About Us

Mission

The Career Simulation Lab prepares college students for their early careers through in-person, learn-by-doing experiences. The program provides training and practice that bridge the gap between university education and the practical workplace skills needed by employers.

The summer 2026 pilot program is designed to prepare students to be competitive applicants for summer 2027 corporate internships.

The Team

Elisa Aldridge

Founder and Director

Medical Device Consultant with experience starting up and operating medical robotics simulated use labs

Todd Johnston

Advisor

Collaborative Design & Facilitation
across teams, organizations, and business ecosystems

Bob Kraska

Advisor

Corporate HR Leader with experience leading career development and internship programs

Founder/Director Statement

Hi, I'm Elisa Aldridge. One of the things I've loved the most about my 20 year medical device career has been hiring, managing, and mentoring college students and young college grads. Many of my career roles have centered on team building, collaboration, and cross-functional projects, and I have creative ideas for how to use these skills to help college students prepare for their careers.

This summer I'm launching a pilot program to test a new approach to career development: a collaborative, cohort-based, internship-prep program for first year college students. I'm looking forward to building this community, testing these concepts and laying the foundation for a longer term program. I also think it will be a lot of fun.

The Inspiration

The Career Simulation Lab was inspired by my mother-in-law, Gail Taylor, who spent her whole adult life teaching, facilitating, and mentoring groups of people. One of Gail's projects, Exchange City, is the inspiration for the Career Simulation Lab. For Exchange City, fifth grade students interviewed for different jobs, prepared, then spent a day running a simulated city. Decades later, people in Kansas City still talk about how much they enjoyed the experience and learned so much from it. We want to use this fun, simulation approach to help college students prepare for their careers.

The Future

Following the Summer 2026 pilot, we plan to scale the Career Simulation Lab into a sustainable, boutique career development experience. Our long term goals include:

Accessible Education: Developing a business model that funds half of our participants from low-income or first-generation college backgrounds.

Career Themes: Expanding the program to include specialized, themed sessions such as medical device, data analysis and visualization, real estate, or bootstrap startups.

Experiential Learning: Maintaining a program whose core values include in-person experience, team work, and personalized one-one-one mentoring.

Page updated

Report abuse