Pittsburgh, PA – March 21, 2022 — New Century Careers today announced it is the recipient of a $200,000 Richard King Mellon Foundation Career Readiness for All Ages Grant. New Century Careers will use the grant to help manufacturing sector workers and companies adopt digital learning.
This Foundation investment area focuses on advancing the education, training, and development of
adults in the region to help all adults gain the skills and training necessary to succeed in the evolving
economy. It also seeks to help build and support people-centered workforce systems, career pathways,
and pipelines to employment that accommodate the many different ways adults map their careers.
The Foundation prioritized submissions that enabled residents to benefit from integrated education and
workforce development systems; build 21st century skills; complete applied, work-based learning; and
develop their own career pathways.
“The mission of New Century Careers parallel’s the Foundation’s goals,” said Neil Ashbaugh, NCC
president and CEO. “We are grateful for this substantial grant to digitize sections of our curriculum to
augment our pre-apprenticeship and credentialing training to better prepare students to adapt to the
technology of the advanced manufacturing workplace.”
NCC will use a platform developed by Rewyndr, a Pittsburgh-based company that provides a mobile web
application for visual work instructions and remote training for workers performing physical work. “The
advantages of the platform will significantly enhance our content, lower the entry-level skill required for
participants, accelerate learning and enable feedback from remote site coaches and trainers,” Ashbaugh
noted.
NCC also will pilot a Digital Learning Alliance to help an extended network of employers begin to adopt
digital training. “SMEs and their workers struggle to adopt and leverage technology for growth,”
Ashbaugh explained. “As NCC’s competence in digital instruction grows, we can also offer support for
member companies to transition their training content to digital formats,” he added.
World-Class Industrial Network (WIN), a project development and management consulting firm with
interdisciplinary experts that enable clients to tackle problems and seize opportunities by looking
beyond traditional solutions, will manage the projects. The WIN Digital Solutions team has collaborated
with Rewyndr for several years.
“Helping our adult workers to compete successfully for high-quality careers in the evolving economy
requires that we find and deploy the most effective ways to deliver skills training,” said Sam Reiman,
director of the Richard King Mellon Foundation. “We are pleased to support New Century Careers in
their efforts to do exactly that.”
