About Us

Skillbridge is a unique, dynamic solutions provider with specialized expertise in capacity building for developing countries and underserved communities often facing poverty. We call our process of empowering individuals and organizations for measurable social impact in their communities Skillbridging.

Why We Exist

We are here to enable people and groups to make quantifiable contributions to society. Every action and choice we make is driven by this goal, which is the basis of our existence.

Poverty is a global crisis requiring everyone’s attention

It is “one of the greatest challenges facing the 21st-century society,” and “no country in the world is entirely unaffected by poverty.” There are “two ways that poverty can be measured: 1. Relative poverty: a person is poor relative to others in a particular society, given the overall standard of living. 2. Absolute poverty: a person is poor regarding minimal standards [what is needed to stay alive].”

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But there is a forward focus
Global leaders are collectively trying to address this and set a 2030 deadline to end extreme poverty through the United Nations’ (UN) Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). This is the number one goal of the SDGs. Training and equipping micro, small, and medium enterprises (MSMEs) is crucial for unlocking the more than 400 million new jobs MSMEs can provide to end extreme poverty by 2030.
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Skillbridge has the passion and expertise required to make an impact

The drive of Skillbridge’s founders, Jason Grant and Mandy Grant, to create measurable social impact by alleviating poverty through skill building is rooted in their purpose and lifelong volunteerism. Jason served on the board of a YMCA and was Vice Chair of a School Board serving underserved communities, while Mandy was the director of a non-profit that trains trafficking victims in making and selling jewelry.

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Skillbridge is sought out as a global leader in capacity building

The world’s largest developmental finance institution to the private sector, the World Bank Group’s (WBG) International Finance Corporation (IFC), sees Skillbridge as a global leader in capacity building. IFC has awarded Skillbridge projects across all core services of the Skillbridge Journey since 2014.

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We are honored leaders of SDG #8 globally
Skillbridge’s greatest and most far-reaching success centers around its work in equipping training professionals to train MSMEs, enabling them to grow, hire others to pay it forward, and create a flourishing community, alleviating poverty and replacing deprivation with solutions.
Read More
Our Purpose and

Our Purpose and Mission

Skillbridge, formerly Covenant Consulting, is a division of Cascades Advisory Group, LLC, a training firm headquartered in Dallas, Texas, founded in 2007. Our purpose is to empower individuals and organizations to achieve measurable social impact. This is the reason our company exists.

At Skillbridge, we develop and strengthen skills, bridge gaps, and empower people and organizations passionate about serving developing countries and underserved communities. We are committed to going beyond identifying skills to bridging the necessary gaps to overcome complex obstacles during the journey toward measurable social impact.

What we do

Why Projects Fail

Typical training efforts fall short of measurable social impact in developing countries and underserved communities. Projects fail when:

Focusing on one solution for a need without going beyond identifying the necessary skills to understand the complexity of the gaps.
Missing the quality support and approach to problem-solving.
Relying on learning methods alone without accounting for the contexts for impact and sustainability.
Failing to analyze the need or approach for necessary methodologies thoroughly.

What We Do and How We Skillbridge

Skillbridging is developing and strengthening skills, plus bridging gaps, plus empowering people for measurable social impact. Some call this capacity building. We call it Skillbridging.

When a powerful arch is supported by strong beams and pillars, results can be achieved. At Skillbridge, our sequence of services is supported by guiding principles and vetted methodologies so we can achieve measurable social impact through capacity building. This is our Skillbridge, our approach to capacity building.

We Skillbridge to make our projects successful by going beyond just identifying the needed skills to fully bridging existing gaps. Why are we so effective at Skillbridging? In addition to providing our select, passionate clients with a Skillbridge, we bring to the table our broad experience with a diversity of projects and our desire to ensure client success.

We have strong beams (guiding principles) supporting the Skillbridge Journey to achieve measurable social impact. We understand that to be truly effective and transformational, Skillbridging requires an integrated delivery. The success of the Skillbridge Journey is only possible because of, in part, guiding principles that ensure measurable social impact through:

  • Analyzing mindsets, skills, processes, behaviors, and culture for needed change
  • Integrating quality methodologies and disciplines necessary to drive impact
  • Adapting solutions for gender inclusivity, FCS, developing contexts, and underserved communities
  • Aligning to or identifying the measurement strategy and tracking investment readiness or community empowerment progress

Before embarking on the Skillbridge Journey, we identify gaps and opportunities by defining and analyzing performance needs. The output is a Skillbridge Needs Analysis, a complete report highlighting a clear way forward by identifying and prioritizing the most impactful actions to drive the project’s success. Projects often skip the needs analysis, but for Skillbridge, it is the key that allows us to define the client’s starting point and desired state. From there, we can confidently move forward onto the Skillbridge.

Click the image above to view the Skillbridge Journey video.

Our Way of Working and Our Clients, Broad Experience, and Diversity of Projects

Our client’s success is our success. No matter our role, we strive to be an extension of our client’s teams and are truly concerned about the success of the projects. We bring the right experience and expertise to match our clients’ needs. We are committed to going beyond just identifying the needed skills to bridge the necessary gaps to overcome complex obstacles during this journey toward measurable social impact.

Three principles guide how we work with clients:

  • Empathetic Partnership: We pay attention to closely align with our clients’ visions, turning your goals into ours.
  • Tailored Solutions: Our Skillbridge is globally applicable to creating your tailored solution.
  • Collaborative Empowerment: We involve key stakeholders so the implementation goes from paper to empowerment.
Our Way of Working
We work with those who are passionate about measurable social impact, including:
  • Developmental Finance Institutions (DFIs)
  • Non-governmental Organizations
  • Corporations
  • Governmental Entities
  • Non-profit Organizations
  • Community Service Organizations
  • Learning and Development Departments
  • Sales Enablement Departments

We partner with individuals and organizations that share our passion for serving developing countries and underserved communities. We journey together toward measurable social impact. Many of our clients share a commitment to achieving the United Nations’ Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). The SDGs are part of a comprehensive global agenda to end poverty, protect the planet, and ensure long-term prosperity and peace. We find our passionate clients across the world and next door.

Skillbridge is a founding signatory of the World Bank Group’s IFC Principles for Learning and the President is a co-author of their Guide to Training, from which we derive our training and coaching methodology. We are also proud to be a signatory participant of the UN Global Compact and that our projects align to support these goals.

Our accumulated experience and ability to go beyond identifying skills to solving problems is strengthened by our 17+ years in the market and the rich diversity of projects we have undertaken to achieve measurable social impact. 

Jason Grant

CEO | Principal | Managing Member

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Mandy Grant

President | Managing Member

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Our Leadership

Founded and owned by managing members Jason Grant (CEO) and Mandy Grant (President), Skillbridge’s team of over 100+ professionals spans the globe, bringing 17+ major languages, 22+ countries, and experience from 25+ industries with it. Our proprietary and secure screening process helps us quickly find, recruit, and qualify high-caliber talent for specific client needs to create high impact for projects across the globe and exceed client expectations.

We use the same integrated methodologies from the Skillbridge pillars internally to drive quality on client projects. Our team fosters an attitude and culture of continuous improvement and follows quality principles. Each team member is committed to bridging gaps and empowering people for impact.

Our team is globally located and poised to meet with you virtually or in person. Depending on the project needs, we have regional workspaces through Regus (domestically and internationally) to meet with you and facilitate local project teams. Whatever your needs are, we can Skillbridge with you.

Partner with us for impact

We respond within two business days.

We partner with individuals and organizations that share our passion for serving developing countries and underserved communities. Together, we journey towards measurable social impact. Contact us today to start Skillbridging!

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Our team is globally located and poised to meet with you virtually or in person. Depending on the project needs, we have regional workspaces through Regus (domestically and internationally) to meet with you and facilitate local project teams. Whatever your needs are, we can Skillbridge with you.

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Poverty is a global crisis requiring everyone’s attention

It is “one of the greatest challenges facing the 21st-century society,” and “no country in the world is entirely unaffected by poverty.” There are “two ways that poverty can be measured: 1. Relative poverty: a person is poor relative to others in a particular society, given the overall standard of living. 2. Absolute poverty: a person is poor regarding minimal standards [what is needed to stay alive].”

According to the World Bank Group, nearly 800 million people live in extreme poverty, defined as earning less than $2 per day. Economic or spiritual poverty is the deprivation of one’s basic ability to provide enough for oneself. It can be crippling and life-ending, especially in extreme cases. For people suffering from poverty, sustaining their life and livelihood becomes their main and often only focus, eclipsing their ability to focus on growth and forward progress. Each day, low-income people “face a struggle to survive that creates feelings of helplessness, anxiety, suffocation, and desperation that are simply unparalleled in the lives of the rest of humanity.” The stakes are high for capacity-building projects in developing countries and underserved communities. Projects that fail to make a measurable social impact could result in death or poverty that lasts generations.

But there is a forward focus

Global leaders are collectively trying to address this and set a 2030 deadline to end extreme poverty through the United Nations’ (UN) Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). This is the number one goal of the SDGs. Training and equipping micro, small, and medium enterprises (MSMEs) is crucial for unlocking the more than 400 million new jobs MSMEs can provide to end extreme poverty by 2030. In a survey, half of the World Bank Group’s International Finance Corporation (IFC) clients identified skill building as a priority need for assistance. By providing skill building for MSMEs, larger investment clients, and the training professionals who work with them, we can help countries improve their workforce’s employability and productivity, help grow MSMEs sustainably, and support their structural transformation and economic growth.

Skillbridge has the passion and expertise required to make an impact

The drive of Skillbridge’s founders, Jason Grant and Mandy Grant, to create measurable social impact by alleviating poverty through skill building is rooted in their purpose and lifelong volunteerism. Jason served on the board of a YMCA and was Vice Chair of a School Board serving underserved communities, while Mandy was the director of a non-profit that trains trafficking victims in making and selling jewelry. She also leads mission teams across the globe to provide hope and upskilling in developing countries. The founders’ careers, expertise, and experience have led them through the transition of running a training firm to leading Skillbridge, where they combine training with international development, capacity building, quality, and leadership to enable job growth that boosts standards of living in communities. Skillbridge evolved its name from Covenant Consulting to reflect this mission. Our company has a diversity of projects (1,000+) and broad experience serving developing countries and underserved communities.

It has transformed from a training company to a capacity-building firm based on the founders’ dovetailing career paths. Jason’s award-winning career includes a storied legacy at a global fortune company and some of the highest honors awarded by the company for enhanced service, profitability, and professionalism. His experience in corporate leadership for global projects, coaching, sales enablement training, measurement and evaluation, and quality is merged with Mandy’s international resumé in training development and delivery, strategic action planning, coaching, project management, and on-the-ground global development work in skill building in developing countries. Their combined careers, along with the global Skillbridge team’s, have delivered core capacity-building services for projects addressing 14 of the 17 SDGs. All of these have worked to accomplish SDG #1: No Poverty.

References:

  1. Isaac Boaheng, Poverty, the Bible, and Africa: Contextual Foundations for Helping the Poor (Carlisle, England: Hippo Books, 2020), 16.

  2. David P. Gushee and Glen Harold Stassen, Kingdom Ethics: Following Jesus in Contemporary Context, 2nd ed. (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 2016), 470.
  3. Barry Asmus and Wayne Grudem, The Poverty of Nations: A Sustainable Solution (Wheaton, IL: Crossway Books, 2013), 39.
  4. https://www.worldbank.org/en/topic/smefinance
  5. https://www.worldbank.org/en/topic/skillsdevelopment
Skillbridge is sought out as a global leader in capacity building
The world’s largest developmental finance institution to the private sector has awarded Skillbridge projects across all core services of the Skillbridge Journey since 2014. Skillbridge, in partnership with IFC, is proud to be leading the way in upskilling the world, particularly in equipping global training professionals as we all work toward achieving SDG #8 (Decent Work and Economic Growth) by upskilling micro, small, and medium enterprises in developing countries.
We are honored leaders of SDG #8 globally

Skillbridge’s greatest and most far-reaching success centers around its work in equipping training professionals to train MSMEs, enabling them to grow, hire others to pay it forward, and create a flourishing community, alleviating poverty and replacing deprivation with solutions. Skillbridge partners with WBG/IFC and its clients as a leader in this strategy. Here is a snapshot of some of what Skillbridge has been honored to contribute to the world in support of SDG #8, which aims to promote sustained, inclusive, sustainable economic growth, full and productive employment, and decent work for all. This work can mean the difference between poverty and prosperity for the 800 million people living in absolute poverty and the millions living in relative poverty.

  • Grow Learn Connect, co-founded by Skillbridge’s president, was created by IFC to support the sustainable growth of MSMEs in developing countries through capacity building and skills development of the training professionals who serve them. Equipped trainers can upskill regionally and in context, providing a more sustainable, scalable approach to fostering the individual and organizational growth needed to bring hope to communities.
  • As part of the Core Working Group, Skillbridge’s president co-authored the Guide to Training (see page 7), providing a detailed roadmap for high-impact capacity building and skills development in developing countries and supplemental roadmaps for gender and fragile and conflict-affected situations (FCS), in partnership with the Institute for Performance and Learning (I4PL) and the Learning and Performance Institute (LPI). This guide and its supplements are a must-read to equip the training professionals who help grow MSMEs, unleash the untapped potential of women entrepreneurs, and develop human capital where it is needed most—in areas plagued by fragility, conflict, and violence.
  • Our CEO, a former leader of a global fortune company’s coaching program, drove the strategy and thought leadership for Skillbridge’s development of the Coaching for Improved Performance course, equipping training professionals to transfer skill building to application in a methodology that is simple enough to be used in pineapple fields and thorough enough to empower architects to design affordable, sustainable housing. The 10- to 12-hour, asynchronous online course moves capacity builders from advising to high-impact coaching. It is based on internationally recognized coaching best practices, as well as IFC’s Guide to Training and the International Coaching Federation’s core competencies (certified by an ICF-certified coach). Coaching is critical to continuous improvement in capacity building, as those facing poverty apply what they have learned in training and address their strategic action plans supported by a coach. We also translated this course into French (WBG Contract #7210121).
  • Our President, an IFC-certified Master Trainer in Designing Learning, leads IFC in training learning professionals in instructional design. She developed the cohort-driven, 12-week course Designing Learning to equip training professionals to design and build their training for classroom and online contexts in an interactive, activity-based learning environment. More engaging, customized training drives stronger adoption of the key skills and mindsets needed to impact poverty and improve lives and livelihoods. See her interview here.
  • Skillbridge shared a peek into its unique needs analysis approach, based not only on the Guide to Training but also on the CEO’s expert certification in quality from the American Society for Quality in Analyzing Needs and Determining Strategies to Improve Performance, a 10-hour asynchronous online course to drive results in high impact and sustainability, especially in the developing country context for complex capacity-building projects. It highlights the specific considerations for gender and FCS that often cause projects to fail.
  • Skillbridge is a founding signatory (listed as Covenant Consulting, signed on the first day, third from bottom) to the Principles for Learning, the adopted standard for making a sustainable impact. This is the public proclamation of Skillbridge’s passion, commitment, and determination to develop impactful, scalable, sustainable, and inclusive capacity building that trains more people and creates more jobs. Without these learning principles as hallmarks for our capacity building, projects fail and people are not empowered to thrive. 
  • Skillbridge leads the world in online learning initiatives that help developing countries and underserved communities scale training to make a greater impact, even in FCS, gender-based role environments, and pandemics. Long before COVID-19, Skillbridge urged global projects to consider online training, and at the outbreak of the pandemic, we were poised to quickly lead training conversions and show others how to do the same. Here are some examples: Considerations for Moving the Classroom Online and MIXing It Up: Blending Learning Options for the Online Classroom.
  • Skillbridge’s President is a globally recognized expert in gender inclusivity in training and scalability through online learning and contributed as an expert to IFC’s Women and Online Learning in Emerging Markets report (see page 7) and advised the Virtual Food Safety Training: The New Normal.
  • Our CEO, in addition to his American Society for Quality expert certification, is also a recognized expert in measurement and evaluation, implementing the strategy and measurements for global projects, including IFC’s Pillar to support sustainable housing and alleviate poverty by equipping housing developers to enhance business performance, increase access to funding, and design and develop sustainable housing.