Running a certification program for 1,000+ scholars a year
- Role
- Program Manager
- Client
- Mentor Me Collective
- Year
- 2024
As Program Manager for Mentor Me Collective’s Grow with Google program, I ran delivery end to end for 1,000+ scholars a year, with 8,000+ applications every cohort: onboarding, communications, progress tracking, mentorship and career support. My focus was keeping scholars engaged long enough to finish, and giving the team the data to step in before anyone dropped out.
- scholars supported every year
- 1,000+
- scholars supported every year
- applications every cohort
- 8,000+
- applications every cohort
- Google programs managed in parallel
- 2
- Google programs managed in parallel
The brief
Mentor Me Collective is a technical institute building a pipeline of job-ready talent. Its Grow with Google program gives scholars industry-recognised certificates, mentorship, career coaching and a professional network.
The goal was simple to state and hard to hit at this scale: more scholars finishing their certificates, staying engaged the whole way through, and moving on to better work.
What I owned
- Program operations end to end: onboarding, communications, progress tracking and cohort engagement for 1,000+ scholars a year.
- Scholar support: regular check-ins, accountability groups, office hours and community events.
- Reporting: dashboards tracking participation, course completion and engagement, used to decide where to step in.
- Stakeholders: mentors, facilitators, career coaches and community partners, kept in step so support arrived on time.
- Career readiness: workshops, networking sessions and career activities that went beyond the certificate itself.
How I ran it
The problems a program manager is there to solve at this scale, and what I put in place for each.
Catch drop-off before it happens
- The situation
- Motivation fades over a long, self-paced program, and with 1,000+ scholars nobody notices one person going quiet until it’s too late.
- My call
- I tracked participation and completion in dashboards, flagged scholars who were falling behind, and introduced targeted interventions for them, from check-ins to accountability groups.
One rhythm for a distributed cohort
- The situation
- Scholars were spread across locations, time zones and learning tracks, and needed the same quality of experience wherever they were.
- My call
- I built communication workflows across email, community platforms and virtual events, and standardised onboarding, communications and delivery so every cohort ran the same way.
Keep many partners pulling in the same direction
- The situation
- Mentors, facilitators, career coaches and community partners each owned a piece of the scholar experience.
- My call
- I coordinated them so support and resources reached scholars on time, instead of each partner working to their own schedule.
Measure what the program is for
- The situation
- Enrolment numbers say little about whether a program works.
- My call
- I measured impact through completion rates, engagement and career outcomes, and used that data to target support at the scholars who needed it most.
Outcomes
- 1,000+ scholars supported every year, from 8,000+ applications per cohort.
- Higher engagement through structured mentorship, community building and targeted support.
- Clear visibility of every scholar’s progress through tracking and reporting.
- Standardised onboarding, communications and delivery, improving how efficiently each cohort ran.
- Contributed to higher certificate completion and stronger workforce readiness among scholars.
The program
Coursera
Slack
Google Workspace
Google Apps Script
Google Sheets
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