Building a Career Co-pilot for Disadvantaged Students: How Zero Gravity Bridges Knowing and Doing

How do you help disadvantaged students take action on opportunities they don't even know exist? In this episode of _Just Now Possible_, Teresa Torres talks with Elliot Little (Product Manager) and Dan St. Paul (Software Engineer) from Zero Gravity, a UK-based platform that helps state school students access elite career opportunities through mentoring, community, and learning pathways. They've built an AI career co-pilot that acts as an orchestrator—not an automation tool—bridging the gap between knowing what to do and actually doing it. You'll hear how they: - Started with grand visions of AI mentors and synthetic avatars, then scaled back to something simpler and more effective - Discovered that hiding the "LLM magic" backfired—students needed to feel the personalization - Built context management strategies to handle multi-month student journeys without blowing up token counts - Approached safeguarding as a first-class concern when building AI for 16-year-olds - Used application logic rather than complex RAG architectures to manage tool availability and context freshness It's a practical look at building AI products that augment human relationships rather than replace them—from a team navigating the unique challenges of educational technology.