Learning & Earning

Corinne Spears is a Principal at Achieve Partners , a middle-market private equity firm investing in the future of learning and earning. At Achieve, she leads the research and sourcing efforts for cloud, cybersecurity, and data.? Corinne is also an advisory board member for UCLA Extension and a mentor for TechStars .

Previously, Corinne was a consultant with McKinsey & Company , where she served private and social sector clients in retail, K-12 education, workforce development, and healthcare. During her time at McKinsey, Corinne spent a year with Generation , a non-profit founded by McKinsey, to recruit, place, and train opportunity youth in career-launching jobs with now over 90,000 graduates. While at Generation, Corinne helped develop Generation’s first global digital program and launched new programs in Dallas and Jacksonville. At her alma mater, USC, she graduated first in her major and was a founding member of Conversations in Ethics , an educational forum for reasoned, informed, and relevant discussion of engineering ethics.

#FridayFutures Highlight 30: Corinne Spears, Principal - Achieve Partners

When did you realize that education was your purpose, and how did you decide to prioritize it?

My interest in education started early, shaped by my family's several moves around the U.S. I saw firsthand how a neighborhood or zip code could drastically alter educational opportunities. This reality was frustrating and confusing as a young student and sparked my passion for impact, specifically education. I took jobs in high school related to education, collaborated with non-profits in college, and dedicated my free days to working in LA's public school system. For the last twenty years or so, I have been working towards a more equitable education system.?

Through these early experiences, I became disgruntled with how significant of a job it is to fix, or even narrow, the education disparities in K-12. It is just such a complex system, and while I am proud to be working for a company now that heavily invests in companies that are supporting this systemic change, I personally gravitate towards higher education and career training. Regardless of where you grew up, and where you went to elementary school, if you can find the right pathway to a great first job, it changes the game.?

Senior year, I received offers to join Teach for America or McKinsey and ultimately ended up joining McKinsey with the hopes of learning a lot in two years before pursuing my goal of improving workforce pathways. As I hoped, I spent two years learning and growing, working across industries and in big and small towns. After two years, I joined Generation, an impact initiative focused on providing career training and job placement for un and underemployed young adults that spun out of McKinsey. Professionally, that year was among the most challenging, but it cemented my passion for the sector. One persistent hurdle at Generation, a non-profit, was the relentless quest for funding. Despite the tangible impact of our work, we often found ourselves seeking new grants for operational sustainability. By the end of my tenure, I began exploring more sustainable business models.

I never dreamed of being able to marry my passion for education with my deep-rooted interest in investing and every day, I am grateful to have landed in a job that does just that. My dad's multifaceted career as an investor, entrepreneur, and executive nurtured my curiosity in both private and public market investments from a young age. I fondly recall when, at six or seven, he provided me with a "seed" investment to choose a stock. We fortuitously invested in Microsoft and it's been a thrill to watch its stock price rise over the past 25 years. Admittedly, that pick was more luck than it was an informed investment decision at the age of seven, but it served as an invaluable early lesson. My parents instilled in us conservative financial principles, and someday, I'll share the amusing story of their attempt to teach us the pitfalls of gambling.

This early exposure to the world of investing, coupled with my passion for education, has enabled me to align my interests purposefully. It has motivated me to seek significant opportunities that integrate education and investing, with the aim of fostering a more equitable and accessible educational landscape for all. I am enthusiastic about the prospects of continuing this work to make education and employment opportunities more accessible and inclusive for everyone.

What’s the most exciting thing you’ve learned you’d want others to know?

There's a pronounced skills gap in the United States, stemming from a mismatch between traditional classroom teachings and the actual requirements of the job market. While some educational institutions are adapting, the broader system is lagging behind. Encouragingly, a paradigm shift is underway: securing a quality first job, rather than merely obtaining a higher education degree, is becoming the new passport to the middle class. Progressive employers are prioritizing a candidate's skills over their alma mater. Additionally, more companies recognize the merit of investing in their workforce, offering apprenticeships and on-the-job training. While there's significant ground to cover, the glaring skills gap has compelled numerous employers and training initiatives to take proactive measures, diminishing the need for learners to take on paralyzing student debt and spend four years in an ivory tower.?

What person and company are inspiring you right now?

April Hansen immediately springs to mind when I think of influential leaders. Her journey began as an RN at a nurse staffing agency. Noticing that most of these agencies were managed by individuals with little to no nursing or patient-care experience, she felt a profound disconnect. Driven by this realization, she founded her own company dedicated to placing nurses throughout the U.S., leveraging her own experience as an RN.?

She sold that company and rose to became the Chief Revenue Officer at one of the fastest growing and premium healthcare workforce solution companies. A staunch advocate for pursuing passion in one's career, April has shared invaluable advice that has shaped my career. She is a constant beacon of inspiration and now a dear friend.?

As for companies, I would like to highlight one of Achieve Partners ’ portfolio companies, Cloud for Good , to illustrate our targeted strategy addressing today’s evolving talent market. Cloud for Good is a salesforce consultancy serving higher education institutions and nonprofit organizations. While they've experienced significant growth, meeting their talent requirements has became increasingly challenging. The entire Salesforce ecosystem competes for a limited talent pool, escalating costs, and stunting growth potential.

Two years ago, we invested in Cloud for Good and helped create the first Salesforce registered apprenticeship unlocking the potential of often overlooked talent. Instead of competing with the entire industry to hire seasoned consultants at $150,000 to $200,000, we target underemployed recent graduates struggling to land their first job. On day 1, we offer them competitive pay, benefits, and three months of training with a clear path to earning six figures within two years. It’s a win for Cloud for Good as they can now sustainably source new talent, it’s a win for job seekers, and it’s a win for Cloud for Good’s customers who now have access to a new source of talent.?

We've implemented this approach across various sectors, such as workday, cybersecurity, healthcare IT, and behavioral therapy. We're actively scouting opportunities in related fields to expand this model further.

What’s your hot take or unpopular opinion about the future of education and upskilling?

The significance of college education is diminishing, rendering the outdated and unrealistic "college-for-all" narrative irrelevant. Outdated programs and a soaring cost, which has doubled over inflation in the last four decades, make the traditional college route increasingly unsustainable. While many higher education institutions do yield positive outcomes, mandating all high school graduates to follow this path is counterproductive for both students and employers.

Fortunately, there are diverse alternative routes available. Apprenticeships, although currently small in scale, are gaining traction. Boot camps and specialized training programs offer focused education, and finding employers committed to investing in their workforce, which all of our portfolio companies stand for, can be a viable option. Some of the most promising candidates we encounter lack a college degree. And as we anticipate the future workforce needs, it's illogical to assume that college will continue to play a pivotal role.

What's your perspective on the controversial topics of universal basic income, the role of AI, and income share agreements?

For those unfamiliar, income share agreements, or ISAs, are contracts between students and training or educational institutions to cover a portion or the entire cost of the tuition. In return, students commit to paying a percentage of their post-graduation income for a predetermined period. ISAs present a compelling approach to aligning the incentives of students and programs. However, their momentum has waned in recent years. Initially, the absence of regulation attracted bad actors and by the time legislation caught up, it was too little too late and today, they are largely defunct.?

I think a more interesting model is employer-pay. If there is a positive ROI on upskilling, employers should be, and in many cases, are willing to pay for it. Looking at what’s to come over the next ten years, I think this employer-pay model is much more likely to gain momentum than other creative student-pay models, like ISAs.?

On AI: AI's influence will undoubtedly reshape how we work and learn, urging us to reevaluate and adapt our approaches to education and employment, but bigger questions remain: how and when?

There is a wide range of opinions when trying to answer these questions. On one end, we have perspectives from industry giants like IBM and McKinsey. IBM asserts, "AI won't replace people, but people who use AI will replace those who don't," while McKinsey predicts that AI will be integrated into just one in four jobs in the U.S. over the next five years. Conversely, the World Economic Forum issues a stark warning, projecting 83 million job losses in the same timeframe due to AI and automation.

AI undeniably possesses the potential to profoundly transform our workforce. Yet, when examining the immediate impact over the next five years, McKinsey and IBM appear to grasp the demands of workforce needs more accurately. Regardless of who proves correct, the skills gap will likely widen before it begins to narrow.?

The future of career launch and socioeconomic mobility hinges on adaptable and relevant pathways, such as apprenticeships, employer-led training initiatives, and more flexible career and technical education models. These pathways are better suited to align with the rapid shifts AI will introduce, offering individuals the necessary skills and flexibility to thrive in an AI-driven world.

How do you balance investor returns with ethical concerns, such as capping returns and setting boundaries, especially in cases where excessive returns, like 10x, are seen as problematic?

There is a misperception that impact means sacrificing returns, especially in the context of private equity and VC funds. However, over the past decade, robust research has underscored the financial and social effectiveness of impact investing. Despite these insights, impact funds continue to face challenges in persuading prospective LPs to embrace both impact and financial objectives. Significant progress has been made in the last decade, and with each year, this perspective is gaining broader acceptance.

For my fund, Achieve, we are, first and foremost a private equity firm with fiduciary duties focused on maximizing returns. But, beyond our financial goals, our team is passionately dedicated to fostering positive impact in education and the workforce. Thankfully, our Limited Partners (LPs) share this dedication and as a result, every investment decision involves a meticulous evaluation of the return profile along with a multitude of other non-financial considerations.?

At Achieve, we employ distinct investment strategies that inherently aims for positive societal change while also maximizing returns, and believe they carry a symbiotic relationship. For us, each newly trained apprentice represents a transformed life, an additional end customer served, and an increase in revenue and profit for our portfolio company that invested in training and credentialing. Remarkably, two-thirds of our apprentices hail from underrepresented communities, significantly surpassing the current representation in tech. Our portfolio companies realize they don’t have to choose between transforming lives and generating profit; the two go hand in hand.

So for us, we don't hesitate to target a 10x return. Achieving such a return signifies our capacity to provide ten times as many underemployed, overlooked, and underrepresented job seekers with meaningful employment. It also means equipping our clients with a talent base they hadn’t tapped into before, thus serving ten times more customers.

Balancing impact, ethical concerns, and financial returns varies across funds. We firmly believe that prioritizing the well-being of job seekers and students constitutes the best long-term approach. We consistently aim to be on the right side of history and this mindset has yet to clash with our ability to achieve top-quintile returns.?

Do you have advice or resources for women in various life stages considering career changes and upskilling, including those in their mid-twenties, mothers returning to work, and late-career professionals seeking to reinvent themselves?

In today's workforce, the opportunity to pursue creative and authentic careers while earning a good income is a privilege that was hard to come by perhaps 15-20 years ago. Although there is still room for improvement, work environments have become more accommodating, flexible, and accepting.

I advise investing time upfront in discovering the intersection of your passions and skills. Not every artist can sustain a living solely as an artist, but every aspiring artist possesses competencies, preferences, and values that can align with various roles in the workforce. Immersing yourself in a career you love can be incredibly fulfilling. It doesn't always have to be the industry or role you initially dreamed of; you might find motivation in people, your lifestyle, or flexibility. It's perfectly fine if your job doesn't feel like you're saving the world; finding joy in your work and enabling you to pursue other passions and dreams is a victory. While our generation often emphasizes aligning work with passion, it's not always realistic for everyone and might come at the cost of something else important to you.

For those later in their careers, embracing your age is essential. With one-quarter of the U.S. workforce over the age of 55, this demographic holds a wealth of experience and wisdom that can be transferred into any new job. Decades of honing communication, collaboration, and leadership skills are invaluable assets.

To moms re-entering the workforce, whether you've been out for 6 months or 20 years, remember that you have been "working" in different capacities. Leverage the skills you've developed: problem-solving, time management, prioritization, effective communication, and delegation. Many companies recognize the challenges faced by parents returning to work and offer programs like "returnships ," paid internships tailored for mid-career parents seeking to re-enter the workforce. Companies such as Goldman Sachs, Hubspot, Amazon, and JPMorgan Chase run these programs. Additionally, platforms like The Mom Project connect parents returning to work with suitable job opportunities.

Finding supportive employers can make a significant difference. If you're considering stepping into motherhood in the next three to five years, I encourage you to seek a supportive working environment now. As a new mom, I've been fortunate to have the necessary support and flexibility to continue doing what I love at work while fulfilling my new role as a parent.

How can we stay in touch with you?

LinkedIn has been an incredibly powerful tool for me, and I'd love to stay connected there. I'm always energized by the opportunity to meet new people and explore new ideas. So please feel free to reach out for direct conversations.

As for the work I’ve been doing at Achieve Partners, one of our founders releases a newsletter every other week called Gap Letter . This newsletter delves into the latest ideas and developments related to closing the skills gap. If this is an area of interest to you, I highly recommend following it. The author, Ryan Craig, is exceptionally insightful and strikes a perfect balance between showcasing progressive ideas and addressing the challenges and bottlenecks in today's labor market. It's a valuable resource for anyone looking to stay informed.

Have thoughts on this week’s topic or question for me or Corinne? Post your thoughts in the comment section. Until next week.??

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