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Career Bridge Success Story

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Career Bridge is a Work-Based Learning Management System that connects students, educators, and businesses to build, run, and track experiential learning programs — internships, mentorships, and student-led projects — in one platform rather than through scattered spreadsheets and cold outreach. The system includes built-in pre- and post-program assessments (21CTL) to measure student progress and program effectiveness, and lets businesses bookmark standout students and fast-track them into interview processes directly through the platform. The company, patent-pending on its core system, was one of six finalists at the September 12, 2024 Startup Texas SBIR/STTR Innovation Competition Demo Day, a program run by the Brownsville Community Improvement Corporation (BCIC) in partnership with UTRGV’s Entrepreneurship and Commercialization Center (ECC) and Texas A&M Engineering Experiment Station (TEES).

Founder Eloy Garza built Career Bridge out of his own classroom experience as a Dual Credit Marketing Instructor and DECA advisor, where he created the first high-school student-led marketing agency in the United States — a model later recognized by the U.S. Department of Education and featured at national conferences. He holds degrees in Marketing and Advertising from Morningside University, a Master’s in Integrated Marketing Communications from Georgetown University, and an Entrepreneurship Certificate from The Wharton School, and now also serves as a Marketing Lecturer at UTRGV’s Robert C. Vackar College of Business and Entrepreneurship. Co-founder Jason Ravitz, PhD, brings more than 25 years of educational-technology research experience, including as Director of Research at the Buck Institute for Education, a Senior Program Manager at Google focused on STEM-CS education, and a Senior Research Scientist at Digital Promise; he holds a B.A. from Harvard College and a Ph.D. from Syracuse University. The two had been working together for three years when they applied to Startup Texas in May 2024, and Garza founded the company in November 2019.

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