WHO WE ARE
Born of the need to reduce racial disparities and fill critical talent gaps in the local workforce, the Career Immersion & Leadership Institute (CILI) seeks to:
- Reduce unemployment and underemployment of college educated students in the local workforce.
- Create, find, and strengthen pathways for college students of color to access employment opportunities and competitive wages.
- Connect BIPOC students to paid career development opportunities, supporting personal and professional growth as they transition from academic to adult life.
WHAT WE DO
We meet students where they are! CILI is bridging the gap between higher education and meaningful employment for students of color and enhancing corporate DEI initiatives in the process.
Our Programs Include:
Hire Learning$ provides introductory workshops focused on specific career readiness topics such as resume writing, interviewing skills, work-place etiquette, effective networking and more.
These engaging and interactive sessions are curated specifically for college students and are offered both in-person and virtually to college students regardless of ethnicity, location, classification, or major.
The CILI Fellowship & Internship is a more intensive, selective admission program that provides career coaching, resources, and multi-year paid internship experiences. Since 2021, our fellowship program has equipped 74 BIPOC college students with the skills, connections, and experience they need to attain and succeed in corporate careers. CILI has also helped place 65 Fellows into paid internships, and in the process, supported improved DEI practices across 22 local employers.
Career Bridge provides students within 3 - 12 months of completing their academic degree with focused career coaching to help them transition post college graduation. Students create personalized career plans, participate in facilitated networking opportunities, and are connected to skill building opportunities to enhance their resume and professional acumen.
WHY WE DO IT
CILI was founded in 2019 by entrepreneur and Human Resources executive Perry Sholes in response to the pervasive diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) issues he witnessed in Louisiana while working with some of the country’s leading consumer products companies. In particular, Sholes saw the need for an organization that could connect local BIPOC students to corporate employers, who too often fail to tap into diverse talent pools from the local market during recruitment.
In Sholes’s home state of Louisiana, people of color reach increasingly higher levels of educational attainment but have yet to close sizeable disparities in the workforce, with data showing that Black college graduates lag behind their white peers in high-wage job attainment, despite the presence of six HBCUs in Louisiana. Due to historic, systemic inequities, many BIPOC college graduates do not have access to networks of professionals who can open doors to high-earnings career pathways. This unequal access results in stark disparities in generational wealth: according to the Brookings Institute, the median net worth of a white family in 2016 was nearly 10x that of the average Black family.
Meanwhile, Louisiana continues to struggle with talent retention. Though several college- and career-readiness programs exist for Louisiana high school students, there are no other programs of CILI’s magnitude focused explicitly on preparing college students of color for professional success, nor on keeping that talent in Louisiana.
TAKE THEIR WORD FOR IT
“CILI prepares college students for the workforce by gaining them access to internships and instilling workplace habits that set them up for success. They connect you to all sorts of opportunities: connections, people, grants, scholarships—it’s more than just internships.”
- Shawn Griffin
2022 Cohort Fellow
“I planned to hire one CILI intern, but I loved the two fellows we interviewed so much that I hired both. They came in better prepared and more mature than some people I had on staff. Whatever CILI fellows are doing in those workshops, I wish every entry-level employee could learn those things.”
- Jessica Dandridge
Executive Director, The Water Collaborative