$10 million to put a career coach in every young person’s pocket, as Ryan Rippel steers NextLadder’s bet on CareerVillage

Ryan Rippel was three years old when his father, who owned a sporting-goods store in Mexico, Missouri, was killed in a car accident.

His mother was left to raise him and his sister alone, and the steady small-town life the family had known turned into something much more fragile.

“Our life changed dramatically,” he has said. “Every member of my family fell down the ladder.”

He has spent most of his career since then working out how families climb back up. Now, as founding CEO of NextLadder Ventures, he is directing a $10 million, two-year grant to CareerVillage.

The San Francisco nonprofit has built an AI career coach for young people.

It offers the kind of guidance that has usually depended on luck: a parent with connections, a mentor who happens to appear, or a school counselor with a free afternoon.

The money comes from an unusual alliance. NextLadder launched last year with more than $1 billion from Steve and Connie Ballmer’s Ballmer Group, the Gates Foundation, Charles Koch’s Stand Together network, the Valhalla Foundation of Intuit cofounder Scott Cook and his wife Signe Ostby, and hedge-fund founder John Overdeck.

These are philanthropists who seldom share a table.

They agreed on one idea: millions of Americans face the moments that decide their financial lives without real help.

They chose Rippel to lead the effort.

He had built the Gates Foundation’s U.S. economic mobility strategy and served as a special assistant to Bill Gates.

Earlier, when his first son, Miles, was born, he went home to Missouri and helped start Upward Momentum, a $30 million collaborative of, by, and for Missourians.

Rippel calls NextLadder’s mission “Navigation Technology”: tools built around a person’s own circumstances that help them through life’s make-or-break moments.

Career navigation is one of the fund’s first three priorities, alongside financial health and access to benefits. Young people show why it matters. Unemployment among Americans aged 20 to 24 is 7.1 percent, compared with 4.1 percent for the workforce overall. Meanwhile, AI keeps changing which skills employers want.

“Too many young people have faced the decisions that will shape careers all on their own,” Rippel says.

He adds that the choices about which skills to build, which credentials to pursue, and which first job to take “can compound over time.”

The other half of the story begins in a living room.

Jared Chung grew up in New York City and went to its public schools.

His family struggled with money, and for him a career meant stability.

His wife, Jennifer Pan, came to the United States as an immigrant.

Her parents spoke no English, so when it came time to find a career she had no network to lean on.

The two met as McKinsey consultants. In 2011 they started CareerVillage at home as a side project.

Chung left consulting two years later to run it full-time.

Their idea was simple and generous.

Any young person could post a question about any career, and working professionals would answer for free.

Think of a high school sophomore who dreams of becoming a neonatal nurse but has never met a nurse. CareerVillage would connect her with someone who could tell her how to get there.

Tens of thousands of volunteers built a library of career advice that has since reached millions of people around the world.

In 2024 the couple’s nonprofit launched Coach, an AI career coach designed with career educators and workforce leaders.

It offers more than 50 activities, from exploring career paths to resume feedback, mock interviews, and cover letters.

So far it has served more than 150,000 people through more than 30 partner institutions in over 120 countries, and 90 percent of users say they feel more ready for their careers.

Chung insists that the technology support human counselors, not replace them.

“We want to make sure that career counselors are in the driver’s seat supporting their learners,” he says.

NextLadder’s grant will pay for the biggest upgrade to Coach since it launched.

It will reach young people where they already are: through text messages, WhatsApp, and widgets for those without a reliable computer, and inside the learning platforms that schools and training programs already use.

Coach will also start reaching out on its own. If a learner sets a goal, such as applying for a job by Friday, Coach will check in at the right moment with preparation and next steps.

And because good intentions are not results, part of the grant will fund randomized trials and independent employment checks to measure whether Coach actually helps people get jobs and earn more.

Rippel and Chung come from different worlds, one from a grieving household in rural Missouri and the other from a struggling family in New York’s public schools.

Both know what it is like to face a decisive turn without a guide.

With this grant they are trying to make sure the next young person doesn’t have to.

“This investment,” Chung says, “brings career confidence to everyone.”