Empowering Students Through Transformative Employer Partnerships

Founded in North Minneapolis, Rêve Academy empowers students for success by equipping them with essential skills for high-demand, high-wage careers. Rêve Academy not only provides engaging coursework and paid internships but also helps students to develop soft skills like teamwork, leadership and creativity. It then helps students to translate the skills they gained into real-world experience through strong employer partnerships.

Minnesota, especially Minneapolis, grapples with some of the worst racial equity gaps in the country. Rêve Academy’s mission is to close the education, achievement and employment gaps for students of color. About 80% of its students come from low-income backgrounds and 90% identify as people of color. With more than thirteen years of experience and almost 15,000 students served, Rêve Academy has driven measurable change in its community.

“I learned a lot about technology; stuff that I thought I would never be able to do or understand. And now I know how to use Adobe Illustrator. Rêve Academy changes how you think,” said Sujoud, a high school aged Rêve Academy alum who learned valuable technical skills as well as project management and agile development capabilities as part of the program.

A key component to Rêve Academy's success is its focus on engaging with small businesses and major corporations such as ​​Capella University, Thrivent, US Bank, 3M, Target and UnitedHealth Group. It builds these partnerships by focusing on local employers, leveraging personal relationships and offering many ways for companies to get involved in their work. 

For example, Rêve Academy engages employers through its student digital agency, which facilitates contract work for student alumni in web design, digital marketing, content management and more. The students work on real-world projects for corporate clients, putting to use the technical and soft skills they gain as part of Rêve Academy’s programming. 

Capella University was a corporate client of Rêve Academy’s student digital agency. Scott Deming, senior vice president of enterprise partnerships at Strategic Education Inc. and a lead on the project, reflected on the students’ performance.

“We had a real business need to create compelling digital experiences for more than 200 B2B clients. We thought it would be a fun and rewarding experience for the students to help us execute on that strategic initiative. We initially set a goal of a few dozen custom landing pages, but quickly realized they were going to exceed our expectations and complete the entire project,” explained Deming. “It was a huge success, both for the students and my team, as we delivered the new digital landing pages to our customers ahead of schedule. The program through Rêve challenged us to reframe our expectations of what these impressive young adults could achieve.”

Rêve Academy also hosts an annual event called Revival, in which students become CEOs for a day. Local employer partners sponsor a group of employees to attend the one-day accelerator as mentors, contributing their technical and soft skills to help students prototype, test and present their business idea. Through active participation, employers become invested in students’ growth and development. 

Brad von Bank, executive director of Rêve Academy, explained the importance of speaking the language of the local business community and effectively positioning their work. Von Bank shared that one of his favorite outcomes is witnessing corporate partners radically change their mindset after working with the students. 

He stated, “In over a decade of working alongside some of the biggest and most respected companies in the world, one of the great joys of this work is seeing high-achieving leaders absolutely floored by the ability of these students.”

Rêve Academy’s approach to employer partnerships adheres to the philosophy of its student programming — it’s not only important to showcase technical skills and knowledge, but also to lead with “soft” skills like collaboration and empathy. When used together, they build successful partnerships for career-connected learning opportunities.