Originally published September 1, 2023. Updated to provide historical context and reflect the continued development of TalentPass.

In 2023, Gobekli presented an early prototype of its Universal Talent Passport—now called TalentPass—during a meeting connected to the U.S. Chamber of Commerce Foundation’s Experience You project in Washington, D.C.

The presentation offered an early look at Gobekli’s vision for helping people bring their experiences, abilities, achievements, and aspirations together in a portable record they could own and use.

More importantly, it shared what Gobekli had learned by putting that vision in front of real people.

Starting With a Simple Question

Before presenting the prototype, Gobekli worked with the University of Phoenix and the City of Boston to conduct early focus groups involving students, job seekers, career changers, and community members.

Participants were asked:

If you had a Universal Talent Passport, what would you use it for?

The question was intentionally open-ended. Gobekli wanted to understand how people might use a portable record of their learning, work, skills, and life experiences—not only how institutions or technology providers imagined they would use one.

Participants described wanting help with challenges such as:

• Recognizing abilities they had developed outside formal education
• Understanding how their experiences connected to possible careers
• Communicating more than a résumé could capture
• Organizing credentials, accomplishments, projects, and other evidence
• Presenting different parts of themselves for different opportunities
• Maintaining greater ownership and control over their information

The feedback reinforced an important lesson: people did not simply want another credential wallet or professional profile. They wanted something that could help them understand their own stories, recognize their capabilities, and decide how those stories should be shared.

Danny Done, Gobekli’s co-founder at the time, described the feedback this way:

“People told us they wanted something that would help them see themselves—not just as workers or students, but as whole people. They wanted a way to make their skills and stories visible and to connect those stories to new opportunities.”

What the Early Prototype Demonstrated

The prototype presented in Washington was not a finished commercial product. It was an early exploration of how a person-owned talent record might work.

It demonstrated concepts such as:

• Bringing learning, employment, and other experiences into one record
• Connecting experiences with skills and supporting evidence
• Helping people add context that could not be found in a credential alone
• Allowing different information to be selected for different audiences
• Making records more portable across education and employment systems
• Giving individuals a more active role in creating and using their own talent data

These concepts aligned with the broader goals of Learning and Employment Records, or LERs.

The U.S. Chamber Foundation has described Experience You as an initiative designed to bring people’s education and experience forward as skills. The project explored how emerging technologies could support verifiable, trusted records of learners’ and workers’ experiences and achievements.

Gobekli’s contribution focused on an essential part of that challenge: how to make those records understandable and useful to the people they describe.

What Gobekli Learned

The early research helped shape several principles that remain central to TalentPass.

People need more than a collection of records

Credentials, résumés, employment histories, and portfolios can all contribute valuable information. But placing those records in one location does not automatically help someone understand what they mean or how they relate to an opportunity.

People need context, connections, and opportunities for reflection.

A person is more than a list of skills

Skills are useful for matching people with education and employment opportunities, but a person’s potential also reflects their experiences, interests, goals, relationships, evidence, and continued growth.

The system needed to preserve that larger picture rather than reduce someone to a standardized inventory.

Different situations require different stories

The information someone wants to share when applying for a job may differ from what they want to share with a mentor, school, professional community, or volunteer organization.

That insight contributed to the idea of creating purpose-specific profiles and Passport Pages rather than exposing one universal record to every audience.

Trust and individual agency must work together

Verified credentials can make information more trustworthy, but individuals should still be able to add context, document informal experiences, and decide what they share.

A useful talent system must support institutional trust without taking control away from the person.

From an Early Passport to a Human Intelligence Layer

TalentPass has evolved considerably since this prototype was presented.

Today, TalentPass is available in public beta and supports job applications, professional networking, profile building, career reflection, and the creation of a trusted digital talent identity.

Pythia, Gobekli’s private AI guide, helps people reflect on their experiences and turn what they have learned and done into information they can use. The Talent Tree provides a developing framework for organizing experiences, capabilities, and personal growth. Profiles and Passport Pages allow people to present selected information for particular opportunities and relationships.

Gobekli’s vision has also expanded beyond the idea of a standalone passport.

TalentPass is becoming the individual side of a broader Human Intelligence Layer: a living, person-controlled source of truth that helps people understand themselves, communicate what they can do, and use their accumulated experience throughout work and life.

TalentSync is extending related ideas to organizations, helping employers, schools, membership organizations, and public institutions build more trustworthy and human-centered relationships with the people they serve.

What Has Not Changed

The technology and product have changed since 2023, but the central purpose remains the same.

People accumulate valuable intelligence throughout their lives. It exists across jobs, education, projects, relationships, challenges, credentials, accomplishments, and personal reflection. Much of that intelligence is fragmented, difficult to communicate, or controlled by systems that were not built primarily for the individual’s benefit.

Gobekli is working to give people a more complete, useful, and trusted way to bring that intelligence together—while preserving their agency over how it is understood and shared.

The prototype presented through Experience You was an early step in that work. The conversations surrounding it helped move TalentPass from an abstract idea toward a product shaped by the people it was intended to serve.

Product availability notice: This article discusses both historical prototypes and Gobekli’s broader product vision. Some capabilities described may still be in development, expanding release, or available only through Launch Partnerships. Visit the Product Availability page for the current implementation status of TalentPass, TalentSync, Pythia, Profiles, Passport Pages, and the Talent Tree.