Bridging the Gap: Guiding Principles for Quality, Tech-Enabled Career Coaching
Includes a Live Web Event on 04/09/2026 at 11:00 AM (EDT)
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Victoria Dunn
Director of Innovation and Impact
Strada Education Foundation
As the Director of Innovation and Impact on the Quality Coaching team, Victoria Dunn manages work addressing scalable solutions for quality education-to-career coaching, especially technology-enabled or publicly available solutions. She also supports overall grant making and management across the team's portfolio including post-secondary education, transition coaching, and state-level supports. Victoria joined Strada in 2024. Previously, she led work in several national college access and success organizations, such as the Posse Foundation, Bottom Line, and KIPP Foundation.
Elise Newkirk-Kotfila
Assistant Vice President for Strategy and Partnerships
NASPA
Elise Newkirk-Kotfila serves as the assistant vice president for strategy and partnerships at NASPA–Student Affairs Administrators in Higher Education. Her work focuses on student success research and partnerships, and she leads the Advising Success Network, a dynamic network of national organizations partnering to engage institutions in holistic advising redesign to advance success for all students, including Black, Latinx/a/o, Indigenous, Asian, and Pacific Islander students and poverty-affected students. The network provides technical assistance and resources to guide colleges and universities through advising redesign initiatives and has supported over 267 institutions in 30 states. Prior to her work at NASPA, Elise served as the director of applied learning for the State University of New York (SUNY), where she led SUNY’s 64 campuses through an applied learning initiative which culminated in providing at least one high-quality experiential learning opportunity to 460,000 students. Elise has served on national advisory councils and boards, including on the executive board for the Society for Experiential Education. Elise holds a master’s degree from the University at Albany where she studied Women’s Studies and Public Policy with a research concentration on community-university partnerships and a bachelor’s degree in Women’s Studies from The College of Saint Rose.
In an increasingly crowded marketplace of "student success" tools, how do we distinguish between flashy tech and high-impact human support? Currently, too few learners have access to the quality coaching necessary to navigate the complex journey from education to a meaningful career. This session is grounded in new research from Strada Education Foundation and developed in collaboration with Bellwether and NASPA-Student Affairs Administrators in Higher Education. We will move beyond theory to tackle the "Tech Solution Problem," identifying barriers to access and the challenges of a saturated ed-tech field. Participants will explore real-world "Bright Spots" in the landscape, focusing on scaled adoption, user-centered design, and rigorous evaluation. Attendees will leave not just with a report, but with a practical "note-catcher" and a template for cataloging their own campus platforms to ensure they meet a quality standard of coaching.
Learning Outcomes:
By the end of this session, participants will be able to:
• Articulate the research-backed Guiding Principles for Quality Coaching that support learners throughout the education-to-career pipeline.
• Evaluate use cases of current coaching technology solutions based on a spectrum of types of supports.
• Implement a structured template for auditing campus-based coaching platforms to ensure alignment with a framework for quality.