American Olympic athletes have a new place to turn to lock down college degrees and other skills for life after sports thanks to a partnership U.S. Olympic leaders announced Tuesday with the Denver-based education company Guild.
The deal between Guild, organizers of the 2028 Los Angeles Olympics and the U.S. Olympic and Paralympic Committee is designed to help the Olympic organizations fulfill commitments to help athletes begin the next chapters of their lives after retirement.
Guild says it has more than 250 offerings on its online platform for U.S. athletes, including opportunities for undergraduate and graduate programs, certification programs and career counseling.
“You’d be hard-pressed to think that someone’s going to go in there and not find something that works for them,” said Carrie White, the USOPC’s vice president of athlete development and engagement.
White said in a recent survey of 5,000 Olympic and Paralympic alumni, around 60% of athletes who were 39 and younger said they needed help with career and professional development. She said within days of the program’s launch earlier this month, some 95 athletes had created profiles on the platform.
Guild CEO Bijal Shah said that because Olympic and Paralympic athletes spend most of their time early in life focusing on sports, they sometimes enter the workforce in need of skills for new careers that others in the job market have already acquired.
Read full story at The Associated Press.
