D4AD was launched to provide workers and jobseekers with better data, tools, and information to find careers and the education and training necessary to attain them. In particular, D4AD focuses on the needs of those unemployed and underemployed jobseekers who are racially minoritized and economically marginalized. The COVID-19 pandemic significantly exacerbated their challenges by creating an unprecedented unemployment surge. It illuminated a range of longstanding structural problems affecting women; Black, Indigenous, and Latino communities; and people impacted by persistent low wages and poverty. While the crisis underscored the need for improved technology and online tools to support virtual work, education, and social support services, it also exposed inequities in access to technology and other resources people relied on to navigate the pandemic.

The COVID-19 crisis was the context within which D4AD states and partners operated, but the pandemic did not create the challenges D4AD addressed. Those challenges are systemic and ongoing and, at least in the near term, will confront any effort to introduce agile, responsive, and equitable workforce development and training tools, programs, and systems.