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UCI’s Paul Merage School of Business has partnered with Google for the next phase of its Future Leaders Initiative (“FLI”) program, providing relevant and critical content to support the development of leaders in today’s digitally driven world. In addition to sessions involving Leadership, Entrepreneurship, Venture Capital, Innovation, Real Estate, and Health Care, Merage School FLI students will now gain access to the Google Career Certificates in Data Analytics, Digital Marketing and E-commerce, IT Support, Project Management, and User Experience Design.

Google is providing 500 Google Career Certificate licenses for this year’s current Future Leaders Initiative (FLI) cohort. These certificates will equip FLI students with job-ready skills in fields with the median salary ranging at $66,000 (USD). These online certificates allow students to learn at their own pace with approximately 10 hours of flexible study per week.

Since launching in 2018, over 100,000 people have graduated from the certificate program in the U.S. Seventy-five percent of graduates report a positive career impact — such as a new job, higher pay, or a promotion — within six months of completion, and 55% of graduates identify as Asian, Black, or Latino. After finishing the program, graduates are connected with an employer consortium of over 150 companies — including Deloitte, Ford, Verizon, Walmart, and Google — that considers them for relevant roles.

“Our premise is simple. The program is based around three ideas: awareness, access and ambition,” said UCI Merage School Dean Ian Williamson. “Give them the means by which they can unleash the potential they have inside themselves. And that’s the future leaders we are trying to create.”

FLI is a community outreach and certificate program that fosters social mobility and socioeconomic growth through a focused, six-week learning model. UCI partnered with local high schools and community colleges in underserved areas to invite students seeking advanced professional training and mentorship in the realms of entrepreneurship, business and technology to take part in this Summer’s inaugural workshop series. FLI attracts talent by leveraging UCI’s leading-edge curriculum and globally renowned faculty to provide a tailored business education to an ambitious cohort of future leaders.

Through targeted lectures, real-world simulations and group activities, students explore careers at the intersection of technology and business while gaining the necessary personal and financial skills needed to thrive in a digitally driven work environment. At the core of the program, FLI intends to address the underrepresentation of communities historically overlooked in the business sector by preparing students from low-income areas to attend a four-year university, graduate with a degree in Business and feel confident in commanding space for themselves within the industry of their choosing.

"Student success is built through learning and mentorship that embraces diverse backgrounds,” says Dean Ian O. Williamson. “With this in mind, The Paul Merage School of Business provides opportunities that enhance the social and economic well-being of our students’ diverse communities. This can only be done by harnessing technology and attracting innovative researchers and top international faculty, in partnership with leading global and local businesses.”

To learn more about how FLI provides underserved students exposure to business career options and early college preparation, thus creating an essential foundation for this pipeline, please visit https://merage.uci.edu.

About the Future Leaders Initiative

The Merage School Future Leaders Initiative (FLI) guides, inspires, and empowers high school and community college students from Southern California’s underserved communities. A community outreach and certificate program consisting of remote and in person courses, FLI focuses on delivering a tailored business education, providing access to financial literacy courses, with the goal of encouraging university enrollment, increasing college readiness and preparing students for careers at the intersection of business, technology and entrepreneurship. The Future Leaders Initiative leverages UCI’s state-of-the-art educational resources, the expertise of globally renowned faculty and leading-edge curricula to offer hands-on mentorship and professional training in these crucial academic areas.

About The Paul Merage School of Business

The Paul Merage School of Business at UC Irvine offers three dynamic MBA programs—PhD, specialty masters and undergraduate business degrees—that prepare business leaders for our digitally driven world. Through our programs, students acquire the exceptional ability to grow their organizations through strategic innovation, analytical decision-making, digital information technology, and collaborative execution. The Merage School ranks consistently among the top five percent of all business programs worldwide through exceptional student recruitment, world-class faculty, a strong alumni network, and close relationships with individual business executives and global corporations. To learn more, please visit https://merage.uci.edu.

About Grow with Google

Grow with Google was started in 2017 to help Americans grow their skills, careers, and businesses. It provides training, tools, and expertise to help small business owners, veterans and military families, jobseekers and students, educators, startups, and developers. Since Grow with Google’s inception, it has helped more than nine million Americans develop new skills. Grow with Google has a network of more than 8,500 partner organizations like libraries, schools, small business development centers, chambers of commerce, and nonprofits to help people coast-to-coast.

In California, Grow with Google has partnered with 719 organizations to train 1,078,000 Californians on digital skills, including public libraries like the California State Public Library and the San Jose Public Library, and chambers of commerce like the Los Angeles Area Chamber of Commerce and the Home of Chamber San Mateo County.