How Che and Robert Built Their Futures From the Same Starting Point
In March 2025, Che Kraham and Robert were hired as cashiers at Goodwill Palm Beaches & Treasure Coast. Same role. Same start date. Neither of them stayed the same for long.
Finding Growth, Not Just a Job
Goodwill Palm Beaches & Treasure Coast is a mission-integrated workplace, which means the environment is designed from the ground up to help people build skills and advance. That commitment is visible in how the organization structures support for its team members from day one. Every team member is partnered with a GoodPartner Coach, a dedicated resource to help individuals identify goals, work through challenges, and map a path forward, whether that path leads deeper into Goodwill or toward something beyond it.
On top of that, team members have access to on-the-job training, opportunities to earn certificates, and daily responsibilities that develop real, transferable professional skills. Nearly 45,000 hours of education and training were provided across Goodwill Industries-Manasota, Inc. in 2025 alone. For Che and Robert, the cashier role was where their stories started, not where they stopped.
What a Cashier Role Actually Builds
It would be easy to underestimate what daily work behind the register develops in a person. Customer service under pressure. Accuracy and accountability with transactions. The ability to stay focused and professional in a fast-moving retail environment. Communication with a wide range of people, every shift, without a script.
These are not entry-level skills in the dismissive sense of that phrase. They are foundational professional skills, the kind that transfer across industries and that employers in fields far beyond retail look for when evaluating candidates. Che and Robert were building something real from the moment they started.
Two People, Two Paths Forward
Che’s growth showed up in the store itself. Through consistent performance and a willingness to take on more responsibility, Che earned a promotion to keyholder, a role that involves opening and closing the store, supporting store management, and serving as a trusted point of leadership for the team. Keyholders are relied upon to make judgment calls, to set the tone for a shift, and to hold themselves and others accountable to the standards of the store. It is not a title given out easily. It reflects what colleagues and managers observed over months of working alongside Che: reliability, initiative, and genuine investment in the work.
Robert’s path led somewhere else. He is leaving Goodwill Palm Beaches & Treasure Coast to pursue a career in accounting, a field he had his eye on. His time as a cashier was part of that journey, not a detour from it. The discipline, consistency, and professional habits he built here go with him into whatever comes next.
What One Year Can Look Like
Che and Robert started at the same place on the same day. A year later, one holds a leadership role within the organization and the other is stepping into a preferred field. Both outcomes reflect something Goodwill Palm Beaches & Treasure Coast works toward every day, meeting team members where they are and supporting them in getting to where they want to be.
That is not an accident. It is the result of an organization that views employment as a pathway, not just a transaction. Nearly 60% of Goodwill Industries-Manasota, Inc. team members have self-identified barriers to employment, and the support structures in place are built with that reality in mind. But the mission does not stop there. It extends to every team member who walks in, regardless of where they are starting from or where they are trying to go.
“We grew together with Goodwill,” Che said. “Good luck, Robert.”
At Goodwill, that is what Changing Lives Through the Power of Work looks like, not always from the outside in, but from the register up.
Ready to start your own journey? Goodwill is hiring. Visit experiencegoodwill.org/jobs to explore open positions.
