By Jonathan Reid, Program Officer

Recent studies confirm that while today’s students have unbounded talent and potential, 70% of the 1.4 million low-income and first-generation college enrollees each year won’t emerge with a quality first job. These students, who will also earn only 66 cents on the dollar compared to their high-income peers, represent a serious challenge. One that Braven, an ECMC Foundation grantee, hopes to solve.

How Braven Began
Braven’s evolution lies in the personal story of its founder and CEO, Aimée Eubanks Davis. She was born into a very hardworking family that lived in a Black neighborhood on the South Side of Chicago. When her parents’ business took off, Aimée and her sister experienced what it meant to be economically mobile. Yet she also watched as her extended family and friends—whose families worked just as hard as hers—didn’t have the same economic opportunities.

After college, Aimée went into teaching because she wanted to pay it forward into the Black community. She taught sixth grade in New Orleans, and later watched her first group of students struggle after college graduation.

“These young people had done everything right—they followed what every parent, teacher and preacher had told them to do—and nearly every single one of them was struggling to figure out what they were going to do after college,” said Aimée. “I wondered how this was possible and asked myself how I could help young people like this develop the skills, networks and mindsets  to come out strong.”

Passionate about finding a solution, Aimée founded Braven in 2013. Today, with multi-year grant support from ECMC Foundation, Braven is on an incredible growth track to empower a generation of leaders who mirror the demographics of our country.

The Braven Experience
Braven’s goal is to help first-generation college students, students of color, and those from low-income backgrounds come out of college and, within six months of graduation, land a strong first job where they earn the full dollar of their earning potential.

Braven is a career-accelerating experience that typically starts in the sophomore year. In Braven’s core university model, undergraduate students (called Fellows) complete a semester-long, credit-bearing course that helps them gain proficiency in five professional competencies: managing, problem-solving, teamwork, networking and leadership. These Fellows are put into cohorts of 5-8 and led by a leadership coach from one of Braven’s employer partners who supports them through a rigorous semester-long experience where they gain skills, mindsets and networks that lead to paid internships—all of which helps students launch into a strong career after graduation. 

“We realized early on that offering this credit was important,” explained Aimée. “These students don’t have time to do a rigorous career prep experience and develop a network that will catapult them into their future careers and lives outside of coursework. Many work jobs to put themselves through school or help their families.”

After the course concludes, Braven works with these students through graduation—offering personalized attention for whatever they may need most, whether that’s a professional mentor, mock interviews or additional internships.

Not only are Fellows learning new skills, growing their networks, and earning college credit, they are also persisting and completing their postsecondary programs at greater rates than their peers, with 91% of Braven Fellows on time to graduation.  

Head-Spinning Scale & Growth
Braven began as a pilot with 17 students at San José State University. Since then, it has grown to serve 10,000+ Fellows at seven schools across five regions nationwide. Much of that growth has happened since 2021 when Braven received ECMC Foundation’s grant funding.

“Three years ago, we had served about 2,300 students up to that point,” said Aimée. “But with the support of ECMC Foundation, we’ve been able to serve 6,500 students in the past three years alone and we also launched our program at four new schools—Spelman College (our first HBCU partner), Northern Illinois University, CUNY – City College of New York, and Delaware State University (our second HBCU and first public HBCU partner).”

Considering the magnitude of what Braven has accomplished in the last decade, it’s exciting to think about where they will be in the next 10 years.

“In the next decade, I hope that Braven will have undeniably proven that it’s possible to build a new American middle class—and that it’s completely possible for the American Dream to be a promise that’s real for anyone, regardless of the zip code they were born into,” she said. “In the near future, we hope to reach at least 25,000-30,000 students per year—and eventually reach 80,000-100,000 young people—which would make Braven the largest pipeline for helping young people access the American Dream and  put their families on a completely different trajectory economically.”

More Remarkable Results
Today, the Braven experience has made incredible strides toward student success. Here are some highlights:

• Strong job attainment: Over the past 10 years, Braven Fellows were anywhere between 14-22 percentage points above their peers in securing strong full-time jobs worthy of their bachelor’s degree within six months of graduation or enrolled in graduate school.
• Higher salaries: In 2023, 777 Braven Fellows graduated from college and were 17 percentage points above the national average for earning the entire dollar of their earning potential.
• Career-building internships: 60% of Braven students get paid internships compared to 43% of similar students in public universities.
• Outearning their parents: Today, 76% of Braven students outearn their parents’ starting point earnings at their age, positioning students to be more economically mobile than previous generations. This is an improvement over current statistics, which give most students a 50-50 shot at fairing better than their parents.

Transforming the Postsecondary Ecosystem
 Another part of Braven’s immense value is how higher education institutions are leveraging the partnership to improve student outcomes on their campuses.  

“Our partnership with Braven is moving the needle on career preparedness, career success, and socioeconomic mobility for students from all backgrounds,” says immediate-past Rutgers-Newark Chancellor Nancy Cantor. “That impact is starting to ripple across Newark and all the communities our students call home.”

As an organization committed to underserved learners and demonstrated success in improving postsecondary success and career outcomes, ECMC Foundation released a case study featuring Braven’s model. The case study aims to share key learnings with the field and better prepare today’s postsecondary students for success. Read A Model to Help Underserved Learners.