African Bridge Network

A significant amount of highly skilled immigrants in the United States possess advanced educational credentials, including PhDs, and have substantial experience and backgrounds in fields such as medicine and technology. In 2018, 14% of immigrant college graduates held professional or doctoral degrees, compared to 10% of their U.S.-born counterparts (Batalova, 2020)​, (Zong & Batalova, 2016), (Korkmaz et al., 2024)​.

Immigrants also play a crucial role in the U.S. STEM workforce. As of 2019, they comprised almost 23.1% of all STEM workers, a notable increase from 16.4% in 2000. Notably, nearly half (49.3%) of these immigrant STEM workers held advanced degrees, compared to 21.8% of their U.S.-born peers (Wikipedia), (American Immigration Council, 2022). These statistics underscore the substantial contributions of highly educated immigrants to the United States, particularly in critical sectors like science, technology, and healthcare.

The African Bridge Network (ABN) has been a cornerstone for supporting highly skilled immigrants in Massachusetts since its founding in 2015. ABN’s mission is rooted in the belief that highly skilled immigrants—part of a U.S. workforce of 12.8 million—should not have to rebuild their careers from scratch. Yet, they face significant barriers to employment in their fields of expertise due to licensing restrictions, credentialing challenges, and limited access to tailored upskilling opportunities. For example, fully trained doctors from other countries often cannot practice in certain states, leaving critical industries with untapped potential. ABN seeks to value and leverage the foreign credentials and professional experiences of skilled immigrants to help them achieve their full career potential and thrive in meaningful roles (African Bridge Network).

When we met with the African Bridge Network team,  a common issue kept arising: how difficult it was for highly skilled immigrants who legally moved to the U.S. to utilize their full potential. ABN’s clients were encountering problems with translating their skills and credentials to fit local job openings.The availability and immersion to the use of technology for this talented potential applicant pool, unsurprisingly, was one the biggest areas of opportunity, with the potential to transform the life of millions of people. One way to achieve this is by filling the employment gap, particularly in healthcare and medicine, with these technologically skilled immigrant workers playing an instrumental part in the integration of AI into these sectors. Incidentally, healthcare and medicine is one of the biggest employment fields in Massachusetts (U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, 2023). As AI is being integrated into health care in areas such as research, medical imaging and analysis, diagnosis and treatment, these technologies have a great potential. AI is transforming health care today and those critical, high demand professionals may in fact be the pivotal transformers. The U.S. is actually facing an unprecedented labor shortage (U.S. Chamber of Commerce), especially for these types of positions in the healthcare sector (American Hospital Association, 2024) . With the growing use of AI in medical care and research, with this collaboration we aim to investigate how technology can address the unique challenges highly skilled workforce and  immigrants (i.e. healthcare and technology professionals) face, particularly in upskilling, credential recognition, and career advancement.