In 2000, while working for a national refugee resettlement organization in New York City, Jane Leu decided that the federally funded system of matching immigrants to careers was a failure. \u201cWe didn\u2019t have an incentive to focus on [the] quality\u201d of the placements, she remembers of her six years of putting highly educated, English-speaking foreigners in low-skill jobs. \u201cIt was just about quantity.\u201d So with no funding, a borrowed laptop computer, and her kitchen table as a makeshift office, Leu started the nonprofit Upwardly Global, whose goal is to help highly skilled immigrants reclaim their careers in the United States. The beginning was rocky. With no funds and no employees, Leu was limited to one-on-one sessions with job seekers, reaching out to foundations for grants, and making employers aware of a hidden talent pool: 1.3 million bilingual workers with degrees and professional experience in every possible white-collar profession. Successes trickled in. By 2002, the organization received its first grant and hired its first paid employee. In 2003, Leu\u2019s work was recognized by the Draper Richards Foundation when she became its first fellow, earning a $300,000 grant. Today, Upwardly Global employs 29 people to serve some 600 job seekers a year.\u2026<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
In 2000, while working for a national refugee resettlement organization in New York City, Jane Leu decided that the federally funded system of matching immigrants to careers was a failure. \u201cWe didn\u2019t have an incentive to focus on [the] quality\u201d of the placements, she remembers of her six years of putting highly educated, English-speaking foreigners […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":5913,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-390751","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/390751","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/5913"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=390751"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/390751\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=390751"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=390751"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=390751"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}