As AI reshapes industries and redefines how work gets done, the question of who benefits and who gets left behind has become one of the more pressing challenges to solve in economic mobility. Generation: You Employed, a global nonprofit operating across 17 countries, is working to help make career opportunities more broadly accessible to everyone, no matter their starting point — and they’re increasingly using AI to do it.

Cisco has partnered with Generation since 2023 to help build digital pathways to learning and employment opportunities for job seekers around the world. We’re supporting Generation’s efforts to leverage AI as a tool to connect more people to upskilling opportunities and relevant job placements at a scale that wasn’t previously possible.

Connecting more people to more opportunities through human-centered AI

Generation’s placement process, through which they match graduates to employers who are hiring, is operationally complex — involving thousands of learners, thousands of employers, and program staff across multiple countries. To manage that complexity, Generation built the Employability Module (EM), a centralized digital platform that coordinates the job placement journey for learners and staff alike. With support from Cisco, the organization has been able to develop and expand this platform, including through the integration of an AI-powered job-matching tool in 2024.

Generation’s exciting work with Cisco is part of a portfolio of AI-driven projects they are pioneering with a range of funders to apply AI across their entire education-to-employment lifecycle to better support both their staff and the learners they serve. These tools draw on real-time data to align employer hiring needs with each learner’s skills, program background, and preferences — surfacing better matches more quickly than manual review ever could. Matching efficiency improved by roughly 25%, and the cost per match fell by more than 99%, making the tool viable across all of Generation’s country affiliates without requiring proportional increases in staff or budget.

Generation has also been using AI to make the learning experience itself more adaptive. A Custom Course Generator now produces course outlines, lessons, and assessments in a fraction of the time previously required, while personalized Learning Paths and an AI Learning Companion adjust content to individual learners as they progress, allowing people to move through material at a pace and in a format that works for them.

Beyond internal tools, Generation is also evolving their curriculum to prepare learners for an AI-driven workforce, helping them develop the skills to thrive in roles where AI is becoming integral to the work. Cisco Networking Academy has added another layer. In FY2025 alone, more than 275 learners completed Networking Academy coursework embedded directly in Generation’s Data Analyst program. This integration means learners can gain industry-leading technical credentials without leaving the platform they already know.

Together, these human-centered tools help make learning and job matching faster and more personalized, and they’re designed to complement, not replace, the coaching and community support that have always been central to how Generation works.

Breaking down barriers to learner – and nonprofit – success

Beyond the digital infrastructure, our partnership works to address some of the practical barriers learners face every day. For many Generation learners, their laptop is their primary tool for everything from accessing coursework to submitting job applications to communicating with prospective employers. To keep those devices safe from malware, data loss, and other online threats, we provided 2,000 licenses for Cisco Secure Endpoint to protect devices across the UK, Mexico, Kenya, Colombia, Chile, Singapore, and the United States.

These efforts are designed to work in tandem. By layering our resources — funding, technology, and expertise — the impact is compounding, allowing us to support our partners with a depth of engagement that can lead to more durable, meaningful impact.

Illustrating the impact of tech-enabled career programs

To date, more than 153,000 learners have graduated through Generation’s program offerings. This number paints a clear picture of the program’s reach, but the real proof point is the durability of the careers these graduates build long after they finish their training: nearly 80% of Generation graduates find employment within -180 days of completing their program. More than 20,000 employers worldwide have hired Generation graduates. Among alumni tracked over the longer term, 76% alumni that graduated between two and five years remain employed, 73% are earning above a living wage, 40% are saving money, and 89% feel optimistic about their futures.

Those trends hold across very different geographies and starting points. Consider David, a university student in Kenya whose studies were abruptly halted by pandemic lockdowns. Faced with limited employment options, his fortunes changed when he joined Generation Kenya’s digital freelancing bootcamp, where he learned valuable skills needed for remote work as a virtual assistant. After completing the program, he quickly gained financial independence; he now acts as a mentor to aspiring freelancers.

Isa had spent years working as a translator in Thailand before deciding he wanted to use technology in a more direct way to help people. Generation’s Software Developer program gave him the technical foundation he needed to act on that dream. He has since built a sign language translator app for deaf and hard-of-hearing visitors at a library in Australia, where he now resides.

In the United States, Alex struggled for years to break into the corporate sales world from her small town in West Virginia, despite holding a relevant degree. Through Generation USA’s SaaS Sales Development Representative program, she developed the specific skills and footing she needed to land a tech role shortly after graduating.

Prioritizing purpose in AI-driven career development tools

While public discourse often frames AI as a threat to the job market, what we’ve learned and witnessed through our partnership with Generation suggests a different reality can be possible when we keep humans at the center. Technology is a tool, and at Cisco, we believe its value lies in the opportunity and impact it enables for real people looking to better their own lives. When developed thoughtfully, with people and purpose in mind, AI has the potential to open doors that have long been closed, advance human potential rather than stifle it, and build a future of work that can work for everyone.