An interview with Josuel Plasencia, Co-Founder & COO of Forefront

What traction do you have so far?
Our team has worked with 20+ customers including SAP, Accenture, and Blue Cross Blue Shield. We’ve been really focused on building our curriculum and preparing for expansion, especially in digital training. We are also happy to be working with leading edtech accelerators such LearnLaunch, Village Capital, and 757. 

What is the story and inspiration behind starting Forefront?
Both me and Yulkendy experienced the challenge of working at companies that weren’t ready to fully take us in and embrace us. Like many millennials, people of color, women and underrepresented communities, we felt the intercultural disconnect in the workplace and decided to quit corporate America. Seeing this happen to our peers and then to us, we decided to take the challenge into our own hands and do something about it.
After running the business for a few years, we realized our biggest challenge was figuring out how to scale this impact and continue equipping teams with the skills they need to engage and retain talent.

After a long journey researching, talking to customers, and learning more about the problem, we’re building a digital tool to help teams and businesses on-board and train their next generation of workers.

What is the unmet market need or challenge that Forefront is addressing?
We know that it’s expensive to hire new talent, and even more expensive to train and then lose that talent. In a time where employee turnover is spiking due to lack of diversification and cross cultural training it’s important for corporations to address this now more than ever. Right now, talent that is joining the workplace is exponentially more diverse, global, and remote and exponentially more likely to leave companies due to cultural mismatches. Companies are beginning to take notice and create more engaging ways of retaining such talent. We are coming to market with a more effective, scalable solution to tackle this challenge. 

How does your company solve the proposed problem and why are you the team to solve this problem?
We solve this problem by providing a learning platform that teaches cultural competency and leadership training for millennials and the next generation of talent. We are the team to solve this because we have had proximity to this challenge and have been in the space, training and equipping leaders for nearly 5 years.

Why are you participating in the LearnLaunch Accelerator? Why did you choose this program?
We love to partner with the edtech community and know that this is a massive challenge, so we wanted to partner with leading organizations. We are so fortunate to identify and connect with both LearnLaunch and ETS and we can’t think of better partnerships. ETS has lots of focus in both leadership and culture as well, so I believe together we can tackle the challenges more efficiently.

Learn more about Forefront here.