Introduction

In 1979 the parents of Workera.ai co-founder and CEO, Kian Katanforoosh, were students in Iran on their way to rewarding careers. The destabilizing violence of the Iranian revolution drove them to independently move to France, where they met and together navigated a new country, a new language, and the unfortunate reality of unequal pathways to success. Kian’s father, who wanted to pursue a scientific career, took up whatever work he could to provide for his family.

This experience inspired Kian to obtain his engineering degree and instilled a desire to create educational opportunities for everyone. Today Kian is an experienced entrepreneur and an award-winning lecturer at Stanford University, where he teaches deep learning in the Computer Science department. 

Millions of learners have taken courses co-taught and co-created by Kian. He saw firsthand how learners and organizations are drowning in an ocean of educational content, with no way to understand their skills and grow effectively. This led to the creation of Workera.ai, the only skills technology company that can precisely measure, develop, and analyze skills data to help global enterprises and their learners achieve their fullest potential.

Mentorship is scarce. Students at top universities often have access to direct mentorship through their professors and peers. They know what skills they need to develop and they know how their skill development compares to others. But most people, especially professionals working in large corporations, don’t benefit from the same guidance.

Scalable mentorship is core to the Workera.ai mission, which all begins with an assessment of an employee’s existing skills. Kian likens Workera.ai’s process to the way he approaches mentoring students in his Stanford Deep Learning class. He asks them broad questions first, and then gets more specific to deeply understand their technical capabilities. Finally, he makes a recommendation based on what the student wants to achieve. 

"Very granularly, an assessment helps uncover a person’s strengths and areas for improvement in a certain domain, then serves it back to them so that they become more self-aware. And when you're self-aware, you can make better career decisions.”

Workera.ai delivers scalable mentorship through the use of innovative technology, coupled with high precision.

• The Workera.ai assessment learns. It becomes more and more accurate with each use. While a course remains pretty much the same regardless of the number of learners, a well-crafted assessment will evolve as more people take it. It becomes completely different -- more valid and reliable.
• The Workera.ai assessment is precise. Most learning and talent platforms use implicit signals such as course completion or keywords on resumes to determine someone’s capabilities. But that doesn’t say anything about what the learner can do with their skills. Instead, Workera.ai measures skills explicitly and provides granular feedback to the learner at multiple levels of cognition spanning theory and practice. The assessment precisely measures what they can and can’t do with their current skills.

While Kian remains inspired by his desire to level the playing field in education, he realizes that he can make a greater impact by building the mentorship layer of education that helps millions of learners and organizations identify their skills gaps and find a way to maximize their potential, thereby accelerating innovation and contributing to progress.

The Workera.ai platform offers precision upskilling and scalable mentoring to meet enterprise demand for key technological capabilities including data science, machine learning, and artificial intelligence. See how Workera.ai can help your organization understand the skills your workforce has today, and plan for the skills needed tomorrow. Contact us for a demo today.