Podcast: Credly and Acclaim Join Forces!
Together, Credly and Acclaim are the most comprehensive global solution suite for recognizing skills, capabilities, and achievements, reaching everywhere learning takes place and skills are assessed. Educational institutions, employers, professional associations, credentialing bodies, and social organizations all use the Credly and Acclaim platforms to power their digital badge, certification, and credential programs.
Listen in on a brief interview with Credly CEO, Jonathan Finklestein, as he shares his excitement for the future of Credly and Pearson’s Acclaim.
Listening to our customers is at the core of our product innovation. If you have a suggestion for how Credly can work better for you, tell us more at info@credly.com.
This podcast is part of a Credly podcast series where we discuss issues of interest for digital credentialing issuers, earners, and partners. Have a topic you want to learn more about? Send us an email at info@credly.com.
Susan Manning: Welcome to the Credly podcast, where we touch base with our issuer's earners and partners and explore themes of interest in digital credentialing. I'm Susan Manning. Today we're going to hear from Jonathan Finkelstein, the founder and CEO of Credly, regarding the news that Credly and Acclaim are joining forces.
Jonathan Finkelstein: Thanks Susan, it is big news and I'm excited to chat with you and to our community about it.
Susan Manning: Yeah, so tell me about the idea that now we're going to combine these two organizations and really take on the idea of having verifiable evidence of skills, capabilities and achievements by way of digital credential.
Jonathan F.: Both Credly and our new colleagues at Pearson's Acclaim firmly believe that individuals should own the evidence of their own achievements and that when individuals have portable verified evidence of what they know and what they can do and what they've done, that they're better able to connect to new opportunities as they advance through their lives. One way that happens at scale is when individual can tell the full story of what it is that they know and what they can do in a trusted way. So that each time you or I walk into a new setting, we don't need to re-prove who we are and what we're capable of. The body of work and our skills and our evidence can speak for us and we can begin to contribute more readily and more immediately to the environments that we enter. When you bring the two leaders together, which Credly and Acclaim are, you wind up with a much better ability to help individual tell that complete story.
Jonathan F.: We also represent, together the largest collection of organizations that are issuing credentials across the entire globe. That creates a lot of opportunity for all of the members of our network and our community.
Susan Manning: And it's worth mentioning that our network and community really does span quite a range of organizations, whether it's education or corporate clients. It's true, it not only spans different kinds of organizations as you said, such as employers or industry associations or educational institutions, but it also cuts across all different kinds of industry vertices and profession, from health care, to technology, to finance to advance manufacturing and everything else. It also covers all different kinds of skills, skills that are required to operate machinery or perform very detailed or advanced tasks, as well as non-cognitive skills, the skills that make us human like problem-solving and leadership and management and even ethics.
Susan Manning: So, together with Acclaim, Credly is now able to not only represent the kinds of skills that are demonstrated in different kinds of environments, but also a much broader range of the types of skills that matter in today's workforce.
Jonathan F.: So for our existing clients, can you tell us what they might expect in the months to come?
Susan Manning: Well, one thing that both Credly and Acclaim have in common is that the organizations with whom we work, value us not just as a provider or a leading technology platform but as experts and as colleagues who really have a vested interest in the success of their programs. We're now taking two organizations that have had as their ethos the notion of providing breathtaking customer success and putting them together and what we're creating is the world's larges collection of people focused singularly on how do you make achievements portable, verified and able to connect people to opportunity in a much more meaningful way. So in terms of what our partners and our customers and the users of our platforms can expect, they can expect at the very least, the great level of customer success and support and technology that they have come to know and love. But, even more so, putting these two teams together creates a really great opportunity for us to innovate more quickly, to even do more for our customers and to put the best in class enterprise digital platforms and teams together in a way that helps us innovate in a faster and much more meaningful way.
Jonathan F.: I can't wait to see what's yet to come. This is going to be very exciting.
Susan Manning: It's really exciting and we look forward to talking more with the members of the community, hearing more about what excites them and making sure that we live up to everyone's expectations.
Jonathan F.: Great. Thank you for taking time to talk today Jonathan.
Susan Manning: It's my pleasure Susan, so glad to have you sharing this story with our colleagues around the world and so glad to have you on the team.
Jonathan F.: Great. Thanks.
Jonathan F.: Thank you listeners for joining us. If you'd like to suggest upcoming topics, feel free to write us as info@credly.com