Why is Smart Futures necessary?

Smart Futures exists because absent from our education system is a curriculum-embedded connection to the real world — how a student’s skills, knowledge, interests, values and personality are inherently linked to opportunities that will be available to them when they leave school.

Our Vision

Smart Futures’ approach is to help teachers inject a career focus in within the classroom to help motivate and guide student learning. Smart Futures’ programs add relevance to academics. Career-focused education correlates education to jobs, jobs to wages, and wages to opportunities. Career education provides students with a roadmap motivated by realistic goals.

Our Strategy

Through solid business planning, the cultivation of strategic partnerships, and ongoing sustainability planning, Smart Futures engages in regional program implementation that can grow to have ongoing statewide impact. Smart Futures maintains direct relationships with our Commonwealth’s many schools, community-based organizations, Workforce Investment Boards, Intermediate Units, and employers.Now that our programs are fully established in Pennsylvania, Smart Futures is committed to making programming available to educators nationwide.

How we do it

Our programs are generally piloted locally with the support of charitable funding and then expanded and sustained through school fees and corporate contributions.

Conclusion

• Smart Futures' vision is that every student graduating from a Pennsylvania high school is prepared for college and career success.
• Smart Futures' mission is to provide Pennsylvania’s educators with innovative career education resources that help students “get real” – about who they are, where they are going, and how to get there.
• Smart Futures is now committed to making its programs available to educators nationwide.

Smart Futures is...

David Mosey
Executive Director

Diane Duncan
Administrative Assistant

Sara Singh
Lead Programmer