Digital Promise Accelerates Access to Durable Skills and Credentials through Center for Learner Pathway Innovations

Expanded center scales career-connected learning, credentials, and lifelong opportunities.

WASHINGTON, Feb. 11, 2026 /PRNewswire/ -- Digital Promise announced the Center for Learner Pathway Innovations (CLPI), designed to help schools, communities, and education ecosystems co-create unbounded, learner-centered pathways that better connect education to postsecondary success, workforce opportunity, and economic mobility.

CLPI combines Digital Promise's proven community-centered co-research and co-design methods work in supporting more than 350 school districts and partners across the country, and deep expertise in career-connected learning and credentials. Through Collaborative Innovation, CLPI will work to support learners, families, educators, postsecondary institutions, employers, and community partners to identify barriers, design solutions, and scale practices grounded in evidence and lived experience. The Center for Learner Pathway Innovations will be led by Kimberly Smith and Viki Young, Ph.D., who both formerly headed the Center for Inclusive Innovation.

"Too many learners are navigating pathways that lead to roadblocks rather than opportunity," said Jean-Claude Brizard, president and CEO of Digital Promise. "The Center for Learner Pathway Innovations reflects Digital Promise's commitment to putting learners and communities at the center of research and innovation. By co-creating future-forward, adaptive pathways with those most impacted, we can ensure every learner has access to durable skills and postsecondary credentials of value – essential tools for diminishing long-standing earnings gaps and delivering the agency and economic mobility they deserve."

As learners and families navigate a rapidly changing economy shaped by technological disruption, shifting labor markets, and growing questions about the return on investment of education, one-size-fits-all pathways are not meeting the moment. CLPI supports communities in designing pathways to be unbounded – flexible and adaptive learning opportunities that enable learners to build durable skills and earn credentials of value as they navigate school, work, and life.

CLPI envisions a world where learning is continuous and deepens with each experience across connected, flexible pathways that are accelerated, future-forward, responsive, co-created, and credentialed. These pathways make learning visible and portable across classrooms, work-based experiences, credentials, and community contexts, enabling learners to enter, exit, and re-enter education and work as their goals and opportunities evolve.

CLPI's efforts build on Digital Promise's pathway work nationwide with more than 350 school district and education ecosystem partners, including:

• The Cybersecurity Pathways Initiative, which has supported more than 20 districts in co-designing credentialed, career-connected programs in partnership with higher education, industry, and community organizations
• Regional Workforce Development Programs, which have strengthened local talent pipelines by mapping nursing pipelines in the Rio Grande Valley with learners, educators, and industry partners, and integrating AI-competency-based credentials into New York's middle and high school pathways.
• A pioneering micro-credentials platform, which offers more than 800 competency-based micro-credentials from more than 100 issuing partners on a wide range of research-backed skills. With more than 40,000 registered users, Digital Promise has awarded over 24,000 micro-credentials.

These initiatives unify schools, higher education, and industry leaders to forge stronger, cross-sector regional collaboration that bridges the gap between education and employment, ensuring learners advance with credentials of value and connections to real-world opportunities.

To learn more about Digital Promise's Center for Learner Pathway Innovations, visit https://digitalpromise.org/center-for-learner-pathway-innovations/.

About Digital Promise
Digital Promise is a global nonprofit working to expand opportunity for every learner. We work with educators, researchers, technology leaders, and communities to design, investigate, and scale innovations that support learners, especially those who've been historically and systematically excluded. Our vision is that every person engages in powerful learning experiences that lead to a life of well-being, fulfillment, and economic mobility. For more information, visit digitalpromise.org and follow @digitalpromise for updates.

SOURCE Digital Promise