Accelerate Montana Selected for National Initiative to Advance Workforce Mobility

The initiative funds solutions that make skills and credentials more visible, trusted, and portable — so working adults can access better career opportunities.

MISSOULA, MT — Accelerate Montana has been selected as one of 10 grantees in the Advancing Workforce Mobility initiative, a $3.5 million national effort led by Education Design Lab in collaboration with Credential Engine and supported by Walmart.

Chosen from more than 400 applicants nationwide, Accelerate Montana will receive $395,629 to continue its Blackfoot Living Principles as Open Data project, a first-of-its-kind effort to translate ten culturally grounded values identified by Blackfeet Nation community leaders into open, verifiable workforce data. The project is led in partnership with the Blackfeet Nation Personnel Department and supported by cultural knowledge keepers and Ancestral Echoes Consulting LLC, an Indigenous women-owned organization working to restore balance and wellness in Indigenous communities by addressing historical and present-day trauma through structural healing initiatives.

In Glacier County — home of the Blackfeet Reservation — 84% of residents are Skilled Through Alternative Routes (STARs), meaning they have developed valuable skills through work experience, community roles, cultural practice, and lived experience rather than a four-year degree. Yet these skills are largely invisible in standard hiring systems and workforce data. This project directly addresses that gap.

“This project is about more than one community — it’s about proving that cultural knowledge and lived experience are real, measurable skills that belong in workforce data systems. The trust and relationships we’ve built with the Blackfeet Nation over the years made this work possible, and we believe the model we develop together will offer a roadmap for how other Indigenous communities, rural communities, and overlooked populations can write themselves into the data systems that shape economic opportunity.”

— Jenny Harms, Executive Director, Accelerate Montana

"Our job descriptions have always listed what we needed people to do. This project helps us also capture who we need them to be - the values our community recognizes as essential but that never made it onto the page.”

— Dana Pemberton, Personnel Director, Blackfeet Nation

How the Work Will Unfold

Over 18 months, Accelerate Montana and the Blackfeet Nation Personnel Office will embed the ten Blackfoot Living Principles — such as iiya’kaakimaat (perseverance) and sapaatsinnaa’pii (keeping harmony and balance) — into job descriptions, interview guides, and hiring evaluations for an initial cohort of six roles, followed by a second cohort of six. Each principle will be expressed as observable workplace behaviors (for example, “maintains calm during emergencies” or “preserves relationships while addressing problems”) and published as open data using Credential Engine’s Credential Transparency Description Language (CTDL).

The result will be a replicable playbook — including methodology, HR tools, open data guidance, and ethical guardrails — that other Tribal nations, rural communities, and overlooked populations can adapt to make their own culturally specific skills visible and transferable without appropriating Blackfoot knowledge.

About Advancing Workforce Mobility

More than 70 million U.S. workers are STARs, yet many face barriers because their skills are not easily recognized or translated across systems. The Advancing Workforce Mobility initiative supports solutions that make skills more visible and easier to understand, build employer trust in non-degree credentials, connect credential data across education and workforce systems, and expand access to economic opportunity. Over the next 18 months, grantees will participate in a national learning cohort to test, refine, and scale these solutions.

“Too many workers have the skills employers need, but lack clear, trusted ways to demonstrate them. These grantees are building solutions that move us closer to a more transparent, skills-based economy.”

— Tara Laughlin, Senior Director of Skills Visibility, Education Design Lab

About Accelerate Montana

Accelerate Montana (AMT) is a nonprofit organization whose mission is to support inclusive economic prosperity for Montana’s workers, companies, and communities through a portfolio of economic and workforce development programs. Over the last three years, AMT has served nearly 4,000 individuals and businesses. AMT is associated with the University of Montana.

About Education Design Lab

Education Design Lab is a national nonprofit that co-designs inclusive, skills-based education-to-work pathways that improve economic mobility for the New Majority Learner-Earner. Learn more at www.eddesignlab.org.

About Credential Engine

Credential Engine is a nonprofit dedicated to creating transparency in the credential and skills marketplace to help people find pathways to opportunity. Learn more at credentialengine.org.

Media Contact

Jenny Harms

Executive Director, Accelerate Montana

jenny.harms@acceleratemt.com