In this episode of the Work in Progress podcast, I'm joined by Sarah Keh, the vice president of corporate social responsibility at Prudential Financial to discuss the company's $180 million committment to helping opportunity youth find a pathway to good jobs and wealth building. Keh sat down with me to discuss the philanthropy in June at the Aspen Ideas Festival.

Opportunity youth are young people between the ages of 16 and 24 who currently are not in formal education or training and are unemployed. There are almost 6 million people who fall into that designation, a number that has grown since the COVID pandemic.

Even before the pandemic, in 2019, Prudential decided to invest $180 million by 2025 in programs that will help young people across the globe gain the right skills to compete for and succeed in quality jobs. 

"The reason why they have come into the situation that there are in...is not because they don't have the will or the desire. It's oftentimes they are born into a situation that doesn't provide them the access to the opportunities that you and I may have had in our upbringing," says Keh.

She says the Prudential believes it is important to look at opportunity youth for their potential and act on it. "We're really focused on this population because we believe these are our future leaders of nonprofits, of businesses, of government, and they just need access to the right resources and tools to provide them the good skill."

Keh says the company has already achieved in five years what it had set out to achieve in six – the $180 million in nonprofit programs that are providing that training and opportunity.

"We've invested in over 20 different organizations globally that have impacted hundreds and thousands of young people. We know even just last year through our impact data that over 500,000 opportunity youth were connected to training opportunities and employment opportunities."

Here is the U.S., those workforce development programs include Year Up, YouthBuild, and Per Scholas.

Keh and I go into details on how these programs are helping and how the can help young people build wealth. We also discuss Prudential's work of a local level in Newark, New Jersey, the headquarters of the company which turns 150 years old next year.

You can listen to the podcast here, or wherever you get your podcasts.

You can also find it on my Work in Progress YouTube channel.

This podcast was recorded at the Aspen Ideas Festival, in collaboration with the Aspen Institute.

Episode 325: Sarah Keh, VP Corporate Social Responsibility, Prudential FinancialHost & Executive Producer: Ramona Schindelheim, Editor-in-Chief, WorkingNationProducer: Larry BuhlTheme Music: Composed by Lee Rosevere and licensed under CC by 4Transcript: Download the transcript for this episode hereWork in Progress Podcast: Catch up on previous episodes here