About Aedifica
Aedifica LLC is a New Jersey-based workforce architecture company building construction-management pathways for the scholars, schools, and employers shaping the built environment and our future.
Our team brings both sides of the gap together: a Stevens Institute of Technology professor who leads a graduate Construction Management program; a public-school principal and district leader with more than two decades of experience; an international education-strategy and evaluation specialist; and a construction-and-education practitioner with over fifteen years delivering programs inside real school weeks.
Mission & Vision
Mission
Aedifica designs and delivers construction-management career pathways for schools, workforce partners, and employers, with a focus on scholars who have talent but lack a clear route into the built environment.
Vision
We envision a New Jersey where every scholar, at every age, from every background, can see, walk, and own a clear path into the careers that build the state.
Signature: From foundations to futures. · Earth. Engineers. Education.
Values
Earth. Engineers. Education, and the two values that hold them together.
Earth.
The foundation: the communities we live in, the infrastructure we depend on, and the environment we have a responsibility to protect and improve. Connect infrastructure, sustainability, and place.
Engineers.
The builders of possibility: the people who turn ideas into roads, bridges, schools, hospitals, resilient coastlines, and transit systems. Teach disciplined problem-solving and project-management thinking.
Education.
The bridge: the force that allows people to enter that world, understand it, shape it, and build a better future. Create clear pathways, not isolated workshops.
Two further values complete the set: Access, design for people traditional systems often overlook, and Evidence, track outcomes and improve the model over time.
Origin & history
How Aedifica came to exist.
Origin
Founded inside the problem, not above it.
Aedifica was conceived at the intersection of three stubborn realities: a construction workforce aging out faster than it is being replaced; a curriculum pipeline that too often treats industry as an afterthought; and a growing population of non-traditional scholars who possess enormous capacity but are poorly served by institutional pathways designed for eighteen-year-olds.
Its founders came from both sides of that divide, licensed engineers and site experience on one hand, curriculum designers and educator-practitioners on the other. Aedifica exists because they refused to accept the polite fiction that these are separate problems for separate professions.
Between educator and employer, Aedifica does not referee. We translate, and when translation is insufficient, we rebuild the terms of the conversation itself.
Organizational history
Aedifica grew from years of construction-management practice in the field, teaching, pre-college engineering programming, STEM outreach, and workforce-pathway design. The model brings together classroom rigor, hands-on construction thinking, employer relevance, and measurable scholar outcomes: a foundation in construction-management education; prior delivery through middle school (Hillside and community-based programming), high school (pre-college), and practical training and upskilling in industry; expansion into New Jersey-focused workforce pathway architecture; and the five programs, Explore, Pathway, Launch, Rebuild, and the Talent Pipeline, designed as a single scalable pathway. Delivery status for each is published in Impact & accountability.
Between educator and employer, Aedifica does not referee. We translate, and when translation is insufficient, we rebuild the terms of the conversation itself.
The founders
Built by people on both sides of the gap.
Co-Founder & CEO
Dr. Karim Karam
Stevens Institute of Technology · MIT · Construction Management
Dr. Karim Karam is Co-Founder & CEO of Aedifica and a Teaching Associate Professor at Stevens Institute of Technology, where he leads the graduate Construction Management program. His work sits at the intersection of engineering, education, construction, and workforce mobility.
Co-Founder & Chief Education Strategy Officer
Evelyne Karam
Education policy · Curriculum design · Evaluation
Evelyne Karam is Co-Founder & Chief Education Strategy Officer of Aedifica. She brings expertise in education policy, curriculum design, evaluation, capacity building, and cross-sector reform, including USAID-, UNICEF-, and ministry-linked education initiatives.
Co-Founder & Chief Education and Industry Partnerships Officer
Dr. Nicole Gilmore-Silva
Ed.D. · Teach For America · Founding middle-school principal
Dr. Nicole Gilmore-Silva is Co-Founder & Chief Education and Industry Partnerships Officer of Aedifica. A former principal and district leader with more than two decades in public education, she builds the school, university, employer, and community partnerships that connect learners to the industries shaping the future.
Co-Founder & Community Program Lead
Kimi Stephenson
M.S. Construction Engineering & Mgmt., Stevens · B.A. Criminal Justice, Rutgers · OSHA-10 · BPI
Kimi Stephenson is Co-Founder & Community Program Lead of Aedifica, with over fifteen years at the intersection of construction, property, and education. She holds an M.S. in Construction Engineering and Management from Stevens Institute of Technology and co-designed the Bridging Brilliance STEM program at Hillside Innovation Academy.
The founder story
in Dr. Karam's own words
Ever since I can remember, I have believed that education can change the direction of a life.
That belief began at home. My father was the first in his family to receive a university education, studying at Saint Joseph University in Lebanon and later at the École Nationale des Ponts et Chaussées in France. He came from a small village, Ehden, and from a family where opportunity was not guaranteed. His own father could not read or write, but my grandmother understood that education could open a door that poverty and instability tried to keep closed.
My father carried that lesson with him everywhere. He gave my siblings and me the best education he could, even when it required sacrifice. When I left for London to study civil engineering, he told me something I have never forgotten: "Your education is one of the few things that no one can ever take away from you." Years later, when I was accepted to MIT for graduate study, he was overjoyed, and he once again made sacrifices so I could continue learning.
That gift shaped my life. It also shaped my responsibility.
Operating principles
Six operating principles, and what each one costs us.
Built, not borrowed.
We design programs from the jobsite backward, not from the textbook forward. Every Aedifica curriculum carries named employer validators who confirm that what we teach matches the work mid-market New Jersey general contractors are doing today, not the work the industry was doing five years ago. Curriculum that cannot survive a project executive's review does not enter a cohort.
From the jobsite backward, not the textbook forward.
Technology-fluent by default.
Modern construction-management work makes use of technology, software, Procore, BIM viewers, drone-captured site documentation, and AI-assisted scheduling and project-controls platforms. Aedifica curriculum is built in those tools at every level because that is the actual present of the work. Graduates leave fluent in the platforms employers already use, alongside the green-building, energy-efficiency, and resilience standards that have become baseline expectations of modern construction management.
The tools of the work, taught in the tools of the work.
Equity is the strategy.
Overlooked adults, justice-impacted, returning to work after caregiving, transitioning from military service, are not a beneficiary group. They are the talent pipeline. We design wraparound supports, regulatory pathways, and credential articulation specifically for the population we currently serve, and we serve one population excellently before adding the next. The durable construction workforce New Jersey needs will not be built from the people the system already served well.
The talent pipeline, not the side door.
Outcomes over activity, honestly reported.
We measure ourselves by placement rate, credential attainment, wage at placement, and apprenticeship articulation: not by hours delivered or seats filled. Every Aedifica program publishes outcome data using the same definitions every cohort. Cohort 1's metric is also Cohort 8's metric. We do not redefine "placement" to inflate headlines.
The metric is the moat.
Partner architecture over founder architecture.
We do not duplicate infrastructure our partners already provide. Community-based organizations own recruitment and case management. County colleges and workforce boards own fiscal capacity and reporting. Employers own role definitions and interview commitments. Aedifica owns curriculum, instruction, capstone design, and outcome measurement. The discipline of staying inside our lane is what lets the program scale beyond a single founder.
The strength of the network is the strength of the program.
Radical legibility.
What we design must be implementable by the people who inherit it, not only by the consultants who wrote it. Curriculum that requires its authors in the room is a dependency, not a pathway. Every Aedifica program is delivered with the instructor materials, documentation, and measurement definitions a partner needs to run it without us, because a program that collapses when we leave was never a pathway in the first place.
If it needs us in the room, it isn’t finished.
Access & funding
No cost to scholars. Full cost transparency to partners.
Aedifica programs are funded through institutional partners, districts, workforce boards, agencies, employers, and philanthropy, and aligned to New Jersey's funded green and apprenticeship priorities. Scholars never pay. Partners always know exactly what a cohort costs and what it returns.
Entity
Aedifica LLC, a New Jersey limited liability company.
Districts
Pathway and Explore run on district, Title, and grant funding, scoped to the school year and budget cycle you actually have.
Workforce
Rebuild and Launch align to WIOA, state apprenticeship, and clean-energy workforce funding streams.
Employers
Talent Pipeline participation is structured as workforce investment, with outcome data that survives a board review.
Philanthropy
Mission-aligned funders underwrite wraparound supports and the research agenda that keeps the model honest.
New York
Aedifica's high-school curriculum is aligned to New York standards, including CDOS (Career Development & Occupational Studies) and the NGSS engineering-design expectations.
Frequently asked questions
The questions boards, superintendents, and families actually ask.
For partners & institutions
A different question for your district, board, or company? Talk to the team.
For families & students