We are thrilled to announce that two new esteemed judges have joined the Winner Selection Judging Panel for the Reach Higher Career App Challenge. Gale Halsey and Arrun Kapoor will join the panel of judges at Demo Day at the White House in July to evaluate the finalists’ solutions and recommend a grand prize winner. We are honored to have Gale and Arrun bring their extensive experience to the panel. Gale has worked at Ford Motor Company for over 20 years, and oversees learning and development organizations, global leadership develop programs, onboarding, and coaching strategies. Arrun is the managing Director for SJF Ventures’ New York City office and leads the fund’s education and employment tech investments. You can read more about each of our two new judges below.

The five finalists are currently participating in an intensive virtual accelerator phase to prepare for Demo Day, where they will present their refined career planning app concepts and demonstrate their final prototypes to the judges. They are working through a series of modules with leading thinkers from Roadtrip Nation, Civitas Learning, Code Interactive, and IBM Watson to improve their concepts, gain a deep understanding of student and counselor needs, develop scalable prototypes, and create sustainable business models.

We are very excited to hear from the finalists at Demo Day and would like to extend our sincerest thanks to the Winner Selection Judges for lending their time and expertise to the Challenge. Please join us in welcoming Gale and Arrun to the panel:

GALE HALSEY
CLO and Director, Global Learning and Organization Development, Ford Motor Company

Gale is responsible for developing and implementing the vision, strategy and global organization structure for all OD and learning activities across Ford. In her role, she coordinates the activities of the ten functional learning and development organizations, global leadership development programs, onboarding, and coaching strategies. Gale is responsible for the business operations of the Ford Training and Development Center, the Organization Development Institute, L&OD IT platforms and university partnership programs.

ARRUN KAPOOR
Managing Director, SJF Ventures

Arrun is the Managing Director for SJF Ventures’ New York City office and leads the fund’s education and employment tech investments. He has been involved as a Board Director or Observer to Civitas Learning, Raise, Think Through Learning, FieldView Solutions, ServiceChannel, Truist, and Ayla Networks. He heads the NYC EdLinks program and is a member of the Investment Board of the Social Venture Fund for The Tamer Center for Social Enterprise at Columbia Business School. Arrun was most recently with Bain & Company in London and Delhi.

Note that Finalist Selection Judges Cheryl Carrier and Donna Harris have been recused from judging the grand prize winner selection due to conflicts of interest.