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Breaking Barriers California × Human+Tech Week
The Whole
Young Person
Challenge
How can AI and emerging technology help California’s systems coordinate around the whole young person?
A community-defined challenge bringing together the people who understand California’s systems and the technology leaders capable of creating new possibilities.
Join the Challenge ↗ThursdayMay 13, 2027
9:00 AM–1:30 PM
9:00 AM–1:30 PM
Human+Tech Week945 Market Street
San Francisco
San Francisco
The opportunity
What if the systems surrounding a young person could work as one?
Young people do not experience their lives in categories. Their education, mental health, physical health, family circumstances, opportunities, and preparation for work are deeply connected.
Yet the organizations supporting them often operate through separate systems, responsibilities, funding structures, and information environments.
For more than a decade, Breaking Barriers California has brought leaders across these systems together. The Whole Young Person Challenge will build on that community to explore the connective technology that could help organizations coordinate while preserving their distinct roles and protecting sensitive information.
The goal of the Whole Young Person Challenge is not to combine the organizations. It is to help them surround each young person with more connected support.
Why now
California invested approximately $30 billion in young people. Now comes the work of connection.
$30BInvested across four major initiatives affecting children and young people
California invested across four major initiatives: early care, expanded learning, the Child and Youth Behavioral Health Initiative, and community schools. Each created meaningful progress. But they were implemented separately. The next opportunity is to help the people and organizations carrying out that work coordinate around the whole young person.
Four major initiativesEarly care, expanded learning, behavioral health, and community schools
Many systemsEducation, healthcare, behavioral health, social services, and workforce
One whole young personWhose life, needs, and potential extend across all of them
What becomes possible
Technology that helps the systems around a young person work together.
Navigate
Find available capacity and move referrals across programs, providers, and organizations.
Coordinate
Maintain continuity so young people and families do not have to repeatedly start over.
Collaborate
Work across institutional boundaries while protecting privacy, consent, and sensitive information.
The larger opportunity is to help the organizations surrounding a young person become more capable together.
See how the challenge works ↗Two communities. One shared challenge.
Our co-hosts bring decades of experience connecting California’s public systems and directing technology toward human flourishing.
Elizabeth Haas
Founder of Breaking Barriers California; 25+ years connecting California’s education, behavioral health, healthcare, social-service, workforce, and public systems.
Nichol Bradford
Founder of Human+Tech Week; technology executive and investor focused on human potential, collective intelligence, and AI for human flourishing.
To Be Announced
To Be Announced
To Be Announced
To Be Announced
May 13, 2027 · San Francisco
Help build a more connected future around every young person.
The challenge will bring together the people who understand California’s systems, the young people and families who experience them, and the technology leaders capable of creating new possibilities.