American Student Assistance Announces New Career Readiness Tasks for Its Free EvolveMe Platform, Empowering Young People to Explore, Test and Try Careers That Match Their Strengths and Interests

BOSTON, Oct. 16, 2025 /PRNewswire/ -- American Student Assistance® (ASA), a national nonprofit changing the way kids learn about careers and prepare for their futures, today announced 20 new career exploration, skill-building, and career experimentation tasks for its award-winning EvolveMe® digital experience. The new activities are powered by existing partner organizations ESAI, NAF, Cirkled In, Tallo, REACH Pathways/Chicago Scholars, and Wicked Saints. ASA partners with more than 50 innovative organizations, including some with AI-driven technologies that share its goal of helping prepare middle and high school students for postsecondary education and career readiness. With more than two million users, EvolveMe's highly engaging learn and earn exercises have a completion rate of more than 80 percent and an average task rating of 4.7 out of 5.

"We know from our extensive work and research that many young people are interested in opportunities to connect what they learn in the classroom to real-world experiences. EvolveMe's career-connected learning activities, powered by our growing partner ecosystem, enable millions of teens to take the necessary steps that will position them to make informed, confident decisions on the path that's right for them after high school," said Julie Lammers, President and CEO, ASA.

EvolveMe enables teens to discover and engage in activities including virtual internships, AI-powered career coaching, mock job interviews, coding courses, and virtual career mentorships, and more; and develop transferable skills they can apply to any job. These tasks involve many different engaging formats, such as watching videos and taking quizzes, playing games, and completing mini-lessons or quests. For tasks completed, teens earn points they can redeem for gift cards to their favorite retail, restaurant, and entertainment brands. They can also track their progress and accomplishments through fun and dynamic visuals. For instance, they can see their personal tree grow as it sprouts unique flowers and creatures each time they complete a task.

Existing EvolveMe Partners Investing in New Tasks include the following:

• Fresh off Shark Tank, ESAI launched three new tasks on EvolveMe: Get Matched with Extracurriculars, Get Matched with Scholarships, and Tell Your Story with Numbers, all designed to drive career navigation with accessible business acumen, social capital, and guidance on finding funding. "I walked into the Tank with a mission: make college admissions less about who you know or how much money you have, and more about who you are. That's the same drive that brings us to EvolveMe to reach users at scale across the country to serve urban and rural youth all engaged in their own version of Shark Tank, as they "step into the tank" under pressure to figure out life," said Founder and CEO Julia Dixon.
  
  
• For 45 years, NAF has led a movement for immersive, career-focused teaching and work-based learning in high school, which includes digital work-based learning challenges with cash prizes on their popular platform KnoPro.org. Launching on EvolveMe in 2024, NAF Vice President of Product & Innovation, Lindsey Dixon, said, "NAF continues to be excited about our partnership and collaboration with ASA's EvolveMe platform and KnoPro. As the new school year begins, we look forward to reaching even more students and offering new Skillbuilders that will challenge them, as well as give them a chance to win a $100 cash prize daily to support their future goals! In just 10 minutes or less, students can also sharpen essential "Future Ready Skills" such as problem solving, initiative and self-direction, social awareness, and more, while boosting their resumes. It is truly a win-win all-around!" New tasks from NAF include: Dream Your Meme, The Future of AI Rests on Your Face, and Green Innovations: Building a Sustainable Future in Hospitality. Today, KnoPro has supported more than 30,000 students, delivering nearly $230,000 in total prizes.
  
  
• Cirkled In originally partnered with EvolveMe to empower Gen Z students across K–20 to showcase their full potential beyond academics through holistic portfolios—connecting them to colleges, internships, and more. Now, Cirkled In is expanding its offerings on EvolveMe by integrating its No-Sweat Scholarship, along with national scholarship database and newly launched resource library. Like the jobs and internships portal, the scholarship database is updated daily, giving instant access to tens of millions of dollars in funding. The Gen Z–friendly resource library spans nine core pillars, addressing real student questions from resumes and applications to job interviews and mental health. Through three new tasks on EvolveMe – Scholarships that Fit You, Discover College Options That Fit You, and Find Your Way Through College & Careers—students can take real, actionable steps to secure funding, chart their college journey, and launch their future with confidence—all in one place. "Students shouldn't have to hop from one platform to the next to find opportunities," said Reetu Gupta, CEO and Co-Founder of Cirkled In. "Our goal is to bring everything students need—portfolios, scholarships, internships, college options, and practical resources—into one connected ecosystem while bringing everyone invested in student success onto the platform. Through our partnership with EvolveMe, we're removing barriers and giving every student a clear, supported pathway to their future."
  
  
• Through tasks like Turn Your Art Into A Career and What Could You Build for a Living?, Tallo is connecting with teens through their passions, transforming creative exploration into career readiness. By meeting young people where they are—through art, building, and creative expression—Tallo helps them discover how their skills and interests can translate into meaningful career pathways. With access to more than 1,800 careers to explore, over 300,000 courses and certifications, and over 500,000 entry-level jobs and internships, Tallo provides the bridge from creative curiosity to career confidence. "As an artist myself, I know how powerful it is when someone helps you see the value of your creativity in the world of work," said Allison Danielsen, CEO, Tallo. "These new tasks on EvolveMe tap into teens' creative energy and help them see the direct connection between their interests and real career possibilities. When we can show a student who loves to draw that there are dozens of careers in design, architecture, or digital media, or help someone who enjoys building things discover engineering or skilled trades pathways, we're opening doors to futures they may never have considered. By partnering with ASA's EvolveMe, we're reaching teens at the perfect moment when they're forming their sense of what's possible for their futures."
  
  
• REACH Pathways and Chicago Scholars are expanding their partnership with EvolveMe to deliver seven new youth-designed tasks, continuing their mission to provide under-resourced students with access to the skills needed for college and career success. Grounded in Chicago Scholars' 30-year legacy of supporting first-generation students and REACH's vision of a world where students from every ZIP code can lead and reach their dreams, the new tasks include two college access experiences focused on demystifying the college selection process and five interactive AI Quests: Navigating the AI Revolution and Your Career, AI vs. Human Intelligence, How to Impress your Boss, Ethical AI, and Building AI Agents for Work. "Our work is about unlocking opportunities for the students who too often get left out of the future of work," said Brooke McKean, President and Co-CEO of REACH Pathways. "With an 88 percent completion rate on our previous EvolveMe tasks, we're thrilled to build on that momentum and deliver even more personalized, gamified experiences that help young people grow the skills they need to thrive."
  
  
• With Dive Into Fantasy and Improve Your Reality, Wicked Saints adds the world's first adventure-activism game called World Reborn to EvolveMe. It is an interactive story game that tackles mental health, fosters healthy relationships, and activates young people to positively impact people and the planet with real-world quests that make real-life impact. World Reborn is the first story game that will reveal players' real-life "character strengths" and help players use them to better their reality. The game is backed by behavioral science, positive psychology, and is designed to boost self-belief. Jessica Murrey, Co-Founder and CEO of Wicked Saints shared, "We wholeheartedly agree with ASA's mission to empower youth to be more confident and ready to realize the future they envision. We do it through gameplay, and being featured in ASA's EvolveMe platform has helped us gather key learnings to make this vision a reality. As a company that prioritizes players, EvolveMe allows us to hear directly from young people whom we're empowering to change the world through our game."
  
  
•  Vero Learning, the workforce intelligence infrastructure for predictive, equitable hiring and long-term retention, has launched its second integration on EvolveMe. Building on strong traction with more than 30,000 learners engaged and an industry-leading 95 percent completion rate on pre-employment assessments, the new Future Builder task gives learners a personalized, predictive view of how to grow from their first job into long-term career pathways across industries such as retail, healthcare, logistics, manufacturing, IT, and green tech. For learners, it's more than job matching — it's confidence, belonging, and a clear sense of what's possible for their future. For employers, it's a stronger, more prepared pipeline of overlooked talent ready to succeed and stay. But more than that, Future Builder is the foundation of a new workforce architecture — one where equity is built in, predictive clarity is expected, and opportunity is no longer left up to chance. Chrissybil Boulin, Founder & CEO of Vero Learning, said: "When a young person sees their future clearly, they don't just plan differently — they believe differently. Our mission is to make that belief inevitable. Partnering with ASA ensures that Future Builder reaches learners at scale. Together, we're ending the guessing game in hiring and giving every learner a blueprint to rise."

About American Student Assistance® (ASA)
American Student Assistance® (ASA) is a national nonprofit at the forefront of changing the way kids learn about careers and prepare for their futures through access to career readiness information and experiences for all. ASA helps middle and high school students to know themselves—their strengths and their interests— and understand their education and career options so that they can make informed decisions. ASA fulfills its mission–in schools and beyond the classroom–by providing free digital experiences, including Futurescape® and EvolveMe®, directly to millions of students, and through advocacy, impact investing, research, thought leadership, and philanthropic support for educators, intermediaries, and others. ASA fosters a generation of confident, crisis-proof young people who are ready for whatever path comes next after high school. To learn more about ASA, visit www.asa.org/about-asa.

SOURCE American Student Assistance (ASA)