Scaling Government Partnerships @ FreeWorld
Unlocking Growth Through Public–Private Partnerships
Challenge
FreeWorld had no public funding strategy or infrastructure to support sustainable growth. To scale nationally and reduce program costs, we needed a way to systematically access and integrate public workforce funds into our model—without disrupting core operations.
Action
Kara built FreeWorld’s public funding strategy and infrastructure from the ground up. This meant immersing herself in the U.S. workforce system, mapping our program to funding requirements, and designing a scalable approach. Using a pilot–learn–iterate–automate–integrate cycle, Kara partnered with FreeWorld’s Product Engineering function to embed public funding access directly into FreeWorld’s tech stack, and created sales and customer success functions to run and expand the model. She led cross-org change management throughout, aligning teams as the work reshaped our core product and workflows.
Result
Launched a fully operational public funding strategy that became a new, sustainable revenue stream—cutting cost-per-student by 50%, securing partnerships with 20+ public systems, and creating a repeatable model for national scale.
