CLIC: Assessing and certifying 21st century skills

Problem
In many parts of the world, young people have valuable skills but no clear way to assess, certify, or showcase them. Skills like digital literacy, communication, and adaptability are essential, yet hard to measure consistently, especially for those outside traditional education or employment systems. Without accessible tools, individuals are often excluded from learning or job opportunities. At the same time, governments and institutions struggle to evaluate these skills reliably across regions or programs.

Solution
At the Inter-American Development Bank (IDB), I helped design and launch CLIC, a digital platform that gives users a structured way to identify, validate, and communicate their skills. Built with a flexible, modular architecture, CLIC can adapt to different skill domains and user groups. CLIC also helps institutions make better decisions by providing insights into skills development trends across populations.

Key features
- Skills assessments grounded in real-life tasks, including digital skills
- Peer validation and guided self-reflection
- A personalized digital portfolio users can share with employers or educators
- Plug-and-play functionality for administrators to add and manage custom assessments
- Dashboards for policymakers and education leaders to track and compare skill levels across regions and countries

Results
- Launched as a minimum viable product with donor support
- Piloted in Colombia and adopted by national and regional partners
- Built as a flexible tool supporting efforts to improve skills recognition, especially among underserved youth
- Continues to expand across contexts and use cases, from skills certification to digital CV standardization

My Role
- Led product vision and development for the minimum viable product (MVP)
- Negotiated and adapted the digital skills assessment into the platform
- Worked closely with the developer and designer to ensure a user-friendly experience
- Coordinated across IDB teams, donor representatives, and government partners
- Defined CLIC’s positioning, use cases, and experience flow for multiple audiences