Alignment Academy is the home of The Expansion Experience™, a structured postsecondary readiness journey built to guide students through the transition from high school into whatever comes next.
Four-year universities, community colleges, technical education, certifications, apprenticeships, service, entrepreneurship, every postsecondary path is a valid one. Our students leave with the clarity, mentorship, and personalized plan to pursue theirs.
Free for students · In partnership with districts, schools, cities, nonprofits & foundations
Alignment Academy partners with districts, schools, cities, nonprofits, and philanthropic organizations to deliver a sustained readiness experience the counseling office alone cannot carry.
Clarity changes everything. When a student knows who they are and what they want to build, the path forward stops being overwhelming and starts being theirs.
A framework students carry beyond the room. What begins in the Foundation Workshop keeps unfolding through every next transition, in college, in work, in life.
Postsecondary gaps are rarely a motivation problem. Students move through high school without structured identity development, without guided planning, and without anyone connecting who they are to where they could go.
A college fair. A single workshop. A brochure. Without consistent support and a framework students can return to, the momentum disappears long before an application is submitted.
Identity first. Clarity second. Action third. Sustained mentorship throughout. The Expansion Experience™ builds the self-knowledge that makes every next step feel deliberate, not assigned.
A generation that doesn't just get accepted somewhere. They choose their path, pursue it, and follow through, because they know exactly why it matters and what they're building toward.
Piloted with the City of Boston's Office of Youth Employment & Career Development, and delivered at Harvard University for the W.E.B. Du Bois Research Fellows serving students from HBCUs across the country. The framework meets students at every pivot point from junior year through the transitions that follow.
Superintendents, city offices, and state agencies are under real pressure, admissions scores, FAFSA completion, attendance, postsecondary enrollment, workforce readiness. Alignment Academy doesn't chase those metrics one at a time. It works upstream, at the source of student confidence and follow-through, so every downstream number moves together.
Counselor caseloads well above recommended ratios, uneven FAFSA completion, and postsecondary enrollment gaps that persist despite strong classroom instruction. Existing supports rarely reach students consistently enough to change the outcome.
Workforce alignment, credential attainment, and equitable access across zip codes. Leaders need programming that produces measurable movement across those indicators, not another one-off event that looks good in a photo.
When students build real self-knowledge and a plan they own, attendance rises, applications get finished, FAFSA gets submitted, and postsecondary enrollment holds. The dashboard metrics move because the student underneath them moved first.
"Bright futures and lasting self-trust don't come from single interventions. They come from stable, sustained support that stays with students through every transition."
The Expansion Experience™ is Alignment Academy's flagship student program, a carefully designed developmental journey that begins with self-discovery and ends with aligned action.
Students move through the framework as a single, connected experience. They begin with the Foundation Workshop, build the first version of their Personal Pathway Plan, deepen it across three pillars of focus, and carry it forward into whatever comes next.
The result is a student who doesn't just know what's expected of them, but who they are, what they want to build, and how to move toward it with alignment and confidence.
"Before we ask students where they're going, we ask them who they are. Everything else comes from that."
A settled arrival. Students land in the room fully before the work begins.
Facilitators share their own path, an invitation, not a lecture.
Students build the first version of the Personal Pathway Plan.
Their plan, guided reflection prompts, and access to what comes next.
Built the first day. Refined for years. Not a worksheet completed once, a living roadmap the student owns and returns to as clarity grows.
Three pillars structure every student's journey through the Expansion Experience™, from the first question of self-discovery to the measurable action plan they walk away with.
Self-awareness, the ground everything else stands on.
A vision of contribution, pointed at real programs and real paths.
A funded, mentored, actioned plan the student owns.
Where the flagship program describes the arc, the student journey is the terrain, six deliberate stages a cohort moves through together.
Each stage introduces new work: facilitated sessions, mentor check-ins, family touchpoints, and action labs. Real tasks happen in real time, applications, FAFSA, scholarship searches, mentor conversations, campus visits, portfolio-building.
Students don't just leave with a plan on paper. They leave with momentum, evidence of what they've already done, and a cohort that has moved through it with them.
Every student begins with the Foundation Workshop and builds the first version of their Personal Pathway Plan.
Students develop the self-awareness that grounds every choice that follows, values, strengths, identity, confidence.
Students explore careers, postsecondary options, mentors, scholarships, and the real programs their vision points toward.
Students build the funded, mentored, actioned plan, applications, financial planning, networking, and measurable next steps.
The Personal Pathway Plan is refined into a living roadmap the student owns and continues to revisit.
Students continue receiving access to mentorship, opportunities, accountability, and resources as they navigate postsecondary life.
Students continue receiving access to mentorship, opportunities, accountability, and resources as they navigate postsecondary education. Community college, a four-year university, a technical program, entrepreneurship, an apprenticeship, service, or a path they build in real time, the support stays.
This is where the self-trust students built during the program gets tested and strengthened, where the Personal Pathway Plan becomes lived experience, and where continuity matters more than any fixed timeline.
"She had the grades. She had the offers. FAFSA didn't cover it. Working through the program, she mapped community college as a strategic first move, built her network, developed her project, transferred on her own terms. She is not behind. She is forward."
Every cohort produces a written outcomes report structured across four levels, from implementation quality through the bridge into postsecondary life.
Session attendance, lab participation, family engagement, canvas completion, program touchpoints.
FAFSA started and submitted, applications submitted, share of students applying to a postsecondary path, scholarships applied.
Pre- and post-program growth in student confidence, clarity, and self-trust. Family and staff confidence in student trajectory.
Continued mentorship engagement, mentor connections made, credits and credentials earned, internships accessed, funding secured after graduation.
Choose the pathway that matches your community's readiness. Every proposal is designed around your students, your calendar, and your goals.
Ideal for pilot programs, small cohorts, or summer bridge implementations. A focused window to introduce the framework, deliver the Foundation Workshop, and prove the model with a first group of students.
The flagship program delivered across one academic semester. The full Roots · Reach · Rise journey, Personal Pathway Plan development, mentor touchpoints, and outcomes reporting.
Deep integration across the school year, with expanded mentorship, family engagement, cross-cohort continuity, and long-term student development woven into your existing college and career infrastructure.
Every partnership may include a combination of the following. The final scope is designed with your team.
Pricing is never public. Every partnership is scoped around the factors that make your community distinct.
Every partnership begins with a discovery conversation.
Request a Partnership Proposal →When the plan is ready, the resources should be too.
The Forward Fund is Alignment Academy's philanthropic initiative, built to resource students directly after they've participated in the Expansion Experience™. When a student's Personal Pathway Plan calls for a specific next step, the Fund exists to help make it possible.
Supported through partnerships with individual donors, corporations, foundations, and public grants.
Schools, districts, cities, nonprofits, municipalities, and philanthropic organizations receive a customized implementation proposal designed around their community.
Free for students · In partnership with districts, schools, cities, nonprofits & foundations