Rebecca Agostino: The Skill Schools Forgot to Teach

Rebecca Agostino is an entrepreneur in the world of education, and she’s on a mission to teach the next generation how to build the relationships and durable skills that power career transitions. She has served with Teach for America, helped scale edtech platforms, and at just 25 years old became the founding principal of Freedom Prep High School in Camden, New Jersey. Today, through her company Prentice, she is tackling a gap almost no one is addressing head-on. Networking is one of the most important skills in modern life, and it isn’t taught in school.

In this conversation, Rebecca shares the truth that quietly shapes every career: the best opportunities are almost never found through job boards or career fairs. They come from people — a warm introduction, a follow-up email, a thoughtful question, a hand raised in a room. She walks through how she breaks networking into micro skills for teenagers: how to map the 25 people you already know, how to write the email, how to follow up without nagging, and how to turn a single conversation into a job shadow, a referral, or a mentor.

It is a conversation about agency, self-advocacy, and the quiet truth that most of us got our foot in the door because someone gave us a shot. Rebecca’s work is making sure the next generation knows how to ask for that shot — and how to be ready when it comes.

www.whogotmehere.com

Timestamps:

00:00 – Introduction: Why teaching networking matters

02:49 – Networking is a skill schools rarely teach

05:07 – The childhood lesson that shaped Rebecca’s mindset

08:33 – Talent is everywhere, opportunity is not

10:05 – The student who changed everything

11:51 – Founding a high school at age 25

14:28 – The mentor who taught her how to lead