Stratum exists because credentials are a broken signal.

The Migration Policy Institute counts about two million college-educated immigrants in the United States who are either out of work or working below their training.¹ The cost is roughly $39 billion in foregone wages every year.²

Employers can't evaluate a foreign degree, so they don't hire it. People with the skills the country needs end up driving for Uber. The healthcare numbers are starker still: 165,000 immigrants with foreign health degrees are waiting for a real chance.⁶

We started Stratum because none of the existing players close this gap. Mercor caters to the global elite. Upwardly Global does honest coaching but relies on philanthropy. The middle — the credentialed professional who can't get a callback because the recruiter can't read the resume — is empty. That's where we sit.

Tier 1 is the marketplace you see today: vetted contract work in verticals where licensure doesn't block the work — design, engineering, software, lab science, teaching, finance, and the trades.

Tier 2 adds supervised arrangements: architecture under a US-licensed firm, scribing for foreign-trained MDs, paralegal work for foreign-trained lawyers. The supervision and liability plumbing is what unlocks roles a US firm wouldn't otherwise offer.

Tier 3 underwrites the cost of re-credentialing — NCLEX, USMLE, credential evaluation — against future earnings. We can only get to Tier 3 if Tier 1 generates the revenue, so we're building Tier 1 first.

We're not a staffing agency, not a charity, not a certificate mill. We're a company trying to build a hiring stack that doesn't throw out two million people for the crime of having gone to school somewhere else.