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Craft Education

Connecting Workforce Training to Licensed Careers

Mallory Dwinal Palisch, Craft Education | HR Tech Outlook | Workforce Education Data Platform of the YearMallory Dwinal Palisch, President
Employers in the care economy invest heavily in training workers for essential roles, but training alone is often not enough to address workforce shortages. High-demand positions in hospitals, schools, and state agencies, including nurses, teachers, and social workers, require accredited degrees and state licensure in addition to workplace experience. When these roles remain unfilled, organizations face operational strain, affecting hospital capacity, classroom staffing, and community services. Yet many employers lack a practical pathway to connect workforce training with the credentials needed for licensed practice.

Craft Education focuses on closing that gap by converting employer-led training into apprenticeship degree pathways that lead directly to licensure. Through its platform and workforce solutions, the company helps employers create structured programs in which workers continue to gain on-the-job experience while progressing toward accredited credentials.

“We are like a Rosetta Stone, translating between apprenticeship and higher education systems that were never designed to work together,” says Mallory Dwinal Palisch, president.

While higher education and apprenticeship systems in the U.S. operate under separate frameworks, Craft aligns workplace learning with Department of Labor apprenticeship requirements, degree pathways, and funding opportunities. The company also helps employers coordinate multiple funding streams, including Title IV education aid, Workforce Innovation and Opportunity Act programs, State Apprenticeship Expansion Funds, and Perkins Career and Technical Education dollars. This approach enables organizations to focus on developing local talent while reducing costs associated with workforce shortages and strengthening the ROI of workforce development.

  • We are like a Rosetta Stone, translating between apprenticeship and higher education systems that were never designed to work together.

Craft supports organizations through two service tiers that reduce administrative burden. Larger organizations like hospital systems and school districts can use the completely free technological platform if they have the internal capacity to design apprenticeship pathways, build higher-education partnerships, and coordinate federal funding sources. Smaller organizations that lack this capacity can rely on the company’s in-house experts to act as fractional administrators and support apprenticeship program management in exchange for a share of the funding they help unlock.

The dual service model removes the expertise and bandwidth barrier that could prevent employers from implementing apprenticeship-to-licensure programs at scale. The platform transforms data collected through compliance and training processes into real-time insights. These insights show which learning modules are effective, where learners struggle, and where pipeline breakdowns occur. Employers can use them to continuously refine training programs and improve outcomes by tracking reductions in vacancies, improved retention, and increased operational capacity.

Craft’s approach centers on developing talent already present within local communities. A certified nursing assistant can progress toward becoming a registered nurse, and a paraprofessional can become a licensed teacher while earning income without leaving the workforce or taking on significant student debt. By the time participants complete these pathways, they enter licensed roles with years of practical experience in the same schools, hospitals, and care settings where they continue to serve.

As employers in these sectors often prefer practitioners with substantial prior experience, the model strengthens alignment between workforce development and community needs. Many learners also come from the same communities they serve, bringing shared language and lived experience that can strengthen patient care and learning outcomes. For HR and workforce leaders, the company’s platform and workforce solutions provide a turnkey approach that simplifies the complexity traditionally associated with apprenticeship programs.

Recognized as the Workforce Education Data Platform of the Year, Craft continues to support hospitals, schools, and state agencies in addressing licensed workforce shortages. By connecting employer-led training, apprenticeship requirements, accredited education, and funding opportunities, the company converts local talent into qualified professionals ready for critical roles. In doing so, it helps organizations build licensed talent pathways, offset training costs, and reduce the operational impact of workforce vacancies.

Deep Dive

Choosing Workforce Education Data Platforms That Prove Progress

Workforce education technology is being judged less by the promise of access and more by its ability to connect training to credentialed employment. Employers in care-focused sectors face a hard constraint: many critical roles cannot be filled through short-term instruction alone. A teacher, nurse, surgical technologist or social worker may need workplace experience, but the role also depends on degree attainment and licensure evidence. Executives evaluating data platforms should look for systems that can join those requirements without forcing already stretched teams to manage academic, workforce, funding and compliance workflows separately. The central challenge is translation. College accreditation, financial aid, registered apprenticeship rules and workforce funding have developed through different agencies and reporting cultures. A useful platform cannot merely store learner records; it has to make the same work-based experience legible to universities, labor agencies, funders and employers. That means tracking hours, competencies, approvals and progress in a way that can support academic credit, apprenticeship compliance, funding claims and audit review. For buyers, the practical test is whether the system reduces administrative effort while increasing the credibility of the record. Data quality also matters because workforce education programs are now expected to prove more than participation. Hospitals, school systems and public agencies need to understand whether pathways are filling vacancies, reducing churn, preserving service capacity and improving learner mobility. Good reporting should show where participants are progressing, where a training segment is losing people and which pathway changes are improving outcomes. Executives also need evidence that can travel across partners. A spreadsheet may describe activity inside one organization, but it rarely gives a university, funder, agency reviewer and employer the same trusted view of learner progress. Dashboards that only count enrollment leave leaders without the evidence needed to protect budget, sustain partnerships, refine training and improve program design. The strongest platforms also respect the human purpose behind the data. Earn-and-learn pathways work best when they help existing employees move into licensed roles without leaving the workforce or taking on heavy debt. That requires careful coordination between the learner’s job, academic pathway, employer staffing needs and public funding rules. Technology should not turn those moving parts into paperwork. It should give leaders a disciplined way to see whether local talent is becoming qualified talent, whether the program is producing ready practitioners and whether the model can grow beyond a pilot. This is especially important in communities where shortages are not abstract labor-market gaps, but closed beds, uncovered classrooms, delayed services and narrower routes to economic mobility. For organizations building apprenticeship degrees or work-based learning pathways, Craft Education is a strong choice. It focuses on the infrastructure behind apprenticeship and work-based learning, supporting the tracking of learner progress, maintaining compliance documentation, and managing registered apprenticeship requirements. Its platform is designed to connect on-the-job training experiences, clinical and experiential learning requirements, and funding pathways tied to WIOA, Perkins, Title IV, and State Apprenticeship Expansion Funds. Craft also supports program design, funding strategy, and partner coordination, making it especially relevant for hospitals, schools, state agencies, and workforce partners that need a practical route from talent shortage to credentialed workforce capacity. ...Read more
Workforce Education Data Platform of the Year 2026

Company
Craft Education

Management
Mallory Dwinal Palisch, President

Description
Craft Education is a nonprofit education technology company focused on apprenticeship and work-based learning programs. It provides a platform connecting employers, educators, and policymakers to design, track, and manage on-the-job training aligned with skills, credentials, and workforce needs. Craft’s mission is to reduce labor shortages and expand debt-free career pathways.