WHAT IS HER SKILLS?
HER Skills, a gender-responsive, trauma-informed workforce initiative focused on recognizing and elevating the Essential Skills Colorado women develop through overcoming adversity.
HER Skills delivers Essential Skills recognition, validation, and training experiences for women, as well as Essential Skills training and certification for partners and employers.
SUPPORTING COLORADO WOMEN IN TRANSITION
Colorado faces acute workforce challenges. The state has the 8th highest cost of living nationally, making economic stability difficult for women with lived experience of justice involvement, homelessness, and poverty.
THE SCALE OF THE CHALLENGE
THE SCALE OF THE CHALLENGE
THE SCALE OF THE CHALLENGE
Over 400k women across Colorado have lived experiences with the justice-system, homelessness, and poverty. The state releases 53,500 women from the justice-system annually, while family homelessness surged 134% in one year, with women heading most households while caring for 1-3 children.
COMPOUNDING BARRIERS
THE SCALE OF THE CHALLENGE
THE SCALE OF THE CHALLENGE
Women of color face 37% unemployment increases post-incarceration (vs. 14% for white men), while women experiencing homelessness are twice as likely to face depression, with over 90% having survived severe abuse.
A SYSTEM NOT DESIGNED WITH WOMEN
HIDDEN SKILLS AND INVISIBLE CAPABILITIES
HIDDEN SKILLS AND INVISIBLE CAPABILITIES
Many existing reentry and workforce programs are designed for men, leaving women without adequate support for their unique needs including childcare, trauma-informed care, reproductive healthcare, period poverty, and rapid reintegration planning due to shorter sentences.
HIDDEN SKILLS AND INVISIBLE CAPABILITIES
HIDDEN SKILLS AND INVISIBLE CAPABILITIES
HIDDEN SKILLS AND INVISIBLE CAPABILITIES
During these experiences, women develop survival strategies that demonstrate Essential Skills: resilience under pressure, creative problem-solving with limited resources, adaptability to changing circumstances, crisis management, and community navigation. These are precisely the capabilities employers value most.
THE RECOGNITION GAP
Yet women often cannot translate these Essential Skills developed through advertisty into employer-recognized credentials.
Traditional resume formats emphasize chronological employment over competencies, effectively erasing women's capabilities. Employment gaps from caregiving, incarceration, or fleeing violence compound this invisibility, creating what we call the 'lived experience penalty,' where the very challenges that built their Essential Skills become barriers to employment.
WHERE EMPLOYERS SEE GAPS, WE RECOGNIZE ESSENTIAL SKILLS
Without recognition of their Essential Skills, through initiatives like HER Skills, women's workplace-relevant capabilities remain invisible, blocking pathways to economic stability and trapping them in cycles of poverty.
THE HER SKILLS FRAMEWORK
HER Skills bridges this gap by providing recognition, training and tools for validating, documenting, and translating lived experience into recognized professional competencies verifiable with portable digital credentials.
To transform how the workforce system, HER Skills implements three integrated strategies:
Coaching, training, and validating Essential Skills with women
Training and certification for community and workforce partners
Training employers for Essential Skill recognition in hiring and advancement
With HER Skills, Colorado's workforce system is shifting from credential-based to Essential Skill hiring, dismantling barriers that have excluded women for decades.
To learn more download the HER Skills Framework.
THE PEOPLE POWERING HER SKILLS
Workforce Boulder County and LWYL Studio
WOMEN CO-DESIGNERS AND PARTNERS
HER Skills is co-designing with, recognizing, and training women with Essential Skills programing, and engaging them through digital tools, events, and media.
HER Skills delivers Essential Skills recognition training and certification to service and workforce partners, as well as employers for recruitment, hiring, and advancement.
CREATING A SUSTAINABLE WORKFORCE SYSTEM THAT TRANSFORMS HOW WE RECOGNIZE WOMEN
CONTACT US!
Are you a woman in transition? Message us discover how HER Skills can help you recognize and validate your Essential Skills.
Are you a service organization? Partner with us to bring Essential Skills recognition and workforce support to the women you serve.
Are you an employer? Train with us to learn how to recognize Essential Skills and unlock access to talented, resilient candidates.
Want to support our mission? Help us close the recognition gap and create pathways to economic stability.
Stay updated - Subscribe today!