Good morning, Broadsheet readers! New research shows that freelance women face a "glass wall," two women on opposite sides of a women's soccer scandal must find a path forward, and Rachel Romer's Guild moves beyond education. Happy Wednesday.
- Graduation. Eight years ago, Rachel Romer cofounded Guild Education, the education startup that partners with big businesses like Walmart to help their employees acquire new skills. That mission and business opportunity have helped the company become one of the world's highest-valued female-founded startups, with a valuation of $4.4 billion and backed by Bessemer Venture Partners and Cowboy Ventures.
But Romer, Guild's CEO, always saw a path for Guild beyond what traditionally qualifies as education. Today, the company announced, it is dropping "education" from its name to rebrand as Guild and introducing a new career coaching product that aims to help employees advance outside of skills-based training.
"Education and skilling can help people make shifts [in their careers] but so can helping people understand the skills they already have," Romer says.
Guild partners with companies like Walmart, Lowe's, Disney, and Chipotle to manage education benefits ranging from degree programs to short-term certificates and English-as-a-second-language classes. By adding more career services to its marketplace, Guild plans to offer support like résumé writing and job interview preparation.
Many career development programs cater to white-collar workers, but Guild hopes its offering reaches the majority of workers at the businesses it supports who are in hourly or frontline jobs. Its new vertical aims to help a retail worker advance to a supervisory position or a drugstore cashier move into a health care role.
About 5 million workers employed by Guild's clients are eligible to use the Guild platform; about 5 to 10% of employees at Guild's client companies are actively using the education platform at any given time. Guild found that a greater share than that 10% said they'd be interested in a broader career services offering. For companies that use the platform, Guild addresses issues like retention and is even seen by some as a way to avoid laying off workers if their existing positions became obsolete.
Romer has spent the past year-and-a-half incorporating new career coaching services into the Guild platform; she hired a new CMO, Rebecca Biestman, who has steered the company's rebrand.
"We'd always hoped to earn the right to make that reach beyond learning," Romer says, "and be able to help all employees access career and economic opportunities."
Emma Hinchliffe
emma.hinchliffe@fortune.com
@_emmahinchliffe
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