Latest news with #Hopeworks
Technical.ly
4 days ago
- Business
- Technical.ly
Fore Biotherapeutics raises another $38M for cancer drug trial, bringing its latest round to $113M
Philly life sciences companies are still seeing massive raises, despite analyst chatter about the sector's shortcomings. Biotech company Fore Biotherapeutics brought in $38 million, the second installment to a later-stage round that began in 2023. Local orgs are also getting funding to expand tech education and job training in Philadelphia and beyond. Tech education nonprofit Hopeworks received a $1.2 million grant to expand its workforce development programming to two new cities on the East Coast. Plus, developers received $30 million from the state to continue creating manufacturing and commercialization space at the Navy Yard, which will hopefully eventually lead to business attraction and job creation, a partner organization said. Get all the details on the latest money moves below the chart, where we look at the top 10 companies hiring for tech jobs in the Philadelphia market and how that's changed since the previous month. Life sciences giant Fore Biotherapeutics rakes in another massive round University City-based biotech company Fore Biotherapeutics raised $38 million, it announced last week. The company develops therapies for cancer, specifically a treatment called plixorafenib. The funding will advance a phase two clinical trial for the drug called the FORTE Master Protocol. 'We are well-positioned to continue our capitally efficient execution and make significant strides in delivering the ongoing FORTE Master Protocol,' said William Hinshaw, CEO of Fore. 'As we look to multiple anticipated interim analyses and clinical data supporting potential registration under the accelerated approval pathway, with FDA submissions potentially at the end of next year.' This round was an extension of its $75 million Series D in 2023, meaning the round now totals $113 million. Hopeworks plans expansion thanks to $1.2M grant Tech education and workforce development organization Hopeworks received a $1.2 million grant from the Hg Foundation earlier this month. Over the next three years, the grant will help expand the nonprofit's reach to two new cities: Newark, New Jersey, and an undetermined second location. The plan is to expand to Newark first, Dan Rhoton, CEO of Hopeworks, told The plan for the second location is to target somewhere along the I-95 corridor, likely in Delaware or Maryland. But Hopeworks isn't in a rush to move forward with this expansion, it wants to make sure the program in Newark is solid before moving forward, he said. 'We don't need Hopeworks to be in 20 cities,' he said. 'We need young adults to get their lives changed. That's the really important part.' Hopeworks' model provides trauma-informed tech training and paid work opportunities to young adults with the goal of getting young adults from low-income backgrounds into sustainable, well-paying careers. The organization started in Camden in 1999 and expanded to Kensington in 2022. In those locations, it offers programs in web design, geographic information services, data analytics and business. Only the web design program will be expanding to the new cities. 'We continue to prove that young adults in Camden, Kensington and now maybe Newark are the folks who can fill the jobs you need,' Rhoton said. 'It's changing the conversation about where you go looking for talent.' DCED awards $30M to the Philly Navy Yard The Shapiro administration awarded $30 million to real estate developers Ensemble/Mosaic Navy Yard to build the Navy Yard Greenway District. This money comes from the Pennsylvania Strategic Investments to Enhance Sites program run by the Department of Community and Economic Development (DCED), which awarded $64 million to 11 projects throughout the state in its first round. The funding will specifically be used for utility infrastructure, soil excavation, grading and stormwater management to eventually turn 700,000 square feet into advanced manufacturing and commercialization space. '[The funding] will help attract new businesses, support the expansion of our life sciences and advanced manufacturing industries, and create hundreds of good-paying jobs across a wide range of skill and educational levels,' said Jodie Harris, president of the Philadelphia Industrial Development Corporation, which partners with Ensemble/Mosaic. More money moves: The Montgomery County Investment Development Authority plans to commit $500,000 to the Montco Made Investment Initiative, a partnership with Ben Franklin Technology Partners of Southeastern Pennsylvania. King of Prussia-based fintech company PowerPay closed a $400 million 'committed warehouse facility,' which means the company can borrow up to that amount to fund its customers' loans. The DCED awarded $2 million to venture capital firm Neovate Life Sciences through the Ben Franklin Technology Development Authority. This funding will be invested in life sciences companies in Pennsylvania. Governor Josh Shapiro's 2025 to 2026 budget proposes $50 million for a new PA Innovation program. This is broken down into a $30 million initiative to expand life sciences job growth and $20 million to support large-scale innovation. 2025 RealLIST Startup Civic received a $50,000 grant from the Draper Foundation through the Wharton Bridge Fund, the company told Biotech company Nuevocor, which is based in Singapore but has its US headquarters in Montgomery County, raised a $45 million Series B round.
Technical.ly
22-04-2025
- Business
- Technical.ly
Exploring AI: Practical Tools to Enhance Your Daily Life with Hopeworks (Powered by Dell Technologies)
Event Description Explore the power of AI and discover how it can transform your career at Philly Tech Week with Hopeworks! Our interactive event, "Unlocking AI for Career Success," goes beyond mastering interviews—offering a variety of hands-on workstations designed to introduce attendees to cutting-edge AI tools that can help them succeed. At this event, you can: ✅ Ask AI Anything: Engage with an AI Q&A workstation where you can explore AI's capabilities and get real-time answers. ✅ Discover Hidden AI Tools: Learn about lesser-known AI applications that can streamline your job search and professional development. ✅ Ace Your Next Interview: Practice with our AI-powered mock interview platform and receive instant feedback. ✅ Upgrade Your Resume & Cover Letter: Use AI to enhance and optimize your application materials. ✅ And More!
Technical.ly
31-03-2025
- Business
- Technical.ly
Dismantling the Dept. of Education could steer more people to nontraditional career paths
If the Department of Education ceases to exist as planned, college financial aid could potentially face disruption for millions of current and incoming college students. The Trump administration's ongoing dismantling of the Department of Education, also known as the DOE, could spur a shift away from traditional four-year degrees and toward education that prepares students for specific jobs. Increasingly, those jobs are in tech, are high-paying and increase social equity. Whether changes to the DOE will mean influxes of students who are on a traditional college path will look toward non-college options is unclear, but the conversation shines a light on existing issues with the US education system's status quo. Building wealth outside of the system The potential financial aid disruption isn't expected to have much impact on non-college postsecondary education, which relies less on traditional student aid. For education professionals working in the equity space on the postsecondary level, dismantling the DOE may not amount to much of a shakeup at all. 'The fact is that the post-secondary education system has not been working for a lot of young adults for a very long time,' Dan Rhoton, CEO of Hopeworks, told 'The young folks who Pell Grants are supposed to help are repeatedly failed by the system.' Hopeworks is a tech workforce development organization that serves Camden, New Jersey and Kensington in Philadelphia, focusing on training chronically unemployed adults in low-income communities. It's not a bootcamp, Rhoton stresses. 'We do web development, data analytics and revenue cycle management, where we provide services to companies like any other business,' he said, 'and we use those businesses as a way to train young adults into permanent jobs.' It is part of an ongoing tech movement that includes some coding bootcamps and IT training cohorts of various models that evolved from coding camps born in Silicon Valley in the early 2010s. The potential for hands-on tech programs as an alternative to a four-year college education, specifically as a pathway from poverty to a high-paying job, led to many of the tech career opportunities that exist in most cities today. If the DOE goes away, Rhoton doesn't expect a change in the number of students Hopeworks serves since the communities they're in are already largely shut out when it comes to college opportunities. With a waiting list of over 300, the level of need is already high, with or without the DOE. Tech apprenticeships and changing debt culture There are few pathways into high paying jobs that have the track record of apprenticeships when it comes to relying less on government funding and debt accumulation. Brian Kennedy, senior vice president for operations and government affairs for the Pittsburgh Technology Council, told that non-college pathways like their registered apprenticeship program tend not to get as much support from the DOE as they do from the US Department of Labor and the Workforce Education and Innovation Act. These are also at risk under Trump — while the Department of Labor is not slated to be abolished, it was reported to be facing staff cuts of 90%, with some staff that was fired in February reinstated in early March. Still, the issues in the US education system go deeper than those departments, Kennedy said. 'The bigger issue that we have isn't really about government funding,' he said. 'The bigger issue is a cultural problem that is somewhat unique to the United States, where the business community is expecting people to go out and finance their own education, find ways to get meaningful work experience and and then wants to hire you when you have five years of experience, the degrees they require and you've accumulated massive amounts of debt — and that system is very clearly broken.' The Pittsburgh Technology Council's registered apprenticeship programs, he says, get hiring companies involved with the education of their employees. 'It's been widely adopted in Europe, and to some extent in places like India,' Kennedy said. 'Through registered apprenticeship programs, industry comes to the table as part of the training — and not just for their incumbent workforces, but for their entry level workforces. That's where the cultural disconnect is today.' Apprenticeships, once thought of as primarily the way into journeyman trades like plumbing and carpentry, have been increasingly catching on as a way to build tech pipelines. Though the number of available tech apprenticeships remains limited, they have trended up since 2020, with a slight dip between 2023 and 2024. Still, in 2024, there were more than 64,800 registered apprentices in tech occupations, a 29% increase over the previous four years. College aid will still be available, at least to some, without the DOE For students whose career choices require a more traditional college route, programs like the Pell Grant, which existed before the DOE was launched during the Jimmy Carter administration in 1980, may be shuffled to a different department but will likely still be available to students, Kennedy said. 'We're probably not seeing any chance that things like Pell would be cut,' he said. Still, as we saw with the FAFSA debacle in 2024, any disruption in financial aid can cause havoc. The technical glitches after the Free Application for Federal Student Aid (FAFSA) soft launched its overhauled website in 2024 were at least partially to blame for college closures, including the University of the Arts in Philadelphia and the Delaware College of Art and Design, demonstrating that even a jostle to the program can cause big problems for students seeking postsecondary education. Are bootcamps a viable answer? Bootcamps like Zip Code Wilmington (ZCW) have helped people get into tech careers for more than a decade. While bootcamps in general, partly due to their expensive Silicon Valley roots, have a reputation for costing a lot of money for certifications that may or may not result in a high-paying job, community-based programs and non-profits like ZCW have partnerships with hiring companies and good track records — always check their track records — and they're more than ready for a potential increase of students if federal financial aid is disrupted. 'Zip Code's immersive training program continuously analyzes and adapts to the changing economy,' Desa Burton, executive director of ZCW, told in an email. 'While we anticipate that more adult learners may seek out alternative education pathways to get into good paying jobs or to stay relevant in their current positions, the economic trends in the tech industry are a considerable challenge: hiring freezes, layoffs, and the uncertainty surrounding the impact of artificial intelligence are having a major impact on enrollment.' To manage these challenges, Burton said, ZCW offers its training for free for qualified applicants, and, because the program is too intense and time-consuming to allow students to have a job during the cohort, qualifying students also receive stipends to support living expenses during training and access to other nongovernment financial aid. Whether those kinds of financial accommodations will convince people concerned about the Trump Administration's impact on federal financial aid that a bootcamp is a better fit than college remains to be seen, but a focus on education that specifically aims to make people, regardless of their walk of life, gainfully employable is potentially about to have a moment. 'I think the shift is happening, and this might slightly accelerate it,' said Rhoton. 'But I think the fundamental reckoning — is college or even a high school education preparing folks for actual work? —- is happening, regardless of the changes in the Department of Education.'
