Velina Lee, GM of Career & Technical Education at Vector Solutions, explains how workforce-aligned learning, durable skills, and real-world readiness are reshaping what it means to prepare students—and why the moment for CTE is now.
INTERVIEW | by Victor Rivero
As Career and Technical Education (CTE) moves from the margins to the mainstream, few leaders have had as front-row a seat to its evolution as Velina Lee. As General Manager of Career & Technical Education at Vector Solutions, Lee is helping shape how schools connect learning to real-world outcomes at scale—bringing together industry insight, technology infrastructure, and student pathways in ways that are increasingly essential in today’s economy. In this conversation with EdTech Digest, she reflects on what she saw early, why CTE’s moment has arrived, and how schools, systems, and solution providers must evolve to meet rising expectations for readiness and results.
You’ve been working in CTE for well over a decade — long before it became a national priority. What did you see early on that others are only now beginning to recognize?
When I started building CTE capabilities at Stride, the programs were nascent in many schools and districts. There was demand – employers were struggling to find workers with practical, verifiable skills, and students were graduating without a clear bridge to the labor market, but the infrastructure to meet that need at scale barely existed.
What I saw early was that CTE wasn’t a narrow vocational track. At best, it’s a fundamentally different model of education: hands-on, applied, connected to real industries, and designed to develop the whole person rather than just the academic credential.
What others are only now fully recognizing is the transferability of what CTE builds. Students in strong CTE programs retain more and perform better across their core curriculum. They develop professional skills – communication, collaboration, adaptability – that no other part of their education was systematically teaching them.
‘What others are only now fully recognizing is the transferability of what CTE builds. Students in strong CTE programs retain more and perform better across their core curriculum. They develop professional skills – communication, collaboration, adaptability – that no other part of their education was systematically teaching them.’
Those same skills are the ones AI can’t replicate. The timing feels almost prescient, but it was never about timing. It was always about what students actually need to succeed.
CTE has often been narrowly defined in the past. How do you describe its role today — especially in the context of AI and the growing emphasis on durable skills?
There are still people who hear “CTE” and picture a narrow vocational track – a path for students who aren’t heading to college. That definition was always too small, and today it’s obsolete.
What AI is doing to the labor market is clarifying something that was always true: the most economically resilient skills are the ones you can’t automate. AI is replacing the repeatable, templatizable work – the kind of entry-level tasks many graduates relied on to get started.
The skills it cannot touch are the ones CTE has always built: how to work in a team, how to adapt, how to think through problems in real-world contexts. Those are learned through doing, not through coursework alone.
This isn’t a college-versus-CTE debate. The institutions getting it right are asking what it actually means to prepare students – not just to graduate, but to contribute and evolve in a changing economy.
You’ve helped build CTE programs from the ground up at scale. What distinguishes programs that truly move the needle for students from those that simply check a box?
The programs that truly move the needle are designed from the destination backward. They start with the question: what does a student need to be genuinely competitive in this field, and what does the complete pathway from here to there look like?
Every element – curriculum, credentials, work-based learning, industry partnerships – is built in service of that outcome. Employers recognize the program because they’ve helped shape it. Students graduate with a profile that means something.
The programs that check boxes are built forward from compliance. They meet the requirements, but the connection to real hiring pipelines is weak. A student might earn a credential, but it doesn’t carry weight with employers.
On paper, completion rates look the same. In reality, outcomes are completely different. That’s the gap that matters, and the one we need to close.
One of Vector Solutions’ unique strengths is its presence not just in education, but across industry and the public sector. How does that broader footprint change what’s possible for CTE in schools?
It changes what’s possible because we’re not guessing about what the destination looks like – we see it every day. Vector’s commercial and public sector divisions actively train the industries that students are entering. We understand, from the inside, what competency in those fields actually requires. When we bring that into K-12 CTE, we’re not building programs based on a theoretical understanding of industry demands. We’re building them based on what those industries have told us they need, because we work with them every day.
But the shift we’re seeing from districts goes beyond curriculum. They’re not asking for a content library, they’re asking for infrastructure. That means technology that tracks work-based learning hours, manages credentialing workflows, documents compliance, and gives administrators real-time visibility into student outcomes across their entire program. It means the kind of auditable, integrated system that makes it possible to say with confidence: this student is ready.
Vector is built to deliver that because we already deliver it for the industries on the other side of the equation. We’re not stitching together point solutions. We’re taking the operational readiness infrastructure we’ve built for industry and adapting it for the schools preparing students to enter that industry. That alignment – between what we know employers need and what we build for students – is what makes the difference.
There’s increasing demand for measurable outcomes in CTE — credentials, work-based learning, real skills. How is that reshaping what districts and institutions expect from their partners?
Since joining Vector, I’ve seen a clear shift in customer demand. Districts aren’t just asking for content, they’re asking for proof. They want to show that students are gaining real skills, completing meaningful work-based learning, and leaving better prepared. That means tracking work-based learning experiences, measuring skill attainment, connecting students to employers, and demonstrating clear, measurable outcomes to stakeholders.
‘…tracking work-based learning experiences, measuring skill attainment, connecting students to employers, and demonstrating clear, measurable outcomes to stakeholders.’
That shift is being driven partly by federal accountability requirements under Perkins V, but also by a growing sophistication among CTE leaders themselves about what strong outcomes actually look like. State legislatures are increasingly involved in monitoring outcomes. The move toward portrait-of-a-graduate frameworks in many states reflects a policy recognition that transcripts and diplomas aren’t sufficient – what matters is whether a student is genuinely prepared for what comes next. That raises the bar for everyone in this space. Partners who can only deliver seat time or curriculum content aren’t enough anymore. The question is always: can you demonstrate that a student came out more prepared? That’s the accountability conversation now, and I think it’s exactly the right one to be having.
For years, vocational pathways carried a certain stigma. Are we finally at a tipping point — and what still needs to happen to fully shift perception?
I think we’re at a genuine tipping point. And I say that with some personal perspective: I grew up in Bulgaria, where the academic track carried significant status and the vocational fields carried a stigma very similar to what we’ve seen here. That pattern runs deep across a lot of cultures. But there’s nothing that strips stigma away faster than economic reality. When a skilled electrician – someone building a career in a rapidly electrifying economy, working on EV infrastructure, solar installations, distributed energy systems that didn’t even exist a generation ago – is outearning a recent graduate with significant debt and a narrowing job market, the calculus becomes undeniable. That story is reaching students and families now in a way it simply didn’t before.
What’s also changing is the profile of the student entering these pathways. Someone going into the electrical field today isn’t stumbling into a trade. They’ve explored multiple careers, taken aptitude assessments, connected with industry professionals, and earned safety credentials. The quality and intentionality of that preparation is completely different from what it was even a decade ago, and employers are noticing.
That said, the deeper layer of perception hasn’t fully shifted. School counselors still frequently steer capable students away from CTE pathways: not out of malice, but out of a cultural reflex that equates a four-year degree with ambition. Resource allocation in many districts still reflects a hierarchy where academic programming gets the investment and CTE gets what’s left. The tipping point will be real when a student who chooses a CTE pathway is celebrated with the same energy as a college acceptance. We’re closer than we’ve ever been, but we’re not there yet.
Looking ahead, what does a truly modern “portrait of a graduate” look like — and what role should CTE play in defining it?
A modern portrait of a graduate is someone who leaves school with a demonstrated capacity to contribute – not just a transcript, but a verifiable profile of skills, credentials, and real-world experience. It’s someone who understands what it is to be an employee: how to communicate professionally, how to navigate a compliance environment, how to work in a team, how to adapt when the role they trained for evolves into something new. And increasingly, it includes a baseline of technological fluency. AI literacy isn’t a specialty anymore, it’s quickly becoming general business literacy, the way digital skills were a generation ago.
‘A modern portrait of a graduate is someone who leaves school with a demonstrated capacity to contribute …’
CTE should be central to defining that portrait, not as one pathway, but as a framework for readiness itself. The institutions getting this right aren’t asking how CTE fits in – they’re using its model to redefine what preparation means. We can define the portrait. The next challenge is building the systems that make it measurable and real for every student.
—
Victor Rivero is the Editor-in-Chief of EdTech Digest and Executive Producer of EdTech Digest’s Future Focus Forums (F3), bringing together edtech companies with top U.S. school district technology leaders for the most effective way to get feedback on new and existing products. Write to: victor@edtechdigest.com
0 Comments