UNIVERSITY INITIATIVE
Braving the Odds
By Julia Halprin Jackson
San José State’s partnership with the career development nonprofit Braven creates opportunities for Spartans, regardless of major, background or industry.
Although Elaine Collins retired from her role as associate dean for San José State University’s College of Science in 2021, each year she returns to campus to teach a course that holds a special place in her heart.
Since 2015, Collins co-developed and has taught UNVS-101, a Leadership Accelerator class offered in partnership with Braven, a national nonprofit that empowers underrepresented students by providing them with the skills, networks, experiences and confidence to transition from higher education to successful first jobs. In addition to weekly lessons, Braven pairs students with volunteer leadership coaches who work in a variety of industries, offering unique mentorship for students of all majors.
Collins integrated the nonprofit’s curriculum into an SJSU course not long after Braven was founded, making SJSU its founding university partner. Since then, the SJSU-Braven partnership has yielded several cohorts of Spartans armed and ready to jump start their careers, many of them returning to serve as coaches themselves.
Elaine Collins
Braven provides opportunities for students and recent alumni to connect and share ideas. Photo courtesy of Braven.
Juan Macias
Braven’s success rate over its near-decade run is impressive. According to its 2023 Jobs Report, of the 254 Braven Fellows who graduated from San José State in 2022, four out of five have secured quality or pathway jobs. Braven Fellows had a 90% on-time graduation rate compared to about 70% of their peers nationally.
Much of Braven’s success is attributable not only to the leadership coaching model, but also to the nonprofit’s message of instilling students to embrace and own their narratives. Each semester, Collins has the opportunity to listen in on storytelling workshops as students practice presenting themselves to the world. Without fail, their stories bring her to tears.
“Sometimes students from underrepresented backgrounds feel ashamed of their stories, and they don’t want people to know where they’re from,” she says. “They see their stories as liabilities instead of as assets. They practice telling their stories with leadership coaches, and I’m walking around listening to people tell their stories of growing up in foster care or arriving at San José State fresh from refugee camps. The students always astound me with their strength.”
Software developer Juan Macias, ’20 Software Engineering, agrees. Macias first encountered Braven when he enrolled in the Accelerator course as an undergraduate, and was so inspired by his cohort and coach that he accepted an internship through the nonprofit. Despite graduating at the height of the COVID-19 pandemic, his experience equipped him well to transition into the job market.
“The mindset that I went into Braven with was, what more can this teach me that I don’t already know? It’s not just the curriculum that’s helpful. It’s the connections that you make through Braven that can completely change the trajectory of where you want to go, and make everything so much more attainable.”
— Juan Macias
“The mindset that I went into Braven with was, what more can this teach me that I don’t already know?” he says. “It’s not just the curriculum that’s helpful. It’s the connections that you make through Braven that can completely change the trajectory of where you want to go, and make everything so much more attainable.”
The crux of the Accelerator course is a capstone project in which local companies share real-world problems with students and challenge them to present potential solutions. The resulting competition is a win-win for students and companies, Macias says, because students are offered the rare chance to audition big ideas for businesses.
“From my conversations with people in the industry who are recruiters at tech companies, I’ve heard from a lot of people that they like San José State because people are coming in ready to work; they’re hungry,” says Macias. “San José State students really want to prove themselves, but that hunger itself isn’t enough to get their foot in the door. But Braven is the link here; it bridges that gap and helps people take that hunger and translate it into a position.”
Want to learn more?
Learn more about Braven's Bay Area chapter
View Braven's 2023 Jobs Report and 2023 Bay Area Impact Report
Top photo courtesy of Braven
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