Partner Series: Ridgeline's CNA Pathway, October 2026

October 2026 · This is the second in a series spotlighting the organizations that use Hidden Skills: a tool that surfaces and names the durable skills young people build through real-world experience.

The partner

Ridgeline is a Bay Area nonprofit that focuses on youth workforce development, building career pathways that connect education to employment. Working backward from employer needs in sectors with high labor demand, Ridgeline designs a continuum of experiences that moves young people from short career exploration through technical training and into high-wage, AI-resilient careers. Ridgeline participants range from 16 to 24 years old, and most identify as low-income students of color.

This summer, Hidden Skills supported three Ridgeline cohorts. Two were programs providing a pathway into Certified Nursing Assistant (CNA) roles. Students completed coursework online and then stepped into clinical training at care facilities, where they worked directly with residents and patients under the supervision of experienced CNAs.

What we did together

Twenty-five students across the two CNA cohorts recorded weekly audio reflections on their phones, providing 112 reflections in all. While completing the online coursework, they described how they managed their time and stayed organized. Before their clinical placements, they reflected on moments in their lives when they had shown empathy, listened closely, or worked as part of a team—the same skills they would need to draw from to give patients quality care. Once in a clinical setting, their reflections turned to stories of feeding residents, giving bed baths, staying composed when residents became agitated, and advocating for patients whose needs were not being met.

Each week, Hidden Skills surfaced the durable skills inside these experiences and named them for each student, using the student's own words as evidence. At the end of the program, each student received a final report, giving them the language and confidence to talk about the skills they demonstrated in their clinical experience as they take their next step toward a career in healthcare.

At the end of each program, the Ridgeline team received a Cohort Report for each cohort, with a skill inventory for every student and cohort-level analysis, all mapped to America Succeeds' Pathsmith™ Durable Skills Framework: a taxonomy developed with labor market data to help job seekers define, demonstrate, and validate durable skills.

Skills we uncovered

Each Cohort Report includes data visualizations, including one that maps every skill onto two metrics: how many students demonstrated the skill, and how many reflection cycles it surfaced in. Skills that score high on both fall into what we call the Program Signature Zone. These are the skills that many students practiced and refined, again and again, over the length of the program.

Across 25 CNA students, four skills stand out for their breadth and depth: Compassion, Empathy, Calmness Under Pressure, and Patience. Each surfaced for more than half of the students.

Insights

The Program Signature Zone shows that Ridgeline's CNA programs build the skills that CNA roles require.

A signature zone is evidence of intentional program design. When many students show a skill in a single cycle, it points back to an activity that drew it out of everyone at once. When many students show a skill across many cycles, the design of the experience itself is setting the conditions and providing the opportunities for that skill's activation. Cycle after cycle, Ridgeline students were challenged to act with patience, steadiness, empathy, and compassion, and the same four skills topped the signature zone in two distinct cohorts with different training providers. As one student reflected near the end of the program:

“I would say I'm becoming a resilient, really patient and really caring professional, which are all traits I've already had, but I just didn't think that I could improve them so much in such a short amount of time.”

The skills match the job requirements. These are the skills required across any CNA job description. Employers ask CNAs to stay calm with distressed residents, adjust to each patient's needs, and treat people with compassion, patience, and dignity. One student described a difficult moment with a resident this way:

“I handled it by staying calm, speaking in a respectful tone and giving the residents some time and space before trying again.”

For program designers, a signature zone answers a hard question: Is the program, as designed, actually building what it set out to achieve? Ridgeline can answer that question with an affirmative yes, and Hidden Skills provides Ridgeline with evidence it can share with employer partners, funders, and other stakeholders: the program design matches the job requirements, and the evidence is in students' experiences.

Students leave knowing what they built. Each student now knows they have the skills the CNA role requires, having named them in their own words through their reflections. As one student said of her final report:

“I've already had skills on my resume, like everyone does, but these really solidified those skills, so I only use these, actually.”

Another, seeing her report for the first time:

“Wait, I can use this for applications and stuff… this is actually a really good thing.”

Those skills can be broadly applied across healthcare roles, from unit clerk to charge nurse. But even if a student decides healthcare is not the path for them, they carry these in-demand skills into whatever opportunity comes next, newly equipped with the confidence of knowing they have already demonstrated them in a real-life setting, and prepared with the language to talk about them with potential employers.

Thank you

Thank you to Aiyana Mourtos, Pat O’Donnell and the Ridgeline team for bringing Hidden Skills to their students, and to the students who shared their reflections with us.

If you run career pathways, work-based learning, or clinical training and want your young people to see and name the skills they're building, I would love to talk. Email me at jennifer@hiddenskills.net.

This article was written and edited by humans: Jennifer Henry (writer) and Quinn Nelson (editor).