Years before SOL existed, Dr. Esther Zeledon watched her father lose his graduate-school funding because he couldn’t articulate the value he brought.
He left.
It took 20 years for him to return.
His potential hadn’t disappeared.
That experience left behind a question that would shape years of work:
How much human potential do we miss because we don’t know how to see it?
Across thousands of people, different countries, industries, and circumstances, the same gap kept appearing.
What someone had done was visible.
What they were capable of doing next was much harder to see.
And underneath different jobs and different problems, something else kept showing up:
That observation was also consistent with more than four decades of Michael Kirton’s research on the relative stability of problem-solving style.
Source: Michael J. Kirton, Adaptation-Innovation Theory
Before SOL, this happened one person at a time.
Through direct conversations, we learned how to help people see what they brought and put it to work.
That work became the $40 Billion Question™, the proprietary methodology behind SOL.
YEARS OF DIRECT WORK
$40 BILLION QUESTION™
SOL
Dr. Zeledon and co-founder Dr. Paul Rivera had spent years working with people navigating jobs, funding, entrepreneurship, major transitions, and large-scale career-transition and outplacement programs.
Then the gap became even more urgent.
People were entering a job market where the next opportunity might look nothing like the last one.
Yet career transition still often begins with the past:
THE JOB MARKET CHANGED.
THE WAY WE SUPPORT TRANSITION HAS TO CHANGE TOO.
SOL gives people an individual strategist to help them understand what they bring, see where it could matter, and build a strategy for what comes next.
It starts in WhatsApp.
It takes one message.
And it can stay with someone throughout their transition.
YEARS OF DIRECT WORK
PROPRIETARY METHODOLOGY
SOL
PERSONAL TO ONE · PRACTICAL AT SCALE
Because transition is where the need is immediate.
Someone has lost a job.
The path ahead may not resemble the one behind them.
And the support they receive in that moment can shape what happens next.
SOL brings individualized strategy into the outplacement experience, helping people move beyond the question:
“What job looks like my last one?”
toward something bigger:
SOL brings together two very different bodies of work: years spent understanding human potential one person at a time, and deep experience in economics, data, systems, and technology.
Founder + CEO
HUMAN POTENTIAL · STRATEGY · METHODOLOGY
UC Berkeley PhD, former humanitarian diplomat, bestselling author, and TEDx speaker whose work has been featured in leading media. Dr. Zeledon developed the methodology behind SOL through years of direct work with thousands of people and experience delivering large-scale career-transition and outplacement support.
Co-Founder
ECONOMICS · DATA · LLMs
USC PhD economist, former U.S. diplomat, and professor who has taught at Harvard and California State University. Dr. Rivera speaks six languages and brings deep expertise in economics, data, evidence, and technology. His work includes mobilizing more than $1B in public investment and training and evaluating LLM models.
Together, they bring two different perspectives to the same question:
Today, SOL helps one person see what they bring and put it to work.
Over time, that same foundation can help us understand human capability across communities and connect more people with opportunities they may never have known to pursue.
