Privacy Policy

Last updated: November 6, 2026

Pathway Ahead is run by Colosimo Ventures LLC, an Ohio company ("we", "us") · Questions: privacy@colosimoventures.com

The short version

• Pathway Ahead helps high school students find careers that fit them and compare what each path really costs. To do that, we need some information about you.
• We never sell your information, never show ads, never share it for advertising, and never use it to train AI.
• The most personal things, like your family's income and any background you pick for scholarship matching, stay on your phone. We never receive them.
• If you're 13 to 15, a parent or guardian has to approve your account. If you're 16 or 17, you can choose to share your plan with a parent.
• You can download your information or delete your account anytime in Settings.

1. Who can use Pathway Ahead

Pathway Ahead is for people 13 and older in the United States: students and their parents or guardians. We do not knowingly collect information from anyone under 13. If someone tells us they're under 13, the app stops before anything is saved. If we learn that a child under 13 has an account, we delete it and everything in it. If you think a child under 13 has given us information, email privacy@colosimoventures.com.

Students 13 to 15 need a parent or guardian to approve their account within 14 days. Until then the account is pending, and if no one approves it, we delete it.

2. What we collect

When you make an account

• Account details: your first name, email address, home state, whether you're a student or a parent, and your birth month and year. We use your age only to apply the right protections. You sign in with a one-time code sent to your email, so there's no password to steal.
• Parent details: for a student 13 to 15, the parent or guardian's name and email you give us, and a record of their decision. For a 16- or 17-year-old who chooses to share, the same details for the parent they share with. A parent who makes their own account gives us their first name and email. If a parent creates a family code, we keep the teen's first name they type and a scrambled copy of the code.

When you use the app

• Assessment answers: your answers about interests, work style and values, and how far you got.
• Your plan: your career matches, careers you save or add, your grade, the career and education path you pick, checklist steps you finish, the deadlines and applications you track, scholarships you save or add, and similar planning choices.
• Scholarship profile (optional): GPA, test scores, activities, awards, jobs, volunteer hours and interests you enter so we can match scholarships.
• Before you make an account, your quick-match answers and saved careers stay on your phone only. If you create an account, they're saved to it.

Kept on your phone only (we never receive these)

• The family income range you can enter to estimate what a school would really cost.
• The background you can pick for scholarship matching: heritage, first-generation student, a documented learning disability, a parent who serves or served in the military, a parent in a union, or interest in an HBCU.
• Your location or ZIP code, if you use "schools near you." With your permission the app reads your location once, on your phone, to find nearby schools. It is never sent to us or saved on our servers.
• Your language choice.
• Your Coach drafts and feedback history (see section 4).

The Coach

• The essay, résumé or interview answer you send to the Coach, which passes through our server to our AI provider to create feedback. We don't store it on our servers. We keep a count of how many times you've used the Coach so we can apply the plan limits.
• Coach reports: if you report a Coach answer that seemed wrong or not okay, we keep the reason you pick and any note you write.

Collected automatically

• Technical data: like most apps, when the app connects to our servers, our hosting provider receives technical information such as your IP address, device type, operating system and app version. We use it to run the app, keep it secure, stop abuse and fix problems. It's kept in security logs for a short time.
• Usage counts: daily totals of how often steps happen in the app (for example, "12 quick matches finished today"). The totals include nothing that identifies you or your phone.
• Number reports: if you use "Spot something wrong? Tell us," we keep your note and which screen it came from, without your name, account or device. Please don't put personal details in the note.
• Notification token (parents only): if a parent turns on deadline alerts, a code from Apple or Google that lets us send alerts to that phone. Turning alerts off or signing out removes it.
• Age signals from Apple or Google: where state law requires it, the app stores tell us your age range and whether a parent approved. We use it only to apply the right age protections (see section 5).

From others

• Purchase status from Apple or Google, through our purchase partner RevenueCat: which plan, when it started, renews or ends, and which student it's for. We never see card or bank details.
• A parent's approval or decision, when they use the approval link we email them.

Calendar: if you ask, the app adds a deadline to your phone's calendar. It doesn't read your calendar.

We don't collect Social Security numbers, bank or card numbers, contacts, photos (unless you choose to send one to the Coach), or your precise location.

3. How we use it

• To run your account and show your career matches, path and cost comparisons, deadlines, scholarships and plan.
• To give writing and interview feedback through the Coach.
• To ask a parent to approve a 13- to 15-year-old's account, to link a parent a student chooses to share with, and to show a linked parent a summary.
• To send emails you need, such as sign-in codes and parent approval requests, and alerts a parent turns on.
• To process purchases and restore them on new phones.
• To keep Pathway Ahead safe, stop abuse, and fix problems.
• To understand which features help students, using only totals that don't identify anyone.
• To follow the law and respond to valid legal requests.

We use your information only for the purposes listed here. We don't use it for advertising, we don't build profiles of you for anyone else, and we don't send you marketing email. Career matches are suggestions made automatically from your answers. They don't decide anything about you and you're free to ignore them.

4. The Coach and AI

The Coach uses an AI model from Anthropic (the maker of Claude) to give feedback on writing and interview answers. When you use it, what you send passes through our server to Anthropic to create the feedback. Anthropic is not allowed to use it to train its models and deletes it within 30 days. It keeps something longer only if it's flagged for breaking Anthropic's safety rules. We don't store it on our servers. Your drafts and feedback are saved on your phone so you can look back, and signing out or deleting your account removes them.

The app explains this and asks you to agree before your first use. The Coach is an AI, not a person. It gives feedback and asks questions; it doesn't write essays for you. AI can be wrong, so check important advice with a counselor or teacher. The Coach is not a counselor or therapist. If you're going through something hard, call or text 988 (the Suicide & Crisis Lifeline) or talk to an adult you trust. In an emergency, call 911.

5. Age information from Apple and Google

Some states (including Texas, Utah and Louisiana, and California from January 1, 2027) require the app stores to check account holders' ages and share an age range and parent approval status with apps. Where this applies, we receive that information from Apple or Google and use it only to apply the right age protections and parent approval steps, and to notify parents of significant changes when the law requires it. If the app store's information and what you told us don't match, we apply the protections for the younger age. We don't use age information for anything else.

6. Who we share it with

We share information only with:

• Service providers that run Pathway Ahead for us, under contracts that let them use it only to provide their service: Supabase (hosting and database, in the United States), Anthropic (Coach feedback), RevenueCat (purchases), Resend (email delivery), Expo (app updates and parent alerts), and Apple and Google (app delivery, purchases, notifications and age signals).
• A linked parent or guardian: the parent who approved a 13- to 15-year-old's account, or a parent a 16- or 17-year-old chose to share with. They see the student's career matches, plan, chosen path, cost estimates, saved scholarships, tracked applications and deadlines. They don't see the student's individual assessment answers, scholarship profile or Coach drafts.
• People you choose: when you share your plan or a share card, you pick who gets it.
• Legal reasons: when the law requires it, or to protect someone's safety.
• A business transfer: if Pathway Ahead moves to another company, including a new company we form for it, or is sold or merged, your information would move with it under this policy, and we'd tell you before it does.

We never sell or rent your information, and we never share it for targeted advertising.

7. How long we keep it

• Pending accounts (13 to 15): if a parent doesn't approve within 14 days, we delete the account and everything in it. If a parent declines, we delete it right away.
• Active accounts: we keep your information while your account is open. You can delete saved items anytime.
• Inactive accounts: if an account isn't used for 24 months, we may delete it after emailing a warning at least 30 days before.
• Deleted accounts: when you delete your account, we remove it from our live systems right away. Copies in our backups are gone within 30 days.
• Parent approval records: we keep a record that approval was given, declined or withdrawn, and when (without names, emails, answers or plans), for 3 years so we can show we asked.
• Purchase records: kept as long as tax and accounting rules require (up to 7 years), without your answers, plans or essays.
• Coach reports and number reports: kept up to 2 years. Coach reports are unlinked from your account when you delete it.

8. Your choices and rights

In the app, you can:

• Download a copy of your information (Settings).
• Correct your profile, answers and plan.
• Delete any saved item, or your whole account (Settings). Deleting the app or your account doesn't cancel a subscription; cancel that in your Apple or Google account.
• Turn off reminders and alerts.
• Stop sharing with a parent anytime, if you're 16 or 17.

A parent who approved a 13- to 15-year-old's account can see what we have about their teen, ask us to delete it, or withdraw approval, which deletes the account. They can do this from the parent view in the app, the link in the approval email, or by emailing us.

Wherever you live in the US, you can ask to know, access, correct, delete or get a copy of your information by emailing privacy@colosimoventures.com. We'll confirm the request comes from you or your parent, and answer within 45 days. We won't treat you differently for asking. If we say no, you can appeal by replying to our answer, and we'll respond within 45 days. If you're still not satisfied, you can contact your state attorney general.

9. Notices for specific states

California: In the past 12 months we collected the kinds of information in section 2: identifiers (name, email), age, education information you enter (grade, GPA, test scores, activities), commercial information (purchase status), internet activity (usage totals and technical data) and inferences (career matches). We collect it from you, your parent, your phone and the app stores, for the purposes in section 3, and keep it as described in section 7. We don't sell or share personal information, including that of people under 16, and we don't use sensitive personal information to infer things about you. Your rights are in section 8.

Colorado, Connecticut and other states with protections for minors: we don't use minors' information for targeted ads, sale or profiling that affects them, we don't collect precise location on our servers, the app has no messaging between users, and we design it to help with a decision, not to keep you scrolling.

10. Security

We encrypt information as it travels and where it's stored, lock each account's data so only that account (and a linked parent, for the plan) can read it, limit access by our team to what's needed with two-step sign-in, and require our providers to protect it. No system is perfectly secure. If a breach affects your information, we'll notify you, and a linked parent if you're under 18, as the law requires.

11. Changes to this policy

If we make a meaningful change, we'll tell you in the app and by email before it takes effect. For users under 18, we'll also tell any linked parent. If a change means we'd collect or share more about a 13- to 15-year-old, we'll ask the approving parent again first.

12. Contact us