all opportunities that fit with their personal interests and goals. And so I think that is a critical piece of the puzzle when it goes into high school. We see that there is enormous value in connecting young people to what's really happening in the world around them. We are seeing a serious challenge with disengagement from high school, particularly since the pandemic, although it was always an underlying challenge that schools were facing. But kids are really asking for the relevance of why am I studying math, why am I doing these things in reading? Why is critical thinking and writing really important? They need to see why it is relevant in a real world context. And providing them opportunities to connect with professionals in the real world. To see math playing out in real world situations is really important for making it relevant to their daily lives, to improve retention. And the interest that kids have in being in school bring back their passion for why they're there in the first place. So. So those are the. Some of the things that we're trying to tackle with our work.
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Yeah, so I've always felt like the American school system is sort of almost allergic to career readiness. More than many other countries internationally where they sort of that relevance that, you know, we're doing this so that you can get a job and have it. We sort of steer Away from that pretty actively in the States we do.
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And I think we've shifted because we have. There has been a big shift over time, rightly so, to push towards a college degree. But that's not the only path for all. Absolutely right. And so we need to think about what the diversity of opportunities are for kids. And we are seeing a big mind shift now. Even, you know, a number of years ago a lot of parents were saying that career and technical education wasn't necessarily for their child.
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Right.
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We are seeing now more and more parents saying it's actually for high achieving kids. Right, right. All young people need hands on experiences before they make a decision about what comes next for themselves. So I think we are getting to a point of sort of balance. What we're struggling with is there still are not enough opportunities in schools for kids to experience this type of learning that we know is highly effective in making sure that they see the relevance, but also have some real world skills before going on to post secondary education, whatever that may look like for them. It could be an apprenticeship program, could be a traditional four year degree, but they need to have chances in high school to build those skills and it needs to be an integral part of all we're doing in education going forward. So.
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And this constellation you mentioned, you know, career and technical education, sometimes people say vocational, they talk about work based learning, all of these different phrases. You talk about profession based learning, which I think is a really powerful phrase, especially about getting away from the stigma that has traditionally gone with some of these worlds. Tell us about what you define as profession based learning, what it looks like.
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Yeah, so it is a variety of things. I think one of the things we think a lot about is how can we lower the barrier for some work based learning experiences that have historically been heavily reliant on an employer providing an in person job for a young person and navigating a system that's a little complicated when you're not used to having 16 year olds in your office. Right. And so thinking about how, what are the other high quality experiences that we can expose young people to. And so there's sort of a movement to figure out what is the right opportunity to engage employers. And one of them is through profession based learning, this idea that we can, through client connected projects or work or project based learning, expose young people to a real world employer challenge, get them in front of a group of employers that will help them with critical thinking and really critiquing whatever the project might be. It's a bit of a lesser lift for, for employers to think about having someone directly in their workplace. But the idea of really ensuring that all young people have some professional skills before they leave high school is really what we're aiming for. What are the critical thinking skills, the durable skills that they need to be successful long term that will not be outsourced by AI? Right. Those are the things that we are, we are really trying to figure out how do we embed those better in experiences kids have in high school.
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It makes a lot of sense. I mean there's been, you know, all of these slightly different flavors. The virtual internships or internships externship, I mean, and I think honing in on how this can actually fit into the world of high school without feeling something that's sort of bolted on from the side is a challenge for the challenge for the whole industry. Technology can help, potentially can help. I think we're at the beginning of that. Tell us about how you've used technology and how you're thinking about AI to bridge that gap.
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So there are a few things I think technology AI has an enormous opportunity to expand the horizon for what kids can be exposed to. So we have digital tools that we have created free for young people that is about starting conversations about career. It is about exposing them to the different types of careers available, understanding how to advocate for yourself when it comes to a career, pitching to your parents why you want to be a comedy writer, what are the things you need to do in order to really convince someone that this is the career for you. As well as new products that we had just launched at ASU GSB called Goz Zig, which is a career navigation tool. And it really is, from a technology and AI perspective really trying to figure out how can we help young people navigate to what comes next after high school with the really complex data systems that are in place, that don't necessarily provide user friendly information to kids and use AI to really break it down into bite sized information that kids can really embrace and navigate. Well, a lot of tools that we've seen are a little bit too complex at times and don't necessarily get to the heart of what kids are looking for. So we've built tools that go directly to kids, sort of circumvent the school system, try to give them the information that's useful to them and chart a course post high school that works for their education and career goals.
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So tell us more about the Scozig product that you're launching right now.
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Yeah, so it's really exciting. We have a whole network of partners that we've been working with in order to make sure sure we are really enhancing the field with new technology and trying to also tap into the technology that others have already built. We don't want to replicate any wheels here. And so how are we really making sure we're uplifting high quality services and tools that already exist? We've got a lot of high quality digital content in the platform because we know that's how kids like to consume their information. And so really trying to give them access to exposure to a variety of different careers and then providing them as. As much as we can the, the localized information about what the education opportunities are then in their community. So it is launching at ASU gsv. We'll be refining it over, you know, next couple of months and years as we improve on it, but really hoping that it'll be a useful tool for kids to understand and try to begin to navigate all of the opportunities in post secondary education.
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That's exciting. Yeah. So career exploration, project based learning or your profession based learning? You know, there are all these different tools potentially at our, in our tool belt to help this work. What do you see as the role of policy? It feels like, you know, this is, it's such a, it feels like a bipartisan issue. People want it. Is this to be solved? You know, nobody wants a generation that doesn't have any connection to work.
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No, absolutely. And they, and you know, they want it for, for our kids to make sure our kids have what they need and that for the economy to thrive. We solve this on both sides. So we do approach this from a policy lens as well. You know, we've got, as I said, the digital tools that we work with. We've got a philanthropy arm that funds a lot of activities, impact investing arm that is trying to stand up new tools and we look at research and policy to try to figure out how can we change this ecosystem that kids are in to make sure it is providing them the greatest opportunity for access to the types of programs that we know are highly impactful. So it's around career exploration in middle school. It's trying to figure out what are the barriers we need to remove to expand opportunity for work based learning, profession based learning in high school and then what is necessary to ensure that young people are appropriately supported and navigating to what comes next after high school. And that goes to are there teachers, families prepared with information and data? The, the policy plays an important role in all of those, particularly when it comes to the data information that drives a lot of the content because a lot of it is state or federally held. And so we need to be able to make sure that we are really providing informed, decision making opportunities for young people. And then it comes back to data and where are the sources of those Data?
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We're at ASUGSGV Summit 2026. One of the themes of the conference is multiple choice.
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Yep.
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Is educational pluralism. We've also seen career academies in places like Chicago. I'm curious how you see that world of schools that actually think about, you know, career outcomes as a core value. They popped up all around the country, but there's a whole new generation, I think, coming out now.
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Absolutely.
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How do you see that as serving this mission?
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Yeah, I think it's critical. We have a really close partnership with an organization called NAF that provides career academies in schools, about 630 or so academies throughout the country. And it really does provide young people a dedicated space to build some career readiness skills, understand what they really like, and eliminate the things that they don't, and understand where their place is in the world. Right. And it's not about having a young person choose something at that point. It really is trying to figure out how are you building some professional skills and of finding relevance in the classroom to the working world. So I think it is. It's certainly growing. And there we need more opportunities, quite frankly, to do this, because it does. We have seen amazing outcomes with kids that really do find a lot of purpose in learning in that way and a great value in that type of education. So we're excited about the possibilities there.
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So you mentioned durable skills as a movement. It's a really powerful movement in this space. This is a little bit of a strange question, but I know that people are very concerned, reasonably, I think, about the impact of AI on the future of the workforce. And in some ways, I think they're beginning to think of AI just like they could have thought of coding 10 years ago as sort of underlying skill set that actually serves many different career paths. I'm curious how you're looking at that. So as students are doing career navigation exploration at a young age, how does AI fit into that picture?
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Yeah, so I think there are a few ways. I think there is a huge opportunity in building high quality tools around AI from the exposure standpoint and the ability to ensure that young people in all parts of the country, all parts of the world, can see things in ways that they hadn't in the past. Right. A huge exposure opportunity there. When it comes to AI skills, I think there's a long way we need to go around AI skill literacy and if we fundamentally believe that workplace of the future will be changed as a result of AI, the kids that thrive, the ones that know how to use it well.
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Exactly.
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And so we need to be building skills around AI in the classroom, outside of the classroom, making sure young people can explore and understand how to use the tool of AI as a career readiness tool and simultaneously giving kids opportunity through real world experiences to continue to build those human connections to understand why eye contact is important, to continue non cognitive understand why they can with critical thinking and how do you interrogate great information that AI is providing to you. All of those things are very very important going forward in order to make a workforce and an environment where kids can really thrive.
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Fascinating. Amazing work. We're here. Julie Lemmers, the CEO of Brightbound, doing really incredible work advancing profession based learning and all its corollaries in the workplace and in schools, especially for middle and high school students. Thank you so much for being here.
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Thanks for having.