Creating Opportunity: How Lattice Climbers Began

The Need for Opportunity

We created Lattice Climbers because of our fundamental belief that every young adult deserves the opportunity to succeed.

Everyone knows that formal education does not equal successful adulting. Depending on your social capital, cultural capital, your background and experiences, you may have gaps in knowledge that could seriously impact your future. What makes it even more difficult, is sometimes you don’t even know there’s a gap until you’re in the situation.

Leveraging Lived Experience

Guang Ming Whitley and Alison Kelly know this firsthand. Through our lived experiences and decades of working with young adults, we saw the need for a life playbook. How would our trajectories have been different if we had known things sooner?

Guang Ming’s mother was an immigrant and her father was the first in his family to attend college. While they did their best, there was so much Guang Ming didn’t know – just ask her about the zebra print suit she wore to her first college interview.

Alison took a nontraditional path, starting a business in high school, entering the corporate world at a young age and going to school at night. She quickly realized how much she had to learn about personal finance, time management, and business etiquette.

Leveling the Playing Field

This inspired us to level the playing field. Traditional mentorship is not scalable and good mentors are not available to everyone. You can’t cover everything that a young adult needs to know in a one hour coffee date once a month.

Our life playbook covers everything from professionalism to financial literacy to personal wellness. We took out the fluff and filler and distilled our lessons into two minute videos with supporting downloadables. Recognizing that everyone’s skill gaps are different, our onboarding assessment generates customized lessons designed to fit each lattice climber’s particular skill gaps. Our practical advice is available when you need it on your own terms. Listen to our CEO, Guang Ming Whitley, discuss Lattice Climbers on the Screaming Into the Cloud podcast.

Lattice Climbers is the mentor you never knew you needed.