The Office was established within GovOps. C2C’s Governing Board seated, Executive Director appointed, and leadership positions established.

C2C filled vacant positions, hosted its first Community Conversations with the public, released its first Student Experience Report, and established its brand identity.

Within three years of its launch, Cradle-to-Career brought data together across siloes, collaborating with C2C’s Governing Board, state-level data partners, and the public to build the necessary data infrastructure capable of securely ingesting partner data. This crucial phase established a high bar of transparency and security, and integrated over a decade of historical education, well-being, and workforce outcomes.

Cradle-to-Career brought data together across siloes, and for the first time, ingested and linked historical data dating back to 10 years. The linked data enabled C2C to build data tools like the Student Pathways Dashboard and Query Builder.

C2C launched its first public-facing tool, the Student Pathways Dashboard, giving Californians a first-of-its-kind tool for education and career planning.

The first phase of C2C’s Query Builder tools allows users to explore aggregated data on how California students enter and progress through college.

In the largest expansion planned since its inception, Cradle-to-Career partnered with California’s Workforce Development Board and Employment Training Panel. Integrating this new labor data—along with expanded insights from the Employment Development Department—will provide a richer understanding of non-linear career paths. By unlocking these critical insights, Cradle-to-Career fills a major missing puzzle piece, allowing state leaders to evaluate and improve California’s training pipelines.

Doubling the Insights to Benefit Californians
In just three years, the data system doubled in size, expanding from eight initial data partners submitting data in 2023 to now containing an extensive scope and breadth of data with 16 partners submitting data in 2026.

C2C continues to deliver insights to cut through the noise and help partners serve the people of California. Through its CalKIDS project, C2C helped the state pinpoint 40,000 community college students who have not claimed their state-provided scholarship money, totaling over $20 million. C2C produced reports used for targeted outreach by the California Community Colleges Chancellor’s Office.

Cradle-to-Career’s new strategic plan sets the vision for how C2C will be a neutral and trusted source of information in the future. Moving forward, C2C will enhance and unveil new dashboards that follow transfer students in their journey from community colleges to 4-year degrees and examine training and retention paths for California’s teachers. C2C will pilot its data request process for researchers and release new data reports to provide deeper insights into who is landing jobs and whether those jobs lead to paths with opportunity.