Pursuit

We empower adults with the most need and potential to become software developers, launch careers in tech, and raise their salaries from $18K to $85K

04/03/2026

80 Builders. 14 teams. 2 hours to build.

Last week, Pursuit hosted its first cross-cohort mini hackathon — bringing Builders from every level of the AI-Native program and partners from the United Federation of Teachers together around one theme: Community.

They shipped an AI neighborhood matching platform, a gamified financial literacy app, an LGBTQIA+ wellness tool, a mutual aid board, and an NYC emergency preparedness router. All in two hours.

The winning team built Amplif.ai — an app that uses AI to match NYC neighbors by skills, hobbies, and music taste, with a built-in Block Party Hub for planning community events.

What we learned: The right tools in the right hands don’t just change one life. They transform their communities.

04/01/2026

Jake Yang is the CTO of S&P Global Energy. 20+ years in fintech: NASDAQ, NYSE, S&P Global. He came to our fireside chat with a read on AI that’s different from what you usually hear.

AI has tilted it toward the people who grew up building with it. S&P has already changed how they hire. First question now: what does your toolkit look like?

What they’re looking for: critical thinking and curiosity. Not technical skill alone. And that’s exactly what the AI-Native program is training our Builders for.

03/31/2026

Jacob. Kelvin. Ariel. Three AI-native Builders. Three AI-native engineer positions at JPMorganChase co-created by Pursuit X JPMC specifically for Pursuit’s Builders.

This is Pursuit’s and NYC’s first AI-native Engineering apprenticeship — six months building inside one of the world’s largest financial institutions. Not a simulation. Not a project. A placement.

This new employment pathway reflects what’s possible when big companies come together with workforce training providers like Pursuit as One Big Team, creating opportunity in an AI-first Economy . Thank you to JPMC for pioneering the future of work and expanding opportunity for all.

Congratulations to Jacob, Kelvin, and Ariel. You earned this.

03/27/2026

With and New York State, Pursuit is scaling AI literacy statewide through AI Prep for Jobs—turning access into opportunity in the AI-first economy.

→ 420 New Yorkers trained through Pursuit’s AI-Native Program
→ 200+ placed into AI-enabled roles
→ Starting this spring

We’re delivering this work in partnership with Le Moyne College, CenterState CEO, Per Scholas, and TechBuffalo.
The future of work is here. Let’s build pathways for every New Yorker.

Learn more on our blog. Link in bio.

03/23/2026

This month for our Build Together series, we’re going full Claude.

The Pursuit staff gathered around a table last Thursday for Build Together, a time block dedicated to transforming the entire team AI-native. Thanks to our partnership with Anthropic and a custom onboarding Skill, our staff is set up on Claude Teams (with proper connections, context files, and settings).

During the workshop, we learned how to build Skills. Real Claude workflows, shipped in an afternoon. Not experiments — real Skills people will use Monday morning.

Thanks Figma for creating FigJam. A perfect way to ideate together.

Next up:
3/31 Claude Code (coding)
4/7 Claude Code (non-coding tasks)

03/28/2025

💻 🎶 🎤 Vibe codin' + presenting 💻 🎶 🎤

We're giving in to the vibes. Embracing our potential. And presenting what we've built.

🎬 by Pursuit Builder Don Grier

03/26/2025

🎨🖌️🤖 New weekly Pursuit AI Creative explorations 🎨🖌️🤖

Inspired by the creativity of 'Google Doodles', our team is doing weekly experiments with visual AI—playing with our themes, values, and logo in imaginative ways. This quick clip was a fun 'image to video' sketch in Firefly, just a glimpse of what’s possible when AI becomes a collaborator in the process.

Stay tuned for more weekly explorations!

03/25/2025

They say practice makes perfect. We analyzed our mock interview data to see if that’s true—or, in our case, whether practice truly gets the job.

Based on our analysis, Fellows who frequently utilize mock interviews are more likely to receive job offers:

🎯 28 Fellows received job offers between November 2024 to February 2025
🚀 100% of the 11 Fellows who received Uber job offers did 10+ mock interviews
⚠️ 88% of the 8 Fellows in the Uber cohort who did not receive job offers did less than 10 mock interviews
📈 1-2 monthly mock interviews boost chances

03/24/2025

Roll up your sleeves. Let's Build! 💪

To mark an incredible first week, we celebrated with new 'Builder' t-shirts. We've intentionally adopted the term "Builders" instead of "Fellows" for our AI-native pilot. They're not just participants—they’re actively shaping Pursuit’s future by testing new software, enabling data to direct learning, and providing direct feedback on the AI tools we’re developing. They’re collaborators in every sense, literally building alongside us.

03/21/2025

📣 Pursuit Staff Build Day Update 📣

Our goal is to become fully AI-native as an organization, and we’re dedicating time as a team to accelerate this transformation. We started hosting once-a-month software “Build Days” for staff earlier this year. Now, we’re moving to weekly sessions.

This means every Pursuit staff member is spending at least one day a week (20% of our time) either learning how to utilize AI tools or developing software. It’s our opportunity to upskill as a team and apply our newly acquired skills to make our work—and Pursuit—more effective and impactful.

One example of a staff-built project is a custom LLM writing assistant that uses retrieval-augmented generation. This allows simple prompts to automatically include relevant context from our database, producing outputs that better match Pursuit’s voice and theses. As you can see, still a work-in-progress. But this project also sparked a broader discussion about how AI can help us provide more and better information for our various stakeholders—including applicants and funders. Imagine if a potential supporter could ask an AI tool we created detailed questions about our model, outcomes, and strategy!

We also closed out the day with a belated Pi day celebration. This also sparked an important conversation: is a quiche a pie?

03/19/2025

🔍 An inside look: How do you train 100+ people in AI?

A key element is our many to many thesis. Each Builder has an AI coach. They'll also have 100+ other Builders.

Relationships drive outcomes. Group learning and teaching enables persistence.

An in-person experience has always been important for Pursuit. It's even more important for the AI-native pilot.

This launch weekend, we felt the many to many energy.

Let's Build!

03/18/2025

Every session in our AI-native pilot kicks off with a daily stand-up—a quick check-in to align, share progress, and tackle blockers. This could be done standing-up, so most of our Builders do!

🔹 What did you accomplish yesterday?
🔹 What’s your goal for today?
🔹 Any blockers in your way?

By reflecting, sharing, and learning together, we’re creating space to make us more effective learners. Time to check in, plan your day/evening, and keep building.

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47-10 Austell Place
New York, NY

Website

http://www.pursuit.org/

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