For six years, Jared Chung was a consultant at McKinsey & Company, the elite adviser to many of the world's most influential businesses and institutions, but his true passion was moonlighting as an adviser to low-income kids.
"I saw that disadvantaged youth were feeling uninformed and alone in planning for their futures," Chung said. "I also saw that I wasn't the only one who wanted to help. The challenge in America is there just aren't enough people who are willing or able to do one-to-one mentoring."
So in 2012, he gathered a hundred volunteers and launched CareerVillage.org, a website that crowdsources career advice for low-income high school students.
"Our program is simple: We promise students the answer to any question about any career, anytime," Chung said. "And we deliver on that promise with a website that automatically matches student questions to volunteers with relevant experience."
Today, CareerVillage has more than 1,300 online volunteers and has served more than 6,000 students at schools including Match Charter Public School and Codman Academy Charter Public School, both in Boston, as well as KIPP Academy Lynn Collegiate High School.
CareerVillage offers teachers training on how to use the website, as well as lesson plans, presentation slides, work sheets and group activities to help students figure out their interests and create a plan for how to get answers to their questions about careers.
"We found the website to be student-friendly, thoughtfully simple and a tool that provides an easy entry point for conversation that can be awkward or difficult to start for teenagers," said Jerre Maynor, KIPP Academy's director of college counseling.
Oren Falkowitz, CEO of Area 1 Security, a Menlo Park, Calif., computer security firm, became a CareerVillage volunteer more than a year ago after he was introduced to Chung while he was living in Boston.
"It's a simple way to make a big difference," said Falkowitz, who has answered dozens of questions — mostly about what it's like to be an entrepreneur — with help from colleagues and friends. "I've always had mentors in my life who have helped me. Without that kind of insight, it's very difficult."
This summer, CareerVillage will get free office space in Boston as one of the MassChallenge startup accelerator's 128 finalists, and it will begin recruiting more staff and volunteers for the upcoming school year.
"We have an incredibly ambitious goal," Chung said. "There are 8 million high school kids living in high-poverty communities in America. We're not resting until we put a real dent in career readiness.
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