Imagine being hand-picked by one of the world’s biggest stars to help him improve the lives of Black youth.
That’s what happened when Careshia Moore was tapped as President and CEO of Usher’s New Look (UNL), a non-profit organization founded in 1999 by Usher Raymond IV and his mother Jonetta Patton to support who were inspired after witnessing the dire narratives of Atlanta teens in a courtroom, per the organization’s website.
Per the organization, UNL has supported more than 50,000 young people gain access to career development opportunities through immersive programs spearheaded by Moore. For instance, UNL most recently partnered with IBM and its IBM SkillsBuild program to offer UNL participants tools AI-focused career readiness training for free.
“We serve more than 1,500 youth per year, and all all the students we serve will have access to SkillsBuild,” Moore tells ESSENCE. “AI is being infused into every part of our lives, particularly the workforce. We want to make sure that our young people are prepared for what’s coming.”
SkillsBuild is a free global platform equipped with learning pathways and content in more than 20 languages that, according to IBM, aims to provide access to key career prep resources to communities that need it the most.
“In the United States, we very much focus on partnerships like Usher’s New Look, where we can to bring the free training, the expertise from IBM, even job shadowing opportunities to the young people in high school, college, and adult learners as well, to make sure that they have these opportunities to move into a good paying job and be able to increase social and economic mobility,” Justina Nixon-Saintil, IBM Vice President & Chief Impact Officer tells ESSENCE.
The news was announced at SXSW EDU, where Lydia Logan, IBM’s VP of Global Education and Workforce Development, participated in a panel discussion on skills-first practices as a catalyst for inclusive socioeconomic mobility, according to a news release.
Usher’s New Look continues to drive the Usher’s vision to empower future generation of leaders, Moore says.
“His ideas are implemented in the work that we do and in fact, he coined this term culture of play that is often heard by our staff, lending to our overall impact. We work hard but we strive to infuse joy into process of problem-solving and addressing opportunity gaps and inequity.”