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How Rachel Carson Has Built Guild Education Into A Tool For Employee Retention — And A $500 Million Fortune


The 32-year-old founder raised money for her company at a $3.75 billion valuation in June, boosting her net worth — and landing her on Forbes’ new list of America’s most successful self-made women.

by Alexandra Wilson


When Rachel Carlson appeared on the cover of Forbes in December 2019, the world looked drastically different. Unemployment was at a razor-thin 3.5% rate and the term “frontline worker” had yet to enter the public lexicon. Her company Guild Education, which creates benefit programs that help employees get free college degrees and helps employers retain workers, had recently achieved unicorn status— a rare feat for an idealistic edtech company.

But the biggest question Carlson faced at the time: If the booming economy took a turn for the worse, would employers still be willing to invest in education for hourly workers? Carlson was confident they would. The hardships of the past year and a half have shown that her hunch was correct, as clients like Walmart and Chipotle have increased spending on their education benefits programs. Two days ago, Target joined the growing roster of corporations committed to enabling employees to get debt-free degrees. In June, venture capital firms including Bessemer Venture Partners and Cowboy Ventures poured an additional $150 million into Carlson’s company at a $3.75 billion valuation. The fundraising also made Carlson one of the richest self-made women in the U.S., worth an estimated $500 million. She is one of two education founders to appear on Forbes’ 2021 list of self-made women, the other being Lynda.com’s Lynda Weinman.

Carlson has been generous with doling out ownership of Guild Education. All of her 1,000 employees hold a stake in the company, and over half of them have equity positions worth at least $100,000. Her ownership has dwindled from 95% when she founded the company in 2015 to a current estimated 15% after eight funding rounds and handing shares to employees. 

“I had a less than ideal early experience as an employee where no one explained to me really what equity was or how to exercise it,” explains the 32-year-old Denver native, who worked in the Obama White House before obtaining an MBA from Stanford. “I just felt like I could do something different in my own company and teach everyone the value of equity. Now all employees have a position of $15,000 or greater.”

A different type of equity is also built into the company’s business model, which doesn’t require workers to pay anything upfront. While many employers already offer tuition reimbursement (it’s a tax break of up to $5,250 per employee), these programs typically see low participation rates. Applying and signing up for courses can be confusing and cumbersome, and in most instances employees have to front the tuition and wait to be reimbursed. Instead, Guild customers like Taco Bell request customized education programs to offer their employees and Guild solicits proposals from over 100 colleges and universities (nearly all of them online) and builds out the programs it deems best. A team of nearly 300 full-time coaches work with students to select and apply to the 2,357 specialized programs Guild has created thus far.

It also negotiates tuition discounts and facilitates direct payments between employers and schools. The majority of Guild’s revenue is generated from universities that pay Guild to bring them qualified candidates, rather than spending the money on advertising. Though the company does not share how much universities pay, some online programs spend more than $4,000 to attract each new student. Forbes estimates that 2020 revenue reached nearly $100 million.

“Many would have created a non-profit, but Rachel has been able to reap the kind of benefits and monetize in ways that most people doing this work cannot because they went the more traditional non-profit route,” says Danette Howard, chief policy officer at education think tank Lumina Foundation,  adding that her business model was suited to respond to the stressors Covid-19 placed on the labor market. “They were created for this moment.”

Despite her fortune, Carlson isn’t comfortable talking about it. She had hoped she wouldn’t need to broach the topic of net worth until the company went public. And she says she doesn’t intend to keep it all. She has allocated 1% of the company’s equity to the Guild Foundation, which is run by employees and predominantly donates to causes supporting low-income individuals. Carlson is also an active donor to a myriad of Democratic initiatives and candidates—unsurprising given that she’s the granddaughter of former Colorado governor Roy Romer. 

“Rachel was always on the cutting edge of what I was concerned about,” says 92-year-old Romer, a lifelong education advocate who cofounded online giant Western Governors University in 1997 with 18 other governors to expand higher education to a broader cross-section of the population. Romer also served from 2000 to 2006 as superintendent of the Los Angeles Unified School District. “Now she’s gotten hold of one of the most important ideas I saw on the horizon. And I see her being more effective than I ever was.”

Another idea Carlson supports: tax reform. Uncomfortable with the idea that employees will sometimes pay a higher percentage of taxes than she does, she is a vocal advocate of a wealth tax. 

“I’ve financially benefited at levels I hadn’t imagined as a result of building and growing Guild. 

I believe the wealth I’ve amassed ought to be taxed like the income earned by my employees and all American workers,” explains Carlson. “I hope we see policy changes on those dimensions and I hope that’s a conversation more CEOs are willing to have.”

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