Our core beliefs
If we want better student outcomes, we have to invest in the people who shape them: faculty and staff.
Skills, experiences, and relationships—not degrees alone—drive economic mobility.
Skills and experiences open doors. Relationships get you through them.
Relationships don’t happen by accident. Institutions that teach students how to have agency to create career-aligned relationships with alumni and professional (career-aligned social capital) —and require them to do so—provide a competitive advantage and better outcomes than institutions that do not require students to do so.
Our vision
10,000
faculty and staff certified by 2032
1 million
students impacted by certified community by 2032
Leadership team
Sean O'Keefe
Founder & Partner
Marieli Rubio
Partner & Vice President of Impact
Destiny O'Rourke
Director of Partnerships
Our story
Career Launch started with a belief that challenges the status quo: Economic mobility and access to opportunity shouldn’t depend on who you already know or what posted online.
For a long time now, and going back to Mark Granovetter’s research in 1973 on “The Strength of Weak Ties,” career success has quietly relied on networks students don’t yet have—leaving too many capable students on the outside looking in.
We exist to change that.
Career Launch partners with colleges, schools, non-profits and workforce organizations and uses a train-the-facilitator model to help faculty and staff embed relationships building skills, career readiness skills, and agency into their curriculum and programs. Through curriculum, certification, and measurement tools, 1,500+ faculty and staff serve students on how to initiate meaningful 1-to-1, live conversations with professionals who are aligned to their careers of interest—so they can access opportunities, not wait for them.
Because opportunity doesn’t just live on job boards. It lives in people.
Prototyping in the classroom
Student-centered design and prototyping began
Career Launch Founded
From passion to enterprise, we started growing and Marieli Rubio joined the team
HACU partnership
HACU named Career Launch a strategic partner for its impact on Hispanic-Serving Institutions
1,000 facilitators trained,
SOCAP & AAC&U fellowships
Career launch scaled to train over 1,000 facilitators, and Sean became a SOCAP and AAC&U Fellow
2010
2016
2018
2021
2022
2023
2025
Curriculum was codified
Founder Sean O'Keefe developed the curriculum for Career Launch while teaching first-gen students at Santa Clara University
Book, workbook and videos published
Launch Your Career book and workbook published, along with micro-learning videos and Career Launch Readiness Assessment
NACE partnership
Career Launch became an official partner of NACE and offered the Career Launch Inventory
This work is rooted in lived experience.
Founder Sean O’Keefe began his journey at Diablo Valley College before transferring to UC Santa Barbara. Without built-in connections or top grades, he learned how to proactively reach out, build relationships, develop career readiness skills, and uncover opportunities that were never publicly posted. That experience became a hypothesis and conviction: social capital isn’t fixed—it can be built from scratch by ANY student.
In 2010, Sean began teaching these principles at Santa Clara University and prototyping what is now called The Career Launch Method. Students from all majors and socioeconomic backgrounds—especially low income, first-generation students—didn’t just understand it. They acted on it. And their access to opportunity and mobility changed.
In 2016, Sean was invited to design a course for the university’s first-generation student program. The results made one thing clear: this wasn’t just helpful—it was scalable. With support from campus leaders, Career Launch was launched in 2020.
The model was shaped alongside students like Marieli Rubio, a first-generation civil engineering major who used the approach to secure an internship that didn’t exist online. That single conversation led to confidence, momentum, and multiple opportunities—proof of what’s possible when students know how to create access for themselves.
Since then, Career Launch has grown into a national movement. Our work is grounded in over 15 years of research, student data and evidence, and strengthened through partnerships with organizations like NACE, HACU, the Pell Institute, and AAC&U.
Together, we’re helping institutions embed flexible career readiness curricula into the student experience—so relationship-building skills and access to opportunity is for every student, not a privileged few who inherit.