Ainsley Castro

As an Afro-Latina woman and a first-generation American who grew up in inner-city Boston, Ainsley Castro (she/her) knows firsthand how equity can change a person’s life. “Being a product of a lot of nonprofit organizations really helped cultivate my professional journey,” she says. “And it also helped create a social capital that I recognize not everyone else had access to.”

Castro didn’t start her career in DE&I, but a volunteering opportunity to provide a financial literacy program in the inner city sparked a fire within her. She knew she wanted to continue to provide people with the tools and resources they need to be successful, and Yupro Placement, formerly known as Year Up Professional Placement, was just the right place for her to carry out that mission.

Today, Castro serves as Yupro Placement’s senior director of workforce solutions, a role in which she educates corporate partners on how to hire and retain skills-first talent with career pathways that can create full-time opportunities within IT, software development, project management, quality assurance and more. “A lot of the DE&I work is having those difficult conversations directly with senior leadership about how they can drive more hiring for diverse talent across their departments,” she explains, adding that this collaboration provides these leaders with the necessary resources to retain that talent as well.

There are so many opportunities to connect talent to career pathways, with upward economic mobility … that is what drives me every day.

One such resource is the Yupro Placement Earn + Learn Apprenticeship program that Castro supported in launching, which provides talent with opportunities in about 150 Fortune 500 companies. When the program was piloted, Castro hoped to place 60 alumni who were unemployed due to the pandemic, but within a month, she was able to place 120 alumni in apprenticeships across the nation. She is proud that her efforts have helped put so many people on meaningful career pathways toward sustainable incomes.

Castro plans to continue advocating for talent Skilled Through Alternative Routes (STARs) by challenging corporate companies to consider a new approach on how they attract talent and encouraging them to evaluate job postings for biased language, omit degree requirements and consider “culture add” rather than “culture fit” during interviews. “I enjoy discussing with partners how to build a more equitable workforce and championing opportunity for all,” she says. “There are so many opportunities to connect talent to career pathways, with upward economic mobility  … that is what drives me every day.”