The 2023–2025 FAO Schwarz Fellowship at
Year Up's mission is to close the Opportunity Divide by ensuring that young adults gain the skills, experiences, and support that will empower them to reach their potential through careers and higher education.
About the Fellowship
The FAO Schwarz Fellow at Year Up Boston will mentor students in the program, creating a positive educational environment for their direct service, and focus on marketing operations and systems enablement in direct support of Year Up’s prospective student experience for their special project work.
Direct Service
The FAO Schwarz Fellow will mentor students as an advisor, group facilitator, and advocate, participating in creating and sustaining a positive educational environment with trust among students and staff.
The Fellow will:
- Be an active member of a Learning Community of around 40 students and 10 staff members, learning and delivering core elements of the program and supporting students and staff.
- Participate in and co-facilitate interactive group exercises that foster experiential learning.
- Provide students with meaningful training sessions to prepare them for successful careers.
- Advise and mentor a small group of students.
Special Project
The FAO Schwarz Fellow will focus on marketing operations and systems enablement in direct support of Year Up’s prospective student experience, helping to inform and engage young adults to apply to the program in their local area.
The Fellow will:
- Contribute to website enhancement projects, including updates and tests of new student features and content and implementation and updates to email and text messaging campaigns as part of outreach to students.
- Enable communications and measurement for recruitment events (held online and in-person), which require registration system and follow-up communications to encourage applications.
- Have the opportunity to work on additional projects in social media, events, and public relations.
Applications are now closed.
We will review each application carefully and select our Fellow by April 29th. Thanks for your interest.
About Year Up
Year Up, founded in 2000, has served more than 36,000 bright and skilled young adults across the country on their path toward professional careers and higher education.
Our students are between the ages of 18 and 29, have obtained a high school diploma or GED, have varied educational and employment experiences, and largely identify as people of color. Before beginning Year Up, many students are unemployed or underemployed, and report feeling sidelined into low-wage, low-growth, low-stability jobs. These jobs leave them vulnerable to the cascading effects of financial insecurity, and do not offer the income, benefits (e.g., health insurance, 401k), or opportunities for advancement required to thrive and support the needs of their families.
Year Up is founded on the belief that every young adult deserves equal access to opportunity and racial and economic justice. We prepare young adults for careers by providing technical skill training in in-demand tracks such as: Information Technology, Business Operations, Financial Operations, Sales and Customer Support, and Software Development and Support.
Our holistic model also incorporates training in business, interpersonal, and digital skills (e.g., time management, public speaking, digital literacy, etc.). We deliver our program through both hybrid (in-person/virtual) and virtual formats, and our program lengths vary by track - ranging from 5 months to 12 months. Currently, students and staff participate in in-person instruction 1-2 times per week and continue virtual instruction throughout the week. As we continue to monitor the effects of the pandemic, we will update our Return to Office protocol to ensure the safety of our staff and students.
Upon completion of the training period, students earn a work-based experience with one of our 300+ corporate partners across the country. During this phase of the program, students earn tangible experience and an opportunity to build their professional networks. Through close relationships with employers, we ensure our curricula is aligned with industry demand. We do this best by understanding the job market and cultivating relationships with corporate partners. Our corporate partners see Year Up as a strategic talent supplier, and as a result, many students turn the experience into a job offer.
After graduating, young adults join the National Alumni Association, a community of nearly 24,000 alumni, who have lifelong access to career and academic advising, networking, employment assistance, and more through Year Up.
For twenty years we have empowered Opportunity Youth with the skills and experiences to excel in the 21st-century economy through our workforce development program. The current moment in our country warrants a bold vision for change, and we are ready to be a leader in catalyzing a more equitable future.
Over the next five years, we will build upon our legacy of success and embrace partnerships to create the wide-reaching impact that this moment requires. Year Up recently embarked on a 5-year strategic plan, which outlines three priorities: 1) Serve Students through Year Up’s Best-in-Class Programs; 2) Scale through Innovative New Partnership Models; and, 3) Promote Equitable Talent Practices Among Employers.
As part of our current strategic phase, Year Up is evolving to serve individuals through a range of program models, including new approaches to partnership with other training providers that have the potential to dramatically scale our reach. We are piloting several variations of our original program model, including accelerated timelines, asynchronous learning, and modularized training components. We anticipate that our new, innovative program models will allow us to serve more young adults and increase our ability to meet growing employer demand.
Year Up is committed to continuous data collection and evaluation to demonstrate the efficacy of its workforce development program. We use our lessons learned to iterate on our program in service to the young adults with whom we have the privilege to work.
Our program has been validated by rigorous internal metrics and external evaluations alike. From internal data collection, we know that 80% of our 2021 graduates were employed and/or enrolled in school within four months of graduation from Year Up – which is remarkable given that these students began the program at the onset and height of the COVID-19 pandemic. Our recent graduates’ average starting salary was $44,000, and in their first year of employment, they will earn more than $86 million in combined wages.
A 2022 report through the federally-funded Pathways for Advancing Careers and Education (PACE) study found that six years after Year Up graduation, the average earnings for Year Up participants were 30% higher than for those in the control group. Average earnings gains of over $8,000 per year persisted to the end of the study period, with large positive impacts found across all subgroups studied.
While the ongoing pandemic has had a disproportionate economic impact on young adults of color, the earning gains for the Year Up group persisted during the economic downturn caused by COVID-19. As the third PACE publication, these results affirm that Year Up’s sustained impacts on earnings continue to be the largest reported to date for workforce programs tested in a randomized controlled trial.
COVID Vaccination Policy
(excerpt—please request the complete policy document if you have any questions)
All employees are required to be fully vaccinated (defined below) against COVID-19 as a condition of employment unless a reasonable accommodation is approved based. Employees who are not eligible for reasonable accommodation and refuse to be vaccinated by the effective date of this policy are required to contact HR to discuss next steps which could include separation from Year Up.
An individual is considered "fully vaccinated" for COVID-19 if they have received an FDA-approved vaccine (whether fully approved or approved for emergency use), and it is more than two weeks after they have received either a single-dose vaccine or the second dose in a two-dose series. This also includes any booster shots necessary to maintain vaccination status and similarly approved by the CDC and FDA.
Employees in need of an exemption from this policy because of a medical reason, a sincerely held religious belief, or other applicable legal basis, must submit a completed Request for Accommodation form to begin the interactive accommodation process as soon as possible. Accommodations will be granted as required by law and where they do not cause Year Up undue hardship or pose a direct threat to the health and safety of others. If you have more personalized questions specific to your situation, please reach out.
NONDISCRIMINATION POLICY
Equal Employment Practices
Year Up is an equal opportunity employer and follows a policy of administering all employment decisions and personnel actions without regard to race, color, religion, creed, sex (including gender identity), pregnancy, childbirth or related medical conditions, sexual orientation, national origin, age, physical or mental disability, genetic predisposition or carrier status, marital status, veteran status, or any other category protected under applicable federal, state or local law.
Consistent with the obligations of state and federal law, Year Up will make reasonable accommodations for qualified individuals with disabilities. Any employee who needs a reasonable accommodation should contact their supervisor or the Chief Operating Officer.
General Policy Against Discrimination and Harassment
It is the policy of Year Up that all employees should be able to enjoy a work environment that is free of discrimination and harassment. This requires that you and your colleagues treat each other and every individual with whom you have contact in the course of your employment with courtesy and respect. Year Up strictly forbids discrimination or harassment of any kind, including discrimination based on race, color, religion, creed, sex (including gender identity), pregnancy, childbirth or related medical conditions, sexual orientation, national origin, age, physical or mental disability, genetic predisposition or carrier status, marital status, veteran status, or any other category protected under applicable federal, state or local law. This policy extends across our organization. Accordingly, any form of harassment, whether by a fellow employee, manager, supervisor, or by a third party doing business with Year Up, will not be tolerated.
If you believe that you have been the subject of discrimination or harassment or that you have witnessed it in the workplace, immediately bring your concerns to the attention of your supervisor or a member of management with whom you are comfortable.
LOCATION Boston
WEB yearup.org
FOUNDED 2000
STAFF 800
"In Boston, the Fellow will work with our marketing team to help enable the digital communications we use to reach out to prospective students across the country and will get the opportunity to participate directly in jobs training and skills development with our students in our downtown Boston location.”
