All Aboard
STEAMe connects everyone to career pathways and quality jobs in high-demand sectors. We power upward mobility and prosperity for all.
Engineered to Scale Systems
STEAMe unifies workflows and improves efficiency so all partners within a workforce development system can collaborate seamlessly, access actionable data, deepen impact and scale. The STEAMe engine powers smart matching, ensuring skills taught align with skills sought and skills learned translate to jobs earned.
See How We Help Systems Thrive:
& INTEGRATE
& Enroll
& Support
& Train
& ASSESS
& ENROLL
WORKFORCE INTERMEDIARIES
Connect system partners, improve efficiency, scale workforce development impact, build employer trust and increase job seeker engagement for greater success outcomes.
LEARNERS (CANDIDATES)
Explore careers in high-demand sectors, create a personalized career route, access learning and support pathways and secure high-quality jobs to increase lifetime earnings.
LEARNING PROVIDERS
Boost learner success and employment rates, match in-demand skills to curriculum, grow program support and gain insight into learner needs.
EMPLOYERS
Tap into a qualified candidate pipeline to fill jobs with confidence, reduce churn and increase retention by hiring talent aligned with your roles and needs.
Rachel Kohler
Co-founder, Chief Executive Officer
Rachel Kohler
Co-Founder and Chief Executive Officer
Rachel Kohler is a passionate social impact entrepreneur, investor and business leader committed to creating technology to address complex societal problems and scale impact. Before co-founding STEAMe in 2024, Kohler was CEO and co-owner of NowPow, a multi-sided SaaS platform that screened and referred over 11 million people to vital social care, digitally connecting community ecosystems to improve people’s health outcomes and reduce cost of care. In 2021, NowPow was acquired by Unite Us where Kohler served as a strategic advisor for the company’s growth plans and business strategy until 2022.
Kohler brings 30 years of experience at First Boston, an investment bank; Booz Allen & Hamilton, a management consulting firm; and Kohler Co., a privately held global company in the plumbing, spa and hospitality sectors to her chief executive role at STEAMe. She serves on the Kohler Co. board of directors and is a member of the Kohler Foundation.
Kohler is also a trustee at the University of Chicago and the University of Chicago Medical Center. She earned her BA from Princeton and her MBA from the University of Chicago Booth School of Business.
Stacy Lindau, MD, MAPP
Co-founder and Chief Innovation Officer
Dr. Stacy Lindau
Co-Founder and Chief Innovation Officer
Dr. Lindau, Catherine Lindsay Dobson Professor of OB-GYN and Professor of Medicine at the University of Chicago, has dedicated her career to research, education and social innovation. For nearly 25 years, Dr. Lindau has led community-engaged research and innovation funded by the National Institutes of Health, Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services and others. As co-founder and CIO of STEAMe, Dr. Lindau champions the power of person- and community-centered information technology to enable human flourishing through meaningful work. STEAMe’s work is informed and inspired by Dr. Lindau’s community-engaged research at the University of Chicago, including employing, training and mentoring Chicago youth in information technology and data-focused work.
Before STEAMe, she founded MAPSCorps and NowPow. MAPSCorps — an organization now operated by STEAMe co-founder Dr. Nichole Pinkard at Northwestern University — trains and employs young people to use scientific method and information technology to gather, map and share high-quality data about community assets for health and economic vitality. NowPow, headquartered on Chicago’s South Side where the idea was created, established multi-sided digital infrastructure to connect people to vital community resources and created high-quality, livable wage jobs.
Dr. Lindau earned her bachelor’s degree in secondary education and political science at the University of Michigan Honors College and her medical degree from Brown University. She completed her OB-GYN residency at Northwestern University Feinberg School of Medicine in Chicago. She was a Robert Wood Johnson Foundation Clinical Scholar and is an Aspen Institute Health Innovators Fellow. In 2024, Forbes recognized Dr. Lindau on its 50 Over 50 Innovators list.
Nichole Pinkard, PhD
Co-founder and Chief Systems Officer
Nichole Pinkard, PhD
Co-Founder and Chief Systems Officer
Nichole Pinkard, the Alice Hamilton Professor of Learning Sciences in the School of Education and Social Policy at Northwestern University, is an experienced educator focused on creating digital learning environments that ensure equitable access to educational resources for underserved youth. She brings her education-focused research and experience — including with MAPSCorp, which trains and pays youth to produce and understand meaningful data about community assets — to STEAMe as co-founder and CSO.
Dr. Pinkard, a computer scientist and one of the world’s leading experts on building informal educational ecosystems, is an expert in STEAM. She founded the Digital Youth Network, which closes the digital divide and fosters digital proficiency by empowering young people with digital media skills, and helped create STEAMville.org, a digital platform that helps children discover STEAM topics, and STEAMbassadors, a mentorship program that helps college students strengthen their STEAM interests and share them with youth.
Dr. Pinkard’s work is widely recognized, having earned the NSF Early CAREER Award, Common Sense Media Award and the Jan Hawkins Award for Early Career Contributions to Humanistic Research and Scholarship in Learning Technologies, as well as recognition as an AERA Fellow for her work in using technology to create inclusive educational environments. She has a doctorate in learning sciences from Northwestern’s School of Education and Social Policy.
Mike Wolf Chief Technology Officer
Kelly V. Hague Chief Marketing & Operations
Leslie Paith Chief Product Officer
Emmanuel Noel Chief Revenue Officer
Mike Wolf
Chief Technology Officer
Mike Wolf is a thoughtful technical leader with over 20 years of experience building lean and engaged teams to bring software products to market.
He has worked in a variety of technical leadership and product roles, recruited and mentored engineering teams, and has demonstrated success growing B2B and B2C product organizations. Most recently, Mike was chief technology officer of Armadillo, a tech-enabled subscription-based home warranty provider. He was also head of technology at NowPow and went on to be a director of engineering at Unite Us after their acquisition of the company in 2021.
Wolf has a bachelor’s degree in computer science from Northwestern University in Evanston, Illinois.
Leslie Paith
Chief Product Officer
Leslie Paith brings more than a decade of product management and systems solutions experience to STEAMe.
Prior to joining STEAMe in 2024 as head of product, Paith was product lead at Resilia, a Series B startup helping nonprofit organizations build their capacity and impact. She also held a similar role at Unite Us as director of product management after the company acquired NowPow in 2021.
Paith earned a Master of Public Health in healthcare administration and management from the University of Texas Health Science Center at Houston.
Emmanuel Noel
Chief Revenue Officer
Emmanuel Noel is no stranger to the career development space. Before joining STEAMe in 2024, Noel founded Skilbi, an early-stage technology company focused on upskilling overlooked students, connecting them to career exploration and skill-building opportunities. He has also served as head of growth at Upkey, a company that helps students, universities and companies with career readiness and talent engagement. The tools Noel created have been used by over 200 universities, including Purdue and the University of Central Florida, helping more than a quarter of a million students find career opportunities.
Noel earned an MBA from Concordia University in Chicago and completed a product management and design thinking program at Cornell Engineering.
Kelly V. Hague
Chief of Marketing & Operations
Kelly Hague is an experienced team builder and driver of new business revenue and customer retention. She has more than 20 years experience in business transformation, operations, sales and marketing.
Prior to joining STEAMe, she served as vice president of marketing at OneCause, a mission-driven tech company founded to revolutionize charitable fundraising and help cause-driven organizations amplify their impact. She has also held management consulting roles at Andersen Consulting (now Accenture) and American Express. Hague brings her passion for innovation, change, and scale-up strategies to STEAMe.
Hague earned a bachelor’s degree in English from Saint Mary’s College of California. She is also a certified Six Sigma Black Belt.