What 2025 Really Meant
Spencer’s experience reflects what we’re working towards: a tool young people return to because it actually helps them move forward.
In 2025, the most meaningful change wasn’t a feature. It was a shift in mindset: we stopped building based on secondhand assumptions about what young people need and started learning directly from the people we’re here to serve.
That shift changed how we work. We became sharply focused on what matters most, and that focus now guides every decision we make, from how we work as an organization to how we prioritize, test, learn, and evolve. We focused on one thing: helping young people take real steps toward their future.
We stopped asking what we could launch next and started asking what would make the experience more useful, what would help someone move forward, and what would give them the confidence to keep going.
This approach has made the product stronger. It has also made our organization more responsive and aligned to the people we serve.
Allison Danielsen, CEO of Tallo
Allison Danielsen is CEO of Tallo, leading the platform that serves over 2 million users ages 13-30 as they explore careers, earn credentials, and connect with employers. She believes connecting talent with opportunity early—before traditional hiring channels—is essential for economic mobility and workforce success.
Before joining Tallo, Allison led strategy for digital career products serving more than 15 million people annually and spent her career building business success through individual empowerment. Her own educational path—from community college to a four-year university—shaped her commitment to supporting diverse career pathways.
What’s Changed in the Product
As one user put it, “I was all over different websites fighting for my life. Tallo takes like 85 to 90 percent of that into one platform”
- Tallo now supports over 2 million registered users, with more than 200,000 people active on the platform each month
- Users can now discover and explore more than 1,800 career paths, 21,000 vetted scholarships, 300,000 courses, and 3 million active job listings in one place.
- Embedded community features make it easier to connect with peers, organizations, and employers in a safe environment built for early talent.
- Clearer user journeys present valuable tools – like CareerVillage’s AI Career Coach – in moments that users need them.
- Expanded real-time data from partners like Lightcast and National Scholarship Providers Association provides users with more trustworthy, actionable insights when choosing what’s next.
- A completely updated look, feel, tone, and voice speaks more directly to young people navigating an uncertain world, guided by a new mascot, Cal, who is at the heart of the Tallo career compass.
- New profile and resume tools help users build their professional identity and showcase what they’ve done and the progress they’ve made.
- So far, more than 500 users have used the report option in the updated profile experience to tell us that Tallo helped them get a job or work experience. That number is not the headline. What matters is that users can more effectively find opportunities and more easily report back when those opportunities lead to something real. It’s a step toward seeing outcomes more clearly.
Combined, we have a new foundation for measuring what matters and building toward something better.
Real Results in Local Communities
“I wish I’d found Tallo sooner because it helps me with skills and learning different ways to get better at them since I never really got that chance when I was younger due to being far from the city and in an online school. It makes me feel like I can finally do things for myself and be a normal person to be honest” – Hunter P
- In South Carolina, we renewed our statewide partnership with SC Future Makers and celebrated major milestones, including the 9th annual STEM Signing Day honoring 75 future STEM leaders.
- In Mississippi, we launched a new initiative supporting veterans and military-connected individuals, already helping several disabled veterans secure meaningful employment.
- In New York, our work with Dream It, Do It expanded awareness of manufacturing and skilled trades and helped young people better showcase their training to local employers.
- With SME, we connected with students at the SkillsUSA National Conference and piloted a high school micro-internship program that provided valuable real-world experience.
- Across Delaware and Maine, we continued strengthening pathways between education and industry by supporting statewide workforce initiatives and expanding access to high-demand career information.
- Our Real Careers, Real Journeys™ initiative brought industry professionals into virtual classrooms through school pilots in South Carolina, Kentucky, and Arkansas. At the end of the school year, 12% of survey respondents reported that Tallo helped them take a course, earn a scholarship, or get a job.
- Our RCRJ pilot work now spans 25+ schools and has supported more than 1,600 students. Over 85% rated the experience positively.
- On the employer side, we welcomed over 200 new partners, including manufacturers like Moog and healthcare leaders such as Walgreens, while deepening collaborations with long standing partners like BAE who trust Tallo to manage their engagement with talented youth under age 18.
Combined, we have a new foundation for measuring what matters and building toward something better.
Key Insights
We Can’t Scale Until We Understand Local Realities
- The barriers young people face look different in every community. The systems around them do too.
- Pilots are showing us that if we want to build something that works at scale, we have to understand what is true on the ground. That includes schools, employers, and the local context that shapes opportunity.
- We are still in the thick of that work. The most useful insights are coming from places where we have been able to go deep, not wide.
The Resource Gap Is Real
- Our research with Morning Consult helped us better understand the resource gap that young people face today:
- One in four young adults can’t find a job in the career they want to pursue
- Nearly two thirds are unsure of the direction they are headed
- Almost half say they feel unsupported or isolated in figuring it out
Career Success Needs to Be Redefined
- Young people want their lives to be about more than a job, and we need to help them build success on their own terms.
- We’ve seen strong engagement with Tallo’s art and manufacturing journeys on American Student Assistance’s EvolveMe platform because the next generation wants to connect art, building, and creative expression to their career path.
- Our interns gave us powerful insights into how they are making their experiences a launchpad.
Early Talent Feels Locked Out
- It’s getting harder for early talent to get their foot in the door, and they are increasingly stressed by the situation.
- Many applicants to our new Product Management Apprenticeship shared their challenges pursuing employment. One applicant described it as feeling like a “Call of Duty: Warzone” experience.
Employers Want to Engage, but the System Makes It Hard
- Employers want better and simpler ways to reach early talent, especially as traditional hiring signals are lost in AI noise.
- They are showing up when the experience is right, but we need to continue to build ways for them to engage.
Progress Comes from Iteration, Not Perfection
- Digital products are never “done.” We’ve moved to continuously delivering new features and have observed increases in return visits, page views, and engagement across the board.
We are using these lessons to move faster and with more focus.
Recognition and News
Tallo was named a finalist in the 2025 EdTech Cool Tool Awards for Career Planning Solution of the Year.
- Our research on the career resource gap was featured on CBS Evening News and published by WorkingNation, fueling national conversations on how to better support early talent.
- Tallo’s insights and data were cited by Fortune, Hechinger, The Christian Science Monitor, The Buffalo News, and the New York Post.
- We shared our point of view in Global Trade Magazine and Authority Magazine. On the podcast What I Want To Know with Kevin P. Chavous, we talked about how families can better support teens as they explore career options.
- Hannah Bullard and I were honored with Emerging Leader Awards for our work connecting more young people to meaningful career pathways.
- At ASU+GSV’s 2025 Summit, we joined leaders from Google, Indeed, McKinsey, and our partner Opportunity@Work to discuss the STAR hiring revolution and how to expand skills-first pathways.
We do not do this work for recognition. But when it comes, it opens doors for deeper conversations about the challenges ahead and how we can tackle them together, not only through our product but across the system.
What Comes Next in 2026
The challenges facing young people are growing. The career journey is still too confusing. Employers still struggle to reach the right candidates. And most tools still don’t solve either problem well.
We are here to close that gap.
That means becoming something clearer and more powerful for everyone we serve. For young people, Tallo will act as a true career compass, a place that helps them navigate the noise, understand their options, and take steps that actually move them forward. And just as importantly, we will meet them and support them as whole people, not just job seekers. Their interests, their lived experiences, their confidence, their next step, all of it matters, and all of it will shape the way we guide them.
For employers, we will cut through the clutter and bring them the candidates who truly fit, not just the ones who happen to apply. We’ll help them see the people behind the profiles and focus on the skills and potential that matter most.
We’re building the space where what truly matters rises to the top: real skills, real interest, real opportunity. By removing friction on both sides, we create a better experience for the users pursuing their future and the employers and organizations trying to reach them.
We’ll keep creating for users like Katelyn, who said it best:
One piece of advice I would give a future Tallo user is that you don’t have to know what you want right away; that’s what Tallo is for!
We’re just getting started, and we’re glad you’re in it with us.
Allison Danielsen
CEO, Tallo