In 2023, Upwardly Global served 2,098 women.
We empowered women to confidently and successfully navigate their first professional job search in the U.S. and supported them in translating their international education and experience into promising career paths in their new home.
The top countries of origins included:
The majority of job placements were in essential industries, with 13% of job seekers listing technology as their professional field and 12% listing healthcare.
51% of all women job seekers were refugees and asylees.
917 completed our one-on-one coaching program.
693 women reskilled or upskilled, gaining industry-relevant skills, credentials, and certifications in technical fields that enhance their employability and workforce resiliency. Training areas include data science, project management, clinical research coordination, UX/UI design, cloud computing, IT support, and data analytics.
Women who found employment through our program earn an average starting salary of $60,515, representing an average wage gain of $51,782 — a meaningful move towards financial self-sufficiency and economic independence.
Upwardly Global’s community faces multiple identity-related barriers, including color, migration, gender, and social status, hindering socioeconomic equity. Immigrant women face systemic obstacles and societal norms that limit their ability to assume leadership roles, influence decision-making, and generate wealth.
Immigrant women encounter restricted access to affordable childcare, occupational segregation* *Occupational segregation is the uneven representation of workers across and within occupations based upon gender and other demographic characteristics.
, rigid gender roles, and limited career services.
Half of U.S. families report difficulty finding childcare. Mothers unable to find childcare programs are significantly less likely to be employed, while fathers’ employment is unaffected. Childcare is the primary barrier to career access for immigrant women, cited by 43.5% of women participants as the leading cause of dropout in Upwardly Global’s Career Coaching program.
Despite more than one in three immigrant women holding a bachelor’s degree or higher, they are disproportionately represented in low-wage jobs, less likely to occupy professional roles, and more prone to live in poverty compared to their U.S.-born counterparts.
The U.S. faces a $122 billion annual productivity loss due to infant-toddler childcare issues, with their impact on families, businesses, and taxpayers nearly doubling since 2018.
Without safe spaces and community resources, immigrant women encounter substantial hurdles, compounded by familial duties and time constraints, that hinder their professional advancement and perpetuate the cycle of economic disadvantage.
To foster a more inclusive workforce, we aim to create pathways to economic power by supporting immigrant women in accessing gender-sensitive online and self-paced training programs, scholarships, networking events, and peer-to-peer support platforms. These initiatives aim to guide immigrant women through a successful job search journey and support them in securing positions in thriving-wage jobs.
In 2022, with support from Pivotal Ventures, we launched the Women’s Economic Power (WEP) initiative, aiming to eliminate barriers to workforce services, revise policies to enable greater access to pay equity and employment, and shift the narrative around women’s contributions to advance gender equity through the three WEP pillars:
Workforce development
Policy change
Paradigm shift
As Upwardly Global continues to shape and transform the immigrant workforce sector, we seek to create a home for immigrant women of various socioeconomic backgrounds to connect them across industry and occupation, as gendered barriers impact all of them.
Learn more about our three-pronged approach toward our WEP objectives, as well as our 2022 impact data on women.
