Consulting and Technical Assistance

Building, implementing, and scaling solutions to meet your organization’s needs – by the only people who understand the challenge from every angle.

OUR SOLUTIONS

Across sectors, organizations are rethinking how learning and work connect. One challenge is clear: the need for trusted, scalable ways to recognize what people know and can do. 

Whether you’re shaping academic programs, advancing a national agenda, aligning statewide systems, or transforming workforce practices, C-BEN has the know-how to help you. 

Our team provides tailored, hands-on support to help each partner achieve their specific goals. We will work side-by-side with you to design and implement approaches that make education and employment systems more connected and effective—turning complex challenges into measurable results.

Higher Education

The Challenge: Traditional higher education models often struggle to meet the needs of today’s diverse learners and employers. Institutions face pressure to deliver flexible, relevant, and workforce-aligned programs—while navigating complex issues like accreditation, faculty readiness, and financial aid compliance. These challenges can slow innovation and limit access to meaningful credentials.


How C-BEN Helps: C-BEN supports colleges and universities at every stage of their competency-based education (CBE) journey. We help you collaborate with employers to design, build, and launch high-quality CBE programs, stackable credentials, and credit-for-prior-learning systems that improve learner outcomes and institutional sustainability. From strategic planning and curriculum design to faculty development and technology integration, we provide the roadmap and expertise to help your institution thrive in a skills-first future.

The Challenge: National associations and accreditors play a pivotal role in shaping quality, outcomes, and innovation across education and workforce systems. Yet many face growing complexity—fragmented standards, evolving skills demands, new types of credentials, and the need to balance flexibility with improvement. Aligning diverse stakeholders around shared frameworks for learning, quality, and validation is essential to advancing collective goals and ensuring trust.


How C-BEN Helps: C-BEN partners with associations and accreditors to build consensus, establish clear and trusted competency frameworks, and design scalable approaches to quality assurance in a skills-first landscape. We bring deep expertise in coalition-building, systems design, and evaluation—helping you guide your members through transformation that strengthens the integrity of programs and leading the field toward a more connected, outcomes-driven future for learning and work.

The Challenge: Public leaders are under increasing pressure to drive economic growth and stability by aligning education and workforce systems, funding programs that close skills gaps, and demonstrate outcomes. But coordinating across agencies, industries, and education providers is complex—and progress requires shared data, common skills languages, and scalable policy solutions.


How C-BEN Helps: C-BEN works with public leaders in states, cities, territories, and tribal nations to design and implement integrated talent ecosystems that connect residents to in-demand jobs and employers to skilled workers. We help governments create statewide competency frameworks, shared technology infrastructures, and cross-agency strategies that make learning and work more connected. With proven success transforming systems like the Alabama Talent Triad and the Navajo Nation Workforce Transformation Initiative, we help you build a more resilient, skills-driven economy.

The Challenge: Employers across industries face growing challenges finding, developing, and retaining talent. Degree-based hiring alone can overlook capable candidates. Leaders need trusted, scalable ways to identify, validate, and promote the skills that matter most to driving company success.

How C-BEN Helps: C-BEN helps employers design and implement skills-based hiring, training, and advancement strategies that strengthen your workforce. Our experts guide you in defining skills frameworks, validating employee competencies, and building recognition systems that reward growth and performance. Together, we’ll create a workforce strategy where skills become the bridge between potential and success.

From our partners...

KU is preparing our infrastructure to deliver direct assessment competency-based programs – perhaps the most challenging model of CBE from a systems change perspective.  Our C-BEN partners took into account the unique characteristics of our university and of our team, providing us with great advice every step of the way. They broke our journey into six 90-day sprints to make the work more manageable and to keep us on schedule.  Throughout the process they've walked the walk of great consultants – our success has been as important to them as it is to us. We simply couldn't have done this as well or as quickly without C-BEN.
Dr. Barbara Bichelmeyer
Dr. Barbara BichelmeyerProvost & Executive Vice Chancellor, The University of Kansas
C-BEN was established at a time when societal and technological shifts in the landscape were converging to create a tremendous need for leadership. A strong network of members has emerged, so joining this network means accessing a deep well of practical knowledge on everything from leading large-scale change to choosing a particular technology.
Erin Crisp
Erin CrispTennessee Grow Your Own Center
Scaling competency-based education and skills-based hiring concurrently is central to Alabama's strategy for reaching its postsecondary attainment and labor force participation goals. C-BEN is one of Alabama's foremost partners in translating all forms of learning into competencies so we can have a training system built on skills. C-BEN has become the central banker for a national skills currency that is helping to make all learning count.
Nick Moore
Nick MooreAlabama Talent Triad
Our work with C-BEN has been valuable to be surrounded by experts in the field and the networking opportunities to learn from others that had similar experiences. The C-BEN team were knowledgeable, inspiring, and encouraging as we were going through our CBE journey.
Shelley Rinehart
Shelley Rinehart Assistant Vice Chancellor Instructional and Program Support Efficacy, San Jacinto College

Learn more about the work we can do together: Download the C-BEN Solutions Booklet

Let's talk more about the work we can do together.