Define
Young people, families, practitioners, public leaders, service providers, funders, and institutional partners identify where coordination fails and what better support must make possible.
Inside the Challenge
How the Whole Young Person Challenge works.
The challenge begins with the people who understand and experience California’s systems—and invites technology leaders to respond to what they define together.
Community defined
The people closest to the work define the problem.
Young people and families, practitioners and frontline workers, public leaders, service providers, funders, and community partners will build a shared understanding of what connected support requires.
Where
Where coordination currently breaks down
Experience
What young people and families experience as a result
Needs
What frontline workers need to serve them well
Systems
Which organizations need to work together
Protection
What must be accessible and what must remain protected
Possibility
What a successful whole-person approach should make possible
The process
From shared challenge to technology-enabled possibility.
Translate
Breaking Barriers California and Human+Tech Week turn those findings into a shared challenge brief grounded in real needs, responsibilities, and protections.
Respond
Selected technology companies and multidisciplinary teams demonstrate potential approaches shaped around the community-defined challenge.
Advance
The community identifies the ideas and combinations of capabilities that merit deeper exploration with participating institutions.
Inspired by challenge models such as XPRIZE, the process starts with a consequential problem and invites capable teams to demonstrate how they would address it.
Technology responds
Approaches designed for the network.
Selected technology companies and multidisciplinary teams will be invited to explore how technology can serve the whole network—not only one institution.
Serve multiple organizations with different responsibilitiesWork across different technology environmentsHelp young people and families navigate supportStrengthen the people responsible for delivering servicesRespect privacy, consent, legal, and information-sharing requirementsEnable collaboration without institutional consolidation
The scale of the opportunity
A statewide challenge with the potential to reshape how systems work together.
The Whole Young Person Challenge will bring together leaders and organizations influencing significant annual investment across education, behavioral health, healthcare, social services, workforce development, and related systems.
Their participation represents more than the scale of public spending. It represents shared demand for technology that can help institutions coordinate while allowing each organization to retain its own responsibilities, operations, and relationships.
A solution that can serve the network may create new possibilities for every organization within it.
May 13, 2027
A working session built around the challenge.
The community will present the challenge it has defined and selected technology companies will respond with potential approaches.
The community presents the Whole Young Person Challenge
Technology-company responses
Community deliberation and questions
Approaches to advance
Working lunch
The session is designed to identify the ideas, approaches, and combinations of capabilities that merit deeper exploration with the community and participating institutions.
Bring your perspective