Understand
See what supports and interventions are available, who is eligible, and what the next step should be.
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 partnering to create 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 to unite in care for our young people and maximize our human and fiscal capital and future. 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 has invested more than $42 billion in whole young person reform over the past five years. Now we need to connect it all in sustainable ways.
$42B+Invested over the past five years, plus $15B+ this fiscal year
Over the past five years, California has invested in TK and kindergarten, community schools, expanded learning, the Children and Youth Behavioral Health Initiative, CalAIM, and foster care reform. Each created meaningful progress. The challenge now is getting all of these dollars to work together in a support continuum that enables California’s young people to maximize their human capital and thrive from 0 to 25.
Major initiativesTK/K, community schools, expanded learning, behavioral health, CalAIM, and foster care
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 to maximize access to and efficacy of our human and fiscal capital.
The larger opportunity is to help the organizations surrounding a young person become more capable together to support realization of thriving young people, a thriving economy, a thriving state and a thriving future.
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 Estes
Founder of Breaking Barriers California; 30+ 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 partnering to create new possibilities.