The ground you build from, the energy you launch with.
The Proving Ground Foundation helps institutions grow their own skilled operators — and gives capable people without a four-year degree a paid, degree-free path into the careers that keep modern life running. We install proven, paid apprenticeships on the plants institutions already run, then step back.
Institutions can't find operators. Capable people can't find a way in.
skilled-trades jobs could go unfilled by 2030 — a gap that threatens roughly $1 trillion in economic losses.
Source · U.S. Dept. of Education / JLL, 2026of energy companies already report labor shortages — and can’t fill the skilled operator roles open today.
Source · IEA, World Energy Employment 2025degree-free operator careers — power plant operator median $103,600, stationary engineer $75,190, HVAC $59,810 — locked behind a credential the job never needed.
Source · U.S. BLS, May 2024Not a school. Not a staffing agency. A connective layer.
We add a thin, high-leverage layer on top of infrastructure that already works. Four verbs, and nothing the institution already has.
Make the case
Bring the institution the succession-risk and ROI argument, and help secure the internal decision to host.
Design the program
Adapt the proven Trainee → Operator I / II / III ladder, Qualification Books, and Review-Board rubric to their plant.
Stand up the opportunity
Register the apprenticeship, map credentials, and recruit and screen the first cohort using skills-based logic.
Steward at milestones
Show up at defined gates — intake, qualification, review boards, placement — measure outcomes, and report.
Returned per dollar invested in registered apprenticeships, measured five years after the apprentice completes the program — before reduced turnover and the value of a secured pipeline. Philanthropy covers design, recruitment, and stewardship; institutions fund only the wages they would pay a new hire anyway.
Source · U.S. DOL / Abt Associates, 2022
We prove the model by running it. AmpCrew is the first.
Each Proving Ground initiative installs the apprenticeship on a real plant and measures what it returns. AmpCrew — our flagship apprentice corps — is initiative one, with our first pilot being formalized now.
A paid apprentice corps for degree-free operator careers. Apprentices earn a full wage from day one, train on real equipment from senior operators, and climb a published ladder — Trainee → Operator I, II, III — into a career that pays for a life.
The next host institution
Universities · utilities · hospitals · airports · data centers
Designed inside a flagship university. Built to travel to any operations-heavy institution.
Two careers spent on opposite sides of the same gap.
Xavier Rivera Marzan
Co-Founder · Executive & Partnerships
Three decades in energy, infrastructure, and higher-education operations. Inside a flagship university’s Utilities & Energy Management division he designed and ran the apprenticeship that is Proving Ground’s proof. He brings the operator credibility, the program design, and the relationships that open the next host’s door.
Xavier Rivera-Lanza
Co-Founder · Program & Innovation
Spent his career connecting overlooked talent to opportunity at scale — most recently as a Senior PM for Generative AI at Opportunity@Work, behind the STARs skills-based-hiring movement. He brings the recruitment-and-screening design, the measurement layer, and the funder narrative.
The operator gap closes one institution at a time.
Whether you want to host apprentices, join AmpCrew, or invest in the pilot, tell us which door you’re coming through.