A Conversation with Daniel, American Diesel Training Centers Career Impact Bond Graduate

Social Finance’s Career Impact Bond with American Diesel Training Centers (ADTC) will train over 550 Americans who qualify as unemployed or underemployed from 2020-2022 in diesel technician training. The Career Impact Bond is a holistic financing model for job training that’s designed to help low-wage earners and people facing other barriers achieve economic mobility, with a focus on placing students in growing careers such as skilled trades. Diesel mechanics provides a pathway to economic security, offering median annual salaries of $50,200 without needing a two- or four-year degree, and it’s an in-demand career seeking 290,800 technicians by 2029.

Founded in 2017 in Columbus, Ohio, ADTC is an innovative 300-hour, 10-week or less training program that eliminates the two biggest barriers to becoming a diesel technician: time and cost. ADTC operates in four U.S. cities with a focus on local industry and employer connections to ensure high quality instruction and to help secure well-paying jobs for students.

Over the past four years, ADTC’s vision has become a reality for more than 1,000 students like Daniel. Before joining the ADTC program, Daniel attended community college for about a year but knew that it was not the right fit for him. He had always been handy and enjoyed fixing things for himself and for others but was struggling to figure out how to find a sustainable career path. That led Daniel to enroll in ADTC’s Career Impact Bond. “The fact that they were paying very close attention to attendance and making sure you were there every day, periodically testing us, making sure we were learning in that short amount of time, it kind of just jump-started my drive. It made me work even harder toward wanting to do this career path and grow,” he said. This support is evident in ADTC’s overall success—graduation and job placement rates well above the 90th percentile and salaries that increase from a pre-program average of $10-12 per hour to $18-20 after five weeks in the program.

Video: Daniel, Career Impact Bond graduate and Penske Technician III

As students enroll in the Career Impact Bond, they receive a toolset—an essential employer pre-requisite—and best-in-class diesel technician instruction, soft skills training, and career services from ADTC. If, and only if, the student graduates and secures a job earning over $30,000 a year, the student pays a flat monthly fee based on their income.

In addition, we are seeing that the Career Impact Bond model is helping to increase diversity in the diesel technician field, which is predominantly white men. Twenty-five percent of ADTC graduates are Black compared to the industry average of 7%. In addition, 5% of ADTC graduates are women, compared to less than 2% industry-wide.

We’re proud to partner with ADTC to help students who qualify as unemployed or underemployed in cities across the country transition into stable, economically secure careers as diesel technicians.

Learn more about the ADTC Career Impact Bond →