Today, the Detroit Regional Chamber’s TalentEd program announced a $3.375 million grant from Ballmer Group, which will be used to strengthen career preparation programs and better connect students to the career options that await them in the Detroit Region.
Detroit Regional Chamber’s TalentEd Receives Over $3M in Funding From Ballmer Group to Support Student-to-Career Pipeline
March 13, 2025
“With this new funding, TalentEd is poised to advance systems change that will better ensure students are successfully accessing and completing post-high school education and work-based learning experiences that will result in meaningful employment. This includes a deep focus on health care pathways through intensive career exposure at the K-12 level, paired with college success and work-based learning strategies for college students pursuing health care majors to support this critical economic sector. Our team is grateful for Ballmer Group’s ongoing partnership in this essential growth.”
– Greg Handel, Vice President of TalentEd, Detroit Regional Chamber
Learn more about the new funding in the news release below.
March 13, 2025
The Detroit Regional Chamber’s TalentEd program announced today a $3.375 million grant from Ballmer Group. This new funding will strengthen career preparation programs and better connect students to the career options that await them in the Detroit Region.
Another key component of this work is removing barriers that often prevent or discourage students from earning credentials that lead to good-paying jobs like:
- Misinformation about the cost and value of college
- Difficulty navigating the transition to college the summer after high school
- Disadvantages that come with their parents having not attended college compared to peers’ whose parents did
“With this new funding, TalentEd is poised to advance systems change that will better ensure students are successfully accessing and completing post-high school education and work-based learning experiences that will result in meaningful employment,” said Greg Handel, Vice President of TalentEd at the Chamber. “This includes a deep focus on health care pathways through intensive career exposure at the K-12 level, paired with college success and work-based learning strategies for college students pursuing health care majors to support this critical economic sector. Our team is grateful for Ballmer Group’s ongoing partnership in this essential growth.”
Funding from the Ballmer Group will support four areas of focus:
- Systems change through collaborating with the business and education leaders who comprise the Detroit Regional Talent Compact
- Providing coaching to students to mitigate “summer melt” and help them prepare to enter college in the fall
- Growing employer engagement in education and talent initiatives, including an initiative to educate students on health care careers
- Expanding messaging, data collection, and storytelling to communicate the Chamber’s impact and the value of college
This funding builds upon a previous grant from the Ballmer Group that created significant progress toward TalentEd’s goals to increase post-high school educational attainment to 60% and reduce the racial equity attainment gap by half by 2030. Over the course of the previous three-year grant, in partnership with the Detroit College Access Network, more than 4,000 students participated in the collaborative Summer Melt and Summer Bridge programs, which provide coaching to students to help them navigate the critical steps they must take over the summer months to prepare for college.
Further, the funding enabled the Chamber to partner with more than 40 employers to provide career exposure and readiness activities to more than 1,300 students. This included a mix of virtual and in-person events focused on networking, professional skill-building, and understanding the day-in-the-life of employees across sectors and industries.