Ep. 61 | Helping Students Choose A Smarter Path Forward - Karen Gibbs

In this episode, Jack sits down with Karen Gibbs, founder of Scholar Shine, a platform revolutionizing how students choose careers. Karen shares her journey from a decade in corporate marketing to launching an EdTech company in Panama. She explains how Scholar Shine uses AI and expert advice to match students with career paths and help schools better guide their students. The conversation dives into challenges in the Latin American education system, resilience in entrepreneurship, and the future of digital career guidance. Listeners will leave with fresh insights into how technology can transform education and unlock student potential.

Scholar Shine 

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Host: Jack Moran
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Transcript

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Welcome to Shakin’ Hands, where we provide the platform for entrepreneurs and thought leaders to share their stories in order to hopefully influence others to get out of the rat race and chase their own dreams. If you have any recommendations for guests or questions that you want to be asked, please don't hesitate to reach out. Anyways, if you enjoy the podcast, please like, comment, subscribe and share in order to keep the podcast growing. Otherwise, I'm your host, Jack Moran and this is Shakin’ Hands. If you're looking for business mentorship, I have a place where you can get feedback on your unique personal development and business growth challenges. Over the last year, I've brought together a group of impact driven thought leaders where we meet every single day to discuss psychology, communication, mindset, and business case studies. We have people who have made millions of dollars, lost millions of dollars, Harvard MBAs and new entrepreneurs like you and I. Entrepreneurship can be lonely. So if you're looking for a support system, please follow the link in the description below for some more information. And it's crazy to think like as technology evolves, like the human brain is going to start losing some of its skills. Yeah I know. I get that. Yeah. It's crazy. We'll see what happens. It's like AI and everything is going to be nuts. Yeah. So what is your, Give me, like, some background. What is your business do. Oh, so I have an online exploration career exploration platform. We design it for, underserved sorts communities from for students. And it's like a way in which they grow, explore, career opportunities and which career path that you pursue based on their personalities or traits and their abilities. Okay. How are you guys, like, determining that personality? What is like, oh, we develop the test. We develop the first Panamanian, career exploration test because the ones that exist already are. They are like 20 or 30 years old, and they are also based on, Europe or United States. So we didn't have, like, a test that was, localized to Latin America and their reality as well. So what are like some of the questions on the test? Oh, 135 questions, which, of course, I can't remember them all, but we divide the test in three. The first is personal traits, the second it's motivations. And the third one is, like profiles. We segmented those profiles for people or students who are creative, who, have abilities on finance or technology. And so that's the way we can guide them to what their future could be. How did you get into that? I used to be a teacher, an English teacher for students from pre-K all the way to fourth grade on a school, which was for students, from low income families. And, that's not my profession at all, but I did that to help them because they needed help with English. And, but then I saw that they had, like, these huge potential, and I wanted to help, but I didn't know how. So, after, like, a couple of months thinking about it, I was like, okay, maybe I can do something that has to be with scholarships so they can whenever they finish, school, they can go ahead and apply for one so they can earn that. Right. But scholarships is a like a really hard and not that dynamic topic. So after like incubation and all of that, like I thought maybe I should do something bigger. And that's how I came up with the idea of the test. Okay. And so what were those like early days in the company like, it was stressful. I started the company by my own, and, that that was back in 2021, and I didn't have a team. I couldn't do everything by myself because I'm not a psychologist, so I needed one on my team. I, in fact, know something about, data and, market trends and all of that, because that's what I, you know, professionally do. And so that helped me as well, like studying, where was like the, the trends of everything in education. And so, yeah, like, it took me quite a while. But finally we did it. How did you start to acquire this, like, team with, I'm assuming low cash flow in the early days. Yes. So I bootstrapped, I think that's the reality. Like, for a lot of, Latin American entrepreneurs, we bootstrap and, I use, like, have all my salary in order to inject money into the company and do the brand and the strategy and the brand book and marketing and register everything and then, start, you know, developing the website and what I wanted, what the picture I wanted to like to be the company that everything goes smoothly and as planned now. What was it like? It was, like, really bumpy. So it took me, like, a year to finally, build up my team. And when we did the first trial that we went into that first go and did the seminar and all of that, like to get that out of it. Two of my team members, they left. So I was left by myself and that with the psychology. But I needed the other two because one was the technology, which of course, I needed because we were using technology for the test. And then the other one was an essential worker, which we also need because of, you know, if there were no abilities other students. So, back then I was like, oh my God, I'm I must be doing something terribly wrong. And then after that, like, I was left go of my job and I was pregnant, so I couldn't go and find another job as well so I could continue bootstrapping the project. So it was kind of tough. But finally we were resilient and we could, like, go ahead and keep moving forward with what we had. How do you get through those, like, hard times, those bumpy. Actually, I think it's because we have a very strong mission, like, some of these services are just only available for people. That is, that has privilege. And, one of the main reasons we started this is because we noticed that students, like two hours from here, which is really near the city. They don't have these type of services. Public schools don't have this type of services. And so we, we think that every students should have the opportunity to have the same services in case of career exploration so they can pursue what they really want. Most of these students, or most like 50% of students in Latin America, they think they can do things because, you know, imposter syndrome or because parents told them like, hey, you know, this is not something that gives you money, but that's not the truth at all. So I think our mission is what keeps us moving forward. What is the education landscape in in Panama, for instance? Like you obviously have like good private schools within the city, but once you get to the outskirts, is it still good schooling or. Okay, so I was a privileged girl. I graduated from an American school. I did, in fact have like this exploration career thing on my school as well when I was in 12th grade. But the truth is, when you move into the public sector like schools, they don't have this service. They have coordinators and they have teachers who can help you, decide which career you can choose in 12th grade. But some of the students are not that sure. If their abilities and their personality goes with that career, most of the students they choose because their parents told them what to choose, or because friends are choosing careers that they think it might work with them. Or, teachers at school also like, hey, well, I think you can do this or that, but they don't know themselves that well. So this is what the test does for them. Like it helps them discover their personalities and their abilities so they can go and pursue these career. It's giving them like specific job, recommendations. So this is a difference between the test we developed and the test that are already in the market. Our test doesn't feel a student in one specific career. Like we try to, place them all the industries on the board. Why? Because we have noticed that when you moved from one job to another, you move inside one industry. Not it doesn't matter the role that you're going to do. So when the test our feels you're just in one career, like they get a little bit messy because they think if that career doesn't work for them, like what else they're going to do? You know, like they feel real confused. So that's what we do. And then with the AI algorithm that goes, oh, United with that test, that algorithm then gives them the specific not only the industry but the specific careers they can pursue based on their traits. And of course, like the percentage of probability that they have to be successful in their career as well. How many, how many, how much work they're going to have through in the following years? How much is growing or if that industry is failing, you know, because due to technology or all other economic stuffs. So, yeah, what happens or what if someone wants to be an entrepreneur? Is that a recommendation? Yes. Of course. We tried to make the test as actual as we can. And, also that it can match the industries and how the world is moving by now. But we have to be really realistic, because our reality in Latin America is completely different than the reality in and in United States. So we try to like, merge all the information from Mexico to Argentina and some of the Caribbean islands. If that's, information available so that they can choose, whatever they the career they want to choose, and that they can pursue in any of those countries. What is the, landscape in Latin America that makes it different from United States or from, basically people are right now they don't have that much of opportunities at work. They there are like a lot of companies trying to reach for, people with skills on their skill sets that they need in order to do the job, but that's not possible. Why? Because we doesn't guide students to pursue, like, or know themselves that much to know where are the strengths or how they can use their abilities and their traits to do something meaningful. And of course, to like, merge that, that, how do you call it, like to, to communicate between the private sector and the occasional sector. So there's a not there's jobs available, but the, the those positions, people don't aren't qualified to take those positions or they don't even know that they're available and that they are qualified for this position. Those two reasons, like they sometimes don't have the skill set because they didn't develop, because they didn't know that they could develop those skill set. And then they all they on the other hand, like, they don't know about other industries or the roles on those industries. And that's why we're trying to, you know, to get the people to know. Where do you think the biggest opportunities are in Latin America? Industry was, well, we map 19 industries, from the global index. And these 19 industries are the one who are the one that makes the the countries, like, grow on their, internal, you know, like the GDP. Yeah. The GDP. Incorrect. So, during these industries are, for example, technology education. We have some others like, things that has to, to do with green like sustainability and all of that. Those are the ones that are driving, you know, like even social impact so that they're driving, you know, growth on, Latin American countries. And where are people, where what's like the most oversaturated industries, like what are the industries that people are like? These are where I have to get a job and they're neglecting these other opportunities. Here we have three, which is medicine, to be a lawyer or laws and economics. Those are the three that are like, really saturated. And, it's it's okay. Like, we're always going to need those, those jobs, you know, we're always going to need someone who can defend us. We're always going to need to go to the hospital, and we're always going to need someone who help us with our finances, but we can also do other stuffs with that. For example, you can be a lawyer, but you can be a lawyer specializing I or you can be, doctor, but a doctor that has knowledge on robotics, for example, you know, like the difference back then and now is that now traditional careers are merge with technology. And so that something that people need to understand, especially parents because, I was raised for example, for from with my grandparents. And so they were baby boomers, and they told me exactly what I needed to study because I wasn't able to study administration or nothing like that. I was supposed to be a doctor. So when I was in third or fourth, year of college university, like, I decided that career wasn't for me. And I stood out, that it was, like, kind of a pain in my family. They were all like, hey, you were thinking the wrong decision. This is not something you should do. But I didn't care. I just went for what I thought I could be more, like, I could be more meaningful and, you know, like, leave a legacy or something like that. I thought, I know, and, that's how I ended up, like, having what I have right now. Well, that's awesome that you were able to trust that gut feeling. And. And that's where you, like we always say, when you chase those passions, that's when you have the biggest impact on the world. Because if you're to have that really profound impact, you need to be putting 100% of your energy. And if you're not passionate about it, it's very difficult. Like if you had pursued and listened to your family's wishes of being a doctor, it would have been very difficult for you to surpass the rest of the field as a doctor when you're not very passionate about it. So it was it's great that you did, you know, trust your instinct, which a lot of people don't have the confidence to do. And they never make that leap of faith into what they're passionate about, where that's really where they're going to have the most impact. Yes. That's true. As I told you, parents, they want the best for their kids, right? And so they always I guide. I was like, hey, I think you should study this or that or whatever, but also we need to pay attention to what students and kids really want because we need to diversify the professional portfolios in our countries, specifically in Latin America, because we don't have that much careers like we have always the same careers. As I told you before and, we need to know if we can get to have astronauts of if we can go and have, I don't know, maybe I specialist we don't have a special is here. We have just, like a technical, career, which is just started this year in January. So, like, we need to diversify that portfolio in order for us to grow as a country and to have more opportunities for more kids. So, yeah, it's very interesting. If you were given $1 million right now, guilt free capital, how would you deploy it within your company? Well, the first thing it would be like to finish our algorithm, like be sure it works perfectly. Right now we are on a pilot and we are. We have already applied it for 100 students, which have work perfectly. We still are missing 400 more. And after that, like marketing and, a huge good team like, that's I think that's the, the key of a good company like to hire and have good staff that are really passionate about your mission and your vision, because it's really hard to translate what you really, visualize of a company or a mission to another person. Like they need to feel it, for sure. And so, I think that's something I'm really proud about. My team, although it's really small because we are just for people right now. They are passionate about they what they are doing like year they realized that, they are not just building something like they are building something for the legacy, like they are building something for the kids, for the grandsons, for like, their nieces. And, you know, and that's really cool. If somebody that is watching this is aligned with your vision and does want to, help perpetuate your vision forward, or maybe it would be interested. Enjoying your team? Where where could they find you? Okay, so we have an Instagram page called Add Scholar Shine. And it will link it to. Yes. And a website with ts w ww w dot scholar um-shine.com. And. Well, also we have an email address which is high, but in Spanish, like Ola ad scholar Dutch that come. Okay. Fantastic. And we'll link all of those. Well, I appreciate you coming on. Let's say, awesome mission that you're chasing after. So I congratulate you and I'm looking forward to seeing where you guys end up. Thank you. Sure. Great job.