Good morning, everybody. I’m super excited to be launching close it distributed today October 29 2020, and this summit will be running through May 24 through 26.
If the world gets co bed under control. We will be together for the close of closing distributed celebrating the outcomes. They’re going to be happening across the globe.
Thanks to this wonderful community of thought leaders from across
workforce, learning, education, HR chief learning officers and dispensing anybody doing anything feature work and let me not forget the learners themselves.
So today’s agenda we have an honor to be with Dr. Big drove and while presenting in a minute, then we will move at the top of that hour to an opening of the ideation hubs by my friend and amazing leader lead Lambert, the Chancellor Pima College Pima Community
College in Tucson, and he’s just not the chance Sir, he’s on so many boards, it might take me too long to read all of them.
And finally we will do a form and a review of the 11 hubs, that ideation hubs by the leaders of those hubs. So thank you again for joining.
Dr Boudreaux, thank you for being with us we are so honored to have you as the opening keynote unit I’ve been talking about this for quite some
as a short intro dr Boudreaux full bio is on our closet summit speaker page. But Dr. Dre was a recognized worldwide leader is one of the leading evidence based visionaries on the future of work and organization john took a big round, and then breakthrough
research on the bridge between work superior human capital leadership and sustainable competitive advantage. JOHN has over 100 publications. He’s published 10 books, and he consults and has consulted across the globe with the top see HR pros.
For the past 30 years his interest in the future of work has been a constant part of his career over those 30 years. I’m proud to call him my friend and he also moved to Santa Fe, New Mexico, a few years ago after growing up in another favorite part of
New Mexico to me last Christmas. So thank you john for being with us. and let’s launch close a distributed.
Thank you, Jimmy. It’s absolutely a pleasure to be here, pleasure to see my friends you may even remotely it’s been way too long since we were in person I’m sure that’s true for all of you.
So as you may say, this is a return to me.
Having grown up in southern New Mexico and then left for 3540 years to have a career at Cornell and University of Southern California and be privileged to have worked with executives all over the world and students, amazing students.
So it’s fun to be back this time in northern New Mexico, and it was amazing. About a year ago, I guess, to discover Jimmy through the auspices of Ellen Galinsky who I believe is going to be kind enough to join us today as a participant no pressure, Ellen.
But Ellen came to New Mexico for close at 2019. She and I caught up after a long period of not seeing each other. And as a result, I ended up through Ellen’s auspices getting connected with Jimmy and we’ve been talking about this idea ever since that
I might offer a humble contribution to her next close it. So hopefully we’ll all see each other in person. In May, I am eager to see the work of the innovation hubs and can’t believe the amazing talent.
That is a part of those.
And as I said today I’m hoping to offer some humble ideas that may inspire, maybe offer a little bit of a change of direction, offer some ideas for discussion.
I’m very much a learner in this. So what I’m going to do today is present to you the kinds of things that I’m suggesting to HR leaders chief HR officers chief learning officers of the organizations that I work with the kinds of things that I’m writing
about, and I’m very intrigued by what those of you on on in close at 2020 are going to make up some of these ideas, I’m sure I’m going to learn a great deal.
And I can’t wait to hear your feedback, and how you would extend them correct them etc. So with that, Tiffany Thank you. By the way, for, for your help as well Tiffany behind the scenes.
I’m going to share my screen now and she’s going to help me make sure everything’s working well and we’ll do a brief presentation for about 40 minutes and then we’ll have some time for questions.
So thanks everybody, and thank you, Jimmy again.
Okay, so this is me sharing.
How do we look Tiffany.
Great. Okay.
So, again, thanks to everybody. these are, you can see my contact information here if you decide that you want to get in touch with me.
Let me start with this slide.
This slide basically is, it was what happened to me.
Several years ago, when I switched from the iPhone models that had a headphone jack to the iPhone models that never would ever again have a headphone jack that moment in time for me was pretty disruptive I spent a lot of time doing the kind of thing you
see me doing here, you can see my wireless headphones in my ear even at this moment.
So what does this have to do with work. Well, the reason I like this idea is that the iPhone is perpetually upgraded. And it’s perpetually obsolete.
The one you had yesterday is a little different from the one you had today. It’s always being upgraded we could say, in a way, the iPhone is always being perpetually shifted to use the language that you may as put together to talk about work and learning
etc. And so when I talked to leaders of organizations, HR leaders and others. What I say is that they need to become very accustomed to a world where the notion of work is changing all the time, every day.
There’s a different work engagement that might do a little bit of a certain traditional job. maybe it’s a freelancer, maybe it’s a volunteer.
Maybe it’s a contractor, maybe it’s borrowing talent from another organization, I’ll talk about all those examples in just a minute.
In addition, of course, everyone is concerned and aware of automation, and how automation is affecting the world of work.
Automation is the other element that every day, can do a little bit of work in almost every job now most of the time those upgrades, so to speak, don’t affect people fundamentally, they might make work a little easier a little different, etc.
But then there comes the moment, just like with the iPhone. When the work has been so substantially changed that really big decisions need to be made, what I encourage organization leaders to do is to understand that this is happening all the time, and
they have a framework to think about this, so that they don’t end up facing a massive change, all of a sudden, without any warning, and having to then adjust in a massive way, in the same way that many people did when they lost their head phone jack on
the iPhone. That can mean laying people off that can be real, real mean realizing we don’t have the skills we need it, we’re not ready to develop them quickly.
That can mean that we haven’t developed relationships with learning organizations and learning ecosystem. So, one of my big messages is think of work as perpetually upgraded.
Think of it work as perpetually obsolete.
And the other big messages to see that you have to kind of think of work and workers. What I like to say is they’re melting, that what that means is that if you had an ice cube called a job.
Well, covert has just accelerated the pace at which that job is being pulled apart into its tasks, and then reconfigured to fit, working with working remotely to fit working with collaborative teams in a different way, etc.
and automation does the same thing. In addition, we have workers, melting. And what I mean by that is something all of you are probably much more familiar with than I am.
And that is the notion that workers rather than being seen as held in an ice cube of a job or a series of jobs or even an organization are melting into their capabilities.
Some people call it something like a skills based economy, for example, skills would be an example of how workers are being melted into their components, Jimmy and I were talking about knowledge, skills, abilities kiss which is a classic way of thinking
about workers as something more atomized more more smaller, more deconstructed. And when you think about a world in which the parts of jobs are allowed to live on their own, and the parts of workers are allowed to live on your own their own, it opens
up some really interesting opportunities and options for the way that we think about work, and the way that work affects our society and workers.
So the other. The next major point that I make with corporations and large and startup organizations, is that leaders have choices about how work and learning are reinvented, and it’s up to the ecosystem of HR leaders, learning leaders policymakers, etc.
To help leaders think about what values principles frameworks and decision rules, they’ll use and today I’ll give you a few examples of the frameworks that my colleagues and I have developed.
One of them is this dashboard, think about being a leader in a company, not necessarily a learning leader or HR leader but any leader, and you’ve got work to do.
Well, today most systems in organizations will present you with one or maybe two of the options on this chart. The most common one is the one in the upper left hand corner, traditional employment.
I’ve got work to do. I create a job, a job requisition, and I go hire people to do it.
The next one is outsourcing where I call that contracting, many of you are familiar with that, that’s often the domain of procurement, rather than the domain of something like human resources or leadership.
So you might get those two options. But of course, in the, in the ecosystem of work there are lots more options. There are free agents who are available either individually or on platforms.
That’s also reflected in the green circle down at the bottom left in the upper right you have alliances that might mean borrowing talent from another organization.
and then deciding which organization would be employees that’s happening a lot right now as platforms are being developed so that organizations with surplus employees can find a place for them in organizations that need employees, like a hospitality organization,
partnering up with a retail organization or a delivery organization.
If we move across the bottom talked about talent platforms, we might be using volunteers.
Like, customers to help you design new products, and then finally robotics and artificial intelligence to the right. So my message is basically that these options may be only a few of the options that organizations have for talent, but they that leaders
should begin to be presented with many more options than just the first two, and that HR systems need to present these options, they need to be prepared to manage these options whether it has to do with legal or compliance for making sure they’re empowering
and not exploitive, but it, but that it’s time to begin thinking this way, not because every job needs all of these options. In some cases, a job is going to be just fine, but because the trajectory of the future of work suggests that we’re going to engage
humans in very different ways.
And we’re going to have options for automation down at the bottom right. So that kind of brings me to the first topic, which is how organizations might engage human workers in different ways than only traditional employment and let me give all due credit
to my good colleagues Robin Jason Lawson and David Friedman, and you can find more in the book, or on the topic on my website called lead the work.
One of my favorites so these are kind of my greatest hits about favorite examples here.
And many of them will have to do with large companies and so I’ll be quite interested to hear from all of you about your thoughts on how we might tap into maybe smaller companies, how we might tap into different arrangements that have to do with the learning
ecosystem that you’re building. So my first one then has to do with a company called Disney that all of you are probably familiar with, and a company called Siemens that you may not be as familiar with Siemens makes.
It’s a division of United Technologies makes things like medical equipment. They also are involved in big infrastructure like monorail and elevators, etc.
So it may not surprise you to know that Disney and Siemens for decades have had a partnership in which Siemens basically helps Disney build the things in the theme park and I’ll show a brief video just to give you an idea about that Alliance.
Basically we’re always focused on doing the impossible. And so our job is to figure out how to do the impossible.
Back seven years ago when we started using the Siemens products, we found that the same as company has very innovative flexible and safe product lines.
And the other thing that is very important to us is these products are very reliable.
There’s so many different ways in which we’re looking to push the.
Okay, so you get the idea. Now I’m going to move to a story for you and I want you to think about a couple of things.
Siemens creates a hearing aid for children and Siemens is interested in marketing that hearing aid in a way that children and their parents will ask their doctor about this Siemens product called a hearing aid.
Now if you think about how Siemens might get that work done probably their first instinct would be to say well we have a job and it’s called a marketing, and we have marketers, of the things that we build whether they be monorail or elevators or medical
equipment like MRIs or hearing aids.
Now those, those jobs and Siemens are largely constructed with the idea that Siemens would be marketing business to business. In other words, that the Siemens engineers would be talking to engineers at Disney or others I don’t know if you noticed but
the little patch at the shoulder of that person in the video from Disney said ride engineer.
Now, what happens if you ask those Siemens engineers to come up with the best story they can tell, two children and parents. Well, I’m not sure what they come up with but my suspicion is they want to show the parents and children the specification sheet
and show the decibels, and show them the sound response. Interesting engineers, but maybe not quite the right way to tell a story to children.
So Siemens might say, I know what we’ll do. We’re going to go recruit for this job of marketing, and we’re going to tell the best storytellers in the world that they should come to Siemens because they can market things like hearing aids and MRIs and
monitor rails and other things like that. And what happens when you begin to get people to the interviews for recruiting, well, lots of great people show up, but the very best of them.
When who have always wanted to be storytellers to children will say what. Well, I think the very best of them will say something like, Look, I know you’ve got a great company, but my aspiration has always been to work at Disney.
So Siemens dilemma is that the very best talent they need is right out there, but they just happen to work for another company. So how can Siemens form a partnership with Disney.
Well they did it with them in a very specific way by realizing that within the job of marketing, there was this little deconstructed part called storytelling to children and parents, and they realized that if they took that little part and they could
move it across their boundary to a place called Disney, that they could get the Disney folks to help them with that storytelling part of their marketing.
Now, this, this and this required a pretty a pretty intricate tunnel, and an IP lawyer who took semen secrets to Burbank showed him to Disney and her Disney secrets about their characters, about what things were in the pipeline to put them together to
market Siemens products.
The result is this. This is a picture from the Siemens website not from that I made. And as I like to think of it as the bottom right territory is what the engineers Did you can see it looks very professional blue and white, gray, you can see that spec
sheet I mentioned at the bottom left, not, however, the great communication for parents and children in the, in the left and upper part of this you see what Disney came up with the Disney character carrying case.
And if you look closely at that comic book I’m not sure if you can see it, but in the middle is a rabbit.
Well it turns out that the story the Disney people came up with was a rabbit, that doesn’t hear very well, and the Disney characters, helping that rabbit understand that there’s nothing wrong with hearing differently, and in fact there is this thing called
a Seaman’s hearing aid that can help you. That’s what was in the doctors offices. Now, now, the idea here then is that I’ll then I’ll do this in a couple of curves are these curves are pretty straightforward to understand even though they look complex
And the horizontal axis from left to right, is the level of performance that someone might do, and I call that return on improve performance that’s the title at the top.
So on the left you can see what’s going on at Siemens. The blue line shows what Siemens is good at the difference between a low and a high performer on creating an innovative hearing aid is hugely valuable the Siemens, and therefore they have a lot of
people at the high end of that performance curve, really great at hearing aids. Now, on the other hand marketing to kids. The difference between low and high to Siemens on the low side is a disaster so that really breaks off, but you can see that in the
Siemens world marketing to kids doesn’t come up much, so even the best person at Siemens is going to be frankly kind of mediocre at marketing to kids.
On the other hand at Disney it’s just the opposite. That’s the right hand curve Disney’s blue line of marketing to kids is where they excel and where they find very great value in high performance, so they’ll have the high performers, innovative hearing
aids is not something Disney is good at.
And so that’s the green curve. If you ask people to design a hearing aid at Disney they wouldn’t be able to do it well Siemens needs both blue curves.
And when you, when you think about just the storytelling part of the marketing job, you realize that you could get the best talent from Disney. So my first message to business leaders is, you can, if you think about the assignment, let’s call that the
work you need to think about how to deconstruct it to find the storytelling inside the job of marketing. In this example, if you think about the organization.
You need to be ready to let your boundary be permeable, and you need to think about how permeable you’ll make it in the Disney case, they did it with a very specific IP lawyer and IP protections.
And then finally we have this issue of rewards.
And I don’t know exactly how the Disney people were paid or remunerated let’s say for their their work, but I suspect having talked to the person who did it, that they might have been volunteers, because it’s a big reward at Disney if you get to help
children here better. That’s something you don’t get to do very often, but because Siemens creatively open to this portal, I would bet that Disney could get some of their best people to do this on a volunteer basis.
So the rewards need to think beyond traditional pay or benefits or an employment contract and think about things like sense of purpose and the opportunity to do something different.
So assignment, organization, and rewards is the framework that we used in lead the work. Here’s a couple more examples.
I was fascinated for a long time with the world of top coder top coder is a platform for computer coders and web designers, etc. That has now been been purchased and absorbed by a period.
So this slide was a couple of years ago. My point here is only this, that there is often a platform where the best talent in the world live and do work as freelancers or contractors, probably met some of you may actually have used a freelancer on a platform
like up work or a period to design a website to build an app for you to do some coding, etc. You can actually find platforms that will give you a corporate officer, small startup companies often use a platform based relationship with a freelance CFO to
do their finances, in addition to having freelancers doing their programming etc. There are famous stories about some startups that have three employees, but have the equivalent of a staff of hundreds, and they found that they can do that through freelance
platforms. So again, here we are, you have to find the part of the work that a freelancer could do, it’s seldom a job, you have to you have to allow your boundary to open up because you have to create a relationship with a freelance platform or a provider
of contract workers, and then your rewards may look very different for those populations.
Here’s one of my favorite examples. In this example, all of the dimensions are turned to 11 so to speak. So we have a situation where the work was significantly deconstructed, we have a situation where the organization boundary was obliterated, and we
have a situation where no one got paid in dollars, but they found very creative rewards. In this case the story has to do with a very specific aspect of solving a problem about a vaccination for the AIDS virus.
Now, this is a biochemistry problem and you often use people who have the job of biochemist to solve it. But inside that job a biochemist, it turns out that there was a mathematical problem.
And it has to do with how something fits together in three dimensional space, how the cure fits into the virus in three dimensional space, and the video you’re about to see shows you a very creative way to find the best talent in the world, to solve the
math problem. That is the little task inside the job, and the riddle of biochemistry and other news for you this morning there is a group of gamers they have cracked the scientific puzzle that stamp stumped age researchers for years, and they did it in
in just three weeks researchers at the University of Washington, stuck in a roadblock but the problem to video game players using a program called fold it.
The game was quickly developed a protein structure that can help by HIV and AIDS and joining me now is set Cooper creative director at the University of Washington center for game science.
Also here is for us Qt but postdoctoral researcher at the University of Washington, biochemistry department it’s good to have you both on with me this morning set that want to start with you because your department created this game, fold it, which was
used to solve this puzzle so explain to all of us in layman’s terms, how it works and were you surprised by the results.
Yeah. And so how folded works is, we’re able to take the biochemistry problems of the scientists and working on and post them as puzzles and an online game.
And then we have an energy function that we got from the biochemists that can basically take a protein structure and to give you a number that tells you how well folded that protein is.
And so all the players who are playing the game are rated and ranked based on how well folder their protein structures are using this energy function and score and function.
And then we can take the best highest scoring results and give those back to the biochemist for analysis.
frichti you set up this experiment using gamers that had little knowledge little experience in biochemistry. Why did you want to enlist them to try and solve these really complex scientific problems.
Because in this particular case, every single experimental method had had failed for 12 years crystallography has been working on trying to solve the high resolution crystal structure of this particular protein and all those methods have failed.
The latest and greatest computational methods to try to do this using supercomputers and all the computing power that we have in the world, also failed and so it was really a last ditch effort, and hope that the gamers would be able to crack this and.
So, I’ll break this down a little bit in terms of the framework, number one, I find it, I always find it so endearing to see those two PhD students and to have corporate leaders realize these are your workforce of the future for tough riddles.
They don’t want to work for your pharma company they don’t need a job with your foreign company and they are the best talent in the world for certain parts of the riddles that you face.
I’ve done a good deal of work with pharma companies in the r&d groups. And what you find is they’re being quite creative about these alliances, whether it’s with universities, whether it might be with think tanks, etc.
which right but what I love about this one is it really takes this to the extreme so let’s think about what happened, as I said, inside the job of biochemist is this part of the riddle.
That is a math problem. So first of all, you can’t get the solution unless you’re willing to let that job a biochemist melted bit. And you’re willing to admit that you’re biochemists are mediocre mathematicians, and what you need is the best talent in
world. Second thing is you have to realize that the best talent in the world are people that are going to be hired, because you don’t have enough of those math problems to keep them busy to keep them interested, but they exist in a community out there
that is gamers who are solving folding problems and math problems just for the glory of being the smartest one way before your riddle evolved so somebody brilliant realize this folded community already existed.
Let’s get the problem to them. Now that meant revealing the problem.
That meant, letting your organization bound boundary down completely giving this riddle to the whole world, and realizing that that part of your intellectual property was now going to be in the public domain and seen by everyone.
And then finally the reward, no one got paid for this, but the teams that figured out the folding problem. Got listed on the scientific paper that got published I wrote a blog about this and you can find the scientific paper link there.
They got listed by their, their team names in the folded community, they got the bragging rights of being the smartest ones, and I think they also got a sense of purpose, because it’s rare that their mathematical hobby would actually let them pay tribute
to AIDS. So again, thinking carefully about melting work, melting the assignment into, into the part that matters and seeing that part. I think there’s a lot of implications here for the learning community on.
Where are the deconstructed parts of work, where deconstructed capabilities fit the most. And then, lowering the organization boundary. I think again in the learning community, there is immense possibility for thinking about how the community can connect
with organizations that don’t involve simply finding a job for someone, but involved a lowering the boundary in creative ways. And then finally the rewards.
the idea that badges, the idea that bragging rights.
The idea that winning a competition and sense of purpose can actually be the rewards that matter when no one gets paid for something as as important as this is probably a million dollar a billion dollar solution, and no one got any money for it.
So then we’ll turn to automation and again I want to give due credit to my colleague rabid rabid Jason Lawson, and and the book reinventing jobs here.
When it comes to automation then we have this new source of work that is different from human beings.
So many people think of automation. This way, I’ll be interested in your community about where you think you are and where the people that you work with are there’s obviously a ton of attention to the idea of re skilling as a way to deal with automation
to the idea of where the responsibility lies for anticipating and then providing the skills that workers need. And very often it is portrayed in the way that this.
Excuse me. This slide shows, which is that automation is going to make people obsolete. Very often leaders are presented with automation investments, based on the idea of how many, how much headcount will be reduced.
Now, to be sure there are other purposes of automation, lowering risk making work safer augmenting workers, etc. But very often it’s portrayed this way.
Now what’s interesting to me is that when you study automation and when you study how automation effects work.
It’s virtually never the case that automation can replace an entire job. So, and that’s one of the reasons we wrote this book because leaders were confronted with a framework with a model that said well automate and then these people in these jobs will
will go away and this job will be done by automation, when they tried to do it of course what they realize is, you almost never end up with zero people and then automation replacing them, but you end up with is you need 70% of the person.
And that and 30% of the job is now done by automation. So it presents some really interesting dilemma is for leaders in reality, because now you’ve got 70% of the person 70% of the work they did before as a human got 30% being done by automation and maybe
the combination makes the human twice as productive.
So one of the policy dilemmas. One of the organization dilemmas is how would you set the pay for that person now, should they be paid twice as much, because they’re twice as productive, or 70% as much because they’re only doing 7% of the work.
Now that answer obviously depends on values frameworks decision rules, etc. And that’s why I’m so fascinated with this area, and with presenting this to you, because I think it’s going to be defined, not just by organization leaders but by the whole work
ecosystem.
This graph is very very busy, but I just want to point out a couple of things what it tells me this is pure research from a few years ago, the message of this graph is that most people in the US are afraid of automation and want to be protected from it.
- The blue line in the, in the upper part of the blue line on the right up there is people who favor that machine should be limited only to doing the dirty or dangerous or unhealthy jobs on the bottom the big part of the pie chart says 50% of people
believe there should be limits on the number of jobs that can replace replaced with machines. So people favorite public policy that would constrain organizations from automating in areas that are not obvious help to the workers, there’s a great deal of
debate about whether automation will be exploitive or not. And I think one of the solutions is that we need an ecosystem that is anticipating automation early enough to give leaders and organizations great options before they face that that excuse me
that iPhone situation where automation means they have a lot of bad choices like laying people off. And again, I think the learning community has a lot to do with providing the frameworks and the pipelines and the options so that leaders can see the upscaling
or the rescaling implications of automation early enough to do it in an empowering way.
So now some examples are some frameworks and then an example.
So optimizing human and automated work means leaders have to choose.
At first of all they have to let work melt, because you can only see this at the level of the tasks, and then work gets reinvented around the automation.
At the task level, automation can replace humans, and that’s something we need to understand sometimes that’s going to be necessary.
Automation can augment humans, it can make them better at what they were doing, maybe safer maybe more reliable domains husband for example is an investor in a startup that creates exoskeletons, I still have a reservation with Dave, that I want to go
to that organization and put on the exoskeleton just to see what it’s like and get a few photos for this part of my presentation and exoskeletons a good example of automation that makes a human worker, better at what they did before and augments them.
And then sometimes automation reinvents the entire level of work. There are there was a story I read the other day that in in parts of Europe, they’re trying to have trucking done remotely.
So that truckers who would normally drive trucks are actually able to operate them remotely from their living room or wherever else they are that that may be a bit on the edge but you see a lot of examples like that in the work that I’ve done in the in
the book that Robin helped me right. Many of these samples that came from him.
One of them was the idea that on an oil rig.
The normal job is to have the repair team on the rig out in the North Sea or wherever, and when something breaks the repair team detects it and they fix it.
Now that means your repair team is limited to one oil rig, and if the best person to repair a certain fault is on one oil rig, and the other oil rig is the one where the fault occurs, then you either have a very expensive proposition to move that person
there or you have to just deal with the team you have, even though it’s not matched to what’s wrong with the rig. Well there’s an organization that basically automated their entire entire oil rig, including sensors that detect faults and robotics they
can fix them. But those things still need human intervention. So all those people on the rig are now in a Air Traffic Control Center, so to speak, or in rig Traffic Control Center. Now the best person to fix the fault is available remotely, and can be
removed immediately. The entire job is changed, and it wouldn’t be, it wouldn’t be possible without automation. That means, frankly, more females can do the job, people who can’t live on an oil rig can do the job.
so diversity open opens up markets, etc. So sometimes automation reinvents so replace augment and reinvent is another framework I suggest leaders use, I’ll be interested in your views on it.
A few examples, just to get you thinking about where automation is going and how it might work with human workers in the future. There’s a lot of talk about what’s human and what’s not.
Some people say well, creativity, will always be a human thing, things like art and dancing, but there’s a picture painted entirely by artificial intelligence that sold for almost a half a million dollars at Christie’s.
So, is artificial intelligence, a better artist than 99.9% of any of you who might be an artist and having sold a picture at Christie’s. Here’s an example that I like that really suggests how artificial intelligence will work with humans to do creative
things, what you’re going to see is a video, and the video depicts how automation can take an ordinary human and make them look like they dance like a ballet dancer.
So you’re going to see the ballet dancer, then you’re going to see the humans awkwardly feeding in their dancing into AI, and then you’ll see the result.
There’s the source, but we’re trying to create the awkward dancing.
So the next time you see someone dancing on video.
Is that a skill that really augments augmentation with artificial intelligence,
people also say well the interactive stuff, social stuff will be saved from automation. Well, we need to think twice about that automation is reaching a point where we might call it a team member, we might call it a collaborator.
Here’s an example that’s been around for quite a while of IBM his efforts to have Watson, their automated AI become a collaborator, to help ontology doctors, figure out cures for cancer, quote unquote, on its own.
Now think about what this means it’s no longer a game man versus machine, it’s man and machine reasoning together. Think about a group of oncologists coming together and creating protocols at Memorial Sloan Kettering Hospital in New York City and having
Watson debate or at the table with all of the known medical information being brought in real time in natural language in dialogue into that debate into that argument into that.
So the idea here is that you’ve got a group of doctors, they’re discussing and studying the literature about cures and and and scientific riddles regarding oncology, they can turn to a speaker on the desk and say Watson has anyone ever studied this question.
In an eye blink Watson reviews thousands of studies and comes back not with a screen full of data, but in natural language says, Here are the three major findings of the studies that have been done.
Here are the five major questions the studies that said are still open for investigation.
Now, if you’re that again we’re deconstructing the job of an oncology researcher.
If you are good at the part of oncology researcher that involves looking up stuff, then yes, you’ve got something to think about because that part of the job is going to be replaced.
But in fact, once you augment the oncology researchers, by augmenting that part of their job. The other parts of their job, figuring out what the implications are of the research, etc.
They become far better at that. So what we’ve done is, every oncology researcher in the world is now at the top 1%, in terms of looking stuff up in terms of understanding literature, and that that allows them to be better at the rest of what they do.
Here’s probably my best example of thinking about automation as a team member or a collaborator, we may think songwriting must be safe from automation.
But in fact, Karen Southern is a very famous songwriter and famous not in small part because of how well she works with AI. And here’s an interview about how she does it and what she thinks about it.
music making AI software has come a long way in the past few years, to the point where it can co produced an album like Terrence as a musician and producer, the idea of AI being able to do what I do is freaky.
I met up with Karen to find out about the process of collaborating with software, maybe it’s not as crazy as it sounds, DVUAI when you’re working with these platforms as a tool or a collaborator.
I’ve been using the word tool a lot just in talking with you but I do view it more as a collaborator, in that it is giving me source inspiration material.
So a piano doesn’t just give me its notes. Right. And I would think more of a piano is a tool.
Yeah, tool is something we can wield and a collaborator is something you work with something we work with so yes I would say I feel much more like a collaborator collaborator and a tool, because I can also still tell it what to do, right.
You have power over it. Yeah, for now.
I find that the most fascinating parts of these videos is the very last part you heard the nervous laughter, as they talked about whether you actually still have control over it.
But what happens and you can find lots of videos of parents Southern out there that are longer and show her process. Is she starts a melody and AI says, other people who started a melody like this have often gun here.
Ai says this is the chord progression, or this is the drumbeat that many people have used when they started a song like this. She said a piano doesn’t give her notes just to walk over to it.
AI is actually giving her material that helps you think better. So if you think about this in terms of teamwork, in terms of learning. I think will reach a point where when we think about teams, we’re going to need to think about not just the humans,
but also whatever is the, the automation AI, etc. that that is augmenting that teamwork. I think this has a great deal to say about how learning happens, perhaps happening with a collaborative AI, that is nudging or creating new habits or offering source
material that helps a person learn what they need to know to adapt etc. And again, I’ll be quite fascinated with your own work and your own views about that as we get pretty close to questions.
So I’m going to I’m going to remind you, I hope some of you are typing in your questions in the chat.
Tiffany and Jimmy are both monitoring that and when Jim and I turned to a discussion in just a couple of minutes, I’m hoping we’ll have some questions from you to work with.
So thank you for that and now let me move on and move to our conclusion here a couple more points.
So, if you want to work. If you want to understand how automation is going to reinvent work Robin my colleague and I suggested in the book that first you need to deconstruct the job that means let it melt, that means see the task within it, because it’s
at the task level that automation happens.
You need to understand return on improved performance those graphs that I showed you earlier about Siemens and Disney because automation is very different.
If you’re on the left side of the graph and you’re trying to avoid mistakes, versus when you’re in the middle and trying to augment what people do well, versus on the far right hand side, where you may be exponentially improving performance by reinventing
the work for the Thirdly, we’ve got to think about all the automation options that are available to us. And then finally, let’s realize that you’re going to be perpetually reinventing the work as as different tasks are replaced augmented and transformed.
This is a slide that is very near and dear to my heart I’ve just finished a couple of blogs about this recently, this new world of work where work is boundary less and you can engage humans in lots of different ways where automation is a part of the the
works supply.
We all have seen the headlines about how exploitive it can be shifting all the risk to workers, providing know training because they’re people aren’t employed anymore.
The death of the career because it can’t happen inside a traditional job or organization, some people talk about the commoditization of work, a rush to a lowest cost provider, very often in work environments that are pretty exploitive weather in in domestic
ones or overseas. And at the bottom worker exploitation. But there are also plenty of examples where people work in this new ecosystem, and are greatly empowered.
Their work is transportable across any employer, think about the computer coder that can work on the very best jobs at the highest pay or the patent lawyer who can work just on the part of patent law that they want by being on a platform.
On Demand training is possible here AI driven training that sees what workers can do deconstructs them melts them into their capabilities, and then is able to do matching and gap analysis for them real time bound realest careers that don’t need an organization
to define them much more precise work and worker matching that actually allows workers to use capabilities that might not show up in a job description.
You get the idea. I think there are many factors that are going to determine whether this new ecosystem is more exploitive or empowering. Certainly public policy needs to come in, certainly we need our policymakers and legislators to quit thinking about
work as just embedded in a job and the only kind of good work is work that is a good job and think more creatively about good work that might exist on platforms or in conjunction with automation, but also I think the learning ecosystem has a lot to do
with with determining whether the new this new work arrangement this new system of work. This kind of melted perpetually reinvented work is actually empowering.
And for me, this is a slide I show every organization group that I work with, and say, corporations, organizations, etc. Also will have a big factor in which side of this we end up on.
So again, my conclusion here, leaders have choices work is being reinvented it’s going to be perpetually upgraded whether you’re involved or not, and whether you do it systematically or not.
The way to not be confronted by that iPhone without a headphone jack is to have values principles frameworks and decision rules that are guiding leaders to navigate through this new work ecosystem.
And for you, I would say, what’s going to be the role of, and I love jamais term, the shift that has already happened. What’s the role of shifted learning.
And with that I will conclude, there’s a slide here, that gives you my contact information. And there’s also a PDF of the slides that I presented so you’ll find my contact information there as well.
Good. I hope we’ve got some questions in the chat, and I will turn to Tiffany and Jemaine to help with that in just a moment. So, Tiffany I’m going to do my best here to try there maybe you can share me.
That’s good. Thanks, we do have questions, thank you so. One of them is one of our hub later to talk to Angela DAX and Dr Boudreau in a new world of work that requires Hong Kong learning who’s responsible for providing training.
Employers governments, individuals, and how do we ensure that the people have the most barriers are not left behind, which you and I talked about yesterday.
Yes indeed, well yeah well I, I certainly wouldn’t presume to offer to think I can offer a complete answer to a group like this but I love the question, I think, training is one of those threads and I would say learning maybe even capability is one of
those threads that you can pull to bring you deep into this new work ecosystem in this, and these issues.
So I’ll offer just a couple of impressions about that.
I do think that the work that this group is doing about bringing bringing overlooked groups, I might say, traditionally overlooked groups to the attention of organizations that need to know about them is a big part of how this ecosystem needs to develop.
It’s a massive part of remedying, the, the, the equity differences and the access differences in populations. So I think the working ecosystem that I described has a great deal of potential for that one can imagine that there would be one or a number
of platforms and of course Jimmy has been deeply involved in some of the tech on this platforms that are using artificial intelligence to watch this ecosystem, or market for work.
I like to think about it and I tell my colleagues at Google and Amazon and and LinkedIn and other places like IBM that somebody really ought to be working on call it the Amazon or the Netflix or the Google of work.
The idea being that anybody from any group can walk up to this engine in the same way that we can all shop on Amazon.
And after a while the engine is going to learn about them learn their preferences in this case learn the capabilities and it’s going to have access to a whole ecosystem of learning opportunities community colleges online learning etc.
And it’s going to be able to show the worker comes up and says, Here I am, and it says looking at you. This is what you’re 100% qualified for within driving distance of where you are.
This is what you’re 80% qualified for within driving distance of where you are and here’s how to get that additional 20%, so I envision a future in which the matching process is seamless in the same way that we don’t think that much when we’re shopping
about the algorithms, and about the feature lists and all that stuff. Now we’re early days on that, but I’m hoping that’s the kind of ecosystem where folks like you will fit in.
11:35:57 I’d like to think that that ecosystem will create more equity more transparency and that it will allow us to value work that is everybody agrees is unbelievably invisible and undervalued like homecare where, where the capabilities of home care could actually
11:36:12 find a market.
11:36:14 Thanks john so we have quite a few questions.
11:36:17 So I’m going to take my last one because I think this is good money hands separate but do you know big example support companies have really nailed internal talent marketplaces.
11:36:39 You know, I there are there are lots of really good examples of organizations that are doing innovative things, you know nailing it is something that is always a moving target so I don’t know that I necessarily want to get into evaluation, but but there
are certainly traditional talent models that are becoming more open, allowing careers to move across organizations, a lot of consulting firms have moved to that idea that it doesn’t all have to be an upper out kind of thing.
A lot of a lot of progress and although the economic numbers suggests not enough in giving caregivers and others, an opportunity to step off a path and then come back, but one that I really find innovative.
Remember I talked about those freelance platforms for coders and web developers and others. There’s a real movement these days to to creating those platforms inside the organization, as well as what they call internal talent marketplaces, or inside gigs,
where they were someone with a job to do, posts it as a series of tasks on a platform.
And people all over the organization can volunteer. My favorite example is Disney, where Disney had a task which was voicing over trailers for some of their advertisements for movies, etc.
Anybody could apply, and they turned out one of their accountants went on the platform, had a great voice. And now that person has a regular job as an accountant that Disney, but a gig, as a voiceover at Disney.
And, you know, I’m gonna hijack this but I want to just say that you and I talked about, okay, the disease and the at amp t switch to at amp t it’s a sponsor I love them.
They’ve now, released to at&t learns which is an open source from the at&t Academy, I think they’re the first company that is taking the internal Academy and made it available to everybody.
Yes, but what we’re going to have to tackle as part of the closed community is 80% of all companies are small businesses and they do not have that. So how to community colleges workforce boards really at and I think Lambert will speak to that.
Another good comment question. I’m going to take up more is Kevin drop, who is from the early part of the country john Sunni Britain in the orc, ya know the area well.
The Christie sale was likely due to a first purchase, as much as art itself, wouldn’t we expect to AI art to be just one more good artist, or maybe even more AI artists, but not supplanting the artists.
I absolutely agree and I know you want to be careful of time here so I probably can’t get that question it’s full merit, but let me just say I absolutely agree with you.
We’re not moving to a world in which all art is AI produced by any means I know I’ve over characterizing what you’ve said, I think the interesting thing from it for me was just to understand how far AI has come, and that there’s some novelty, today I
absolutely agree with you. I think that half a million dollar sale was to be the first one to buy the AI produced, art, basically, and lots of art today I can’t tackle when you dig into it you realize there’s a certain kind of art that can be taught to
- So you’re absolutely right. I don’t think we’re looking at a world where we don’t have human artists. I do think that we’re going to see the artistic endeavor.
Increasingly augmented by AI in the same way that the music writing was and I think there’s an interesting place to say, what is it to know artists needs to be in the future, maybe an artist needs to be someone who is good at working with AI, and the
best artist in the future will be the ones who create that balance beautifully and know when to let the I do it at a I do it and when they need to do it.
Well just so sideline it for party closer, we’re going to have the National Dance Institute of New Mexico dancing. When one day, you know, on in our meeting and I hope that you can put me at doing that but I don’t know the software is out there.
That was really good. Last question maybe two more dr Quebec.
John’s argument makes a lot of sense. Of course, how do you get institutions locked into the 20th century management paradigms, especially schools.
Dr cubic There tends to work with K 12 to let their jobs melt into new sets of talent.
Well, it’s a great question and I’m no expert on schools actually I’d probably have to refer to my daughter who does a great deal of consulting with New York and Vermont school just to give her a little bit of a plug.
And so I think there’s, I think the answer, probably, let’s see, in general, you’re right. I find that almost all the institutions in the world. And this is not just me observing this are locked into a system that was designed, at best for the early 20th
century probably even before that, a system that assumes that jobs or jobs or the way you hold work that employment is the way that people achieve good work, and it particularly in the US, that the safety net is attached to an employment contract.
I think everyone, every workshop I’m on from NSF to, you know, to every university that everyone is saying that system is going to need to change. So, in institutions that I work with what I say to them is do a heat map, because there’s going to be a
lot of your work that is still accessible and and where you want to deal with it as a job.
It’s at the edges, and you’ll find it. Where are the skills changing too fast for jobs to keep up. Where are your job descriptions becoming obsolete and everybody knows they are and rewriting them just doesn’t seem to be the right way, where are their
tasks that ought to be floating on their own, rather than being embedded within a job where is automation chipping away. Those are the signals. And what I find is that the leaders of the work in those areas the managers, supervisors, etc.
are very open to new solutions, because they can’t solve the problem with their jobs. So rather than pushing a string up hill, and trying to do this everywhere.
I think the key is to find where there’s already pull for that string, because the problems are already pretty apparent. And I think that transfers over to learning institutions as well.
Not only should they target the edges. For example, the, the instinct that STEM skills or something they ought to work on. That’s an edge that’s a good instinct because that edge has all the characteristics I described, but there might be others.
The other piece of it and I think Cobra is really accelerating This is the institution’s themselves into do the same thing. We see deconstruction of qualifications to create stackable credentials, we see now, in particular, complete rethinking of the
educational paradigm, because everyone is remote, and the idea of a person standing in a classroom talking to people in person. That is not obsolete, but it’s getting rethought as to when it’s appropriate, so thank you so much for the question.
I’m sure that I didn’t do justice to your own thinking of your own sophistication, but what a great way to open up and maybe model the discussion that I hope the incubation teams will have yeah and I want to do one more question we have two minutes but
this is Annalise Coker at the Brookings Institute. I like the idea of shifting from only focusing pulse hand Good job to good work. But in thinking about what that means in practice.
It seems that requires a framework for rethinking safety nets and benefits,
just lost. Yes. Before I finish reading it. But, anyway, thoughts, yeah i i personal Well, yes, I think I’m safe to say that’s that you’re absolutely right that there is eventually an unavoidable need to attend I just wrote the my wording in my latest
blog was putting fluid work on a more solid platform.
The idea being that these platforms, often embody both what’s great and what’s not so great about such work and I think you’re right, and the World Economic Forum and lots of others they were some citations in that blog that you can find have have actually
developed frameworks and recommendations about what good platform work is so so portable benefits, portable pensions, some sort of collective voice that doesn’t necessarily depend on employment, excuse me, Jimmy.
Yes, so what she asked at one time Pam the question again is who paid in a good.
Yep. And you shared shared responsibility. Yeah, I think that’s exactly right there. Currently we attach it to employment, particularly in the US. But that’s not the only way to create these things, and many countries have found a way to fund them with
a balance of public and private funding and with a balance of public and private advantages flowing to them. Now I get it, that’s not a I’m not proposing to offer a solution, but I would say that your question is absolutely spot on.
And in the same way that we need to get leaders thinking about work being reinvented so that they don’t get caught, when the headphone jack goes away.
I think we need policymakers. Every time I hear a very thoughtful policymaker talk about good jobs. I wins.
Because as soon as they say jobs, they have limited, so many of the different alternatives that we need to think about. And so that’s why I’m kind of on a crusade to change that to good work, and then ask ourselves, What’s all the kinds of work that are
being done all the kinds of work arrangements, and how do we get ready for a society that’s great at perpetually reinventing them and giving those opportunities, wonderful question.
Thank you. That’s a great way to end.
Thank you for your time. Thank thanks to make the participants. And now, I’m going to move right along, and introduce.
Like, See if you aren’t going to see that.
Let me get my screen.
And I’m going Can you see my screen. Tiffany. Yes. Okay, good. So just really quickly, we’re moving into the next hour which is really important because you’re going to learn about the work that’s going to be happening behind the scenes.
The goal of closing distributed, is to distribute our knowledge, none of us are speakers we’re all experts, and this is the distribution of knowledge across the 11 hubs.
And when you register if you happen because everybody here has, but we’re going to push this out to 20,000 people just see what happens. Why not, and push it out on LinkedIn and I’m surely Lampard will share it on LinkedIn and Pearson and others are working
to get as many knowledge leaders as we can into this community over the next seven months.
Well, I’m one to introduce another friend, I guess I have a lot of friends but I respect the heck out of me Lambert, He’s a true leader champs certain Pima Community College.
I asked Paul his director marketing this morning, if he could list the board sleeves on it and there was no way I could get those one slide.
Lee is on tons national boards ACC leap for innovation national association workforce boards and mobile steering committee, and you name it. So, without further ado, I want to thank you Lee for opening up this part of the closet summit.
No. Good morning everybody and thank you, Jimmy for having me and Dr Boudreaux that just hit it out of the park so thank you for your great presentation.
So what I thought I do is really just paint a picture of what what’s happening kind of schema but really connects back to dr Pedro’s presentation and I hope feeds back into the it ideation hubs, as well, so.
So welcome to close it.
And we asked this question at Pima a lot. Where is the puck is going.
And we have a responsibility to go in the direction of that.
So if you all could just close your eyes for a moment, I’m going to share a little story with all of you. So can you imagine from Long Beach, California.
Going through Arizona through New Mexico into Texas across the Gulf Coast states, all the way to Jacksonville, Florida, a virtual railway.
Well guess what, that is not stuff of science fiction. This is actually happening as we speak. In fact Pima Community College is partnered with a startup called to simple, who has built an autonomous vehicle technology that is being deployed on the road
as we speak, from Arizona to Dallas, Texas, and the goal is to move freight from Long Beach, from the Port of Long Beach, all the way through it and that dumps out at Jacksonville, Florida.
So, so they came to us and they asked, well that actually what they said to us. We know our technology, the autonomous connected technology is going to displace the single largest employment opportunity for males in the United States.
and that’s the truck driver, can we build a curriculum together, that, that ensures that they still have a future in logistics and trade.
And so, in less than a year.
We built that curriculum with them. And it layers on top of the CDs and and it is short term.
And it can be done both non credit and credit.
So it’s exciting when you start thinking about where the puck is going and helping to be part of shaping the future and having conversations with these innovative companies that are building off of concepts like autonomy is connected, electrical, and
by the way that’s that comes from McKinsey asis. And what’s what’s what’s driving all of this, Pat Gelsinger wrote a great article about the four superpowers, and he’s not talking about countries, he’s talking about AI mobile technology cloud computing,
and the Internet of Things Are you talking about those things in our are your programs starting to integrate those pieces into the curriculum into what you’re offering folks.
And so, so when we think about this exciting industry 4.0 world where we’re really integrating the physical with the digital in a way that was not possible before.
And so we started thinking about that human plus machine, and I think Dr Boudreaux really did an excellent job of showing the machines aren’t going to replace us.
We’ve got to understand where it all connects up so that we still have a place and that’s the work that’s happening at Pima Community College, and as the World Economic Forum challenged us before co-head that we will need to re skill.
1 billion individuals worldwide by 2030 that’s a third of the global workforce about a third of the global workforce. And so what is that going to require us as higher education leaders to transform what we do to be able to help empower our communities
to go from, I like that phrase, good jobs to Good, good work. And I think some of the, and I go back to the work that McKinsey has done where they’ve said the fastest growing segment of the skills is digital, followed by the social, emotional, and the
higher cognitive and but are we doing enough to integrate all three of those into what we what we do. And so let me give you some examples of beyond the two simple example that I gave that really starts to build off of this so we’ve partnered with caterpillar.
And we built in Applied Technology Academy. And the reason why Caterpillar came to us, is they were concerned that as engineers were coming out of the universities, with great theoretical knowledge and talent, it was costing them a lot of dollars and
rework and loss of time, etc. Because the engineers did not understand that you can design something, but it can’t. It can’t be machine. It can’t be welded, you get the idea.
So we built this academy, to bring the engineers to Pima and expose them to the CNC machine and how that works and how parts are made, etc. and get them connected more to that and get them more connected into the welding process, etc.
And so interesting enough then Raytheon came to Pima said we want in on on that as well, because we we faced similar challenges with our engineers and, and then the University of Arizona came to us and said, we know we have to do better.
Can we partner. And so it started to you as you can see just by opening up and thinking differently, and realizing it’s not about credit versus non credit, it’s about getting the skills that folks need for a lifelong journey.
And so that opened up a wonderful partnership with them. We’ve also say to our small business community, we are thinking of us as your training arm is what many of our small, medium enterprises in our community, do not have the ability to stand up a sophisticated
professional development regiment. So we built partnering with one of our local SMEs, a model around how to leverage the educational benefits, that, that, that business can offer their employees and offer, you know, and then they can take the tax write
off for that, but also provide opportunities, so we figured out a way to build a model together. And now we’re taking that to all the other small, Medium Enterprises.
The other thing that we’ve done with our small businesses. We realize we’re in a, we’re a platform.
So we can bring in some of the best work across the country. And for example, robotics, so we brought in a whole presentation around robotics, so that we can expose Small, Medium Enterprises how to, how to integrate robotics into what you’re doing, because,
as these as the OEM become more sophisticated and need more sophisticated parts, etc. Well these small mediums who are suppliers to them, they have to keep up.
And they have to produce at a level of precision. That is very hard to do just from the human side of things. So, robotics, was something that we expose them to and brought those best practices and experts to help work with them.
Also, we partnered with tech data.
And to set up the first ever live fire cyber warfare range in the state of Arizona on a community college campus.
And we’re the only public institution that has a cyber warfare range and I and I think it goes back to what Dr. Dre was talking about where you have a freelance platform because that’s what what it really is.
And so professionals from the cyber world come to to our cyber warfare range to go into the dark net and do things they couldn’t do in their companies.
And then our students get to work with them to learn from these professionals. And so what’s happening is, companies are coming to the cyber warfare a range and say, Can you help us so we can find our vulnerabilities.
And so we can build better systems to fight back. So some really exciting things are happening.
When you start to think about where that puck is going and being open to new ways, and not being afraid to take risks. Believe me when I introduced this idea to my board, they first were very concerned that Pima would be a target for hackers and and and
that and that we’re putting, and we’ve worked through all of that and now we’re doing this very innovative thing. We’re also working with a model to build the very first job or course the job marketplace exclusively for community colleges, universities
have their version.
x Udacity you get the idea. But do we have our own version of that and the answer is no, but we’re we’ve created that version through a model, and we’re excited about launching this next month and there’s a few, few community colleges that are part of
this now, it’s focused on non credit.
I’m sorry, we have to move on but it’s perfect to add two things. One is one is you are going to be a keynote, I think it’s in December, right, to really, you know, go a lot deeper, deeper yes into the data into that and metal on November 19 is actually
doing a two hour session which is I’m super excited about that because we have, how many, how many coaches you have that will be joining seven so seven seven at this point, I was just wrapping up here, that was my last point, by the way.
And I just want to just say, you know, to all the folks out there. I really highly encourage you to join the closed community it’s an amazing place where we focus on shifts that are happening, and the future and these 11 ideation hubs.
I encourage everyone to participate. Thank you very much for being here today. Thank you so much. I’m super excited
to have as many community colleges as possible, and you know I’m going to work on the average but then metal in other words on that, obviously Pearson, because to me.
I think one thing you and I talked about this recently is community colleges are at the heart of workforce in every city.
And, you know, that leadership is critical. So, I’m going to say thank you ladies so much. We’re going to move to Jenn Morgan who is leading hub number one.
I wanted to just personally think Pearson they were the first sponsor to step up to sponsor quotes and distributed in an insane time, think it was around March, and Caroline Larry’s typically said we love the idea of this model, we want to participate,
so welcome Joe to
the, the hub.
Tiffany, can we, if I do my screen. Can people still see Joe.
Awesome.
Perfect. Okay, so, Joe, introduce yourself. Well thank you, I hope you can hear okay.
Yes.
Initially, let me think the closed at summit for allowing us to to be a sponsor and to really kick off this first ideation hub, and then of course, we thank the audience for taking the time to listen to these remarks.
When we think about the title of this ideation hub, which is the global future of education and learning pre coven.
Many of us concluded that there was this massive transformation in education on the way that the future of learning was digital and the consensus timing for this transformation was a steady march of five maybe seven years.
In hindsight, that thesis was perhaps flood into Well, maybe in many ways but but certainly in two ways.
First, it suggests that there was a distinct finish line to be achieved, or to be crossed, it will be five years or even worse, it will be completed in five years.
The second is this notion of a steady march towards the future is suggesting that there was no room for massive disruption. During this massive transformation.
What the last eight plus months have taught us as Kevin Clark would say the future showed up really early. And it was very disruptive. In the midst of this extraordinary human tragedy institutions businesses educators, parents and students were abruptly
thrust into this into the future of learning and remote work without warning, or preparation.
12:01:58 And for us what has emerged for education and learning cope in 19 was the great accelerant towards the global future.
12:02:08 And there is no returning to pre coveted education as.
12:02:14 And this is the world’s learning company but we have. We’ve had a special responsibility to listen and to address issues for our learners globally we have, we’ve developed an intimate understanding of learners by virtue of serving millions, and through
12:02:30 our global learner surveys against that backdrop, allow me to speak to just a few themes emerging from the voice of the adult learner seen one, a do it yourself mindset is reshaping education with ready access to technology and changing global economies,
12:02:51 people are taking matters into their own hands, they are patching together their education from a menu of options.
12:02:59 Think to the pressure is on to build skills that will sustain people through the pandemic. And beyond learners, and certainly beyond just the pandemic learners need education because their job status has changed.
12:03:15 There is this palpable urgency to build skills for employment.
12:03:20 We know that universities have more opportunity than ever to drive economic recovery learners are clamoring for universities and colleges to provide adult learning shorter courses soft skills and work portable options.
12:03:38 This learner archetype this adult learner they are committed resilient self propelled and yet they are overwhelmed by choice and underwhelmed by education sure search and discovery tools and the lack of transparency around that.
12:03:54 Look, making the best choice in education is a high stakes decision, and is nearly impossible to do effectively.
12:04:03 That hardship is borne by three critical stakeholders in the education ecosystem the learner. The university and the employer, what we know from this research, a learner who is faced with information overload and information processing abilities that
12:04:21 are narrowed.
12:04:22 They then narrow their attention and evaluation to a subset of institutions, regardless of whether that institution is the best fit. And so what we was talking about his institution has wonderful wonderful opportunities.
12:04:36 It is a best fit for certain opportunities.
12:04:39 These students are so frustrated that 27% of them almost 30% abandon the process of search before deciding to enroll, they do not enroll.
12:04:53 That’s bad for students, that’s bad for institutions and that’s bad for years.
12:04:59 We needed to respond and in Pearson’s response has been Pearson pathways. And Dr Boudreau.
12:05:11 He foreshadowed some of the things that that pathways represents. It is a strategy based on the traditions of a curated digital marketplace pathways, what, what we believe it represents is the first learner centric personalized search comparison and recommendation
12:05:25 engine for online education.
12:05:31 We intend to radically simplify the education decision making process. And by providing access and transparency to education, non degree to full degree single course to PhD.
12:05:42 We remove boundaries, learning, and allow that learner to make an informed choice.
12:05:48 And they, they own their education they own their outcomes.
12:05:54 Really good for the student for the Academy, and for the employer.
So, I’ll leave with this remark and that is in this time of uncertainty, we are certain about one thing at Pearson Education has a potential to improve lives and enable economic mobility.
It is the single biggest force for change in our world.
We inch, we must ensure that education can continue to deliver hope and opportunity through access through quality transparency.
And with that, I turned it back to you. Did you make an introduction since the first time.
Thank you so much.
I got that, you know.
Pearson, I you all will have a keynote in January, I believe. I’m not sure exactly if it’s you or who Joe but Harrison is helping oversee a big umbrella of the future of global education which will include work happening globally.
And as we find different speakers in the hub works.
You will see a lot more they impact is to really put learners at the center that they will benefit. And then we can really uncover through those hub ways and unlock the talent and opportunities around work, not a job.
12:07:27 Right. Same thing we’ve been talking about so thank you for that. I’m going to turn it now, to have number two, being led by Luther Jackson and Phil Jordan so not sure which one of you wants to take it first.
12:07:40 Thank you guys. Go ahead, thanks to me it’s great to be here and great to be with everyone so my name is Luther Jackson I worked at NOVA works which is a workforce development organization Silicon Valley, and I’m joined today by my co host partner, Phil
12:07:54 Jordan who is a vice president pw research which has offices in Massachusetts and in California.
12:08:01 So Phil and I had spent some considerable time working regionally and nationally looking at approaches to identify and nurture diverse talent and to get that talent on the field.
12:08:14 And our goal with this close that project is to convene some great thinkers and doers, to develop and test Career Mobility success formulas. And by the way, Phil and I had the pleasure to lead a workshop on this topic at last year’s close at conference
12:08:31 so we’re excited to be back in the game. Next slide please.
12:08:37 Thank you.
12:08:38 So I think Mitch cape or from the cape or center in Oakland does a nice job of really capturing our problem but to delve deeper I’d like to introduce you to our friend Ebell Regalado who’s pictured here.
12:08:53 So a bell is an Oakland California resident, and when he was about 15 years old in high school, he decided he wanted a career in tech, and he said well okay if you want to go get into tech, you go to Cal Berkeley that’s just the thing you do, but the
12:09:08 problem was that a balance from a low income household and didn’t have a clear defined pathway to Berkeley. So he went on an arduous self directed journey, which took him from Cabo tech training programs to community colleges to coding boot camps and
12:09:28 to an apprenticeship.
12:09:29 And now at age 20. He has a Silicon Valley software engineer.
12:09:35 He’s got no degree and no college debt. There’s two ways of looking at a bell story. One is you can view this is a modern Horatio Alger story where hard work and perseverance and talk, you can get ahead and make it in this world.
12:09:53 But Phil and I really ask a question. Why does the young man with a Bell’s talent, have to travel through such an obstacle course in order to make his contribution to the regional economy.
12:10:08 Why is this so difficult.
12:10:10 You know, if a bell were a basketball star in Oakland California college coaches from around the country would find him, there are systems in place throughout the country to find athletic talent regardless of your background.
12:10:26 So close it we will focus on topics of Career Mobility career awareness mobility knowledge which is contributed by our friend, Jasmine hill at Stanford which is this discerning what’s the best career for me.
12:10:43 And how do I get there, and also of course addressing some of the severe structural barriers in our society, and we will pilot solutions to help get talent like a bell on the field, it to build communities and boost regional economies.
12:11:00 Thank you.
12:11:04 Thank you. That’s awesome. Okay. Have number three Esteban. Hey. Hello, good morning.
12:11:14 Greetings from Northeastern Mexico. Thank you very much for inviting me to this really really interesting distributed idea.
12:11:24 Well, I’m in charge of hub number three. Our main idea is to actually connect you and to collaborate with the rest of the continent.
12:11:34 My name is Devon managers I’m in charge of the observatory of educational innovation, where
12:11:41 we tried to analyze and disseminate the, the latest or more important trends on educational innovation, or the intersection of technology, innovation, and education, and we do it by producing open educational resources from webinars, white papers to podcast
12:12:01 to whatnot. We have a very strong presence in Latin America, and we also actually we’re one of the few units in my university which I will talk in a little bit later to produce content in English so the idea is that all this content, all this connections
12:12:16 we’ve made will be helpful to all the people that attended close it a little bit about my university of technology called the Monterey sub private for profit University in Monterrey, Mexico, that’s on the Northeast.
12:12:29 We’re probably the only national university in Mexico we have campuses and with 26 campuses in almost all the States and Mexico to 31 states. And we really committed to educational innovation we were the first university in Latin America to be connected
12:12:57 to the internet so for almost 30 years we’ve been innovating and we have a lot of experience with that. I was hearing the comments by by Joseph i’m dr Boudreaux regarding all that and we’re seeing that here in Mexico as well, particularly the acceleration
12:13:02 of digitalization and higher education with the commit, and then we are going to be telling you stories, we’re going to be letting you know experiences, regarding our implementation of technology, for example in Latin America, we just did a survey with
12:13:20 with inter American development mark and 30% of teachers say that they don’t have the enough skills to deal with the new technology put forward by this cold that endemic.
12:13:33 So for example, we’re doing some very important work with universities in Peru, where we, as technological MRI and other solutions are serving us. So, trainers on basic educational technology they use of zoom they use of blogs whatnot because unfortunately
12:13:53 include distance education was seeing a sub very very cheap alternative and for many years where at least a decade.
12:14:01 They didn’t they didn’t pay attention to that. So covet comes and now they have to scramble to to train teachers to everything and it’s been a very very interesting program were expecting to share those results with you.
12:14:17 And to give you an idea of what’s happening in Latin America with the purpose of connecting of finding, maybe a solution for problems that you have in the US or Canada or wherever you are, and also the idea that would be a common thread we have developed
12:14:36 educational innovation ecosystem which we can connect you with, and that ecosystem is connected to other ecosystems in Peru, Colombia, Chile, that I think you will find very, very interesting.
12:14:49 So, in this half we will be presenting you those cases we are really hoping to hear your ideas, suggestions on what not, we’re going to have some important panelists or speakers, and we also open to all sorts of of ideas and collaboration, and last of
12:15:07 it. I’m really interested in meeting all of you and hearing your, your thoughts, ideas and suggestions as well and hopefully find what we’re doing in Latin America, relevant to us to bone.
12:15:26 We’re so excited to have you and I think they International Development Bank is also going to be working with.
12:15:32 So, we’ll keep you posted. thank you very much for inviting.
12:15:57 Have number four I’m so excited about the model at the internship and making that a key part of closing this year so Carrie Hi. Hello, close it 2020 today and Kevin. Thanks so much for, for having us.
12:16:02 We are delighted to be part of the hub showcase.
12:16:17 We are also delighted you know as friends and fans of close it for a long time so very excited to be here and part of the launch today. And my organization that Casey Social Innovation Center is a nonprofit impact agency in Kansas City, Missouri.
12:16:26 And we believe that young people are the social innovators of our time. And we believe that real world experiences are the means to which they can create through their voice and leadership, the types of social change and impact that can transform their
12:16:42 communities their cities and their neighborhoods.
12:16:45 We have been working in the internship space for the last half decade we manage the mayor’s so summer youth employment program higher Casey.
12:16:56 And we have really been innovating around this concept both culturally, but also really unpacking the bits and apparatus of internships when it comes to both employers and and young people in our school systems.
12:17:13 So this hub is going to take a deep dive into exploring the progressive trends of opportunity models, both from a user standpoint and young adult models.
12:17:23 We’re trying to create a success casting system for our cities and our neighborhoods. And we think that the future of the school to work transition can be aligned to four key pillars.
12:17:36 We think these are leading indicators for the opportunity models that are out there, not only in Kansas City but across the globe, where we’re really trying to identify and unpack engagement sustainability usability and accountability as the core functions
12:17:54 that really give us the most manpower and the most opportunity to grow and spread and scale or initiatives. We have been brokering and curating a system of real world experiences, both in the private sector, the public sector and the nonprofit sector.
12:18:10 And furthermore we have introduced in this year, largely due to the, to the pandemic we have accelerated a fourth sector, which we’re calling community based initiatives.
12:18:22 These are everything from economic development, private public partnerships philanthropic initiatives that take place in communities where we can match native residents to those very specific projects and really create a whole new inventory of engagement
12:18:40 and experiences.
12:18:42 Next slide.
12:18:45 So, ultimately that we want to, to form this hub and these conversations around the benefactors which is really the opportunity ecosystem at large, young adults are the the end user certainly, But our employers are high schools or community colleges higher
12:19:02 education institutions and workforce systems are all part of the stack of, who really is impacted by our ability to adopt sustainable models in the opportunity space, we have, we have sort of charted ourselves on a path with a theory around unlocking
12:19:21 human potential, and we’ve created impact zones to really think about how would we organize these conversations and how would we organize the work over the next several months, and looking at what we consider the impact zones.
12:19:36 Work Readiness regional talent development growth in both real world learning but also business, to education initiatives, and those three systems are really employer driven assets that will, and often drive.
12:19:49 Opportunity networks and the experiential internships apprenticeships and really the workforce of the future.
12:19:58 And ultimately, our design is is you know looking to have an dose of spread, which is the healthy side of scale, but we want to systematized this in a meaningful way where we can introduce these concepts and need smiles into neighborhoods communities
12:20:14 and spread them into cities and hopefully scale them beyond those communities, but that’s what we we plan to do over the next several months is really explore these progressive models and get that input from from folks like you guys across the nation
12:20:29 and help us contribute to unlocking human potential through young adult models so we’re looking forward to the next several months. Thank you. Thanks Carrie and also you’ll be hearing from Ryan in a minute about the learner hub in Kansas City social innovation
12:20:46 is also going to bring learners, so we’re excited about that young adults.
12:20:52 Number five. Hi Karen and Cindy and Mike and Patricia, and.
12:20:58 Hey,
12:21:05 Cindy. So, okay I thought it was going to be.
12:21:08 I don’t see me but that’s okay um Hi everyone. I’m Cindy Murphy and I’m a principal and consultant with stone associates HR in Richmond, Virginia. I also serve on the New Mexico State Council, and I’m one of the creators of the shift towards.
12:21:25 I want to recognize the other leaders of this hub Mike Dillard founder and CEO of executive networks, Patricia Franklin the network director of executive networks and chief learning and Content Officer for flourish and Karen, cool, also a principal and
12:21:40 consultant with stone associates HR, and also one of the creators of the shift towards close it has given us the opportunity to create a space for HR talent and other business professionals to share ideas regarding hiring and workforce development initiatives
12:21:57 that create new pathways to economic employment, especially for disadvantaged and marginalized populations. We’re really looking forward to hearing your ideas.
12:22:07 We want to mention the shift awards, which were developed through a partnership between innovate educate and sharm New Mexico to recognize employers that are already implementing hiring and training initiatives that focus on skills and training, rather
12:22:21 than on college degrees, especially those focusing on often overlooked populations such as minorities persons with disabilities, veterans and military spouses and the formerly incarcerated, you’ll find more on the awards and how you can apply or nominate
12:22:38 another organization on the close it.org website, and you can also take a look at the initiatives of the organization’s honored last year from that website or here and have five.
12:22:52 Move on.
12:22:54 There we go, and talking about the shift awards naturally leads us to Sherm the Society of Human Resource Management Sherman’s four initiatives that we really, that will really connect with what we’re doing here in this hub and at least part of what we
12:23:08 want to explore the getting talent back to work, initiative which highlights efforts geared to second chances for the formerly incarcerated veterans at work with its focus on attracting hiring and retaining members of the military community and relates
12:23:23 to programs focused on hiring military spouses, employing abilities at work, the initiative to strengthen the skills and abilities of business professionals to hire develop and retain individuals with disabilities, and finally the newest initiative together
12:23:39 forward at work, which is a call to action to bring racial equity to the workplace.
12:23:45 Executive networks will be offering insight to the hub in a variety of ways, including by drawing relevant information from their back to better webinars, which is a collection of resources, developed for senior executives for navigating the future of
12:24:00 work post coded 19, and that series draws on the experience of business academic and thought leaders. Again, we welcome you, and we’re looking forward to developing ideas to share with everyone involved with close it and the distributed event that we
12:24:16 can bring back to our own workplaces and to our communities. We hope you’ll encourage others to join us here over the next six months and also hopefully live in May and beautiful Santa Fe, New Mexico, And we thank you for being here.
12:24:33 Thank you to the and your whole team of folks, and I’m excited about engagement sure in the next couple engagement and all the HR leaders that are so critical to this conversation.
12:24:46 Okay, my friends at any wpm road trip I think Tim are you speaking from road trip in the in the web. Yeah, you’re, you’re stuck with me for a few minutes so you made us all together and good morning or afternoon depending on where you are in the world
12:25:01 at the moment so we’re partnering with any web on this on this hub, want to acknowledge Lindsay AMEC from our team who’s doing a lot of the heavy lifting on the, on the in the background and Ron painter and Mel Anderson who are helping us craft what this
12:25:15 what this can and should be obviously the future of work is, you know, what we’re all touching on here I do put it really nicely at the start of this conversation the future future future showed up really early right everything we knew would be happening
12:25:27 The future showed up really early right everything we knew would be happening over the course of the next several years and decades is suddenly upon us.
12:25:38 But regardless of whether coated landed on us this year or not there’s a piece of the future work discussion that we find is often missing, that’s really how all of that, that changing landscape affects the individual right the person actually going through
12:25:46 it, which translates to the folks who will be going through it.
12:25:50 And what I mean by that is, is, you know, thinking about the conversation that us, you know so called experts as you make calls us have about the future of work there’s an element of excitement for us I think about figuring out what’s going to be happening
12:26:03 years or 10 years or 20 years or how industries will be affected by automation or just things that we don’t see coming for example right that are going to change the timelines.
12:26:13 But that’s a very scary and frightening thing for somebody who’s either at the very beginning of their journey or does not have any sort of career momentum in figuring out what their next steps are going to be, but when you start to break down the stories
12:26:24 of the individuals who have gone through these changing landscapes and see the changing landscape is an opportunity to do things differently to to define new spaces that to have an impact, especially those who are from backgrounds who are not always supported
12:26:39 by the system as it currently stands, suddenly the, the uncertainty about the future of work can become a bit more of an opportunity than a frightening story that’s not even worth, you know, trying to put your energy behind so by taking content from previous
12:26:53 projects we’ve done your resignation and projects that any wb has done over the course of the last couple of years. We’ll do our best to personalize the future of work, conversation in a way that makes things a little bit more personal, right, but also
12:27:06 a little bit more hopeful as we as we all try to solve this, this massive problem that this this incredible group of folks are trying to address together, or eight.
12:27:17 Great. Let me give a couple of minutes for people to keep the fight, I didn’t catch up again. I’m super excited about the you to joining forces and can’t wait to push out some of the road trips, and I’ll be working with latency on getting those out to
12:27:33 the community. You know sooner than later, and appreciate both of your presentations so much, thank.
12:27:45 Number seven, Angela and Verryn with new prophet.
12:27:50 Hopefully, a lot of people know what you’re up to but the X Prize and MIT solve and you’ve been a great partner of close up for several years so thank you for being with us.
12:28:00 and thank you to Jemaine you’ve just been an amazing thought partner to me.
12:28:04 To those of you who haven’t met I’m Dr. Angela Jackson, I’m a partner at the Boston based venture philanthropy firm, new profit where I lead a $15 million future of work investment fund.
12:28:15 As many of you all know that we are facing that future of work that has become the president of work and we’re facing this double pandemic of racism and covert 19 and new profit we are obsessive really focused on how we create a future of work that works
12:28:31 for everyone. And we’re doing this through our partnerships and through our investments.
12:28:37 We like so many of you all. We want to get back to a normal but a normal that actually works for more people. So when we think about our hub. We’re going to take you on a journey and show you the behind the scenes design thinking that we use to launch
12:28:51 the future of work grand challenge with X Prize and Jobs for the Future, and MIT solves will also show you how we are developing innovative solutions by partnering with proximate entrepreneurs and centering user voice.
12:29:07 Next slide. So when we think about who benefits from this really we think it’s learners it’s innovators, it’s entrepreneurs, it’s anyone who hears about an equitable future work, we are working with some of the leading minds, like I mentioned X PRIZE
12:29:23 MIT solve and problem solvers, and thinking about how we center workers how we centered learners to create solutions that are more effective and do to create solutions that work specifically in this moment, There were the inclusive Impact Hub.
12:29:38 You’ll also be exposed to practices, and we tell our fellow travelers on this journey, who understands that it will take a village and radical collaboration to create a future of work that works for everyone.
12:29:51 So I want to thank you for this opportunity and look forward to traveling with you over the next month, the few months that is great. Thank you and things grew for your work and helping with this hub.
12:30:04 Number eight. number eight I see the, you know, really critical hub because it’s really looking at the entire k 12, to work, it kind of work to learn, learn to work, and we’ve got awesome experts project arc.
12:30:22 Epic Games and come to that have joined to really make this a meaningful hub so I’m not sure Tim I think you might be speaking on behalf of the hub, or all.
12:30:35 I’m going to get kicked off and I think we’re going to hear from everybody, Jimmy so first off the opportunity to be here.
12:30:42 We’re really glad after participating close it for a couple of years to be able to host this hub with our sponsors Epic Games and come to our goal is really practical we want to use the participate platform, over the next seven months to build a robust
12:30:58 and online community of practice around triangles, teachers and technical experts and technology platforms, what we call triangulation in the new learning ecosystem that is the work to learn environment, we’re in now.
12:31:12 Part of this with the support of epic will be looking at the way that games and the sort that Dr Bordeaux talked about with the help healthcare example and then also, in a way that allows people to gain certifications from doing this because as we’ve
12:31:25 learned from our participation and closer and our work that project dark is done around the world, and education that just needs to grades and diplomas is really not enough for our learners anymore, and for that matter, not enough for our professional
12:31:37 educators. So we really want to commit to that practical role and our experience so far in the agent coded is that schools will not do this on their own.
12:31:47 Just because they’ve been forced to leave the four walls of their traditional learning ecosystem and go remote. They need to know those networks are in place so they can dive in.
12:31:56 In terms of benefits, and other outcomes I’ll turn it over to my colleague Danilo from project art.
12:32:04 So his project arts core focus has really been in the K to 12 world. Our teachers and more importantly, our learners are the ones who are going to grow as deep thinkers and innovators who see the connection between content and standards, and the real
12:32:20 world beyond the classroom. So we want them to take an attitude that sees value in their education rather than that ultimate question that many students often asked them, they say why do we need to learn this, and more.
12:32:36 So really what we believe is a work to learn ecosystem in which our community partners have that potential to influence workforce development skills, and ultimately as we build are working to learn ecosystem, we have the potential to redefine educational
12:32:53 systems that have been traditionally isolated from their communities, into ones that are collaborative partners.
12:33:03 And I’m not sure who and our hub is beginning next I’ll just say thank you, Dana for that and I’ll turn it over
12:33:14 to sponsors Lisa Tenorio from Epic Games, and then any cartel from come to Lisa take it away.
12:33:20 Thanks Tim Hi everyone, I’m really excited to be part of this hub and to be partnering with Tim and Amy on this.
12:33:28 I think we all know that technology is changing the landscape of jobs at an unprecedented rate, and a great example of that is in our own industry where we’re seeing a shift from 2d content and experiences video static images to a world where 3d interactive
12:33:46 experiences are the norm, and the technology that’s used to create games like fortnight that you might be familiar with is now being used in everything from designing buildings and cars, it’s changing the retail experience, it’s changing how film and
12:34:02 broadcast TV or produced and it’s changing how we learn and train people as well.
12:34:07 And at epic. We believe in the future, everyone will be a creator. And so in this hub. I look forward to talking about how can we work with educators to bring learners along this journey from player to creator and build the skills that are going to be
12:34:23 needed in some of these jobs of the future, which are only starting to emerge now, and really build more awareness of how some of these skills can be translated into new career ideas so look forward to talking about all that in more detail with all of
12:34:38 you.
12:34:40 And I’ll turn it over to Amy.
12:34:42 Thank you. Come to us excited to be involved with, close it after many years of being involved. This a different experience and as we look at our hub on ecosystems come to Israel as a computer Trade, Industry Association is to be the convener within our
12:34:58 industry have the skills that build portable credentials for the global workforce and it, and how that translates to the schools, and to learning, and to the world of work, and how we can really scale those skills that are not just in tech companies that
12:35:14 but are across companies in every zip code in the world that companies that aren’t tech companies that have a piece of tech is really exciting to us and think about how we can work together and use some of the models we’ve proven to do training to get
12:35:28 unlikely technologists into technology jobs so we look forward to learning and scaling With you around that structure looks awesome thank you to all of you.
12:35:38 Three more, so don’t give up will be often if everybody fixed it three minutes will be up right on time.
12:35:46 I am really excited about the next hub in the day. All these hats are important but nothing more important than the youth voice. So I’d like to introduce a young adult Ryan Demuth to Ben Brown who’s representing association of young Americans isn’t with
12:36:05 us so I asked Ryan to present.
12:36:09 Right.
12:36:23 Ryan’s muted.
12:36:33 I’m sorry. I muted, or no. Here you go. You’re good. Okay, sorry about that guys.
12:36:38 My name is Ryan, I’m representing the young adult learners hope today.
12:36:43 And Ben Brown, as Jimmy was telling you couldn’t be with us of a why he’s busy working with his 30,000 members from ages 18 to 30 before Tuesday’s election.
12:36:54 But
12:36:57 the intended outcome for this hub will work with many nonprofits.
12:37:05 Working learning councils, youth advisory councils and other youth and young adults, targeting from ages 16 to 30 to create a community for their own voice for the future of working and learning.
12:37:22 Some of the partners bringing youth and young adults to this hub are listed here.
12:37:29 And many more will be added as we create this space for the voice of so many young people for the future of work.
12:37:43 This home. This work will help young people across the country has a place for pitching their own vision for the future of working and learning the many organizations preparing and working in the future of work and learning, HR and talent development
12:37:59 leaders planning for the next generation of workers.
12:38:06 Thank you Ryan I’m super excited about how we can build this hub and provide a unified place for all the different learner councils and just invite 10 people to be part of the conversation right will be one of those young people, as he works with an innovative,
12:38:25 educate, and is a true example of a future of work, and you’ll hear more about his story as he’ll be keynote being.
12:38:47 Most likely in May, but you will be hearing from him along the way. Thank you, Brian, Kevin Clark distributed number 10 brings everyone Kevin Clark here I am, jamais partner in the distributed practice.
12:38:54 So we’re delighted that we have a hub, focusing on the future of coming together, distributed as a practice is about putting people first. There are a lot of us who are doing exactly what we’re doing right here, we’re spending a lot of time online, and
12:39:14 we’re thinking about when can we go back right to being together.
12:39:19 Distributed is about creating a both end about something that’s better than online better than in person, because even when you get back to the physical gathering.
12:39:31 I bet you’re not going to want to just sit in the audience and face forward, you’re going to want to actually be part of the conversation. So, everyone who is part of the whole community, you’re creating the content that’s going to put you on stage right
12:39:48 when we come together in Santa Fe.
12:40:02 Now, we’re flipping the conference, right, Jimmy and I are delighted right that we’re able to be in this creative space, and we want you to be part of the conversation.
12:40:03 So join the future of coming together.
12:40:08 I’ll remind that in Dr Boudreau his presentation that I absolutely believe that all of you are going to melt into close it right into, you know something really interesting.
12:40:23 And in my model solids products or solids and customers are liquids.
12:40:28 When you get to energetic water becomes a gas and it evaporates, because we’re coming together. This way, you’re going to be in that ideal innovated liquid state.
12:40:40 So, with that, All right, we want you to learners.
12:40:46 The young people, workforce boards educational leaders, and the not for profits NGOs and CB o leaders to think about being, you know, both part of this and beneficiaries of our work together.
12:41:01 So with that Jemaine, it is so great, right to be partnering with you, and being part of close it again. Last time as a participant. This time, providing some leadership with you.
12:41:15 Thank you. And last but not least at all, is an exciting hub, led by Don Baron and a group of l&d professionals I know everybody knows, or a lot of people know chemo Kip him who works but Don closely and I reached out to her a few weeks ago and said please
12:41:36 help and she came up with this awesome.
12:41:39 please help and she came up with this awesome hub. So thank you don. Absolutely. Good to meet everyone, can you hear me. Yes. Okay, excellent. And yeah so Jimmy reached out to us chemo and I and a few others in the learning and development profession
12:41:53 brought together a group of people who were displaced by the pandemic or were career searching, and we have now gathered a group of about 700 people, and something that we noticed amongst the group was that they’re all our age in our 40s and 50s and we
12:42:08 asked them. When did you get into the profession and many of them said that they fell into it, and so we want to be more intentional about creating curriculum that invites high school and college professionals to say we choose to be any l&d profession,
12:42:25 we thought about this and then we really thought about the types of skills that our young people are developing these days and the type of professions that are emerging amongst young people, one of which is the creator or the influencer and all of these
12:42:38 terms as you probably know are coming from social media, whether it’s Tick Tock or Instagram, we see that these creators and these people who are creating content and making it go viral because they influence the way people look for content.
12:42:53 These are attributes that can certainly help the learning and development profession as we all strive for a way to increase engagement, and an appetite for learning.
12:43:02 So our role as in this hub is to define what those entry level jobs can look like the competencies capabilities and skills that are required in order to be a successful entry level person in the l&d profession, and then back it up even a step further
12:43:17 and start working with organizations to develop curriculum that can get young professionals excited about the profession and prepared to do those jobs.
12:43:26 So, Jimmy if you want to just slip, go to the next slide there.
12:43:32 As I mentioned, this is going to benefit the young professionals who have these skill sets and who already have a creator mindset mindset that many of us who’ve been in this profession for a long time, struggle with because it’s a little hard to relinquish
12:43:44 the power of creation and yet we do it all the time but we’d haven’t done it at a full enterprise level scale, and the l&d profession will then create a pipeline of professionals who are able to decide to use this skill set and to create an environment
12:43:59 where learning is proliferate peripherally proliferates sorry proliferates and can be shared amongst the enterprise, this overall will create jobs and it will also create curriculum development opportunities for education providers, and it’s a project
12:44:15 that this group at l&d cares is really excited about because while they’re searching for their own careers. There are many of them are also searching for good career opportunities for their children who are entering college or coming out of high school,
12:44:27 and they want to influence some of their behavior and help them to help others like we do and learning.
12:44:36 Wow, awesome. Okay, 11 hubs it’s 1059. What’s next, lots of work, the hubs are going to start meeting, we invite you to share on social media. This is our next keynote he’s kind of rocket like john did.
12:44:55 Bryan Alexander wrote a book last year, saying what would happen to the teacher of a higher education. If we had a global pandemic.
? 12Nov2020: Bryan Alexander
The Futures of Higher Education – Post COVID and beyond
Transcription:
Okay, Hello and happy. Um November 12 this year has fun, Bye and thank you for being part of the closer. Distributed, just as a reminder, The distributed model will run over the next seven months uh coming together. Hopefully Maybe Brian will tell us that this is going to happen or not, but hopefully coming together in a in New Mexico for a celebration of outcomes. We’ve got 11 ideation hubs working behind the scenes around key topics for the future of working and learning and those hubs have just launched. So the community is going to build over time with incredible knowledge sharing. That will lead to um new relationships, outcomes partnerships, hopefully business development for everybody and aloha chemo keeping good to see you from hawaii, I bet it’s beautiful there. Um so I just want to introduce a an amazing speaker that I’m just honored to have met through CNN, one of our friends at CNN introduced me to Bryant and we had a great conversation about this distributed model. Thank you, kevin Clark, my partner in crime to create this model. Um brian alexander um is a senior scholar at Georgetown University and teaches graduate seminars and learning designing technology. Um brian is a speaker that has really had a lot of attention lately, Washington post MSNBC, Wall Street Journal, U. S. News and World Report. NPR you name it. If you go to his full bio, he’s written multiple books with his last one being published this january academia nix the features of higher education, what I think brian um spoke about in there, which is pretty incredible timing. When I first spoke to BRian he said I don’t like that I become more popular because I spoke about what a pandemic would do to higher education and then we have one so definitely what I would call a podiatrist in that he wrote about it, it happened. And now he’s going to visit with us very organically about his research, his futurist view and share with us um the field of higher education where he believes it’s headed. So brian thank you so much for being with us today as a reminder, um all of our keynote or share within the closer community and reaches a widespread um we’re we’re really honored to have you today. Well, thank you very much for the very, very kind introduction. I really appreciate it and thank you to everybody for coming. I find right now in the middle of the pandemic, that the gift of attention and time is especially precious and I hope I can honor that. Thank you again as well for the chance to get to meet the closing community. It’s good to get to know you. I appreciate that very much. Uh and thanks to everybody who has answered my query in the chat box where I was asking what your relationship is to higher ed. And we’ve seen people who are former professors, people currently working in campuses, people working in nonprofits. Thank you. That helps me very much and getting a sense of how to shape what I’m saying. Um, speaking of what I’m saying, I’d like to explain. We’ll be talking about for the next few minutes. Uh, the, uh, the idea of the presentation here is to dive into what just happened to american higher education during this extraordinary year. Uh, and then to look back at the forces that were already acting to reshape higher education in the far distant past of say january And then looking ahead to where this should all take us in the next 1-5 years. Uh, now along the way, you will all have questions. I’m sure you will have comments. You will have objections, you will have examples. Um I would love to hear from you, so please just use the chat box. I’ll be checking it as we go. Um and I will try to answer during uh during the session, but if I miss you during the chat back and forth, I will definitely grab you at the end. Hello to Kristen and Kevin. Um Kevin Community colleges are great heroes of mine. You’re the biggest sector in higher ed. You do more with less than anybody and you get no publicity for it, but you’re fantastic. So it’s good to see you. Um I’m a futurist specializing in the future of higher education. What does this mean? Well, people like to come up with jokes, they like to come up with models. They usually like to ask me about my crystal ball and I do have one. Um but in reality of my job is to help people think more effectively, more creatively and more strategically about the future. And I do this with a few different ways, a few different projects. One of them is trends analysis. I tracked nearly 100 major trends reshaping higher education have been following these for almost a decade. I also hold a weekly video conference conversation with dozens or hundreds of people each week hosting a guest who has particular angle on the future of higher education. In fact, our session today starts in about a little less than three hours. I also teach part time at Georgetown University in their learning Design and Technology program, which is a great great masters program and uh teaching is just absolutely a delight. And before Covid struck I used to travel all over the world, consulting speaking, working with different groups and now I do all of that just completely online. Like I’m doing right now. So like I said, let’s start by discussing what just happened and then let’s look at what was happening and then let’s get a sense of what might happen next. And again, as I go, please bring to bear your own particular experience, be it as someone working adjacent to higher ed, somebody who is a faculty member or administrator or someone who’s just interested. I’d love to hear your thoughts. Uh, so to begin with, I’m a big picture person. I like to zoom out um, as I can And one of the great uh sets of impacts right now, possibly the biggest has to do with the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic. We are in the United States either in the second or third wave depending on how you count this. Uh, deaths per day have passed 1000. The total death toll is about a quarter of a million and probably higher than that and infections are building all across the nation. Um, it’s a truly terrible thing uh, and an extraordinary, extraordinary time. Um, jimmy was kind enough to mention um that in my most recent book, I have a little bit discussing this. So this is academia Next came out from johns Hopkins And there’s a certain page in the 1st chapter. Now no one noticed this paragraph as far as I can tell before March, but ever since March, people have been asking me about it and wondering what kind of black magic I use. It’s during a discussion about where higher education might be headed. And I have a few prompts to get people thinking. So here I ask, imagine the future academy after a major pandemic has struck say about the scale of the 1918 influenza. And here I give people some food for thought and thinking about what happens to athletics or online learning, how this impacts enrollment and the public attitude would happens academic disciplines and so on. And in reality this is the kind of prompt that we’re all using in the futures field and we’ve been using for maybe 40 years. We’re all very, very keen on the possibility to pandemic. We’ve been modeling it gaming pandemics, we’ve been consulting writing. The sad fact is not enough people paid attention, but this is one that we correctly anticipated. Now in higher education, most people did not anticipate this. They experienced it as what Nicholas Taleb calls a black swan. That is a statistically very unlikely event. But when the event happens, it has enormous impacts. So think, for example, about September 11 this we also experienced in terms of injuries and deaths that is in the spring, we lost dozens of people, especially the new york city area. And we also suffered injuries. And this is one part of the pandemic that doesn’t get a lot of attention. But once somebody is done with the virus and they live, some proportion of population contains some kind of injury, some kind of tissue damage, be it to their nervous system or to their lungs, to their heart. We’ve into their brain and we’re still trying to understand this. We don’t have a good sense of how many people this has occurred to, but I would anticipate we should expect to have people saying things like uh covid lung or my covid nerves. Some call these people long haulers because these injuries persist for some time. And academics contains some number of long haulers. We’ve also gone through this with the enormous anxiety and a great deal of conflict. Nobody is surprised. But we also did something that surprised everybody. Higher education did something massive, surprising and fast. We transitioned our face to face instruction and our face to face research online in a matter of weeks, if not days, which is truly literally unprecedented and extraordinary something that we should be very proud of. As flawed as it was. We did a lot of fast employment, a lot of really quick learning in a hurry and it was exhausting. We didn’t have extra resources to do this. We didn’t have extra time. Um, but we did it Now at the same time in 2020 in parallel to and in some interaction with COVID-19, we’ve had what some people call a great awakening or a great awakening, but really a sense in the majority of the population that anti black racism is a terrible problem and it’s one that we haven’t been paying enough attention to and we need to address. So we have a massive movement of anti racist activism and this also has impacted higher education. Everything from reconsidering our curricula, looking at the composition of populations and staff, faculty and senior leadership To renaming buildings where I teach at Georgetown. The students voted to tax themselves in order to pay reparations to the descendants of enslaved people whom Georgetown owned in the 19th century. So this impact is still rolling and still going on. Now before this annus mirabilis of 2020 or this annus horribilis. What was happening beforehand? What forces were impacting higher education? Well, I want to touch on some of the major big picture ones and I want to zoom out the global level to begin with because all of these factors are still in play. All these trends are still happening to begin with. Higher education has not been immune to globalization. In fact, over the past 30 years, really, since the fall of the Berlin Wall, we’ve seen increases worldwide in globalization of higher education. That is, we’ve seen researchers collaborate across international boundaries and published across international boundaries. More and more frequently, we’ve also seen more and more students move across national borders in pursuit of learning. The United States has drawn really heavily on this with some institutions having larger and larger populations. Canada, in terms of per capita is probably the world’s leader in this after 2000. And if you extrapolate this forward a bit, if you think about this and say 2030, you can imagine that setting foot on a campus called International University, you’d be likely to hear a wide range of languages, you’d be likely to see and experience a wide range of ethnicities and cultures and the research, the curriculum would all reflect that now in opposition to this has come up what I call the model of the national college. And this is a model which says that campuses should instead more strongly reflects their local situation. They should heed and support local knowledge. They shouldn’t bond more closely with the geographically proximate community. Uh, they should perhaps research local ways of knowing uh and that higher education shouldn’t affect the kind of resistance to globalization. And and part of this comes from politics. We’ve seen this at the national level around the world, from India to brazil Poland and Hungary Britain and the United States. Um but it has played out academically, for example, uh in Turkey, President Erdogan has been urging the teaching of various forms of creationism or intelligent design by arguing that they are based in fact on Islam has experienced in the state of Turkey, in Holland and in Italy as well as South Africa. There been conversations about what language to teach him. A lot of these universities have moved to teaching in english because language is increasingly the world’s lingua franca, but you have people in Holland who say you know maybe you should learn dutch if you’re going to come to our country to learn. Maybe this is something that you should do. So we’ll see more and more of this as well. Now the pandemic has hit this internationalization dynamic pretty hard just because people have been unable to move across borders at the same frequency as before. The US. has been a hit hard. Australia has been hit especially hard. There’s something like 30% of their students come from abroad so they are suffering financially a great deal right now. A second big picture macro trend. I’d like you to bear in mind has to do with what people call the demographic transition. Now let me just ask you in the chat if any of you remember being really worried about overpopulation. If you grew up in the 60s or 70s and member of the population bomb or movies like CPG just just put the chat box a little note. If you remember any of these thoughts the concern of the world would fill up with babies that we would have chris you were part of CPG. Amazing. Amazing. Okay well it’s fun when I talk to teenagers and people in their twenties about this. They they largely have missed that moment in our culture. Um that moment turns out to have either been stark wrong or to have scared us so much that we changed our behavior. Let me explain What you’re looking at on this slide is a glimpse of population. Uh this is a model that depicts one developing nation right now, and this model also describes most of human history until about the year in 1900. Um And if you look at it, every horizontal bar represents a slice of population. So the very top, you can see slices for people aged 85-89, and so on, all the way down to the bottom where we have babies up to age four. And you can see that in this model people produce a lot of Children. Uh the novelist neal Stephenson refers to as spamming the environment with babies, but you can see that mortality sets in right away so that there are more Children than there are teenagers, more teenagers and people in their twenties and so on up until you have very, very few elders. And this connects closely with a lot of traditional societies and their veneration for seniors, which you see, for example, in Confucian philosophy, in East Asia or in basically a lot of projects traditional societies in africa in the pre Columbian Americas. Well, starting in 1900 with the onset of modernity has changed. Here’s what Germany looks like right now. The pyramid has been flipped upside down. So you have more people in their twenties than teenagers, more people in their thirties than people in their teens, more people in their fifties than people in their thirties and so on. This is not an extreme case right now. If you want extreme cases, you want to look at south Korea, japan and Finland where the pyramid is almost perfectly reversed. Uh, this has happened for a few really powerful reasons. One is that we have had tremendous developments in public health and medical care, but also in particular women who have had access to birth control technologies and practices, but especially in education Tend to have fewer and fewer Children. In fact, you can see nations like Mexico where the number of Children per mother goes from 10 down less than two, Just in a generation or two. It’s truly extraordinary. Why am I mentioning this now? Well, obviously for the future for the rest of the 21st century, this has a powerful impact on everything from popular culture, uh, to economics. Uh, some argue that this is going to change war saying that we should think about the society is being less willing to fight if they have fewer teenagers, especially teenage males, leading to the coinage of the term geriatric piece, which we might look forward to. But for higher education, this matters because about 60% of higher education is devoted to teenagers, 18 year olds, well, that population is beginning to thin out, which means we are going to become more and more competitive with each other, which means we’ll be able to collaborate less often. It also means that higher education might shift its focus more and more towards adults and towards seniors. We might also change our geographic focus. And if you look worldwide, the demographic transition of describing has occurred wherever societies have gone through modernity, but some have not progressed through that yet. Let me zoom in a bit. Uh, if you look at Central africa, for example, as well as Pakistan and parts of Southeast Asia, you can see those nations are still producing Children at speed. Those are the ones that are colored blue on this map. In that case, if we are trying to recruit international students, if we’re looking for traditional age students, it may be that that is where the 21st century lies for higher education. Now there’s a still bigger trend, a still bigger trend. Oh, before I get to that, Gerald Solomon asked a great, great question. How will this impact the conflict between public and private colleges? Uh, in a few different ways, Gerald. Um, last summer, there was this fascinating pair of stories that occurred. Um, I want to say it was Minnesota, there were a couple of news stories which were heartwarming stories About senior citizens taking advantage of a plan from that state, which allowed seniors to take credits, uh, at any public university for an incredibly low price. I want to say it was $8 per credit hour effectively free. And these were heartwarming news stories and you had video clips of people in their 60s and 70s saying this is great. I’ve always wanted to learn history, your French or biology and I could do it now. Well, this immediately blew up because you had people who were not seniors, people who were, say teenagers who said I would love to pay $8 a credit hour instead of going to debt for the rest of my life. This is terrible news. I please change this funding model and conflict broke out. Meanwhile, at the same time in Arizona, Arizona State University broke ground on a new residence hall, which was only for retirees And being Arizona real estate, it was not cheap. Uh, and the idea was that if you were a retiree in 65 and up and if you wanted to be near a campus because of different reasons because you think it’s exciting because you want to learn more because you’re afraid of cognitive issues. Either way you get to immerse yourself in that environment. Now this is also a business model for Arizona state University because as far as I can tell, they made a ton of money on this residence hall. So you’re starting to see these kind of interesting dynamics occurring in public education, private colleges. What I’m seeing more and more often is people retiring next to them for those benefits. And I’ve been seeing this in Vermont for example, so it might not be so much conflict as so much just different models of supporting seniors. Um I really have hopes for intergenerational education, intergenerational community as a result. That’s a great question. Your, I’ll come back to the, at the end to and more the biggest challenge that we’re all facing as a species, as climate change and I don’t have time. Uh, and probably you don’t have me, you have the need for me to tell you about how climate change works are the impact that will have on the world. What I want to just quickly touch on is the impact it’s having higher education. So for example, if you think about a physical campus bricks and mortar, lawns, libraries, all that good stuff, you wonder about how to renovate or replace buildings to make them carbon neutral or carbon negative. You wonder about if they will resource their power supplies. So they’re not drawing from carbon sources. Perhaps on campus, you will have more, say bio gas generation or wind turbines or solar. You might see campuses try to host carbon sequestration technology. You wonder when campuses will ban carbon burning transportation on campus, be it faculty cars or student cars or on campus shuttles. We wonder if the food that’s served will change as we grow increasingly concerned that animal and animal products based diet is unsustainable. Will campuses have to be more likely to serve vegetarian or vegan meals well? It departments grow massively as they have to support more and more people who are traveling less and less and are working online, like we’re all doing right now or will it departments get cut if people deem them to be unwholesome consumers of carbon. And it’s possible that looking ahead, 30, 50, 60 years out. the campuses will want to relocate physically if they see their physical plant in danger. I think about the huge number of campuses lining the pacific ocean or the or the atlantic ocean in particular, think as well. But the campuses in the midwest that are really near prairie which may encroach upon them. Let’s mention the enormous number of campuses that orbit the great american desert and this is a worldwide issue. Um, and we may just see a big migration of campuses away. We should see research changing with certain fields expanding and perhaps some contracting new domains or disciplines appearing. You can imagine curricula teaching when you get more and more students who are designed to major in climate change mitigation. This may lead as well to new pedagogic is and even the student movements and academia is role in the world stage in terms of climate change may become very interesting. Will we see more faculty having a bigger role as public intellectuals? Well, campuses play some role in trying to lead mitigation efforts and how will we work with local efforts. For example, if you’re in Miami dade County in florida, that’s an area which is in serious danger inundation from floods and rising tides. The campus is then partner to try to support seawalls or other mitigation measures. Covid hits into an intersects with um climate change in some interesting ways. One is that whenever we shut down an economy for quarantine reasons, we get a brief glimpse of what the world looks like without so much CO two being burnt and we haven’t done this yet. It’s a very interesting project to think about. The second is, as a few others, including Bruno Latour have argued perhaps Covid presents us with a kind of dry run for climate change and looking at how the whole world responds to this great disaster coming at us from the natural world. Climate change can also hit the internationalization of higher ed. I mean, if your model of climate change is one that’s global, that this is a planetary crisis, its one that requires international collaboration and work, then this may further power you in supporting internationalization of higher education. If on the other hand, you think that nations are where decisions should be made and either you want to have national based mitigation measures or if you want to just avoid climate change altogether, then maybe the national college model is more in line with your disposition, maybe one more trend. Uh and then I want to dive into uh into the pandemic and more deeply. Uh One of the big shifts that’s been happening in higher education for the past generation has been a shift towards stem fields plus business and a shift away from the humanities. Now, this is a big level shift. This isn’t sure of every single campus or every single department, but generally speaking, we’ve been producing more and more degrees in the sciences and fewer in the humanities. If you take a look at this graph, if you look at the top right, you look at the fields that are booming. I mean there’s the ones that are growing by 25, 50, You see, they’re not really surprising. Exercise science, computer science, nursing health and medical fields. Um, if you scroll down to the bottom left, you look at the fields that are losing numbers again, they’re not surprising. History, religion, area studies, humanities, languages, english literature. Now I don’t say this when a particular pride or excitement, my own PhD my own first professor job was teaching english. So I um, I don’t, I don’t delight in this, but I can’t deny the data is occurring. So where does all this take us? If we if we mix all these different trends together and we extend them forward in the future, what does that do to higher education? Well, one thing it does is it gives us greater attention towards the field of in structural design. Back in March when American higher ed left online, there are a lot of professors who panicked. How do I teach online? How did I teach you the video? What is asynchronous teaching and all of this stuff? Well, thankfully we have a whole profession called structural design which has been working on this for the past arguably 50 years. So they have peer reviewed scholarship, they have books, they have presentations, we have professionals. I mean it’s a great resource, so structural designers have moved a bit closer to the center of the academic enterprise. I mentioned the changes in curricula before Covid. I suspect we’ll see a kind of post covid curriculum as more and more people decide to study in order to fight covid. Think about adults who go back to school in order to re skill for the labor market. Clearly health care is one of the few fields that’s still hiring. Um, I think as well about an 18 year old making the same kind of decision. But all these people may also just feel this is the crisis of our time. I want to participate and I don’t want to contribute and I don’t want to fight the virus. So I expect we should see greater enrollments and classes on nursing, pre med biology, epidemiology of course, geriatrics, remembering that the largest proportion of people who are killed or previously injured by the virus, our seniors think about people majoring in psychology, given the huge psychological psychological trauma of the event as well. Think about policy and economics because those two domains have suffered a great deal of chaos this past year. Now. Back in spring, I also modeled three different scenarios for where higher education might be headed as a result of pandemic. All three of these have been born out and we just explain so you can see how they work. One of them is what I call the post Covid campus and that’s a campus that is based on the idea that either the pandemic isn’t hitting them or that they can handle it and so they can have face to face instruction. The second scenario is one where the campus thinks that covid is a dire threat and the best way to respond is to teach online. And the third is what I have nicknamed the toggle term. I mean, this is when a campus switches back and forth between these in the middle of a semester powering these scenarios are a few extra features. Um, We had a great question a little while ago about private versus public universities, but we know that public universities are being hit very hard financially. That’s because state governments are being hit very hard financially. On the one hand, their revenues are declining because taxes have declined. Tax collections declined because of the recession. On the other hand, their expenses have gone up because they have to pay for increased medical treatment or they have to pay for more public health measures. And we know from the past 50 years of history, the state governments will gladly cut public higher education before almost anything else. So we’re seeing state systems really taking big hits like 10%, cuts right now. Already. I I and this gentleman here both forecasts that we should expect enrollment drops and this is a little counterintuitive because the usual idea is that whenever there’s recession, more people flocked to colleges in order to re skill. But my model was otherwise and it’s been borne out that on the one hand, people don’t be less likely to want to come to a face to face campus because they’re afraid to be infected and people are also less likely to want to take classes online because of the perception that online education is not as good Right now. The closest data we have shows that enrollment has dropped 3-4% this semester. Um The gentleman here is scott Galloway and N. Y. U. Professor of marketing and he says that we should additionally expect elite institutions to really open up spaces for more and more students because they are now no longer constrained by physical restraints. He also expects that we should see big corporations partnering with the elite institutions. So think about, say, Harvard partnering with Microsoft, neither of these two things have happened yet, but I want to put them out here just in case they do, cuts have been happening all across the country, cuts have been happening, as in terms of ending uh job searches. Uh They’ve been furloughs including involuntary ones, uh and we’ve seen just cuts to compensation cuts to retirement and then laying off staff laying off faculty, including tenured faculty. This is likely just keep rising and rising. Um Kristen asked at this point, specific universities or all of higher ed. Yes, I’m speaking of the entire sector American higher education, roughly? 4400 colleges, universities. Oh, there’s another question, I’m sorry, I just missed that. Um uh, this comes from tim how much the twin trends of internationalization, remote learning impact, the structure of state systems beyond less money and enrollment trump’s. In theory, tim uh, state should be, state institution should be able to enroll more and more students because the people don’t have to travel to them, they should have more and more access to them, so that’s possible once people get more acclimated, more online learning. A good question. Good question. Um, The corporate partnership does make sense. Um, but it does leave out so many colleges. This is a problem with uh, scott’s analysis. He really, really focuses on the elite. Um and it may be that he’s correct in his partnerships will happen and that will increase the economic gaps between lead institutions and everybody else. Now, the scenario, as I mentioned, I want to give a couple of examples of them and show how they gamify beyond that. We’ve had about 20, maybe 22% of colleges and universities have opened up this semester for face to face teaching. Uh and they’ve done so with a great deal of precautions. They’ve had plexiglass shields, they’ve had PPE supply to students, staff and faculty. They’ve had mandated social distancing. They’ve changed some physical at tribute to the campus is like having classes outdoors, which you can do in new Mexico. Uh They’ve also had some kind of moral charge to it. Uh Notre dame’s president said this was something that he felt an ethical requirement to do. Here is a screenshot from Purdue University’s president urging more of the same. So that’s out there. We also have maybe a third of campuses that move primarily online. Uh, the California State University system did that right away. and they have announced plans for doing the same in the spring. Um, and of course, as a result, they’re much safer in terms of pandemics, chemo. I’m going to get to that number in a bit. It’s a good question to raise the toggle terms. Nobody wants to admit to this ahead of time. All throughout the spring and summer. I was scanning campuses communications to see how many we’re announcing publicly. They would do this and almost none did. A few liberal arts colleges hinted at it and they said things like welcome first year students, please pack very lightly. But since the semester began, we’ve had toggle terms all over the place. Their usual form is a campus will shut down face to face instruction for a week or two or three because they’re suffering from a pandemic outbreak. The screenshot here is from my alma mater, the university of michigan. And you can tell it’s university of michigan because there’s so much blue on the screen, right? Um, but what happened there was the county shut down the universities face to face instruction because they were experiencing a big upward swoop in infections. So we’re seeing that play. We’re also seeing other plans in some interesting ways. For example, this is a shot from Houston community College which offered an incredibly detailed reopening strategy. I’m not going to read this whole slide to you here. I just wanted to show you the scope of this, that they have got this down to a science, down by individual buildings, individual academic programs, individual classes, A number of students based on their perception of the danger of covid. So as the danger recedes step by step, they can open up step by step. Who have a question from chancellor Lambert corporate partnerships already exist with many community colleges. Do you see the shifting from community colleges, universities or just expanding? Just expanding? I mean, we have partnerships of all kinds of uh, thinking about texas, christian university for example, which partnered with a T and T to uh deploy wireless connectivity over that campus. Um, I want to say that Ball State University or another indiana University partnered with Apple to do some app development, so we have that already. Um, but definitely an expansion, that’s what uh, that’s what Galloway is seeing. We’ve also seen universities and colleges come up with even more finely detailed schemes of surviving this Beloit college in Wisconsin, for example, has come up with a micro semester. They basically cut their 16 week long term into about a six week long chunk and the idea here is that they can become more nimble where it’s easier to change things up between these smaller blocks of time. Uh, a lot of students have decided to take gap years instead of being on campus or online, Harvard University reported something like 22% of their incoming students deferred admission deferred classes for a year. So some colleges are trying to grab onto that. This is a champlain college in Vermont, which has a service that will help you in your virtual gap program. My colleagues, uh, Eddie Malone at Georgetown and josh kim at Dartmouth have actually a couple of 15 possible scenarios, um, which are excellent. And all these are in play as well. Everything from targeting curricula to specific functions, to differences between grad students and undergrads, to moving online doing fall terms, uh, content to spring term and so on. If you want to learn more about their models, I recommend their book, the first scholarly books on the subject called low density university. Uh, it’s really a e books about 90 pages, brilliant and I recommend it highly. Chemo mentions that taco models requires to have a curriculum delivered in person and virtually correct. It is more work. It is, it builds on the work that we did the spring semester by shifting rapidly from person to online. I’m gonna get to how it’s even more work than it sounds in just a minute or two. And definitely many teachers and professors are not prepared for this. Now, what does this do to the teaching experience? This, this wild semester? What has it done to us and what is it doing to us in the spring? Well, A few things, there are one not on controversy right now, it has to do with how we handle cheating. So on the one hand, we have schools relying more and more on remote testing technology tools that are able to scan a student as they work to see if they’re cheating or not. And there are different ways of doing this. One of my favorite was a company that handled hundreds of thousands of hours of video of students taking tests and they brand numbers on this. They concluded that students who looked up on camera, we’re less likely to be teak or less likely to be cheating. Students who look down were more likely to be teaching. So they’re able to scan and look at people’s chins, cheeks and eyes and model that motion and pay attention to students, for example. So on the one hand, people support this because they’re very concerned about academic integrity because it’s one thing to be a student in a lecture hall, supervised by a proctor, on the other hand, to be at home in your living room or wherever, it’s much easier to get away with stuff. Other people oppose this, saying that this is intrusive. This violates privacy, and this is actually bad for learning. The controversy rages. There’s also a push to change assignments and assessments in order to make cheating less desirable. It’ll hold pedagogy based on that. Now, the campuses that are entirely or mostly online have a few challenges. One is they have to figure out how to make learning communities happen online. So we know that social learning is a positive thing and we know that people can learn from each other in classes, and we have to reproduce that digitally. We also have to figure out how to reproduce the campus online. Maybe a quarter or 20% of students live on college and university campuses, and so how to reproduce that whole experience of meeting people of clubs, of sports, of fraternities, performances. So that’s a real challenge. And we also have the interesting question of how we change class size. Should we, for example, make classes bigger because there are no physical constraints on their sizes, or should we make them smaller in order that we can devote more faculty time to each student as a way of caring for them in this troubled time? Uh, tim asks if we should stop worrying about cheating. I think about how we should prepare students for the most collaborative workplaces in the 21st century. Tim is a man after my own heart. I agree, personally. I think that is one way forward. Uh, and some faculty and some administrators agree. Not all do. Um, I mean, you think about the testing environment, how artificial it is, how it requires you to act in a way that usually don’t in real life. You know, if you can’t think of this one formula in real life in the workplace, you look it up or you ask a colleague, you know, I think most of the workplace is actually collaborative. Uh, and that’s what we should really be teaching, but like I said, this is controversial. Also online, we have some advantages. We have a culture of steady improvement, arguably there is more of a culture of that for online teaching. And face to face, we have, as I mentioned before, a whole body of professionals and research and how to teach online and libraries. Academic libraries are really stepping up to do things like increasing the number of digital materials they have available and providing digital services online. One of the big challenges as well is the problem of doing hands on work. That is if you think about everything from working a diesel engine to throwing a pot, to dissecting a body, to looking through a telescope a chunk of higher education requires in personal hands on work. How do you do this online? Well one way to just teach right around it and that kind of temporarily put it off a little bit, Another is to assign local instances. So if you’ve got an astronomy class, for example, to work with individual students 100,000 miles away to help them find a safe telescope to look through or either digital simulations of which there are many, especially in the sciences and they are growing in number or we just put it off, we take that dissection lesson and put it off until the semester is safe again, which differs people’s careers. And it also differs research now, the face to face campuses also have a lot to celebrate. I mean, face to face learning is often what we think of, We think of higher education, but there are problems. One is some number of students who don’t want to come to campus to risk infection. My own son made this decision. He’s a student at the University of Vermont and he’s been enjoying living in Burlington, but he has moved in with us so he can take classes online because he doesn’t want to run the risk of infection. There’s also the expense and logistical problems of trying to do all these safety measures. For example, um classrooms where you can’t be closer than six ft, people wearing masks, which covers up a chunk of the face, which makes it difficult to hear or to see people’s expressions. Um We have the expense of PPE. The expense of building temporary structure is the expense of miles of plexiglass. And of course the bigger expense of lots and lots of testing, not to mention doing contact tracing. Its a big lift to be able to do this. And we also have the problem that some older staff and faculty may not want to be on campus because they see themselves at risk either because their age again remember the older you are especially over 65 or 70, the more susceptible, are to getting, getting the virus and being injured or killed, it. but also those who have various comorbidities such as diabetes. Um, so there’s a lot of pressure on them to being on campus. At the University of florida’s president issued this little short video, which is a plea to faculty to teach online. And the first half of the video is describing all the joys that he wanted to teach face to face. And the first half of this video described all the delights of teaching face to face of being, you know, in a closed convivial environment and so on. Second half, the video is all about job cuts, so it’s pretty clear teaching person or face layoffs and that kind of decision is being made across the country. There’s the issue of library being depopulated if you have social distancing, if you have lower enrollments, does library of foot traffic plummet and then you have the really complicated and contentious issue of town gown relationships during a pandemic. I mean think about it this way were often a local community depends economically on a lot of students, faculty and staff as well, primarily students. Now on the one hand, they might want to have students there because they wanted economic shop that wants students shopping, you’re renting cars and renting apartments and so on. On the other hand they might not want them there because they fear the infections. Think again what I said before about a growing number of elderly folks moving around campuses. Besides I saw in the town of Middlebury Vermont, the merchants there were demanding that students stay out of town because they were simply afraid of the infections. So either way the town’s really stand to suffer, they either face an economic hit or a pandemic blow. Now there’s an additional problem which is less of a concern in uh in the southwest, but it’s a concern nationwide, particularly in the north country, which is that winter as the bard says is coming. Uh and that means, among other things that it’s a lot harder to teaching online, I was teaching outside Reed college in Oregon, had some wonderful tents set up so that U. T. Austin can’t really do that in michigan in february for example. But there’s also the possibility that we will see covid really pick up in the winter and not just the data that we’ve been experiencing for the past few weeks but also that you have people who are spending more time inside and more proximity of other people which is great for spreading the virus. They’re also breathing and exhaling and inhaling, recirculated errors. So they have more opportunities for infection. And we also have the possibility that the seasonal flu will interact with covid. That is people who have the flu will be weaker, more susceptible to catching or spreading or suffering from the virus. And people who have covid will be more likely to be damaged by the flu. So face to face runs into that level of challenges that are seasonal above all, I think is this problem that we love face to face learning for this kind of situation. This kind of scene people are side by side, face to face, tossing ideas back and forth, working on physical projects together. Um, that’s in many ways the model. We have the joy of learning, which is of course a terrific way to spread the virus. Now we can, we can blend online and offline in some interesting ways and campuses are experimenting with this in different ways. Uh I mentioned University of Vermont, what they’ve done is they’ve taken their curriculum and split it into, so the courses offered from, well given semester one part of them are only offered face to face, so you have to be on campus in Burlington, Vermont to do that. The other part of the curriculum is only available online and you can only take that if you’re off campus. So they now have two catalogues where they once had one, which is a major logistical project to do. Another way is to blend a given class and that is the model for this is kind of a bryan beatty is high flexor hybrid flexible, that is students and faculty can decide instance by instance if they are physically going to be present in the class or they’re going to be remote. Um this is a really fascinating idea. Um it’s a very challenging one implement, Let me just give you a little bit of info, but to do this, you have to have the right hardware setup, so not just making sure everyone’s got a good laptop or a tablet or whatever, but to make sure that they have good sound quality, so there might well, as long as you might know that mike in a room is not an easy thing to do. Also, not every student who was remote, not every faculty member is going to have the right hardware for this. They also have to have the right software, which again is nontrivial and maybe the biggest challenges, they often have sufficient network speed. One of the Elections of 2020 has been that the digital divide in the United States is deep, persistent, incredibly unfair and really, really hits heart. Uh, so as Chemo says having access is huge and we’ve seen college and university is doing all kinds of steps, taking all kinds of steps to do this. I saw a community college president load up a school bus and drove to an area where we basically flow to wifi cloud and let people use it. Baden college and main mailed all their students on the remote students ipads that had cell phone. Prepaid plans attached to them so they didn’t have good wifi or ethernet. They could at least get on a cell phone signal. There’s also a change to pedagogy for higher flex. That is if you’re teaching and you now have two classrooms at the same time. If you will, you are the physical classroom and you have remote students. So you have to kind of toggle back and forth between them. Uh And you also, if you’re a student, you to change, if your remote student you have to advocate for yourself. So people know you’re there. Um and also if you’re a student whose face to face, you have to remember your online compadres. Um it’s a, it’s a, it’s a big exercise to do. Here are a few resources if you’re curious not gonna share these again at the end, there’s a free book from Beatty and colleagues and we hosted him twice in the future, transform with hundreds of people talking about how to do this, right? Um I mean I’ve done, oops, oops, excuse me, just had my laptop get too excited. Um I’ve taught this way before. I first thought this way in 1999, and I can tell you it’s quite doable. It’s kind of like putting on binoculars or bi focals, where you have to learn how to synthesize the two horizons, but it is very, very doable. Uh There were a couple of questions about this and I just wanted to make sure that we don’t that we don’t lose sight of them. Uh Chemo. Uh Keeping observes that 18 to 24 year olds um conduct themselves in all kinds of ways which aren’t necessarily sane or healthy. There’s quite true, it is quite true. Um that’s partly their job is to learn how not to do that. Um in particular, not to stray too far in stereotypes. Quite a few campuses have seen their fraternities and sororities really be special dangers in terms of spreading dependent, in part because their social organizations often tend towards supporting those kind of socially risky behaviors. Jamie asks, well, all this change after the vaccine, I’m going to come back to that, I want to come back to that. Um, and kim oh, thank you for seconding the motion about the digital divide. There are few other issues that are coming up right now and I’m gonna touch on these and then look ahead a little further. Uh one of them is how we balance synchronous versus asynchronous teaching. So synchronous just means live a live video like we’re doing now. Uh and this is a very exciting thing to do. It’s the closest we can get to the face to face classroom gives you that sense of live give and take. Um and it has some downsides. One of the downsides is as can point out the digital divide is a big deal. Not everyone has the bandwidth to be able to partake of of live video. Also, we have people who suffer from zoom fatigue who just can’t stand it. We also have people who are naturally a typical, and the zoom interface may be too much for them to process all at once. Plus we’ve had issues with people for example feeling bad about turning the camera on themselves at home if their home environment is unsafe or they feel embarrassed by it or they’re homeless. So we may see a shift away from synchronous and more towards asynchronous teaching and learning. The curricular shift I mentioned before, a shift towards allied health towards business and police. I we should also expect more classes about the disease, you know, uh, for example, ethics, uh, and the pandemic or literature of disease. We should also see the flip side that students migrate towards allied health and away from the humanities. And as that kind of makes her more and more hit hard, financially more cut more of those classes in the majors in those humanities and arts programs. We have an interesting challenge about student data like prop during exams. Student data has been very controversial. On the one side, we have folks who say that now that we have such digital platforms for teaching and learning, we have a lot of data that we can use to help teach and help advise students. We can build models of student success. And we have examples of colleges universities doing this very well. On the opposite hand, we have people saying stop, this is unequal, this is unethical. This is possibly dangerous for data security purposes. This can lead to false positives and this can be intrusive as all get out. Now. The pandemic has heightened this debate because public health requires a lot of data gathering. Uh so if I’m on the campus and I come down with Covid, the authorities have every reason to know who I’ve been talking to him, where I’ve been, naturally, the sauce comes across as an Orwellian nightmares. So we have a big debate back and forth about how to handle student data. We also have a question about what we can do with some emerging technologies. So thinking about virtual reality, thinking about augmented reality, these are technologies that we know we can use to help students visualize stuff that we can help them see each other and other people and feel some empathy with. On the other hand, the technology can be expensive and it also has serious network uses. So we have to figure out how if and when we can we can deploy them. I mentioned classes about Covid, we’ve also seen multidisciplinary classes about Covid taught often liberal arts colleges. Uh, here’s one sample from Whitman College, up in the northwest where you can see we have faculty from sociology, environmental studies literature, film, german, hispanic studies, politics. I mean all of these shedding light from different disciplinary perspectives. Just very exciting open education. Maybe having a moment. Let me just break this down to a few pieces. There is open education resources. This is text books that are learning materials that are open that is they’re not copyrighted. They can be shared and they’re very low cost. If not free. We have open access and scholarly publishing. So that is scholarly journal articles or monographs that are open not behind pay walls. And we have a practice open teaching where a faculty members share stuff about their teaching practice so they can get feedback for it. Also to brag now all of these have been building before covid they may all accelerate. We may flip to a majority of education. Partaking of all of these because, well to begin with, the economy makes textbooks harder and harder to afford A $500. Biology textbook was not good news in 2019. It’s worse news now. So we may see more. Oh we are open access in scholarly publication is very much demanded by people who think we need access now to all the scientific data. We could possibly can in order to fight the virus and we need to publish in open way so more people can see more of it. And then teaching since teaching is more challenging as kim but others have observed, then sharing that practice is great. So we can ask questions, you know, how, what’s the best way to form groups in zoom or what’s a good writing assignment on blackboard, that kind of thing. Above all, there is a sense that we need to just do better at this. Uh, the Pew Research polled americans that a clear majority of like 65% said they thought online teaching was inferior to face to face. So if we’re going to do online, it’s got to be good and we have to really work hard at making it better and we have incentive to do this. There is a kind of ethic, the professional I think of doing this well, but also there’s a bevy of lawsuits already underway where families are charging that they’re getting substandard education for less money and some campuses have actually cut their tuition as a result, if we look a little further ahead for let’s say 23 years out, let’s just, let’s just come back to jimmy’s question about what happens to the vaccine. Um, you know, we have this, uh, wonderful vaccine. So apparently that’s been trialed by Pfizer and another german company. Uh, and this is great news. This is great in those deployment is not gonna be easy. Uh, these had to be produced at scale, which is going to be expensive and take some time. They also have to be distributed, which is a political real struggle. I recommend the 2012 film contagion. If you haven’t seen it. It’s a chilling excellent film. Uh, in one part of that involves trying to have lotteries are distributing vaccines, which is one way to do this or do you prioritize certain populations and so on. There are already a whole set of plans out there in this particular vaccine has an additional problem distribution that has to be stored incredibly cold temperatures, which means we’re likely to see this being served up to urban centers before rural centers. Um, yeah, I came up points out, you need two doses. So it’s not just in your one flu shot. You have to do this twice. I want to say it’s a two week interval. I’m not sure that’s right. Someone can find that out. And on top of that we have the problem of people not wanting to take the thing before Covid we had the fascinating anti vax population but also now the vaccines to degree politicized. For example, if this goes out under the ages of president biden, how many republicans will not want to take it? Just like if president trump had won re election, how many democrats wouldn’t want to take it? We’ve seen higher resistance from communities of color. So it’s going to take some time for this to make its way through the population. That is assuming that they can also continue to turn out vaccines that cope from mutations of the virus. And this is what you do with the flu disease. For example, we’ve already seen one bad mutation breakout in Denmark right now. So my long winded way of saying Jamaica, in answer to your question is um I think this will be with us for some time. It may be with us to the extent that AIDS or the flu is with us that is still alive. Medical threat that hurts and kills people, but that we manage with a complex set of health care, medical care and policies. Um, if this continues at this level for a bit more, we just extrapolate a bit further. We may see fewer campuses. We are already experienced thing that enrollment declined. That I mentioned that are also declined by the way has been happening for the past eight years every semester, total enrollment in american higher education has gone down and for the overwhelming majority of colleges, universities, tuition and fees are how they pay the bills. And so decreased enrollment is a real hit to their livelihood. We’re also seeing, as I mentioned before states cutting funding. So we may see more campuses close. We may see more campuses merge with each other. Uh, we may see that covid curriculum really takes shape. We should also expect to see I think more services being offered by campuses thinking particular mental health at the same time. All this has to be done with potentially fewer faculty and staff in the digital world. We should expect to see more and more people just more and more familiar with the digital world through practice, more people knowing how to turn the light on their face to the right degree for videoconferencing. More people using tools like learning management systems or discord or twitch to communicate. We may see some social de skilling occur from traditional age students. That is one of the great functions, traditional agenda, graduate experiences, learning how to socialize with people different than you are. Um That’s a great experience is very powerful. That doesn’t happen as easily online. So we may see some kind of de skilling as a result may seem more automation, both in terms of software using ai in order to replace faculty or staff because it’s cheaper or face to face automation or use of robots. Again, either for a price or because it’s more safe than rolling a person through an infected environment. And we may also see the emergence of covid careers. That is more and more people who become nurses, therapists, anesthesiologists because of covid. Then there are costs to be felt to be born by people in academia. I mean, illness and death. Um in the spring semester, some number of people in faculty and staff as well as students um were badly injured and others killed by the pandemic, especially in new york city area. We are already seen at least six people killed this semester for students. One staff member, one university president. Uh We don’t know the data on this because nobody is tracking it. Um, The data is absolutely terrible on this. Some, some hundreds of thousands of students and other populations on campus have been affected this fall. We don’t know the full number. Um, but we should expect more human damage. Obviously chronic stress is part of this. I mean, if we have to manage this pandemic for another full calendar year, um to an extent we acclimated to it. But that acclamation itself is a way of deforming our personalities. And then there’s the economic hits that are part of this. Uh, the economic crunch of last spring was absolutely brutal. You know, the worst since the Great Depression. And we still haven’t recovered their whole industries that are just collapsing. Uh, then we have the possibility of social or political unrest. If if, for example, let’s just imagine if if President biden calms the waters, if he’s able to knit together a very bitterly divided country, even if he is, we still have a large number of people who have been impacted by the virus medically, who have lost family members who will be unhappy, who are suffering from economic stress. And we have a lot of leftover political tension on top of that. This may play an inter generationally we’re talking about this little bit earlier. But what I’m hearing from some 18 year olds is their resentment of having to sacrifice what they see as their glory years in order to preserve senior citizens. Again, senior citizens are much more likely to suffer the brunt of the pandemic. I’m not advocating this view. I’m seeing this view is out there. And since our culture loves generational politics and culture clashes, this may be fanned into a big roaring flame. Kirsten asks, how important is credit for prior learning and post covid education. On the one hand, kristen I think hopefully more important. Um, both as college universities get more used to, you know, accrediting that kind of thing. Um, also as campuses are more desperate to bring in more and more students, they will offer this as an inducement. On the other hand, people’s work experience may be considered to be out of date, uh, if it is not digital enough, given that so much of the work space is now online or heavily mediated by computers or people just may see that the work environment is so different from Kobe, they might not accept it as much. So I think some degree more important. It’s a question of balance. It’s a great question. If we look forward to 2025, if we can’t completely quash the pandemic, if we can’t drive, down, like we did say with you know swine flu or or with polio. we can see some interesting changes continue to develop. So we may see for example changes to the built environment of campuses. Um I mean architects are eagerly planning this out right now. They usually see that we need more windows and bigger windows, more doors, bigger doors, more interaction between inside and outside, more outside structures, gazebos, that kind of thing, and then bigger rooms inside for social distancing. So you can really have a covid look for a campus, more digitization, you know more and more immersion in the digital environment and keep in mind five years from now, five years is a long time in technological history. There are a lot of innovations popping up everything from ai to new forms of robotics. Uh On top of that we may become more introverted as a culture. We may just be shire around people. Um that’s in part because of the de skilling of interaction for young people. But also, I don’t know if any of you have felt this, I’m hearing a lot about this, This kind of fear of other people right now, called it an three phobia. Um you know, I feel I’m an extrovert, I love people, I love being around people and now I find myself twitching. If I go for a walk in someone’s across the street from me when I watch movies and people gather on the table, I sometimes flinch. I wonder if we might not become quieter and more withdrawn and again, we’ll have this constant churn of innovation. I don’t just mean sort of technology, but trying to rethink and relive how we how we proceed. Will we try to have, say, a kind of porch airlock on our houses in order to deal with deliveries? How much online education will shape our environment? What happens to our workplaces as we try to work in positives, for example, just constant, constant innovation? No, I’m often accused of being too scary when I present, and I try not to be um, I don’t want to look away from anything, but I want to make sure that we have a nice balance. Um, and I want to make sure that there are things that inspire you all as you think about higher education. So let me just offer three and then I want to hear some more from you all. The first is it’s commonplace in human history for old folks to mock young folks. Um, there’s a great uh, chronicle from seventh century Byzantium, where kids going to the Hippodrome races, get their hair cut in ugly ways and they’re adults, mock them for it. Um and right now, of course, we’ve had a long meme of seniors mocking Generation Z for being coddled, snowflakes, etcetera. Um well, in reality, I look at 17, 18 year olds and think about them in the world they inhabit now. I admired them. I imagine coming of age during this crisis, and they meet it by working, they work hard, they are creative, they’re thoughtful there, politically engaged. I admire that. I find in that much, much to celebrate. And I think higher education, as well as the rest of society should not just support and embrace them as we should ethically, but also we should welcome their thoughts, their stories, their experience as we revise our entire civilization, especially in higher education. A second is I think this is a great time for collaboration, in part is a very human instinct actually, during a crisis to reach out to other people. There’s a fantastic, very moving book by Rebecca Solnit called a paradise Built in hell, where she looks at great crisis, hurricane storms, disasters. And she finds that we tend not to go into kind of mad max, Thunderdome war of all against all, but in fact, we tend to reach out to each other for help. Uh we do mutual aid and I’m seeing this in higher education, that people are reaching across disciplinary boundaries across professions, across campuses and we have all this great technology to do that for all its flaws, facebook or twitter or tools for reaching out to other people, from video, from Youtube, from text messaging to twitch tv. I mean, it’s just this is a great time for us to learn and work together and then last but definitely, definitely not least because the Black Lives Matter protests in the United States and some other countries were now reexamining our relationship to race and racism and that means that as we struggle to revise to survive and thrive, we’re doing so at least one eye on social justice and equity, it’s obviously overdue. Um it’s not easy to do, it’s about time and I’m glad we’re doing it. No, its kind of customary to end every power point presentation with links. So if you’d like to learn more about my work just get a future of education that us and you can find a bunch of different projects you want to find me on twitter and I haven’t tweeted for an hour so I’m already getting kind of the shakes right now. Go to twitter dot com slash brian alexander, let me stop sharing all of this. I want to see your faces instead, I want to hear from all of you. Uh and I want to Jamaican, I quickly grab a couple of questions, you bet, please, we have the thank you for the nice words, Friends, we have someone whose name, I can’t really make out, starts with m uh oh, Matthew, Matthew Cohen says that he’s an extrovert and he finds being around others repugnant. Yeah, I mean, I it’s what a shock, right? I mean, I thought when this lockdown began that, when it was over, I want to run out and shake hands, right, hug people, I don’t feel that anymore, you know, I think it was flying again, I used to fly up to six times a month and now that sounds even more horrible than normal. So I let me ask, let me ask you a question for everybody here. Oh, one more question came up. I think this is from Jamaica, which is that this is a great time for entrepreneurship. Absolutely. This is a time for all kinds of startups, for new ideas, uh, ways of teaching online better for helping campuses do this work. This is definitely a great time for innovation. I would love to hear your other questions and thoughts. I’ve got some time for that. And uh, I could ask you all, one of things is how are you seeing this play out in your experience of higher ed? Another question is to ask which of these trends besides Covid? Do you see is having the biggest impact on higher ed? So those are a couple of questions, but if you have your own questions, please feel free. The chat box is there? And I would love to hear from, you know, there’s a Q and a box to, I’m sorry. Um there’s already a question uh from uh natalia there, gina, um it says so much pain and society and the comment about performing personnel is it’ll take a lot of healing. Do you see any way to lift people up sooner? Uh thank you for for asking that question. That this is a very, very moving question. One is we’re already seeing some of this in uh in all kinds of teaching. I mean from corporate training to K through 12 to higher ed, which is for a pedagogy of increased care. That is, we ask students how they’re doing. We try to partner with mental health professionals to help as we can. There’s been a push towards kind of, I don’t want to say this the wrong way, not reducing academic standards so much as taking it easy with students. Um you know, I’ve seen a few faculty who say great people working remotely, they have more time for homework. No, no, no, no, no, that’s not the way this works, you think about the opposite. Um, but also it’s interesting, the field of psychology, the research field of psychology is a disaster right now. I mean, it’s suffering horribly from the replication crisis. It’s just really being torn to pieces. But the profession as healthy as can be, people are just, there’s the demand for the for therapists and social work is enormous. So I think what they will see is more and more people pushing for psych. Um overall, I when you look at the climate change movement, there’s a lot of talk about a kind of woman centered, um sometimes people don’t use it in general terms ethic of healing, that the job of climate change is to heal the earth. And so it may be that you see that kind of impulse as well and climate change politics. Um, Sarah Yoda asks the title, the Rebecca Solnit book is a Paradise built in hell. I just just read everything buyer. She’s a great writer. But that book in particular is very, very moving. Uh, Jill Meagher or I’m sorry Bill meter asked I met her, asks what about the question that are oi of higher ed? Uh, that’s a good question. It’s a really good question. Uh, the best data we have shows that overall higher rate is a good investment that depending on your data and depending on your major right, Not depending so much on the institutional, depending on your major um, the lifetime economic bonus to hire red is substantial. That women Tend to make several $100,000 more men a little bit more than that, which is of course awful. I mean they should be the same. Um but if you think about a bone, a lifetime bonus to earnings of say $250,000 While the median debt is about $29,000. So a 10- one payoff is pretty good. Um Again it depends completely, it depends on your major if you’re in thoracic surgery, if you’re in petroleum engineering man, it pays off. If you’re an english language and literature, cough, cough cough. It depends not as much, but again this is this is recent data looking ahead is hard to predict this, but I think overall it’s still there. The student debt crisis is a disaster or the only nation in the world that’s doing this. It can be overstated. There are a lot of horror stories circulating around But it is, it is a shambles. Like I said, the median amount of student debts around $29,000 for a lifetime payoff. That’s great. But if you’re a 23 year old, that’s a huge ball around your neck. I mean that’s gonna make it. We already know that that pushes people to delay capital purchases like for cars and houses. And we know that it also puts off childbirth. So there’s a kind of echo knock on effect in terms of demographics. Uh, I can say more about this bill, but it’s a great question. It’s a great question. Thank you Germany. Can I keep running these questions? You bet people, I know everybody, you still have a great crowd. Feel free if you need to get back to things to leave and brian you keep answering as long as he want. There’s a bunch and these are, these are great questions. Did we did do the book giveaway? So you’ll be autographing 10 books and getting them out one of them. I’ll pay you extra. We’ve got one going to Mexico and when going to um Colbert um um um in Germany excellent. No, is it Germany? No Colbert and I’m just drawing a blank in africa South africa Colbert, sorry? Yeah. Whoa Sarah john Michael, Liz lois, gen, Philip, esteban Colbert. Um fantastic, fantastic. Uh Marilia mayo forgive me if I’m asking your name, I’m trying to work on this in Canada. Yes john uh Marilia says uh that she’s an extra an introvert whose lifestyle hasn’t changed at all. She’s always worked remotely and social has mostly been virtual, especially with gaming. So you never missed in person socialization, to what extent her college is prepared to move into offering non zoom social activities to recreate the social engagement? Well, special Marilia, you may become a majority now you may for the first time, I mean, statistically speaking, introverts are usually about a third of the population, but you may be closer to the norm. Now we may be learning how to be introverts rather than, you know, the normal way of the other way around. Um, colleges are trying different ways. Uh, so they’re doing things like, you know, having performances through zoom, trying to make sure that clubs have access to different technologies for communication and for holding sessions. We’ve seen things like uh tabletop gaming, uh their software that lets you play a tabletop game remotely. Um, you know, fraternities and sororities are all so they’ve always been heavily invested in social media so they can do that. Um, but there’s a lot of experimentation on that. Uh, Kevin kevin clark, Thank you. Kevin uh says what is the intersection of human learning, machine learning and continuous sense making well if you mean sense making in in the sense of uh of uh David Snowden’s idea, I think you might see more and more of this, what refreeze it another one way of looking at this as humans training machines to be smarter and to be better at using um um uh ai in different ways. Um And it may be that you know, we will continue to have this kind of tutorial relationship and the tutorial relationship will go both ways because we already have software that tutors us and that software is getting better and better. Um So it may be that we have this kind of symbiotic relationship going expanding each other’s learning. Um I do think machine learning has a few other possibilities for higher education uh including supplementing some faculty work as well as doing non faculty work. You know you think of everything from your HR payments and uh definitely virtual advisers were really really hoping to finally get something for that. So we should see more of this. I think there’s also if I can go a little a little bit macro on this, there’s also the sense that we’re facing this kind of civilisational crisis about automation. Uh You know there’s the fear of unemployment. Uh there’s also the possibility of transforming work so that more and more jobs are basically cyborg jobs working closely with Ai but there’s also this human crisis that we haven’t lived through before which is how do we handle machines that are better than us at certain things You think for example Microsoft has speech recognition software that now does better transcription of speech than human professionals do when you look at self driving cars and for all their flaws, they’re better than we are. Humans are great at killing each other and causing property damage the cars. Right? And this is one of the reasons why there’s so much capital behind them because insurance companies are delighted to push for these, right? Um I think one of interesting challenges is how we’re going to cope with this. Um, and I think of all parts of civilization, the academia is the best place to help us think it through. Um We do need friends. We do need to make friends. And Marilia. Which software is your husband using? Is he using tabletop simulator or something else? Let me know. Um We also have um, chat with more of Canada. All right, great to see it. Is this the esteban that I got to meet at at at Tech University Hall? Good to see you, my friend. Good to see you. Um, No more. Thank you mary earlier. Thank you earlier. More questions. More questions. What which of these trends would you like to uh, for us to spend more time on? Or are there any trends that we haven’t had a chance to really dive into yet or if you have any? Oh, chemo, actual college athletic programs or doesn’t ask about them, but just says doug, which is a good response. Uh, I mean, this is and for those who are not in the US, this is a, this is an american quirk where we have these uh, we have a lot of athletic programs where students are athletes in different ways and some of these become enormously powerful in terms of money and cultural clout. It’s a very um, it’s an interesting situation and so some of these campuses have closed down, their team’s just straight up, especially teams that are not the most successful, uh, in drawing students. Uh, some have decided to play games. Uh, and I’ve gone to enormous lengths in order to keep their players safe. Some teams have done daily covid testing, for example. Um, this doesn’t always work out. I mentioned Notre dame before nor a game a few days ago had a game at the end of the game. They scored a big triumph. So all of their students who are sitting socially distanced in the bleachers, stormed the field and most of it had masks, but people are already calling a big super spreader event. Um, yeah, it’s a real problem. One problem with this is if we see college athletic programs being cut, college athletic programs are often, among other things, a a really powerful route for a lot of disadvantaged populations to participate in higher education. You think about black and brown populations as well as poor folks, um, cutting those back as a way of reducing their percentage of the population in the higher education Chemo asks about good examples of universities, partner of business on innovation for incubators to launch. I think the Sunni system did a pretty good job of this. You want to check on that. But the governor was actually, was cuomo when he did this. Uh, we need a kind of low tax zone around every Sunni campus so that people could do a startup business there, which is a pretty clever approach. I don’t know how it’s playing out right now, but there are more examples of this, but the number of startups is not what it should be. Hey brian, I’m gonna, I’d like you. This is jimmy. Um, Sarah’s got a great question and I’m just gonna um put up the next speaker for tomorrow and then um I think we’ll probably ended. I mean we could probably stay all day with questions for you. It’s amazing. We can also. Um but Sarah, what role do you see E sports? I personally really like this question because my son’s any sports and seems to be really moving. What do you think about that? Well, Sarah, it’s a great question. Um and uh jimmy, what’s what does your son play? Can you tell us? Oh, he doesn’t play? He works for any sports company. Oh, I see. Very good play. But he’s big in the sports. And then Gerald Solomon was on her earlier and he’s running a global e sports learning. Epic Games is one of our partners were closer than their, you know, look at the sports. So it seems to be getting very popular. Well it is, it is, and initially met with a lot of resistance from within higher education because you have people who love college sports who saw it as fake. Um and the new people who hate college sports and didn’t want to see any more of it. Um but the fact is that there’s a huge student appetite for this and there are all kinds of benefits from e sports, such as careers like your son has um, a um, you know, connections to all kinds of media positions, um, as well as just the kind of social glue of bringing a campus together. Uh there’s been, I’ve been seeing this across the United States, all kinds of school, all kinds of programs for this. Um and I think in many ways it’s a very positive achievements, also a very low cost thing for a lot of campuses to offer. Um They really don’t have to spend a lot of money on it. I mean they can they can if they want, but it can be done relatively lightly. Um I think as well there you may see growing support for it when you have people who are opposed to football because of injuries, e sports, whatever their downsides, The biggest physical trauma you get is sore thumbs. Uh you don’t get closed brain injuries. Um And so as we see a kind of culture struggle about football, um you may see more people saying, well let’s let’s do e sports instead, you know, or start Warcraft is a little bit better in this case than getting your brain bashed out. Um Sorry, I think that’s a that’s a great, great question. Uh Marie, thank you for sharing that. Thanks Marie, thanks for doing that. I actually have to go because I have to go uh lead my weekly video conference session a few minutes and then I have a blessed brian. Thank you for the commitment you’ve made to this morning and the awesome discussion I learned tons and I know what those did. So we will be in touch. Hopefully you can join other sessions. Just remind people tomorrow we’ve got monty Hamilton. He’s an amazing speaker and his started initiative at his company. From incidentally good to intentionally great and Michael and Mina will be with us too. So hopefully everybody can join us only for an hour. Thank you Bryant very, very much gratitude to you and your wisdom and sharing them with us today. Thank you all. I’ve really enjoyed this and everybody take care and stay safe. Thank you. Goodbye the bank. Okay.
? 13Nov2020: Rural Sourcing
From Incidentally Good to Intentionally Great
Transcription:
one really happy friday the 13th. Um I’m not at all one of those people that cares about that day but a lot of the news let’s talk about it. So happy friday for everybody from South africa to Atlanta to gulf port Mississippi where one of our speakers, Nina is from. I’m so excited to have um this session of close distributed which is um led by Ceo and founder of rural sourcing Montel monty, Hamilton Monte has been so gracious to be the king of Gosh probably Dallas I think you were with us in Dallas Monte and then you were with us last year. And just one of the greatest motivational speakers that I have been. Um lucky enough to listen to. I ran on linked in about six months ago about a new initiative that girls forcing was launching. And I asked Monti to join us and to speak about that real sourcing has offices all over the country and Monte has made a commitment. We’re beginning to train um uh a nontraditional workforce to move into the I. T. Field. So um monty it’s so great to have you, Michael and Nina join us and um again thank you for your time and for being part of the closest community. Okay thank you Jim I appreciate that introduction. And uh as always I’m excited to be here. It’s a privilege and and something that I’ve been able to look forward to the last couple of years and I keep my fingers crossed that you know when we get back together in person next year I’ll get another invite. So I just put my plug in now. So um thanks again and welcome to everyone who’s joined the zoom call today from wherever you are uh in the world. It’s pleasure to be here with you and I appreciate the opportunity to talk about our efforts that rural sourcing as it relates to equity, inclusion and diversity from incidentally good to intentionally great. That’s our mantra when it comes to E I and D. That’s our rallying cry. That’s what we are trying to become. We know we’re not there yet, but we have big plans and big goals to be able to one day claim that we are intentionally great when it comes to E. I and D. And a real treat. I think for you all today is that you won’t have to listen to me this whole time. Uh, we have invited two of my colleagues here, Michael White and Nina Ladner, who are chairs of our E. I. N. D Council. And I’m excited for you to have the opportunity to get to hear from their point of view what what they’re doing, what they’re working on, what their struggles have been, what their successes have been. And so I think after I get through and and set the table here a little bit, uh we’ll get into the fun part of this thing. So I do want to set that table just a little bit and give you some idea of the history uh where we’ve been, where we are on this journey and and kind of hopefully lay out some idea of where we eventually want to get to that that promised land of being intentionally great. Um, the yeah, and the efforts that rural sourcing really got started at a grassroots level. There was a group of black women in our mobile Alabama center of which Nina Ladner, one of our guests today is one of those who spearheaded that effort. And it really started as I would say, a employee resource group to help support each other uh to be there for each other and also to um educates the other colleagues in that office and across our company on what it was like to be a minority in the workforce, but they didn’t stop there. They also began a community outreach program and they worked with an elementary school locally in an underserved neighborhood in mobile Alabama And they were able to raise money for and pack and distribute over 400 bookbags in the past year to allow those students to start school off in a way that would help them be successful. They also adopted a middle school robotics team again from an underserved neighborhood in mobile and they mentored that group and they coached that group and they even brought that group into our offices in mobile, which is a really beautiful office to allow those folks to be able to see what a career in technology might look like and to be able to see someone who looked like them working in high tech and having fun while they were doing it. Nina and her group also started and created our first ever juneteenth celebration Back in June of 2019. And it was an awesome event. They involved a lot of the community groups. They had music, they had arts and crafts, they had educational program, uh and it was just a fantastic celebration and also a way to educate the rest of our community and our organization on the history of juneteenth. They also held a watch party, which I got to participate in briefly in mobile for the movie Hidden figures. And they didn’t just stop there. They then had discussion forums after that movie to allow small groups to get together and talk about what their ah ha moments were and what they realized after watching that movie. So that’s where our E. I. D. Efforts got started really at this grassroots level with a group of black women in mobile Alabama. Now the rest of the organization began to take notes. Uh and folks in Atlanta, my team began to ask ourselves, why can’t we scale this now across our other six centers across our entire enterprise to be able to take what Nina and that team of folks have done and broaden it out further until we began to think about and plan for how we would do that this past year. Now. Um one of the things that I was putting my notes together for this discussion today, I couldn’t help but keep coming back to this analogy of going to see your position for that annual checkup. Now, I don’t know about you all, but when I see that on my calendar and it just keeps getting bigger and bigger and closer and closer, I get more anxious and more nervous with each passing day because I know when I go to see my position, she’s gonna say mani, you know, you need to eat better, you need to get more exercise. We need to stop doing some of these bad habits that you’ve accumulated over the many years. And so I know that’s going to be a part of that discussion. But I know that if I listened to her and I take that advice, I’m going to be healthier, I’m going to be better for that advice. And so likewise that they, when we started out on this journey, we realized that we need to take a good hard look at ourselves and figure out where we are today and then paint that vision for where we want to be in the future for that promised land of being intentionally great now, just like going to position, I think oftentimes we need an objective outside voice to help us to see where we are and take a true objective assessment of where we are today. And so we were able to do that. We found a consultant here based in Atlanta. Her name is Jackie Parker. Jackie um comes from a very successful career in um corporations as first as a brand manager at Nabisco and some other large brands. She then got into inclusion and diversity work and she led the inclusion and diversity efforts at Russell Athletic here in Atlanta And then she went on to run and become the president of the community and philanthropy foundations at Newell Rubbermaid and eventually at General Motors two very big jobs. But Jackie decided that she thought she could have a bigger impact on her own if she left that corporate world and began help companies like rural sourcing understand how we could make an impact in the equity inclusion world. And so we’ve enlisted Jackie’s help frankly to help us understand where we were to help us then draft our vision, mission and vision and guiding principles of where we want it to be. And I think anytime you are willing to do this and take that assessment of where you are and paint that vision, you know, you have to be willing two here the things when you don’t want to hear those things right? I think that’s where we were 18 months ago. And listen, I want to be very transparent. I want to be very clear and uh forthright with you all today. If some of you are out there Googling rural sourcing and you pull up the website and you look at our board of directors and you look at our leadership team, you may be saying yourself, hey monty, you sound like the biggest hypocrite in the world because if you look at those teams, it’s primarily male and it’s primarily white, but we are making progress and I would hope if you got to know us better, you would then see if you looked a little further down off that one page on the website, you could see across our software development centers. We have a development center director And those development center directors are directly responsible for the health and well being and the work environment of 600 of our colleagues And out of that group of people, about 40% would identify as being in a minority category. And then if you look further than that, you looked at where there are significant minority populations in our centers such as mobile Alabama, Augusta, Georgia and Albuquerque, New Mexico, you find in those places That over 20% of our colleague population in mobile and Augusta would identify as being black And likewise in Albuquerque, you would see that over 20% of our colleagues there would identify as being Latina. And so we have done some of these things, I would say, and we’ve incidentally done okay or even good but we’re a long way from being intentionally great. We’re a long way and we know we’ve got work to do as we did that recent survey. One of the other kind of ah ha moments for me, frankly, was that over 20% of our high tech worker population identified as having some disability. Now, whether that was on the autism spectrum or having some speech impediment, it was a wide range of stuff, but that was really surprising statistic frankly for me and I’m the dad of two special needs kids. So I get a little bit about this world, but the fact that we’ve not been intentional about going and hiring folks with disabilities, but the fact that we’ve incidentally done good there, I think speaks to the kind of culture and the welcoming environment that we have and that we’ve created such as those folks with a disability, feel like they can come to work and be who they are. And I think that’s a good starting point. So back to our story with Jackie and and our health check up. So she helped us lay out our mission, our vision, our guiding principles, uh, some of which I think are just awesome. Right? One of those things is to steal form a former president, President Obama, which is if you can do the job, you should get the job. Another one is putting the I back in team in this case that I stands for inclusion to making sure that we are building inclusive teams across all of our organization. And so Jackie was instrumental in helping us lay out those things and put a framework in place so that we then and now our responsibility is to make sure that we are beginning to put the right practices and programs, um, and other activities in place so that we can become a healthier, better organization. And so when Jackie was here, I think, you know, she would say that she found that, you know, we had been feasting frankly from the same old, um, set of college recruiting grounds that we’d always gone too. And we needed to introduce some diversity into that diet. I think the other thing that she would say is that, you know, we had some inclusion muscles, but we needed to exercise those a lot better and a lot more across everything that we do. And finally she would say that you’ve got some habits that you’ve fallen into, you just need to stop, You need to quit those things now. And their habits as we look back now are things that we just started doing without thinking about them as we were a young growing, fast growing company. And we didn’t get out of them. We didn’t recognize them until we brought a professional land to help us see those things. And so we, we started on this journey now and I think one of the things that will wrap up with this is that it’s helpful when you’re trying to get to that other side of being intentionally great to have models out there that you can look to and borrow from, as we’d like to say in the corporate world. And last year at this conference I told a story about a friend of mine, randy Lewis who’s now retired executive from wall grains And Walgreens recently scored a 100% top score on the equality inclusion index. And so they’re a great model for us to look to and see how they’re doing things and what they’re doing. But last year I told the story about randy Lewis and randy before he retired, one of his last big success stories, they’re Walgreens was he set up a new distribution center in Anderson south Carolina. And when randy went to do that, he had a mandate from himself That one out of every four employees hired in that distribution center would be someone from the disability community. No, Randy hadn’t done a whole lot of research, frankly, he didn’t know if that community was even big enough to support that Because that’s close to 200 people that he would have to hire from the disability community. But he didn’t let that get in his way. He just said, we’re gonna go do this now. The great part of that story today, Get that distribution center that Randy went to Anderson South Carolina and built out and found those 200 employees from the disability disability committee to hire and put to work there. That distribution center is one of the very top performing distribution centers in all of the Walgreens network. So it can be done and it can be a success when we put our minds to it. And so Walgreens serves as one of those great models for us as we try to move from this world of incidentally good to intentionally great. So as I said before, it’s my pleasure to get to ask some questions and and put a couple of my colleagues on the hot seat here today. If you will, uh, and I want to introduce them first and then I’ll let them tell you a little bit more about who they are as people as they work here at rural sourcing. Michael White is VP of sales for us here in the Atlanta office. Mike is a graduate of Morehouse College. Uh, he started out his professional career, uh, as a labor union organizer and Mike and I might share a few stories with me from those days. I know that’s a tough job. Um, Mike and I found each other close to 10 years ago now and he was my first sales higher here at rural sourcing. And um I would agree with Mike said this, he’s the only successful sales higher I’ve ever had in my entire career. So I’m excited to hear what mike has to say today. And then uh Nina Ladner, who I mentioned earlier, she was a driving force, I would say an unstoppable force probably in creating the original grassroots efforts in mobile Alabama uh to start to start what we’re doing today. Uh Nina is a graduate of Southern Mississippi, she lives over in gulf port, just a short drive away from our mobile office. Nina started her career actually working uh U. S. Coast Guard and then she moved on to become a bench chemist. And that’s kind of how we cross paths with Nina that she was working on a laboratory information management system. We were looking for some of those skill sets. Uh and she joined us at that point in time now over the years, Nina has been promoted several times. She’s a senior delivery manager now for us, which means she is the person that has to make sure that whatever mike goes out there and promises on his sales role. Nina has to deliver on the back end of that. So I’m excited to have both of those folks with us today. So Nina let me just turn it over to you first. I’m going to take a seat and go through my questions but maybe just tell us a little bit about your background. I didn’t give all the secrets away and who you are. Um Okay, my name is Nina Ladner uh like monty said I am right now in gulf port Mississippi. Um I say right now because I am a military veteran and a military spouse now. So I basically uh follow my husband and right now we got to come back to go port Mississippi which is where we’re both from, which is nice. Uh we have four daughters who I think that I like to coach and soccer on a regular basis. Although I’ve never played soccer in my life. Um Start out with R. S. I about five years ago. Um I will say with no shame this is the longest time I’ve stayed at one place for a career and that speaks volumes because I get bored pretty easily. Um Monti has somehow created a company. Were getting bored is not a thing that I can easily do. Uh Always a new challenge. Always something fun to do. And uh I work with some of the best people around. I would say that mike is one of those people but I don’t want him to feel too good about himself before he has to speak so. But I’ll pass it on. That’s really a lot about me. Well thank you Nina Mike. You wanna give us a little bit more background and set up for uh for yourself. Yeah thank you. Uh good talking with everybody this morning. So uh I’m I’m originally from the northeast out of massachusetts. I continually to move further down south new york to Atlanta came in college at Morehouse. Like money said um our our site has been a great opportunity for me. So I was sold on the company for money. Looking at Monty’s passion for the business. Um the good that he wanted to do create a number of jobs in the U. S. And also given someone like me who frankly didn’t have the deep background to selling into I. T. Services right? He saw something to me uh maybe the competitiveness my will to to win and achieve. And really kind of the I think the family background like in connection I could tell he really cared about people so that resonated with me and and it made me even want to I’m internally motivated but it also motivated me to prove him right by bringing me young. So throughout world source. And I know I I started with that I’ve been able to not only kind of come on be successful sales but also develop additional skill sets. Whether I think my my leadership uh the opportunities I had to add to that go to that two different people I’ve been able to network with ah different exposure or different responsibilities I wasn’t really aware of. Um And then also with this E. I. D. Council right? This is something that has been very important to me Because one thing that I would maybe want to really be a part of this and kind of be a main focal point to push is because we started it before. A lot of the things in 2020, you know, took place, this was something that we they were intentional about. The strategy was talked about way before that, right? So to be able to come on and kind of have our first meetings with Jackie and already have the council taking place uh to incorporate some things within the centers. Think that was important to me because from top down from Monte, his executive leadership team and also kind of to myself in different colleagues in the centers, we know that it was important, right? And and everyone is held accountable no matter what level with this intentional focus. So the key is I want people to feel how I’ll do right, uh celebrated versus tolerated. And I think that’s a big thing like within the centers, that’s what I felt and I want that to resonate with everybody in the center. So they feel as empowered as I have during my journey. Thanks Mike. Hey nina maybe just tell us a little bit about um the work of the I. D. Council and your particular role there is you’re responsible as the chair for our workplace. Um so I guess a little background of where we started in mobile, a lot of this was um really we have two options with the I and D. I think um you can be a part of the problem where you can be a part of the solution. And one of the things that I really wanted to do again following Montes mission and seeing how passionate he is about putting people first was seeing how I could continue to support his mission and rally with people around me. That felt the same way to be intentional about being better to doing better things. Um so that’s really how we got started. We didn’t want to continuously complain and say this isn’t working, or this isn’t working. Uh we wanted to be a part of bringing about a solution if we did have a complaint. One of the really good things about working with R. C. Is when we spoke up, people were listening and not only were they listening, and this is executive leadership, they were also reactive. And eventually that turned to them being proactive, which is where we are now. So as chair of our E. I. D. Work place committee, a lot of what I focus on as the chair is continuing to create an equitable workplace and looking at those things. So not looking from an HR perspective but really looking more from we’re already doing good things. But what can we be doing better to bring about change? Is it training, Is it conversations, is it making sure that everyone is transparent and everyone’s getting enough information and then trying to put some really measurable goals. One of the most difficult things about me I and D. Is measurable goals. There’s a lot of I think qualitative things that you will see. People will change behaviors will change, people will be more open. But I think when it comes to those quantitative measurements it gets a little more difficult. But we have gotten really intentional and setting some goals. So things like um as monty said, we started out very much like an employee resource group. One of the things we don’t do at Rs I refer to the people that we work with as employees, there are colleagues. Um so we have intentionally created a very strategic colleague resource groups. And in those in these groups we have missions, we have goals, we have a sort of support system, we have some rotary and we have things that we want to implement that will not only work for us as a workplace, but also things that will work for our future colleagues that come along. So um that’s one of the main things that we’ve been focused on. In addition to training, we’ve realized that a lot of discussions and issues that we have around E. I and D. Aren’t always coming from a place of hate. Oftentimes they’re coming from a place of lack of understanding or ignorance and we truly can’t expect people to understand what they have an experience or what we haven’t given them an opportunity to look into. So a lot of what we’ve intentionally done as the workplace is, we’re trying to focus on things and not make them negative. We want to talk about privilege, but we want to talk about how we can elevate that privilege, how we can use it for good. We want to talk about biases, but we want to make sure that you understand it. That’s not because you’re a bad person. There’s a lot of different things that go into biases, but we want to break that down and we wanna reevaluate how we can go about being better people in general. So just making sure that we’re not putting a negative connotation and calling anyone out, but that were actively looking for ways to grow together. And I think at the end of the day, that also includes going into the community and growing our communities because we are better people from what we’re learning in our work community. Thank you Nina and mike a little bit. You’re the overall committee chair. What are the things that you’re feeling the weight of responsibility for that role uh to make sure everybody is hurt? So I think one thing and stressing patients in order to see progress, I think that that’s that’s been a really big thing as working with the colleagues and understanding their concerns. Uh a lot of them, whether even prior history before R. S. I. They might have seen some things may be heard, some lip service from from different executives, different companies and nothing ever really happened. So they might take some of that past experience here. So if they don’t, maybe you see us moving fast enough with certain things, they think we’re not really doing anything. So I think that has been kind of a key thing that I constantly think about in ways that more so take the, I try to duplicate and replicate where you do money, open door policy. So everyone in the council, um, people reach out to them individually, and I think the more that they’ve seen our face, the more that we’ve posted, we have a monthly newsletter that we leverage, just talk about what we’re doing. Uh, the more we utilize slack, the more visible maybe I am. Uh, they they’ve been able to reach out, feel a little more comfortable, um and confident. Uh, and me kind of what I’m doing and just overall objectives of the council, right? So it’s it’s a full time job that I’m not necessarily able to give full time um ours too right now. Um I I think that’s one of the biggest things that I’ve learned um in just having that kind of, the air of the executive team has been helpful, but it is definitely a full time job. I’ve been able to I understand some of maybe the blockers and that I had as well, being remote. Like covid everyone has been remote, but that’s, you know, my role. That’s what I’ve been anyway, right, I’m not working in the center, so being able to get a good view of the colleagues, what they’re going through in the centres, it’s helped me understand maybe some potential blockers that I might have had things that I haven’t been seen. So it’s it’s helped me grow and really kind of be able to work with people within the centres to present the executive team, to get this is um to get get certain things we need to do incorporated and improve upon our strategy. Yeah. Thanks mike. And um whoever wants to take this first is fine. But you know, and you sort of alluded to this, Michael about being an open door policy. But what things as has the I. D. Council done to make sure that we have an open communicative environment in general across the organization? Uh Sure. So one of the first things that we created, um one of the good things about Covid is we have been forced to be more uh communicative on our social channels which we use black. Um We started with an open inclusive channel. It’s actually called the inclusion community. This is a no judgment zone on slack where we get in there and we ask questions. We share articles uh We talk about current events, we talk about the positive and the negative, and we allow people to have full on conversations and ask questions and gives suggestions without judgment. And that has been really helpful in uh creating some trust and opening some doors for us to be able to have deeper discussions and kind of guide those discussions towards more training. Um, our news letter that we send out monthly is actually our our basis around that newsletter is anti racism. So not only are we giving the most up to date articles that we find or guidance on training that we find online. So we’re also thinking about our families were all remote. So we’re doing a lot from home. So even in our newsletter, there’s a small portion for these are the things that we suggest you talk to your kids about here are some really great resources to talk to your kids. Uh like monty said, we have a very uh white leadership team. One thing that we’ve done to really engage that leadership team is they’re doing the work and we’re making sure that as the inclusion council that we’re supporting, them, doing the work and looking past uh their outward appearance and saying, hey, there’s way many more parts to these people. So we’re doing a spotlight, They’re reading articles, they’re reading books, they’re giving feedback, they’re telling our colleagues how their minds have changed. So those are some of the really big, I think pieces that we’ve put out there that are opening up this communication. Okay, thanks anything to add there, mike, Uh we we just continually remind all the 600 plus colleagues that the council is mainly were facilitators to the strategy for the overall strategy of the company, so they’re all we’re all responsible to carry out the mission and action items Associated Council. I think that’s just something that we want to continue reiterate within the, within the team in the company. Okay, so let’s move into maybe a little bit more brass tacks. And I alluded this when I talked about the fact that we’ve been feasting off of recruiting from the same old places that we’ve always gone to. What, what steps are we taking today to be able to introduce some more diversity into that candidate pool. Um, one of the steps was, we, we immediately revived some of the job descriptions right to have more inclusive language. We’ve also started posting in different, diverse recruiting job boards where we’ve been able to different, definitely try to tap into and take advantage honestly of the fact that since we all are 100% remote now, it’s not necessarily having the focus in areas just where our centers are. So where if we have centers that don’t necessarily have a high minority population were able to look elsewhere throughout the country. And what we’re finding is a lot of people actually do want to, when things return back to like our new normal, they’re looking to relocate. We actually have some one on one of the teams that now that we started engagement with who’s gonna relocate towards one of our centers, right? So they’re just looking for that opportunity. Um And you know, what else uh kind of on, you know, with your team, you looked into a couple other things too, besides the kind of the job board, changing job boards, um inclusive language there. What are some of the other things that you’re seeing? Um I was just, I was actually gonna mention that we have updated our job descriptions, but we’ve also uh kind of gone about an updated our inclusive statement are equal opportunity statement to make sure that we’re branching out as far as we can to make sure that when people are reading these job descriptions that they are seeing, uh they’re seeing that basically we have no boundaries, we’re not asking you to leave any part of yourself at home, were saying bring your whole self to work. Um we’ve talked a lot about focusing uh and not directly through workplace, through community, looking directly at our hbcu and trying to understand how do we get a pipeline directly out of the historically black colleges and universities to come directly to us? We know that the talent exists now. It’s just demystifying the fact that there is a pipeline problem, but truly redesigning that pipeline that it’s coming directly to us. So we’re still brainstorming on some of those areas. But I will say that we are, we are making some progress and I will updating those job descriptions was really a strong move to move towards more inclusive language and to make sure that we weren’t everything is not so race related, but making sure we weren’t doing anything that was hurting our gender are creating a gender bias. So just looking at that language with a really inclusive lens and making sure that the thing that we were saying were intentional and inclusive. Yeah, it’s a great pointing. And I mentioned earlier in my statement that, you know, outside folks are helpful and then someone inside folks as well to help us really think about the messages, the subtle messages, the unintended messages we were sending out there. And so one of our recruiting lines used to be, hey, the picture of people with their shoes off underneath the desk, right. And said, come kick your loafers off. Guess what? Women don’t really wear loafers, you know? Uh, and so we were blind to that. So that was one of those habits that we just had to stop doing all right. So, uh, talk to me a little bit about through this process. We’ve been at it for, you know, uh, well over a year now, what, what things have have you learned that have been maybe ah ha moments for for you all, I’ll start out here and I’ll start with the one that maybe resonates loudest to me. Um, I am really passionate about the I. D. Um, and I am probably one of the most strong world people that I know, but what I’ve learned through this process is that passion and will, they don’t equate to time and energy specifically for this role. Um, there’s a lot of emotional labor would cut list that comes with being a person of color and leading this effort. There’s there’s teaching and there’s feeling and we have realized along the way, and I think mike mentioned it earlier, it’s really difficult full time job in a part time position. So there’s a a lot of things that you want to get done. There’s a lot of follow up that you want to get done, but there’s just not always enough time to get it done. Um, and it’s also understanding your balance with other portions of the organization. Um, making sure that your relationship with your HR team is a partnership and not a gatekeeping or uh oversight. Um, you have to understand from the beginning that you will work directly with HR, but you will work with them in a partnership. There are things that E I and D cannot do, but there are things that HR tends to make way too stringent and way to legal. That doesn’t create the trust that an inclusion council can bring. Um I think those are two of the biggest things. Everything else kind of your team formation really becomes very organic. Um I can say when we first put together the council, it was like, I’ve never worked with these people. I don’t know how to communicate. But it’s one of those things where uh I guess it’s exactly what inclusion is supposed to be. You start having conversations, you realize who these people are, You realize how much you have in common as opposed to how much difference there is. And then within the next few hours you’re talking about your whole life with people that you just met five minutes ago. Because you realized once we sat down and we were completely uninhibited and we had a conversation. We realized how alike we were to have these conversations. Um, so I’ll say those are some of the big things. Uh, there there’s a lot of emotional labor that will go on. And I say that because I’m a person of color, but I don’t know what it’s like to not be a person of color and to have to have these conversations. So that emotional tax may be great on everyone. Um, I will say there’s also uh disillusion that comes along with, uh, just what were, and I say we as people of color are going through kind of when things happen in the world. I think it’s difficult for everyone to realize that it’s also happening directly to us in that moment. And there’s going to have to be some patience and understanding and time that left us be able to perform two roles to work through personally what’s happening, but also to come out and still be a leader and say, I see this is happening, but we still we’re still about progress here. Yeah, just like eating let Yeah. Just one thing at uh, just unintentionally alienating others. I think that that’s been something that I’ve come across and and learn from kind of just by being part of the council when some of the to nina’s point some more conversations getting to know everyone. Uh, for for example, in the uh, the use of pronouns, the correct pronouns uh, for colleagues I’ve been um during this process, a number of us have been educated on that scene how important that is. Um when I when I first started and just because I am a black man, I when I thought diversity, I was just thinking black, white, you know, race. There’s a lot of different things within that makes everyone diverse whether, you know, age, gender, uh, sexual identification. So there’s a lot of things in that. And it’s it’s been a learning experience for me. And it’s this just certain words that you say or things that you don’t say says a lot to other people, right? So I think by taking strong stances against racism against any discrimination outwardly and openly says a lot by not saying stuff even though you don’t agree with it and not defending and they’re not defending someone that says just as much. So I think that’s something just within this process. It’s been very important for me. Uh, and and a lot of other people to learn and just be mindful of Yeah, great point mike. And his phrase, I think something goes like, you know, the sound of your silence is overwhelmingly deafening, right? So um you can communicate a lot through inaction uh as well, so um maybe might want to take kick this one off to and and talk a little bit about what we’re doing to ensure that, you know, these principles, these practices, the cultural fabric of what we’re trying to build here, uh doesn’t go away with, you know, tomorrow, right, that it’s lasting and sustainable. Yeah, we’re documenting everything for one and we’re starting, we’re not just doing it within the centers. So uh Anger miller Rco is also executive sponsor who sits in all the meetings are head of HR and lucero is also in all the meetings as well. So those things that were other than just kind of setting it within our individual committee groups, they’re becoming standard within whether it’s indoctrination into the employee handbook, uh, whether it’s 100 adding bias interrupter, um, surveys and also training for new hires. That’s something that a list on that’s going to be required as we’re, as we bring on additional colleagues and we’re starting to set different time periods where each colleague already in the workplace has to take the same uh, um, surveys and also training. Right? So this is to make sure that no matter who is in place within the council, uh, that this is going to be something that just becomes the fabric of our site, Right? So if some of the things that we’ve taken upon ourselves to, some of us have already done trainings, right? So now it’s actually gonna be required from all levels, whether it’s uh, kind of, your level money kind of the executive level down to different tech leads in the in the center down to cut new colleagues also. So that’s so the some of the steps that we have taken continue to take um and by having kind of that executive responses to back in in in leadership, it’s it’s being documented and part of really the guidelines. Um and for the company versus kind of just some things that we’re trying to unintentionally maybe work towards. Yeah, mean anything to add to that uh kind of sustainability. I will say that we’re trying to be uh more focused on our senior leadership, so we’re looking to take a step down from the executive leadership but also not encumber our new hires and look at that feeder that senior leadership is being a full on, even though the whole company is an extension of the council. We’re looking at senior leadership to be ones that push these efforts. Um they have a lot of influence. They also have some tenure with the company. They know what our culture was like in the development centers. So they’re able to encompass all these things that we’re looking to work directly with, that senior leadership to be champions for inclusion as we continue to move forward with training and uh surveys just to make sure that not only do they feel engaged but also that they’re learning since they are so impactful on our other colleagues. Right. Right. Cool. But one of the things that, you know, the company from the get go has been built around our three pillars of colleagues, clients and community. And so talk to me a little bit about what the I. D. Is doing to make sure that we’re not only focusing on ourselves and how we get better and we get healthier, but how we help our communities communities get healthier as well. Nina you’ve been very intentional kind of on that within the community. Talk about some of the things that we’ve done kind of as a company, not just mobile, that you’ve exposed the rest of the company to some of your efforts as well within the community. I think that’s important to highlight. Um I think across the board we’ve all done a lot of uh focused on where our centers are located and I got to have to give that credit completely to monte. So we are in downtown areas which are usually surrounded by underserved communities. So in each of our development centers, although we started out in mobile with reaching out and inviting these uh students in to see a day in the life, I know that multiple development centers across our entire company have done the same thing, bringing these uh Children in showing them people that look like them, giving them better skills. Uh, We have connected with other schools that aren’t able to bring their students in. There’s a lot of resourcing issues that come with getting your students to the school, but uh, we’ve been able to take some of our colleagues out to those schools and do an hour of code at the school. We we’ve even gone as far as to bring teachers in for a work day where the teachers sit with our developers and they learn how to engage their students in these underserved communities. Um, we’ve looked for alternate pathways. So we’ve connected with part, we have partnerships with people who aren’t necessarily looking for college pathway, but they do want to get into technology. So we’ve connected with them to make sure that we’re looking in all the areas. Um, and then there’s a nice one thing that we do, uh we donate bookbags, we look for opportunities to buy lunch. Um you know sometimes it’s not the money that you donate but it’s the time and the thought that counts. So we try to make sure that when it comes to the community that we are being more thoughtful too. So let me let me highlight that specific there where you said the lunch nina. So uh juneteenth uh started out a mobile became a company wide event this year. We ever do that virtually, but you know, was a key part in uh identifying different organizations within the cities that are centers are in and donating lunch. So we we we identified some ordered lunch for them, but specifically from black businesses in the area. So monty and executive monty gave approval. Uh, also for all the colleagues in our center if they ordered lunch from a black restaurant. Uh, partner for Uber. We we talked and how to partnership with Uber as well that our side took care of that, right? So that was a way to not only expose all the colleagues to different um, black restaurants uh, in the area that they might not have even known about, also gave that business and exposure to those specific restaurants. At the same time, we were all able to donate males uh, throughout the number of organizations within our communities. Right? So that was something that I know I was very proud of and and Nina, I’m gonna have to definitely praise her for that. She was a big part of that and and pulled me into some conversations as well. So that was I think a very big, successful kind of community wide, company wide event that we had. So we did a lot of good thanks mike. And I saw one question pop up in the chat was was that personal employee funds or those company funds? And those are company funded efforts. Um so I’ll ask one more question of each of you, and and then maybe we’ll have some time Tiffany for any questions uh from our audience, uh at least a couple of them. So my my last question for each of you is given what, you know, now, been at this for a little bit working on it. Um what advice would you give to others? Who may be starting out earlier in this journey, or somewhere else in this journey? So I’ll jump out here, and uh I’ll use the monte is um I will give you kind of uh how I C E I and D. From an analogy um I think you have to think about this like a tree. Um You start with an acorn and it takes a lot to get an acorn to become an oak tree. There’s gonna be watering, there’s gonna be pruning, there’s gonna be times where you actually think it’s dead and not growing, but you have to play the long game with the I. And D. And you have to realize that it’s going to continue going on past you and that’s what you’re planning for is truly the future of that growth. So my main point is it’s all about patients and going back and reiterating those steps to make sure that what you did the last time that you grow a little bit on that last step for improvements. And even when you think that you’ve reached the end of an objective where you can check it off, it doesn’t really work that way for ei and D You may check off a check box because, let’s be honest, there is a return on investment that we can measure for inclusion. But at the end of the day, you still want to keep growing on that same objective because you learn so much along the way while you’re trying to talk about, for example, we talked about implicit bias training. We were going to specifically teach people not to be biased. Well, as we went down that road, we realized, but that’s not enough. We need some interrupters to understand that this is what you should be doing, not that you shouldn’t be doing it. This is more what you should be doing. So that little effort of that one branch of our tree turned into a much larger branch of, oh, we now need to look at training for all of these specific parts. So I think it’s just understanding that you may start with something small, but it’s going to continue to grow and if you have to cut back some pieces and go in a different direction, that’s not a failure, that’s just redirecting. But you’re still going towards that end goal. Yeah, just the only thing I would add their nina thank you is uh, make it specific towards your company. What, what, what works maybe at one company depending on size and kind of how everything is structured might not work at, you know, like a start up for a younger company. Right? So I think you have to dependent on kind of the workforce that you have there and kind of where you are as far as kind of diversity efforts, leadership, it could be structured probably a little differently with still same underlying principles. Keep that in mind remain agile in this point, things come up that you might have to change, right? So you might have to tweak certain action items, different goals like Covid. We changed a few things made some of the community events that we’re gonna have a person change. That’s virtually so organized that and structure that a little differently. Right? So I think just remain an agile have back and from your executive leadership because that’s very important. That allows Us to have a voice and our voices to be hurt, right? So by having that from top down them 100% on board and making sure everybody below is accountable, that helps. Really kind of get a lot of the strategy, um, uh, adhered to within the company. Oh, thanks, mike. Thank you. Need to appreciate that. Um, Tiffany or Jamai are there? We’ve got five minutes left, so, um, thought we open it up for any other questions from our audience. Yeah, thanks money. Um, there’s a lot of questions I have, but I can’t hug it so merrily um asked the question and I’m gonna just tweak it a little bit because you address some of it. Um they have a high growth start up company and I want to know, she says, I want to know um what you could have done early on to avoid the football fit pitfalls that we were gonna have to look out for. So it’s kind of like the way I address that is you’ve got a big ship now, if you were starting over, you know, what could you do as a startup to approach to approach this differently? It’s a big question. Yeah, certainly, and, you know, I think it’s a great question by the way, and I think the reality is, um, you can, uh, choose your what you want to be hard, right? If you want this to be really, really hard down the road, then you can ignore these things and maybe go to where it’s easy to recruit people and go to your own networks and the people in your co founders that that already know each other. The reality is, you know, I’m no different than this. Those folks are going to look a lot like me, right, older white male. Um, but if we decide now to do the hard thing, which is, let’s go figure out where that talent is in other places that we would normally, uh, knee jerk reaction, go look in, then, uh, then that will make it much easier down the road. That would be one. Uh, and I think just the fact that you’re cognizant of it. Now I mentioned earlier, we fall into a habit so easily right. Whether it’s recruiting from the same schools or um, you know, pulling practices that we had from our previous employers that work there, but that, you know, make no sense here in this given time. Right? So I think those are some of the things just to be cognizant of. And the last thing I would add is that, you know, bring in some council, whether that’s paid professional advice or someone you can just trust, who’s going to give you a really, really honest, truthful answer to your questions. Thank you. Gerald Solomon, who is working with e sports education, wanted to be only Ryan johnson in Atlanta at Sea X community. I do not, but I’ll make sure to go, uh, go talk him on linkedin and find, I’ll have Gerald for reach out to you and give you the information. Um, any other questions I think we addressed, you know, one of the questions was that uh, if you go to your website, it is white male low first. Now I added the low person. Um, but you did address that and, and and I think you address to beautifully. So I think that that is something that people are trying to figure out. So I’m going to close with the question I asked, which was do you think you’ll provide a toolkit that other businesses could use? I mean, I personally have been looking at, you know, diversity inclusion across corporate America and it needs a whole redesign. Um, do you think you guys would, would be able to start thinking about how this could be used by dr Angela Jackson and her team and new profit and others that are working across the country and diversity inclusion. So my short answer would be yes. I I mean we are all stronger when we can share our experiences and our learnings, right? Um both good and bad and so we would be an open book to share what we’ve developed what we’ve come up with. We’ve certainly borrowed from other companies. So we’re part of bain capital’s double impact portfolio bank Capital large private equity company. But they have a social impact fund of which were part of we’ve been relying on them to feed us other stuff from those other portfolio companies. So absolutely, we would love to share what have we got. That is really cool. So Angela, if you want to have a further conversation with monty, please, I mean, I think that’s just fabulous and Michael and Nina obviously who are leading the work. Thank you. Thank you. Okay, on behalf of the closer team were at 9 59 in New Mexico. This was inspiring beyond belief. I knew it would be, thank you Nina and Michael for, for the, um, you know the ground you’re laying for this incredible work. I’m going to be sitting in and out of the email with some things that you said and um, bravo to you um, in your leadership monty. Just to remind her next week, my dear friend, dr Portmanteau Jasa will be leading the session as a launch and metal, a startup company and merrily Mayo, my other super dear friend who helped start to innovate educate with me. They are the co founders Evan metal and we’re going to have an amazing session on the new platform that they’ve unveiled to ensure equity and inclusion above learning in the marketplace. So, um, thanks everyone. Happy friday and bravo. Thank you tonight. Thank you for having us. Bye. Right.
? 19Nov2020: UNMUDL
UNMUDL: Reimagining the Learner & Talent Marketplace
Transcription:
14:00:20 Thank you everyone for joining us today. I’m Julie analysis.
14:00:33 Chief marketplace engagement officer at social tech. And we’re a social benefit corporation that builds technology for social good.
14:00:34 I am my co host today is, I’ll Lewis, who’s vice president of economic and workforce development at Bellevue College in beautiful Washington state now would you like to wave to your to the job your adoring audience here.
14:00:51 What what what binds together.
14:00:55 What I want to say that over the next two hours.
14:00:57 Alan I will be joined by an all star lineup, to talk about reimagining the, the learner and talent marketplace, as we go through the presentation I’ll you know I encourage folks to type questions into the q amp a box with you’ll find, you’ll find that
14:01:15 that at the bottom of your zoom to the bottom right.
14:01:19 And, and so it would bind together this this all star group is a belief in the central role in workforce development
14:01:29 community colleges.
14:01:32 You know, our national treasure. I like to say the nation’s training infrastructure. They provide a ticket to the middle class.
14:01:44 Ongoing skills upgrades and needed social support for a diverse population of learners and they do so at a scale unmatched by any other trading entity.
14:01:55 But, community colleges can be challenging to work with on their courses are often hard to access, you know, we found a can take as many as a dozen clicks to register for example, employers don’t always know how to how best to engage with community colleges
14:02:19 and lawyers don’t often know the return on investment at a given course by our estimate. There are 64 and a half million working learners in this country.
14:02:26 And by that I mean individuals who need training to get a better job.
14:02:30 And with a pandemic addressing the workforce needs of this population is central to our recovery as a nation.
14:02:37 And that’s, that’s a statement I feel very strongly cuts across all across the country across political lines, very broadly shared and and so in addition to making sure that the 64 million working learners get the training they need.
14:02:54 We also need to make sure that they’re connected efficiently to the 30 million employers are going to grow our economy.
14:03:01 So today, you’ll hear from the visionary leaders of seven community colleges who built on model and models and online marketplace for these working learners and employers.
14:03:13 Now, educational institutions are historically slow to change, but the model college leaders and their outstanding teams have put their reputations on the line and dedicated significant energy to building out on metal, and they’ve done it in just one
14:03:26 year which is really quite amazing.
14:03:28 So today, I’m pleased to report that on the on model marketplaces live at open for business, model.com yay. I’m don’t go there now though stay here. Stay with us.
14:03:40 Because we’re immediately upon completion of this session.
14:03:43 What’s so striking about a model is that in some ways, about this whole venture is it really is all about the technology. And in the building on model, we’re rethinking the very processes and workflows and policies that have bought us down in the past,
14:03:59 and it’s it’s really a disruption in the best sense. So you’ll hear about the vision of the model college leaders. What this means for the business of education for educators themselves for employers and learners.
14:04:11 At our format will include conversations with the college leaders, as well as key partners and stakeholders including employers and students and and a national thought leaders.
14:04:22 So before I turn it over to Alex and introduce himself in the first panel. I do want to say that we’re deeply saddened by the recent passing of Dr. Jerry Weber, the former president of Bellevue College, and an initial enthusiastic and Gaspari non model,
14:04:38 and I’m sure that Jerry would be very very excited to know that the models come to fruition. So how it’s all yours.
14:04:45 Thank you, Julian thank you for that great introduction. Good afternoon, everyone. My name is Albert Lewis Jr. I’m the Vice President of economic and workforce development at Bellevue College, and we are proud to be one of the founding colleges and model.
14:04:58 You know it’s interesting when we were first approached about this opportunity were very skeptical because of the time involved, and the whole concept, but the more we thought about it, it made a lot of sense.
14:05:10 One of the things that we pride ourselves on as many college community colleges do is being able able to provide relevant training to workforce to work for us at different stages in their development.
14:05:23 And so, my tasks today is to introduce our first speaker and first panel. I’d like to introduce to you, permitted yourself she’s the CEO of social tech and the founder of work and learn futures lab, located in Silicon Valley so I would like to bring to
14:05:40 the screen or Monday.
14:05:40 Thank you out thanks Julian and to me and Tiffany.
14:05:44 So Hi everybody.
14:05:45 It’s been a year since.
14:05:48 At the last close it, and since then five and now seven community colleges have stepped out of their comfort zones, co created on metal. com to unbundle the future of working and the future of learning.
14:06:02 And they’ve taken control of their own futures so today I have with me Lambert, who’s the chair of the metal steering Council and Chancellor of Pima Community Colleges.
14:06:13 Add leech from nice side who has been a major supporter and Tracy heart slur from Central New Mexico out of Albuquerque and original founding members and collaborators that have taken a hold of the future.
14:06:32 So by coming together through in metal to form a national network of community colleges, each of the colleges are melding together their physical infrastructure within overlaid digital marketplace to make their courses services credentials and space easily
14:06:49 available to their locale. But even more importantly worldwide today with over 150 courses from seven colleges they’ve created a trifecta environment for learners with paths to work, college credit and industry credentials.
14:07:09 Today, on metal. com is open for business and stretches coast to coast from San Diego to SUNY broom and Binghamton, New York. Here’s an inspiration from Jordan Matheson that says it all.
14:07:28 And opportunities gotcha befuddled log on now will help you finish the puzzle multiple courses wrapped up in one bundle, helping you dictate your futures on modeled futures on model.
14:07:43 You’re going to hear from Jordan a little later today, and model the course to jobs market place streamlines this relationship between skills driven education and employment.
14:07:54 So that learners can shop, a one stop skills driven marketplace for community college courses and services that are available on demand, including both online and in person for hands on.
14:08:09 So employers can also recruit directly from all the community colleges for the most diverse untapped highly qualified talent pool anywhere.
14:08:19 So why and the how did the founding colleges and nice side pull this off in a year.
14:08:26 And why is the trifecta bet to foster solid connections for learners among college credit work and industry credentials, a good bet for the future.
14:08:38 Lee, as chair of the unlevel steering Council and Chancellor of Pima what compelled you and your leadership to make such a risky bet for the future. Are there any trends that drove your decision making, that you might point to.
14:08:52 Well, thank you for the question I will first, I want to say thank you to you and your team for your tremendous leadership and really bringing forward this concept that is now reality to us in the middle group and then we’re proud to be a founding member.
14:09:07 I think as we look at the trends that really helped shape my thinking it revolved around three pieces, one is industry 4.0. That’s the integration of the physical digital biological worlds, along with the enabling for superpowers and not countries, but
14:09:24 artificial intelligence, mobile technology cloud computing and the Internet of Things, so you layer that over the reality of the demographic shifts that have been occurring in our country is, you know, coming out of the Great Recession, the fertility
14:09:38 rates have been pretty low, that’s going to impact us on the K 12 pipeline to our colleges, but what we’re also seeing is, is the graying of the United States happening at the same time, and then the fastest growing segment of learners are going to be
14:09:53 those adult learners and many of them now as you know, are going to be more and more people of color, so so that’s another important piece that added into the equation.
14:10:02 Speaking of the adult learner and if you look at the data from strata that they’ve been tracking pre pandemic and pandemic. It’s very clear. He’s adult learners.
14:10:14 Want more opportunities for non degree pathways, they need to get in get short term training to something that’s relevant to a career area that’s going to pay a livable family working wage and getting those skills.
14:10:26 So those are three areas that have really been important to us at Piedmont Community College.
14:10:32 Wow, that’s awesome Lee thanks so much for for kind of setting that big picture for us. And, you know, Add I think maybe if you could kind of add to the conversation a little bit about community colleges and who they see as competitors and how that’s
14:10:51 been changes how how that’s been changing over the years, kind of based on what we talked about a little bit, it’d be awesome if you could provide an institutional perspective across, you know, 600 colleges that are a part of nice on.
14:11:13 Thank you for providing me with that opportunity. And also let me. Echo leave comments regarding kudos to your team and the founding members and everybody who’s gotten us to this point today.
14:11:24 Community of technical colleges no longer have a monopoly on their local student days. Just about everyone has a choice of multiple learning providers, all of which compete directly with community and technical colleges for students.
14:11:38 First on the list, our other community and technical colleges. Some schools have begun to openly compete with other two year institutions in their area.
14:11:46 A College in New Jersey has frozen his tuition and mandatory fees, in large part because nearby community colleges are less expensive.
14:11:55 Local four year institutions have always offered the first instruction.
14:12:00 However, some University program and is moving into Workforce Development Program and that program and that has traditionally been seen as belonging to community and technical colleges, private and public nonprofit four year institutions like Purdue University
14:12:25 global and Southern New Hampshire University of considerable allied options do University global offers more than 175 online programs, including associate degrees in Southern New Hampshire University offers close to a dozen online associate degree programs.
14:12:34 The decline in undergraduate enrollment at public community and technical colleges combined with increasing numbers of students enrolled and for profit colleges suggested they may be competing for some of the same students.
14:12:47 Employers have become more receptive to candidates with for profit online degrees, which makes these institutions increasingly more attractive for seminars, any professional associations, long known as being advocates of professional development and continuing
14:13:02 education, offer content credentialing programs and have a huge advantage over community and technical colleges, since they have existing relationships with their members.
14:13:13 Is this an industry. In addition to being consumers of what community and technical colleges produce, and also be competitive. SAS, the business analytics software and services company offers its own professional training and development, along with the
14:13:27 Career Resource Center.
14:13:29 When a soldier joins the United States Air Force with their high school diploma or GED, they’re automatically enrolled in a community college of the Air Force.
14:13:38 Likewise, a joint Navy, Marine Corps effort will create a new United States Naval Community College, which will offer roughly 10 associate degrees in industry certifications in high demand fields needed in the civilian world course aggregators like edX
14:13:55 uni Coursera, and Udacity are trusted platform for education and training for millions of learners.
14:14:02 Well, many students want an accredited credential community and technical colleges would be wise not to discredit course aggregators and MOOC based online learning platforms.
14:14:13 More than ever before, community and technical colleges will face intense competitions from all sorts of educational providers.
14:14:21 I suggest that they don’t look at the competition as a threat but instead, considered an opportunity to examine what they’re doing and how they can make it better.
14:14:30 I can they meet the demand for non degree offerings and work related learning by positioning their institution for the increasingly digital future.
14:14:40 Yeah, thanks add you brought up a lot of examples, all the way from snood to the military to the car, there’s just so much going on that there’s need everywhere and that has a lot of implications for the future business of learning at community colleges
14:14:57 and Tracy in your role as a brand new president of Central New Mexico college as of January one, and what are some of the implications for the future for the business of learning that you’ve been facing or so apartment or thank you for the introduction
14:15:26 certainly thanks to my colleagues, I, I’ve been familiar with and modeling this conversation on the future of work. Fortunately, we’ve been involved at CNN had been involved in this conversation for years. So it’s, it’s fantastic to actually get to today and this week and launching a model so we’re incredibly proud to be part of
14:15:39 so we’re incredibly proud to be part of one of seven institutions to participate in this event.
14:15:51 And this effort and what’s so important I think about the business of learning, which we had senses of right.
14:15:51 Ed and Lee both described the tea leaves, we’ve seen this, these aren’t say murmurings but we’ve seen these efforts with competitors with, and will say competitors other institutions.
14:16:00 Military others who are looking at ways to help individuals to meet a need. And so what does that mean for the business of learning so coming into this role.
14:16:09 I looked at the, the, the, what the who and how right so the what is we absolutely are working at community colleges to build on our nimble responsive nature to really think about how we have to repackage and provide quality content for value in a, in,
14:16:26 I will say short because certainly experience and skills can be gained and always a short period of time but really that honestly just in time training.
14:16:33 We know that people need skills particularly now they’re looking for ways to accomplish their professional goals or economic security and they’re doing that by looking at, but by seeking solutions and we want community colleges, which are trusted institutions
14:16:51 and local communities to be the first source for that and so on model provides that opportunity in terms of the business learning about the what, how can we repackage How can we build on our partner institutions, and I do look at at our colleagues in
14:17:16 partner institutions here as partners. We certainly offer competitive courses but but we are all able to meet a growing need as Julian pointed out 64 million working learners are looking for answers and help. So we’re all ready to pitch in and so we look at the word, how do we package that and also make
14:17:21 at the what how do we package that and also make sure that we’re providing it as we now know in this pandemic. And just working remotely we know that the skills that we often provide to our local communities have to have a broader reach, because we know
14:17:35 that our students are working learners are going to be working for employers who are regional who are global and we want our resonance and our citizens to be competitive in that marketplace and to be able to be resilient as, as a Industrial Revolution,
14:17:46 Lee noted continues to to progress so we look at the what we look at the who I mentioned the displaced workers I mentioned our adult learners. We know that our students come in and out of our systems all the time, not the traditional pipeline as much.
14:18:01 So we know we have to meet students where and working learners where they are. And it’s often not in a two to four year degree program so on model certainly gives us that platform to do that.
14:18:11 And of course, as we look at the business of learning, just like the businesses.
14:18:15 The business models that have changed so much in the last couple of months, particularly, we know students just like you and I can get our services our banking our groceries online, people want to be able to access education with the same amount of ease.
14:18:30 Not surprisingly, they don’t find our processes really intuitive financial aid applications enrollment needs Student Help, I’m a veteran or I may have a disability and so I need additional help, somehow they don’t find that to be seamless or easy or accessible.
14:18:44 So we absolutely need to change how we do the business of work because that’s one that’s expected, we know it’s good practice we know it’s what student experience.
14:18:53 We know that’s what a student experience can lead to a successful result, whether it’s training and certainly successful employment.
14:18:59 And so the opportunity and again and it all goes back to the global community colleges tend to be local, right, we want to meet our local needs but we increasingly know we have to have one foot in the locality, and one foot in our region in our, in our
14:19:13 global network because that’s what our residents demand that’s what our mission compels us to provide to have individuals, and students and learners who are able to succeed, over time, as the community as the, the industry’s change.
14:19:27 So I think those are some of the ways we can we can tie back to that, that welcome global marketplace. Here we are. So, breaking apart this panel. Here we are.
14:19:38 Thanks Tracy. So, I have a question for you, and Lee, add Tracy pointing it to all of you. Why, why not just join a Coursera, or an edX. Why was there a need to have a separate and muddle like, you know, why not just jump on to link learning or something
14:19:57 like that and put your stuff online. What’s, what’s actually different about a metal that, that helps meet the, the future space that you all have been thinking about as far as the future of a student, the future of a community college and your role and
14:20:21 the future of the workforce.
14:20:19 I’d be glad to go first if that’s okay. I think first and foremost.
14:20:26 It’s a crowded marketplace out there with those other providers, and I think it’s easy as community colleges to get lost in the, in the mix with the, the, the Harvard’s and the MIT is in the Stanford’s.
14:20:39 So that’s one piece, but also I think we have a unique differentiated mission. And by having something that is unique and differentiated to us, where we can bring in what we’re best at and that is connecting the learner, with the employer, and then integrating
14:20:54 that to our physical infrastructure and building in the credit already into the courses so you know if you take course x, you’re going to get so many credits for that, if you want to come over to the credit side, but you also know which employers are
14:21:11 already hiring folks with those same same credentials, if you will. So, so I think that differentiation, the uniqueness of us and not being in a crowded marketplace where we are defining the space and not somebody else are important variables.
14:21:27 Awesome.
14:21:28 And if I could just add to that, I think that this is a natural progression of the national conversation around.
14:21:36 Its, its skills and certificates and degrees, it’s not an either or we’ve all lived through 10 years of the degree everybody needs a college degree everybody needs this post secondary credential.
14:21:47 And what we’ve seen is the evolution of this in the last 10 years to say it is a it is skills, and a degree and I really highlight what we mentioned in terms of.
14:21:56 We want to make people where they are and get the skills and the training they need to either get back into the workforce or get into a different type of work, but also point them directly to a here’s what you’re going to need going on in the rest of
14:22:07 your time, you’re going to learn lots of skills over time and gain many certificates and credentials, but that degree we know is still often a litmus test for many employers and we know that also that that gives them gives our students more opportunities
14:22:19 just over, over time, so this is a natural progression, and the fact that we get to do this with on model and Pima and Bellevue and our other partners allows us to go to scale, which is not something that any one of us I think could do on our own.
14:22:32 So it’s a tremendous opportunity I think to provide that local learning at the same time, help with the National progression of the discussion around attainment and completion.
14:22:43 Very cool. So, at the Institute for the future couple of the zones of innovation some future zone of innovation that you’ve been bringing up with your responses there is this idea of digital physical blends where it’s not an or any longer.
14:23:00 it is the reality of our day that both the digital side and the physical side have to come together so being able to get hands on learning and experiences and having the contact, building social capital, but yet being able to do it from your smartphone,
14:23:18 when you have a few minutes to be able to to actually learn and study so I love how you guys are really thinking about that physical and digital blending that’s happening, leveraging the Community College infrastructure throughout the US, the other concept
14:23:36 I heard you all kind of start to touch on was this idea of human machine collaboration. So the superpowers that lead mentioned, and and you know and and the reality of so many jobs in this day were like with Uber and Lyft, it’s a computer that is managing
14:23:56 all those drivers and instructing them as to what their job is. And hey, pick up a person from point A and stick them in your car and drive them to point B and then drop them off and do and now go to point C and grab your next fair and that whole dispatch
14:24:16 job has been taken away, but even more importantly, the job of a manager has been taken away so a computer as an. So nowadays we’re operating in with machines as our bosses or even our employees, or we’re having to do one on one communication.
14:24:37 So, how do you all think about that with a muddle with everything that you’ve had to face with going online and and getting ready for the new age and at the same time you bring you’ve been bringing up on metal to be able to respond to rapid rescaling
14:24:54 upscaling and lifelong partnerships.
14:25:01 and lifelong partnerships. Trisha you want to go first. You have to unmute.
14:25:05 Okay, that was kind of you saw me. I think of it as. So as a new president I think about it as I have 2000 plus employees myself as an employer so what does that mean in terms of re skilling and, and I can, and so I appreciate that other panelists will
14:25:19 be from CNN, help us think about the future of work which is really made my own role as an employer, similar to what I think employers are seeking of our own students in our, in our working learners, which is how do we help with these transitions of going
14:25:32 from A. I would say technician to an analyst right i mean there is still absolutely a role for individuals and work and we all know the statistics about how the jobs of, you know, the jobs of tomorrow aren’t even available yet we can’t imagine them yet
14:25:47 but they will certainly evolve. So I do think that’s why our role of at least at community colleges and as part of this network is so important for us to help keep people in mind.
14:25:58 Keep in mind, our rescaling, it’s not only our students it’s our own employees and as an employer our responsibility to help that continuous learning, which is why I think it’s fantastic that I can have my colleagues or my employees work with and take
14:26:11 courses at Pima as part of a model I mean so think about the training we can all have just even among ourselves, let alone meeting our local workforce needs in our global needs so I look at it I think many of us are all wearing multiple hats and and trying
14:26:25 trying to plan for the future and I can see where the role and and model has become even more central to my core business way of doing business and helping me relate to others who are seeking our students and what our students needed the skills they need
14:26:38 to have moving forward. So, thank you.
14:26:43 Let me add with just within an analogy.
14:26:47 So those of us who are old enough to remember the days when the pilot used to carry this huge satchel.
14:26:54 And in that satchel was all the manuals of that airplane that they were going to be piloting well guess what that pilot now carries on to the airplane and iPad, iPad has the pre programming flight plan that once they get in that cockpit, they, they connect
14:27:10 it up, and the computer takes over.
14:27:14 And once they get us off the ground to computers flying the plane, and then it’s time to land the pilot takes back over. So that’s a classic example of this digital physical, biological integration of industry 4.0, and by the way that’s not just touching
14:27:31 the pilots also touching the folks that we train the air airframe and powerplant technicians who service and maintain those airplanes. Now with the digital pieces, you’re no longer having to go back and forth to look at the manual and all that they have
14:27:47 it right there on their iPad, once they complete the, the servicing of that particular part of the plane, they just click it and then everybody who’s connected into that same app universe, they have the updated information about servicing so this is,
14:28:04 this is an exciting time for, for all of us, and but we need to make sure we’re skilling folks appropriately, so that they can incorporate the digital and the physical and the biological components that are necessary to be successful going forward.
14:28:19 You guys have been awesome. So everybody you heard it here first. Back to you, Julian,
14:28:31 earning opportunities. Gotcha.
14:28:33 Log on that will help you finish the puzzle multiple courses wrapped up in one, helping you to get your futures on modeled features on model.
14:28:46 Okay, well I’m on not turned on yet Can you all hear me.
14:28:53 Yes. Yes, you can. Excellent. Okay, here we go. Sorry, just transitions transitions we’re not quite at the, you know, at the CNN quality shifts here with our 19 speakers, but we’re doing pretty well I must say, and it’s quite a technology, the journey
14:29:19 keeping this all moving, but the SP official unveiling of the model, a jingle there. Thank you so much Lee Tracy as a mentor that was really an amazing kickoff session, and we want to take a little bit deeper now around this notion of melding the digital
14:29:30 and physical worlds, and how that really opens the way for a more flexible approach to training and education that doesn’t sacrifice quality sacrifice quality, and what I’m really talking about now is the full range from online to hybrid to face to face,
14:29:48 um, you know synchronous asynchronous and so I’m now joined by Nicole Trimble who leads talent rewire high tech all day you are their inbox down second over talent rewire represents a coalition of leading companies that are focused on building pathways
14:30:07 to success for low skilled workers, including sorry I went online Patagonia T Mobile App let Dave’s Killer brands, I don’t know that one but I do know that one, my family’s on gluten free, and Steven is Interim Chancellor of the Maricopa Community College
14:30:27 System in Phoenix, which, you know, and president of gateway, which is one of the colleges of America system a founding partner and I will point out that Phoenix is the fastest growing in the city and the best friend said in the US I believe for about
14:30:44 four years. And so, all sorts of connection there with employers and having to reach lots of people, lots of new ways to jump right in here and Nicole.
14:30:54 What is so our session here, why is high flex suddenly popping up. What is high flex and why is it valuable to employers. Yeah, thanks for asking me to be here to talk about this and from the employer perspective.
14:31:08 Hi flex flexes when learn every learning activity is offered in person.
14:31:13 Synchronous online asynchronous online, and so students can decide for themselves for every class and activity how they want to participate and I’ll tell you a personal story why this is so important.
14:31:24 I have a son who’s an engineering major and decided for him with engineering in person was really important. And he was gonna, he was gonna risk it this year when a lot of kids were just going online, but semester he had both a head injury on, and he
14:31:38 had coated. And because he was in a school that had high flex. He’s been able to keep up with his, his schoolwork he’s been able to like go on and watch the videos for calculus, or chemistry or engineering which he really wanted to do in person, or he
14:31:53 has been able to like watch a video while he had coded and then be part of the class and get called on. And so it’s really important from a student perspective and from the employer perspective you can imagine why this is so important, so I’ll talk a
14:32:06 little bit more about that but that’s what I flexes way, they will think thank you so much and Stephen so Maricopa has certainly been Flexi coded. How is this.
14:32:18 Can you speak a little bit about of how is it changing the way your faculty teach now and for the foreseeable future.
14:32:26 Thank you very much. Yes, we’ve had to be very flexible as it says if Maricopa has been going through some yoga experience with the amount of folks that we’ve been having to do.
14:32:37 So dealing with appreciate that opportunity to share what we’ve been doing. Just to give you some perspective on on on Maricopa.
14:32:46 In the spring of 2020 when the pandemic hit, we moved nearly 22,000 classes to an online environment in less than three weeks. That was extremely challenging.
14:32:54 And so it’s given us an opportunity to explore how we deliver education in a new way, high flex is one of those options that we use, but I’m going to be really honest with you, it’s it’s convenient for the student, it’s, I know our employers like it I
14:33:09 know we’re working adults like it, but our some of our faculty are really struggling with it because it requires the management of students that are showing up in the classroom, face to face, managing those that are attending online, and then also managing
14:33:23 the student that is neither face to face or online that particular day, but decides to watch a recorded lesson later, and then comes back to the faculty member with additional questions, so it’s it, there’s many moving parts to it, it’s certainly requires
14:33:39 creativity and requires flexibility.
14:33:51 What it makes me feel like is the very first times in the early, the late 1990s and early 2000s when we began to introduce the concept of delivering classes entirely online.
14:33:53 As a faculty member, we talked about the struggles of doing it, then and how difficult it was to deliver education online. I see this high flex being that same way.
14:34:02 It’s difficult, but it doesn’t mean that it can’t be mastered and it doesn’t mean that it can’t grow for right now. For us, it’s, it’s burgeoning, and I suspect that will continue to give it a try.
14:34:15 Right, right. Yeah, well, it’s, you know, I mean, changes, difficult.
14:34:21 It takes time and I mean it is kind of amazing how quickly you move to that 90% online and it’s going to take time to really work this through but I just don’t see us going back.
14:34:34 I’m going to pop it over to Al now, our you. Well, thank you both so much for that. Quick, quick, quick discussion there and you know I will say that every discussion we’re having today over these two hours and we’re barely scratching the surface, and
14:34:49 see this as conversation starters, we will certainly be doing more in depth discussions webinars, interviews, documents, kind of flush out all of these various points because any one of the speakers here today could be could be doing a two hour in, you
14:35:15 compelling keynote for an hour or two. So thank you so much and now I’m going to turn over to you to introduce our next group, thanks Joe and Joe, I’m totally in agreement with you, given what’s happened with over 19 I don’t think any of us are going
14:35:21 back to what we used to, I think, you know from our school perspective we’re looking to figure out how we lean into this new normal of being online. A lot of our faculties are uncomfortable with it but then over time we provided them with the tools to
14:35:32 make make them more comfortable with it. I really see that online modelling becoming a growing part of a bigger part of our make some courses that we move forward and our partnership with a model.
14:35:42 And so part of what we do as part of the unlimited platform.
14:35:46 It’s all about students but there’s another part of the platform that has to deal with employers because the purpose of educating our students is to prepare them for the workforce.
14:35:55 So our next session is going to talk about visionary talent sourcing sourcing and with a subtitle not the usual suspects, and it’s going to be moderated by Holly’s Danville strategy director for future learning and workforce from the Lumina Foundation,
14:36:11 like to bring Holly to the screen.
14:36:20 Everybody.
14:36:25 We’ve had a big wind storms coming through and my Internet’s been going in and out so I’m hopeful.
14:36:33 If not, really pleased to introduce the new panel.
14:36:49 That’s going to be talking about visionary talent sourcing in a focus on know, looking for the usual suspects, and the folks on this session, are Marlene Garcia, who’s the executive director of the California Student Aid Commission and former manager
14:36:53 of the Strategic Initiatives group at Apple. Dr Carlos Cortez president of San Diego continued education in the San Diego Community College District, and Dr.
14:37:12 Tony Pendergraph president of San one quality in Farmington New Mexico. So let me just
14:37:27 tell sourcing and why we’re not looking for the usual suspects.
14:37:18 For us to be more diverse and inclusive. And one of the most promising strategies is to work with community colleges, which you do have access to very diverse student populations, do of course offer education and trainings and our position very well for
14:37:31 local and regional workforce development. So for all these reasons for many others, community colleges are important part of solution, but unfortunately there’s always a button.
14:37:43 it’s kind of issues. It’s really not always been so easy to make the necessary connections between employers and columns and this is what we want to focus on
14:37:55 your first and I’m not seeing your picture on the screen. So I’m hoping you’re here.
14:38:01 If not, we’ll switch to Cardinals first but Marlene if you’re here. The first question is about sharing with us two or three lessons that you’ve learned from your experiences working with community colleges, about talent sourcing partnerships between
14:38:17 community calls and employers and especially how they may not have been the easiest for employers to work with.
14:38:25 Marlene is not with us. She’s not with us. Okay.
14:38:31 And one of the things I want to point out is that I hope everyone saw it was a really excellent interview with you, Colonel suppose, about a week ago and illusion, entitled continuing ed, as the strategic imperative for for community content.
14:38:45 And in that, in that interview. You mentioned that when you arrive in your position five years ago the San Diego Community College has zero courses fully online, and we all of course know what the situation is now putting your, in your experience, what
14:38:59 prevents employers from working or working well and talent sourcing with community colleges, and what are you doing differently to try to solve these issues.
14:39:09 First, just to clarify, my quote was that San Diego continuing education at zero courses offered fully online part of a multi College District and there were fully online courses at the other three colleges in our district It was my college that didn’t.
14:39:23 And I could go into why it’s a bit convoluted but it has to do with the enrollment and registration and residents to process. But to answer your, your actual question.
14:39:33 The, the overall in the state of California, there are 116.
14:39:42 Hundred and 1516 accredited community colleges and then to accredited adult education divisions North orange in San Diego continuing education. So there’s 118 accredited institution to the California Community College System of all the enrollments in
14:39:58 the largest higher education system in the world.
14:40:02 Less than 3% of them are ready short term intensive. Career Education certificate programs.
14:40:10 San Diego continuing education offers 75 plus free short term intensive job training programs that take three to six to nine months to complete these certificates are stackable.
14:40:24 And so there’s multiple points of entry, and there’s usually 567 certificates in a pathway so if you’re in the automotive pathway in the IT pathway in that in the nursing pathway.
14:40:36 There are opportunities to advance oneself within that pathway.
14:40:41 But this design is intentional to meet the needs of working adult learners.
14:40:48 All too often our community college system is focused on moving students through associate degree and bachelor degree pathways, or associate degree can take three four or five years for a student to complete.
14:41:02 And we look at who our community colleges serve. They’re often coming to us because they’re looking to advance themselves, professionally look at it transform their lives and they’re looking to do it as quickly and as efficiently as possible.
14:41:14 So the fact that less than 3% of our state enrollments are in non credit short term intensive Career Education pathways suggest that our state system is not focused on moving people and I think particularly now in light of the pandemic.
14:41:30 And this is why I believe on model has a real opportunity to be a game changer, is that there is increased desire not just by students but increasingly by employers, for our students in their employees to have requisite skills.
14:41:45 and cyber security and network design and particularly it in digital media pathway, there is less of an emphasis placed on degrees and credentials and a greater emphasis placed on the talent of the employees and so creating additional opportunities to
14:42:07 allow students to quickly move into employment opportunities I think should be a major redesign of our community college system. I believe that the core of your question, the disconnect between employers and community colleges is that community colleges
14:42:22 are large public bureaucracies, and we’re not nimble and we’re not responsive in the way that our, our proprietor counterparts can be, you know, it when employers come to us for a customized training when they come to us to make enhancements or changes
14:42:39 to our curriculum, those, those types of changes, move much slower through our bureaucratic systems. And so, my organization we’ve been working diligently to try to eliminate as much of that red tape to try to make ourselves more nimble and more responsive
14:42:57 to industry and one way that we’ve done that is we’ve moved our customized training into our foundation, which means for example when you know the San Diego workforce partnership for the San Diego housing authority comes to us and they need a customized
14:43:11 training in a particular area for a particular group of persons. I don’t have to wait two months to my board meets to sign a contract.
14:43:27 We can get a contract process within 24 hours that those are some of the roadblocks and some of the frustration I think employers often experience with community colleges.
14:43:30 Is that because they’re such large bureaucratic systems. It’s difficult for them to serve the needs of industry in an expedient manner, it’s so fascinating Collison, good to see there’s so many solutions and that 3% statistic is really interesting I would
14:43:46 have, I would never have guessed it would be that that percent but that’s something I think a lot of us might want to learn more about.
14:43:54 So to turn to you. What are you seeing working well or not so well between in Florida, we can call it a near area. And what are you doing to try to diversify talent sourcing opportunities for students.
14:44:09 Yes, community colleges are perfectly poised for the diverse talent sourcing for employers.
14:44:20 There are 1050 community colleges nationally, with 11.8 million students enrolled in credit and non credit courses.
14:44:28 Most of us at community colleges have extremely diverse student populations, for example at salmon college, we’re extremely proud that we are a majority minority serving institution.
14:44:42 And we are number one in the nation for granting certificates of one year or less to Native American students, and number two behind CNN and Albuquerque for granting associate degrees to Native American graduates.
14:44:56 And to me, developing strong relationships with employers is key to successful diverse talent sourcing. Our number one strategic direction here at San Juan college is to develop an agile and responsive business model, so that we can help more students
14:45:14 get in through an out of college into a very good job.
14:45:20 And we have transformed our institution. By creating seven pathways and accelerating programs with four week eight week courses that like Dr Cortez mentioned, and really rethinking our processes so that we can eliminate barriers for students and employers.
14:45:39 And it’s it’s vitally important that we deliver exactly what the employer needs, and we make it really easy for them to work with us. That’s one reason we opted to join and be part of be one of the founding partners in on model with some employers we
14:45:57 annual contracts, where we provide all of their professional development whether that means week long orientations, for their new employees to just continuing professional development.
14:46:10 We do also do a lot of just fee for service short term training, giving them exactly what they need just in time. Some employers work directly with our Career Services Director or our dealings.
14:46:26 To find employees that possess the specific skills they’re looking for, for large companies we usually work closely with their recruiters. So we can help them meet their targets and, and make sure, ensure that we have the students have the skills and
14:46:42 competencies needed. We’ve also hired an internship and apprenticeship coordinator to assist our employers, because you know, these types of opportunities internships for example, are really a 90 day interview for the employers.
14:46:59 We have also been extremely successful with innovative boot camps. I know many of you are familiar with boot camps that are offered in it, but we’ve kind of ventured out into other areas we offer a lot of CTE programs at the college.
14:47:16 And we’ve offered several earn while you learn boot camps, and these have been in welding, in partnership with employers and Workforce Solutions.
14:47:27 Each time the employer has hired over 20 of the participant participants. After a five or six week boot camp. We’ve offered offered a CL boot camp for water Hall, training, and several and for three employers.
14:47:48 But I do call them boot camps or some other means that you’re using for those.
14:47:52 We actually call them boot camps.
14:47:56 And we heavily advertise them and they earn while they earn. So it really helps underemployed or unemployed individuals and we we provide those wraparound services that they need.
14:48:13 So, great.
14:48:13 Looking forward to comes in we can get more information so I’ve got a note that Marlene is here.
14:48:19 I’m not seeing you on the screen Marlene, but I want to circle back and ask you whether or not you can provide us two or three lessons learned from others who are looking around two to three lessons learned from your experiences working with community
14:48:34 colleges about talent sourcing partnerships with me any comments that you can share with the group.
14:48:45 Marlene you’re on mute. So,
14:48:50 everybody.
14:48:53 Thank you. Thank you for having me.
14:48:56 Yes, I just want to reference that it is a real priority for to figure out how to make these connections with the community colleges as a, a pipeline for diversity which so many companies need.
14:49:11 I coming from the tech industry I knew how critical that was for building that pipeline and figuring out how to connect the talent, with the actual jobs that are available at Apple.
14:49:24 One of the areas that Apple looked at, which was a really interesting innovative projects with the California Community Colleges was the retail ready program.
14:49:33 And what Apple did is obviously retail is a huge area for Apple, and what the company did his work closely with the community colleges on the ground level about 11 community colleges throughout the state that had retail manufacturing programs.
14:49:49 So what Apple did was not just come in and create the curriculum, but rather worked with the faculty to create curriculum to add to curriculum that would expose the students to what Apple looks for when it hires its retail employees, and of course Apple
14:50:09 retail and places you know are really amazing and they’re, you know, basically your Apple genius is that you’ve all had experience with. So, the effort was really effective and what Apple did was for these students.
14:50:24 They were their applications were flagged if they had been through these programs so that they would get special consideration. Once they applied for an actual retail job at their neighbor neighboring Apple retail store.
14:50:39 So that was an innovative practice I think Apple’s doing a lot more work with HPC us and really creating these coding hubs and training students, but I think the challenges is that you can’t guarantee necessarily for a lot of companies if you’re doing
14:50:53 this on a large scale that you’re going to hire them automatically but that they at least get consideration for, for having been through these specific training programs, when they actually apply.
14:51:08 So I think that those are promising practices but with the situation that we’re in now how we accelerate and create more of a seamless connection is going to be really a critical opportunity to fully flesh out for the future.
14:51:25 Thank you.
14:51:30 opportunity and the lightning.
14:51:32 Ask yourself, one question.
14:51:36 You want to share with the group that I wouldn’t even think to ask and this would be just a one minute to type.
14:51:44 with you,
14:51:54 tiny bit of difficulty hearing yourself, Holly.
14:52:07 can
14:52:08 certainly start, I’ll be happy to start. So, if we could ask ourselves a question.
14:52:15 I said, you know what feature of a model are you most excited about.
14:52:20 And there is a module on a model that allows employers to indicate what their needs are and then this information is shared with all of the colleges so they can quickly respond.
14:52:32 So it’s just another method to assist us in developing a direct line of communication with employers and so we can start to establish and build relationships with them so I’m really excited about that new module.
14:52:50 Question and Answer.
14:52:54 I’m not sure I necessarily got the prompt but but a question I think that relevant to this conversation that that really is creating controversy across the United States at many higher education institutions is whether or not a short term intensive career
14:53:09 education and traditional liberal arts programming can live harmoniously alongside one another, and one effort I’ve been taking is to create short term intensive certificates, as the starting point or the entry point into degree programs that are, that,
14:53:30 that, the emphasis of the short term intensive job training is relevant they’re connected to traditional liberal arts pathways and example could be a certificate in Health and Human Services to then go on to get a degree in social work or sociology or
14:53:46 psychology. I’ve been observing that many colleges are are experiencing conflict particularly between faculty who believe that this shift toward CTE is going to undermine the traditional intention or purpose of higher education.
14:54:03 And I think there’s ways they can complement one another not be in conflict.
14:54:07 Also interesting.
14:54:12 So, I believe people are going to vote with their feet, and they’re going to start enrolling in the core courses that are most relevant to the needs they have for either rescaling or upscaling in this economy that’s obviously becoming more and more automated,
14:54:27 and frankly I believe it’s that process has been accelerated given coven 19.
14:54:34 I would like to really put on the table is how we help individuals who’ve been dislocated, because of this past year crisis, and given my line of business now and the financial aid world.
14:54:46 I’m interested in I think we need to address how we help people who are unemployed, how we help them pay for access to these courses. There are some non credit certification programs but there are also credit, and they all have different price tags.
14:55:03 I would like to work with partners to figure out how we can create a funding mechanism to help students offset the cost adult learners because adult learners are different now than when we used to think about adult education, adult learners are everyone
14:55:18 who needs to go back for the training and upscaling. And so I think we need to be prepared for the onslaught of people are saying I don’t want to go. I don’t want to enroll in a undergraduate program a four year program and spend $100,000, I just need
14:55:33 the skill sets that helped me get a job in areas such as clean energy technologies, health care, mass transit water industries all these areas that are really fast growth industries, but they don’t necessarily require those degrees.
14:55:48 So I think we need to be prepared to help that segment of the population that has lost wages in or have this past year, and help them regain the tools to get back into the workplace.
14:56:03 into the world what unfortunately ended up here.
14:56:17 But, join me in thanking our panel and I’m going to turn off my video. Great. Well, and I’m going to pop back in here and and say thank you, thank you all for really an amazing discussion.
14:56:26 I, I do think that what part of it so exciting to me about our model over the years so many of us have been involved in learning communities where we kind of come together and learn and go away and and bring back we’ve learned to our home basis and while
14:56:42 there’s an element of that here. What so especially compelling to me is that we’re doing this together. And now that we’re, you know, about ready to open up our employer portal we’re going to be doing this in partnership with employers so all of the issues
14:56:55 you’ve touched on are are really, you know, in real time you’re watching us, you know like, working our way into the into the future here. And so, and now is time for a demonstration of a model, and I’m just gonna say that the demo is being led by social
14:57:11 texts, Chief Operating Officer merrily male and Marilee is joined by our partner Ron g rock Yvonne, who’s the CEO of progress systems and future of work strategist greatest title ever Erica Barreiro who is champion who’s champion the adoption of a model
14:57:30 at Central New Mexico, so I’m going to turn it over to you, merrily and team.
14:57:34 Thanks Julian Can everybody hear me.
14:57:38 Yes. Good.
14:57:39 I just want to give a little preview of the order of events in this little segment first step will be Erica, she’ll cover some of the basic features on the learner side of on model, and she will expand a bit on how colleges are using this platform to
14:58:08 and then we’ll hear from Ramzi Raghavan. Who will conduct a walkthrough of some upcoming on model features that he and his team have designed to overcome a lot of the issues involved in non credit to credit pathways planning. And then finally, you’ll hear from
14:58:20 So first up, Erica.
14:58:23 Hello everyone and thank you so much for attending today and hearing about on metal. I am a self proclaimed champion of the middle platform, it’s just been such a wonderful experience to be involved in it.
14:58:41 And the great thing is is I get a video that actually can help articulate some of the amazing features of this platform. So I’m going to share that first with you.
14:59:06 Hello, and welcome to a quick intro production and preview of the new on model marketplace.
14:59:14 What’s our model, glad you asked. We’re completely different way for working learners to connect with employers with on model, you’ll be accessing our course two jobs marketplace, of course offerings from our coast to coast network of Community College
14:59:28 partners, by making it easier for working learners to access a broad range of skills driven courses from the workforce divisions of community colleges, the pathway from school to job becomes more streamlined, or wait for it.
14:59:48 Think of it like ordering our cart from a menu of courses, meaning that you can take classes from one, many or all of our community college partners simultaneously.
14:59:59 And here’s where it gets especially interesting, the courses offered through the on model marketplace, are those requested, or most needed by community employers to fill short term workforce needs.
15:00:11 In many cases, employers often hire right out of the workforce courses. That’s why I’m muddled make sure you can actually see which employers are hiring out of the specific courses.
15:00:22 That’s what makes on model, a course to jobs marketplace.
15:00:27 The on model marketplace currently offers courses from these community colleges Bellevue CNMP ma gateway, San Diego continue education, San Juan Sunni broom and more are joining the network in coming months.
15:00:47 And because I’m models courses come from a real community colleges, you’ll benefit from all their real academic perks like actual professors grading your homework, answering your questions and writing letters of recommendation, you’ll have access to real
15:01:04 campus facilities and services like libraries, and academic advisors.
15:01:09 It’s really exciting that our community colleges are working together to design a system that allows you to mix and match courses from multiple colleges and still get a real degree from a real College of your choosing.
15:01:25 On, on model you have your choice of class format online in person or hybrid, it depends on the skills and instruction methods. For example, courses like linesman training are better held mostly in person because really we wouldn’t expect anyone to repair
15:01:42 high voltage electrical wiring after just watching and internet video. Right.
15:01:48 And we’ve also made it so that the same course can count twice, once towards a job, and once towards a degree. In fact, this introduction to autonomous vehicles course actually counts three times one stores a job once towards a certificate at Piedmont
15:02:06 Community College, and once towards a commercial driver’s license.
15:02:11 So, is shopping the model marketplace right for you. Well, if you’re looking for the most efficient path from school to job needing an extra skill or two to get to that next level in your career in the military, or your education keeps getting interrupted
15:02:26 from frequent moves. Not sure where you want to do in life, or are curious about changing professions, or wanting to try a degree path and see how it fits.
15:02:36 And if you can’t afford $200,000 of student debt right now or forever.
15:02:43 Hands down on model is absolutely for you.
15:02:47 And there you go, the lowdown on on model, and the ways that can help you get ahead.
15:02:54 And please be sure to follow our social media channels for the latest news about what’s happening at on model. Thanks so much, and we look forward to connecting with you soon.
15:03:08 So, that video provides a nice overview of the model experience from a learner perspective and one of the things that it didn’t really show is the ease with which you can navigate and model in terms of purchasing a course.
15:03:31 So, our president Tracy hearts lawyer, kind of reference that a lot of learners find it challenging to navigate our websites our application process having to register for courses, and one of the really exciting things about a model is that similar to
15:03:50 the Amazon experience. All they have to do is put in some basic information their name, email or phone number, and ultimately if they’re purchasing of course their credit card to purchase a course or multiple courses from a number of providers in a very
15:04:12 simple way and so one of the opportunities that’s really exciting for a model, being involved in a model is it’s it’s really creating a landscape and an opportunity for us to rethink like how do we take what we’re learning and seeing, and the ways that
15:04:33 learners respond to the and model marketplace and actually embed that in our own systems to make it easier for students to come into engage in the courses and the degree pathways that we offer.
15:04:53 Another thing that I am really excited about is that this is the first time that I’ve been in a network where I’m closely working with and meeting every other week with community colleges that are engaged in this type of work and we get to share best
15:05:14 practices and how we are doing different things like credit for prior learning how are we, how are we engaging in curriculum that goes from non credit to credit and awards students for those learning experiences that are traditionally captured on a transcript.
15:05:37 And so with that I’m going to transition.
15:05:42 Because one of the pieces that that I’m really excited to go live on and model and it’s not quite there yet, is a is a tool that will actually show learners, what courses, non credit courses will skills courses will actually lead them towards earning
15:06:08 a certificate or a degree at our community colleges, and so with that I’m going to turn it over to rob T and figure go, oh can you guys hear me.
15:06:21 Yeah. Okay, perfect. So I’m going to share my screen. And, and walk through what this looks like. Again, I’m Randy and refer your friends frog and I’m excited to partner on this initiative and primarily Our mission is to help learners contextualize and
15:06:51 choices about their learning experiences in the context of college pathways and careers. Right. And so, I’m going to pick up where Erica let’s start off in the learner demo right so if I were to wear this hat.
15:06:55 And I’m browsing, you know the model marketplace. And I find, you know, a course that I like right and now I can look at it, you know. So how much does it cost you know a little bit more about the course, and I can go buy it right and.
15:07:13 But, if this one course that’s published in our modern marketplace is a step towards a larger partner certification or a degree pathway you know as many of the panelists earlier described I mean that’s part of you know what is really cool about our model.
15:07:32 And so, you know, what happens is you know that shows up out here right and to inform the learner that hey by taking this course, you’re going to be 18 credits out of 32 turns into getting a certificate, right, or they could be multiple options right
15:07:48 i mean you could be awarded credits to one or two certificates or one or two associate’s degree programs, and it doesn’t really matter. So you know you get a quick peek into what this looks like.
15:08:00 And in a week. You know they can click on it and to get a deeper look into okay what does that really mean right and so part of writing what we’re trying to accomplish.
15:08:11 steps into actually getting, you know, a credential, but credential could also this is these this is what it means from a career perspective, right and so we’ll get to the career path in just a second.
15:08:27 But, you know, if you look at this a little bit more. So essentially it sort of calls out says look by taking the scores you have 55% in to getting this credential, the certificate.
15:08:40 Right. And so you can look at what courses that you get credit for. But it’s possible that the learner may have taken other courses and in this case this is a course that’s offered by CNN.
15:08:51 They may have taken courses and CNN before. So, you know, we provide them an opportunity where they can come and say look, you know, if, of all the courses that you need for this particular program.
15:09:04 I’ve taken this one other course right and so they can add their own courses to they may have taken in addition to what they being awarded for here. And so now that 63%.
15:09:15 Right. And so, so this really gives them an idea and sort of not just them to work towards actually getting significant, but they can buy deeper and say you know what, why do I, why should I go get the setup.
15:09:26 Why should I take those extra 12 credits to go get the certificate. And we connect them with, you know, men give them this holistic exploration experience where they can actually dive deeper into what does it actually need right from the career prospects
15:09:43 of this particular certificate. So, I’m going to sort of walk you through a little bit and, you know, under the hood really what we’re doing is we’re tapping into the different requirements for getting this, This particular credential whether it’s a degree
15:09:58 or certificate.
15:10:00 Inside the college, but also tapping into labor market information, employers and so on and so forth. Okay. And so here is a sort of a quick look at what this could look like right if I get this business and the certificate you know this is what I could
15:10:13 expect to earn.
15:10:15 to earn. This is the growth rate nationally initially, and these are kinds of careers that, that it opens the doors for right and you know what I expect to learn.
15:10:26 And you know I can look at what, what are the top companies that recruit.
15:10:33 What are the skills that I would you know I would need are you know that are required by employers, and you know, foundational skills special skills and there are even skills which may actually give me a salary bump right that are actually called out,
15:10:45 and we work with our partner burning glass and sort of pulling all this information together. And I can come, you know I can even regionally, narrow this down and say look, what about Albuquerque right and so it sort of brings you know the companies who
15:11:00 recruit in the region.
15:11:03 So and so it’s quite powerful. That way you know I you know I could look at it from a from a state perspective sort of broaden that a little bit more.
15:11:11 And you know the skills that are required by employers may be a little bit different.
15:11:17 You know, for the similar kind of thing. Right.
15:11:20 So that’s one aspect of it but then it can be diverted into the DI t put into the careers that we just saw. Right. And so here are all the different careers and I could go deeper and what does it mean you know to be a bi developer architect right and
15:11:37 so you know what other companies which pose, what are the kinds of skills that are needed.
15:11:42 You know what are the typical wages.
15:11:44 You know I can look at related for years, you know, if I take this, you know, I can sort of build on it and become a data scientist and that may increase my income even more.
15:11:56 I can then go back and say okay I was looking at the studio. You know what program again, can I do, you know from this college perspective really it’s connecting the dots, from a single course and on model to, you know, the richer offerings, you know,
15:12:11 you know, that say a CNN offers, and also the associated career prospects of.
15:12:17 So I just want to pause here and I don’t know if Erica Marie you want me to cover anything else on this front.
15:12:26 I think we’re probably okay for the time being let me get through the employer portal and if we have any time left over, people can actually ask questions which would be shocking.
15:12:34 So let me go ahead and introduce the employer portal with several people have mentioned a couple of times.
15:12:42 That’s. There we go.
15:12:43 Can everybody see that.
15:12:46 Okay, fantastic. So the employer portal is a new feature for a model that will be rolled out around December 10. And the goal of this portal is to make it drop dead easy for employers to work with community colleges and their students so no longer would
15:13:01 an employer have to say okay we’ve got like 17 plants across the country which community colleges actually are in the area of those plants.
15:13:11 Who, what, individual in each community college that I send an email or call to to get started with my request. And then from there, how do I navigate each individual colleges bureaucracy and processes and systems in order to get approval and to get this
15:13:25 thing going. So, what we’re trying to do with this portal is get rid of all of that red tape process so that it’s possible for an employer to get what they need and the click of a few buttons.
15:13:36 So let me just show you how that’s going to work.
15:13:43 Great. So this is what the employer portal looks like.
15:13:48 They have a set of functionalities along the left hand side and we’re inside the one called contact colleges. So inside this functionality is where you actually submit requests to colleges.
15:14:01 This is a list of requests have been sent so far and I’m going to generate a new request. So here, all I have to do is think of, you know, what is the title of my request.
15:14:11 What is the category of my request.
15:14:15 And here, we actually have several sub categories to choose from. For each category we have courses skills, courses credentials services and facilities equipment for the major categories, and then the subcategories allow you to target more specifically
15:14:31 your request, which in turn allows that request to be automatically routed by messaging an email to the right person in each college that handles that request.
15:14:41 So here an employer says I want a commission new course.
15:14:45 And I want this course to be accessible to everybody in the good old US of A.
15:14:51 All right, and now we’re just going to add a little more description to that request, so people know what it is exactly what we’re looking for if we had a lot of information we could attach a file.
15:15:05 Okay. And in this section, what you’re doing is you’re saying, Who do you want to see this request it can go out to all colleges the unbundled network or it can go out to some selected colleges say all colleges in Texas all colleges in the southwest or
15:15:18 you can just pick and choose individually colleges from the list.
15:15:23 This case is going out to all colleges. Here we are previewing the requests that we just created.
15:15:29 And we can submit.
15:15:32 And the request appears on the bottom line here as a new request that we’ve just sent. And if we need to go back and edit it, or change it, we can do that.
15:15:43 Okay, so that’s what it looks like on the employer side, and then, of course, since the request was sent to the colleges, we should look at what the college gets to see, they have a different portal with different functionalities along the left hand side,
15:15:57 because they have to do things like upload courses course descriptions for people to view on the marketplace, manage the financial transactions are going on as students by courses, managing learner lists and instructors so they have a lot of different
15:16:11 functionalities that the employers don’t have.
15:16:13 But here, down here is where they go to look at what the employers have just sent them. And that’s what you’re seeing on this main page here.
15:16:22 The requests that I just sent as an employer is now showing up on the college’s portal, as this top request. Yep, I’m an employer, I sent this request is showing up in the college portal.
15:16:32 The college has the opportunity to respond to that request. They can add to the response anybody in their college that they think otter BCC do not know the discussion, they too can attach files if necessary.
15:16:47 As I attach this file i’m actually going into my computer and pulling it up, you should be the usual file interface selector.
15:16:55 Okay, and so now I’ve just responded to the employers request.
15:17:01 And there is a conversation module as well where you can go back and forth and back and forth and see the record of the correspondence between the employer and the college.
15:17:12 So this is all actually on our test server right now undergoing debugging and beta testing feature which is still in design.
15:17:19 So I don’t have sort of live, live but can footage of it.
15:17:24 This is still sort of on the drawing board stage but it will be out on December 10 is the source talent feature. So let me show you what that looks like.
15:17:33 This is the way in which employers can interact with the college’s to get the students that they want for specific jobs.
15:17:42 It’s a little different than systems, you’re probably used to because the way we structured it employers actually reach into individual courses to message the students in that course, or the instructors in that course with an information about job openings.
15:17:57 So for students who would say hey you know look at this great job that we have available please apply for instructors the message might be something more like, Hey, give us six of your best students who really performed well in the algorithm sections
15:18:09 of your course because we’re really looking for people with that expertise. So let’s just go through and see what this looks like.
15:18:15 All right, we’re inside of support source talent.
15:18:19 We’ve decided to send this message to all students who are in the introduction of Microsoft Excel course.
15:18:25 And this is the message that we want to send it was a little apply here which will take them to our corporate website to apply.
15:18:35 Reviewing the message we can send this to one course are many courses.
15:18:39 This list just shows that the message was sent.
15:18:43 You can see it there. And this is what the conversations look like between the employers and the students and or instructors that response so it’s sort of a chat interface where every piece of dialogue is captured and you can follow up with people.
15:18:56 So all of this should be live at around December, 10. And I think that’s pretty much it for what I had to share so I’ll generally there’s no question about can individual colleges.
15:19:11 Determine the routing of an incoming employer in queries and specified different context, oh yes the institution. Yeah, so it will be on the college side there’s a menu that says okay for this type of requests and sub request, what are the email addresses
15:19:28 that you would like to be notified when this comes in.
15:19:31 So it could even be multiple people in a department to be one to have, you know, coverage in case somebody is out. So yes so it’s sort of segregated by functionality.
15:19:41 And then if there is a sort of a one of these categories is like other, it’s probably going to end up going to the super admin the person who’s sort of in charge of the model portal generally, who will try to figure out who in their college it should
15:19:50 have gone to since, not every request can we identify ahead of time. And, and I was going to add that that one of the things, both from the learner perspective and the employer perspective is that it really, you know, the design, you know, on the back
15:20:06 end of the college we want to avoid bouncing learners from person to person to person. So really, they have one interface like the the learners have one interface where all of their messages from seven different community colleges or the three that they’ve
15:20:23 registered for all go through that interface and the same with the employers.
15:20:29 It’s on the back end that we can assign who’s going to respond to particular messages, but it reduces the layers that people have to navigate through to get to the right person.
15:20:44 Yeah, it didn’t receive a lot of airtime but one of the features that I kind of like is what before you buy a course, you can you know message on model if you’re having technical difficulties that understand it but you can also like message the college
15:20:57 and say Hey, is this course really the one I should be taking I see three courses look kind of identical Can you help me out here.
15:21:03 So there is much more personal support it for the learner than there is in a typical sort of course aggregator system where you just buy a course and pay and then you’re on your way and good luck with you.
15:21:15 But you know via con Dios so that’s, I think, I really look forward to seeing how this plays out is more more learners come online.
15:21:25 I think that’s it. Does anybody else have any questions or issues or are we ready to move on to the next section Julian.
15:21:32 You know, I think we are an Al’s going to actually introduce the next section, I am like, I wish people could see I feel like every one of these sections all I’m doing is smiling and bobbing and bobbing.
15:21:51 I thought you all were amazing.
15:21:45 It’s so wonderful to see actually the latest iteration Ramzi of of the back end link between non credit and credit i mean i think it’s such a incredibly important advanced at we truly have not been able to figure out, and other models doing it.
15:22:02 I do want to say before I hand it over to Al who’s going to introduce the next panel so thank you so much, merrily, Erica, D.
15:22:10 And I want to say before we turn it over to you.
15:22:13 We are in just putting a little plug here employers. We are now that the employer piece is the pat on the corner portal is in kind of V one.oh. I’m actually bringing in players on for six month pilot to work with us to help us really refine and improve
15:22:30 that piece of the marketplace, just as we have with our amazing colleges. So, you know, you’ll see at the end of this, where to find us how to contact us but any folks to know the companies that want to be a part of it.
15:22:44 We’re especially interested, I mean we want to work with employers of all shapes and sizes.
15:22:49 I’m particularly talking now at the early stage with large employers that, you know, want to work and access community colleges across the country, but don’t really have that access that our model provides I’m gonna leave it there.
15:23:02 that’s my ad out it’s all yours.
15:23:05 Thank you join. I really enjoyed the last segment.
15:23:09 I had my camera was off but I was giving a standing ovation to the video that was shown until the comments of Erica, lot of hard work went into that, and I was just amazed that I’ve met in fact I put a plug into our vendor to ask for a copy of this like
15:23:22 a show it to the college.
15:23:23 So without further ado, what the main reason we’re here is for students. And our next panel is going to talk about what dude, learn is what and what do learners need.
15:23:35 This segment is gonna be the moderated by Kevin drunk president of Sony broom. So I like to bring Kevin, to the, to the screen.
15:23:56 with us.
15:23:58 Somebody’s got to bring me up. He’s gotcha.
15:24:15 Okay.
15:24:18 Now we got to bring up land and Jordan and Chris.
15:24:22 I’m assuming that I know they’re there I can see their names there is Jordan
15:24:28 and landed is here.
15:24:31 As Landon, and we got Chris there somewhere 30 start Chris on the yes I’m here. All right.
15:24:41 There we go.
15:24:41 All right, good afternoon right now we get to the heart of the matter.
15:24:45 This is this is why we’re all here and why we do what we do to reach her to reach our students.
15:24:54 I’m just going to go around, I’m moderator here, folks.
15:25:00 And I’m going to go around and ask a few questions. We’ve got about 20 minutes to talk with these. These students who agreed to join us today I’m just going to go around my screen as I see you your orders probably different than mine not knowing how these
15:25:15 these zoom things. Go and ask you a question to respond to. But, you know, give us a little thumbnail 30 seconds about yourself and your background, and then answer the question was one question at a time so I’m not going to be a journalist and asked
15:25:32 or three in a row and have you try to remember them but if you could spend that 30 seconds to tell us just a little bit about your, your background and what’s wrong with our educational system particular higher educational system.
15:25:47 As you view it today.
15:25:51 Landon you’re the first one, my screen.
15:25:56 Great. Awesome. Well, again, thanks so much for having me. My name is Landon Taylor. I am a failed account executive for a marketing technology company called the TiVo, we work with a lot of Fortune 500 brands, helping bridge the gap between the stories
15:26:14 they want to tell and telling them to their consumers and meeting them where they’re at in an environment that already comfortable in it to talk about the question about what’s wrong with the higher education system right now.
15:26:26 I had a quick anecdote you know I was working to get my degree in PR and advertising and couple hours in college, But during the time I actually had a, I got a job at an advertising agency that covered all of the monster North American operations, and
15:26:46 I was working full time and a part of my requirement for graduating was an internship.
15:26:52 And I went to the office and I said, Hey, you know, I know that you need to have this internship before I can graduate but actually already have a full time job in the industry that I’m trying to get get a degree to get into.
15:27:04 And they said hey we understand that but you know you still have to have this internship. And so I said You mean to tell me that I would have to quit my job, and therefore take this internship, to graduate.
15:27:16 And they said this is how it goes. And I think for me it was at that moment that I actually had to make the decision that I was not going to finish at that college, and because I had I had children at the time, I had a full time job I was doing what the
15:27:29 goal of going to school is to do. Right. And I think that there’s an issue there there’s a disconnect there between the reality and the world that we’re living in right now, and that that not everyone has a traditional path into higher education into
15:27:45 post education, but it doesn’t mean they don’t desire it. And so I think we have to be flexible and agile and learn to adapt to the different lifestyles that are out there.
15:27:55 Thank you. Landon.
15:27:57 Chris, you’re going around extra going counterclockwise, but I do a lot of things backwards, just just asked my faculty.
15:28:05 You want to tell us just a little bit about yourself and critique are higher education system a bit from your perspective. Sure.
15:28:13 So I’m Chris Lewis, I’m a business agility and executive coach. So I work with organizations, mainly in the IT space but also organizational wide to kind of help them deliver digital products to their customers faster and and do so in a way that doesn’t
15:28:34 burn out their team right so my current clients are Florida Blue and Morgan Stanley, which are, you know, great companies in their own right. So, to your question of what is wrong, our, you know maybe do a shocker and say nothing.
15:28:52 Right.
15:28:52 There’s nothing wrong I think Landon kind of touched on it. Um, it’s all about the customer and and figuring out what works for you and I think and where we are now, especially with coven.
15:29:07 It gives organizations and educational institutions the opportunity to listen to the customer. Right, which is the student and treat them like customers and say hey you know if we offer this would you buy it, right, and take a more by Amazon model and
15:29:22 saying hey I want to offer something that you would buy so, I think, I don’t think there’s anything wrong because I think the major, I think the ones that are flexible to use land in terms of land is term, are the ones that are going to be more open to
15:29:35 listening to the customer. And then as a customer you have options right so i don’t think anything’s wrong because there’s options. And if you want to be a part of that option is just listening to the students and listen to the customers.
15:29:49 Thank you, Chris.
15:29:50 Well, Jordan, at least, you actually you’re the center square here on on Mike your beer I don’t know if you ever saw Hollywood Squares on TV, you may reveal too young for that I should probably on cable somewhere.
15:30:04 What would tell us a little bit about your background and I also learned something interesting. You might want to tell us a little bit that you conducted admission.
15:30:14 Not too. not too long ago.
15:30:16 You might want to tell us a little bit about about that and. And then about what what your any area of critique you have for higher education system today.
15:30:27 All right. Well, yeah, I’m Jordan. I wrote the jungle that you heard part of it the end their own model jingle, and I’m not a I’m not a jingle writer, why I am now, now that I’ve done it I am, but my wife and I and our three kids we volunteer full time
15:30:41 for an international nonprofit organization that works primarily in the Middle East.
15:30:45 That’s a Christian organization that does relief work.
15:30:48 And so we spend most of the last, while we were any rocky Kurdistan for about a year.
15:30:53 Serving the Peshmerga they were going into the areas around Mosul rescuing civilians that were under attack from ISIS. So our organization set up a casualty collection point for their military and then a Care Center for me civilians coming out of Mosul.
15:31:09 And then my wife and I moved over to the Turkish Republic of North Cyprus, just the illegally occupied northern third of the island of Cyprus, south of Turkey west of Syria.
15:31:21 And so we’ve been living there doing an addiction recovery ministry for Turkish speaking people on the island of Cyprus. So, it’s funny how like we go from that to like, I wrote a jingle for on model.
15:31:33 But I started doing music stuff for our organization just as for the values a little bit. And at that time I, I, my sister actually was doing social media for on model.
15:31:43 And she introduced it to me I was just asking her what she’s up to.
15:31:47 And so she, she pitched on model to me and I was like whoa this is brilliant. This is so cool I wish this was around, like in 2006 when I was graduating, I wish I had an option like this because it’s making education super accessible, and there’s no limitations
15:32:01 and especially the thing that really got me was including community colleges, because I’ve always believed in the, The, the financial wisdom of going to community college.
15:32:12 And there’s always this unfortunate stigma sometimes attached with community college that I don’t think it deserves because it’s really wise it’s a good option for so many people.
15:32:20 So I hear about how the bringing all these things together and I was like, oh man I want to get behind this I want to do something. And so, because I was already just messing around with a little wraps for our organization I thought I’ll just read a little
15:32:32 jingle for on model. So I wrote it and I thought, hey, this was not bad. I said to my sister and she passed it on to apartment or and, and she said hey we love it.
15:32:41 I said, Really, you guys like it so it was really cool because I just, I felt like excited I wanted to help spread the word about on model I think I believe in it I think this is going to be really a tool that a lot of people are going to be a help point
15:32:54 them to their future. And I think this is awesome. And so I just I don’t need a digital I didn’t ask for money because I didn’t want to take from this I was like, Look, I just want to give to this this is a beautiful thing.
15:33:05 I like this I hope it succeeds I want it to succeed and I want people to use it so I hope that in a small way my jingle will be To that end, thank you, Jordan, I gotta
15:33:19 throw you a little bit of a little bit of a curve and give you a little context for this because you all have have kind of alluded to, some old career interests if you want to put it that way and you’re, you’re following some of those right now.
15:33:36 My wife has her own business, she’s a sole proprietor.
15:33:41 My son wants to have his own business doesn’t wanna be boxed in like his dad in the education world people don’t think educators have all this flexibility.
15:33:51 Lots of entrepreneurs on my, my wife side.
15:33:54 But the only way my wife can advance her education being so busy as a sole proprietor and she is busy.
15:34:02 Is this way, where she can go online and get her professional development she has no other time as a, as a sole proprietor and, and a wife and a mom and in all that have each of you have you thought about just jumping out and starting your own business
15:34:18 and doing solely that.
15:34:21 Out of curiosity has so many more of your generation, tend to thinking that way then save my generation when we just thought about going out and getting that big corporate job.
15:34:31 I’m kind of curious because I you know, entrepreneurship it really drives the world and has driven the US economy from the, from the beginning, you know with Benjamin Franklin one of our more famous founding father entrepreneurs, extremely successful
15:34:48 entrepreneur so I’m kind of curious if you thought about that, because this, this is the sort of thing that entrepreneurs would would look toward versus a traditional education for which they have no time.
15:35:03 We enter new wanna say we have you ever thought about just jumping out and do you obviously you’re doing all three of you are doing some of your own thing.
15:35:13 I’ve just kind of curious what your thoughts on that.
15:35:15 Yeah, definitely. It’s a great question. You know, I think, entrepreneurship is is something that’s on the top of everyone’s mind they think that in a perfect world everyone would want to be their own boss.
15:35:27 I think for me what I’ve learned, it’s about the fact that I think that you.
15:35:39 I think that you can have the best of both worlds. And in the way I look at it is what I’m really lucky in sales, you know, especially if you’re in a sales organization that is run healthfully healthfully and has great mentorship, they allow you to be
15:35:49 own entrepreneur, you know I’m in charge of my own book of business. You know the work that I put in will put out what I put out, you know I was blessed during Cobra to have a really great. A couple of quarters.
15:35:58 A couple of quarters. But it was because of the work that I put in and no one pressured me, and no one was micromanaging me, and I was responsible for it, and I did well.
15:36:07 I think that the way I look at life is I believe that we’re all, no matter what age we are, but I say this to a lot of my peers, they say you know we’re too young to wake up and hit our lives, you know there’s been jobs where I’ve been in, where I literally
15:36:19 only look forward to the first of the 15th. And I realized there was no way for me to live, and I and I was like I just I can’t do it, even if on paper, you know, the money was good.
15:36:32 The title was good. I learned very quickly that money cannot sustain you. So I think the goal that we should find is find something that makes you happy that makes you wake up and be excited for the challenge, even if it is under someone else, because
15:36:41 just because you have something that has a boss doesn’t mean you can’t use that to fund your dreams. Right, so I’m in tech sales but I would love I’m really into wine I’m a, I’m a level one small a working in my level two right now.
15:37:03 My wife is a coffee bloggers Our dream is open up a coffee wine shop coffee during the day, wine at night. But I know that I have to keep doing my nine to five to have the funds to do that right and so I think that we’ve got to get away from this idea
15:37:16 that it’s all or nothing right that working for the man is the new slavery, right or whatever they say right that’s that’s not true, right, because I think that happiness rest on contentment and joy is the biggest form of rebellion, in my opinion.
15:37:42 So, I know my answer is kind of long winded or not really nothing into the question but I think you can be an entrepreneur in whatever you’re doing, right, even if it is a nine to five right and there’s a book lean startup and talk about, you know how
15:37:51 IBM had that incubator within their office right and so you’re coming absolutely yeah exactly so that’s my answer that’s my response, I think some small business courses on model.
15:38:06 I think we opened up a market hear your thoughts on maybe having your own gig someday entirely and I know you’re already doing some of that.
15:38:15 Yeah, so I mean landed you I mean you said it beautifully, you know i mean to me entrepreneurs, entrepreneurship is a mindset. Right, it’s just about enjoying what you do.
15:38:25 It’s not about you know this client or this revenue it’s really about enjoying what you do so.
15:38:32 But yeah, I’ll just keep it short because he said it so beautifully. Um, so, I actually took a scrum master course and a certified product owner course.
15:38:41 Back in 2015 or so at Bellevue College, and then two years later I’m running my own shop. So, you know, I have my, so the clients that I, I go in that whether I work with the staffing company or recruiter, I’m able to you know everything’s coming in house
15:38:58 no taxes anything I have my own p amp l that I have to manage So long story short, I’ve done it. And I’ve done it by way of utilizing.
15:39:09 Things like a model right by just going after the PMI ACP the scrum master course, the product owner course and, and then going out into the marketplace to say hey you know what I can.
15:39:23 I enjoy doing this. That’s my motivation, yet I also can make more doing this, if I’m on my own, right, and then merge the two together and I’m in bliss.
15:39:33 So someday instead of Mackenzie it’ll be Lewis and we are out there on our Christopher solutions.
15:39:41 Christopher solutions.
15:39:44 Jordan they’re doing you want to be that character on man that Charlie Sheen who wrote jingles for a living, you might want to live the rest of his life now you might want to do that too but that’s just the first part just the genius will be fine.
15:39:58 Yeah, actually, after doing this jingle.
15:40:01 I got really inspired so I did one for my father in law’s cool company.
15:40:05 And that went pretty well too so I there’s a website called fiber that you cannot sell services so I logged on Fiverr and got a little profile there so if anyone wants to buy jingle.
15:40:19 I’m the man so it’s a small step in that direction. That’s how all businesses start you know one, one step at a time.
15:40:24 Bill Gates started his by quitting Harvard University was his big step.
15:40:30 When he got decided to go off on his own. He had had quite a vision.
15:40:36 Albert How we doing on time
15:40:42 is approximately three minutes or so left you doing pretty good. Very okay well if each of you, you know wants to, you know, take a minute to, you know, to close us out Jordan will go backwards this time, and give us your your thoughts on how, how you
15:40:58 see on model impacting the world. Here in the, in the next several years. You’ll give us a minute on that I will start with Jordan and go backwards this time.
15:41:08 Okay, yeah, honestly, because my situation I’m spend most of my time overseas, not in the States and in the fact that it’s like a community college, you know in a town I grew up in would be available, while I’m overseas.
15:41:24 I think it’s a game changer.
15:41:24 I think it’s it’s it’s giving, it’s giving all the tools and all the, it’s giving, it’s making education super accessible for anyone with a computer.
15:41:35 And while the internet’s a little slower than living but apart from that, it’s like, it’s a great option I think that really is a game changer. So I’m really looking forward to, how, how far reaching this can be.
15:41:47 Thank you, Jordan, Chris.
15:41:50 Any thoughts.
15:41:52 Yeah, I mean, I think it’s just a great platform, especially with my experience in the tech space. I see people all the time with, you know, unconventional paths right, they may not have had a.
15:42:06 Some people don’t even have a four year degree right and that’s fine, right, because they are a Salesforce export.
15:42:13 You know their Salesforce expert or they are an expert at some type of programming language so I think technology has really knocked down barriers for people to just be able to be effective and productive, and I think this platform enables the progress
15:42:33 of that yet my son doesn’t want a four year degree.
15:42:51 And he sort of apologizes as the son of a college president.
15:42:42 You know he was taking some business classes in our business program here and then once would automotive school and have his own automotive repair business someday.
15:42:49 He does all the work on his own vehicle now saves a fortune and um instead of my mechanic. And that’s and that’s interesting because I mean you can audit courses, right, you don’t have to, you know, you can sit in like you know if he wants to run a repair
15:43:03 business his main thing is the car right hey that’s where he’s.
15:43:08 That’s, that’s his technical expertise and if he wants to learn about bookkeeping or something like that, he can go on model and and just do that. Yeah, that’s why he’s not here with us because his accounting classes meeting right now or he would have
15:43:18 been here with Landon you want to close this out. Yeah, I think I just a quick comment wanted to say to you, Kevin is I think that I want us to get to a place where that that’s totally okay and accepted and celebrated equally, you know that your that
15:43:45 son doesn’t want a four year degree, right, I think that’s something that I want it to be equally celebrated as having a four year degree and I think that the cool thing is and I’m just really excited, inspired and and just really pumped about on model,
15:43:49 you know I look at I interact with a lot of individuals who who didn’t go on a traditional path, and then they feel lost, they feel like they don’t know what to do the next step they, their only answer is to move away.
15:44:02 You know I live in California a very expensive place to live. And a lot of times if they have a child early or they have to take care of a relative, they feel the only answers to leave because they can’t figure out their life because it wasn’t on the
15:44:14 path that was, quote unquote, the right societal path. And I think what a model does is it goes okay, don’t panic.
15:44:23 You can still do this, here’s, here’s let’s let’s gather your resources because people forget what they’ve already accomplished, you know, and it’s so easy for us to be a self desperate, you know, it just really so hard on ourselves, that they forget
15:44:37 forget the amazing things that we’ve done on model reminds you who you are, put you together in a path in given lays out a path for what you can still do, right, you know, and we get scared, we want to procrastinate we say oh man we can’t do this program
15:44:52 because it’s going to be three years it’s gonna be a three year program, but guess what, three years later, you’re still going to be sitting there saying oh it is going to be a three year program when you could have started, and been done in three years.
15:45:02 Right. And so I think a model gives gives that clear path, gives something in front of people’s faces and gives them an accomplishment and they can reach that inspires people so I’m really excited about on model I and I’m excited to see it growing and
15:45:16 let it continue to be a part of any way I can.
15:45:18 So here we go out potential tagline for on model Don’t panic.
15:45:23 Well thank you guys very much this was great and it’s been a joy for me to to get to know you all a little better and it’s time for our next segment I think back to our will, so yes.
15:45:38 So yes, I Eleanor here and you know, thank you all so much what a, what an inspiring, you know,
15:45:47 set of speakers and points you covered. I guess one thing that I wanted to just jump in with and I’ll hand it over. Back to you, Alice is, um, I actually read recently that Gen Z which I think, Kevin these three guys, for the most part, probably represent
15:46:03 is likely to have three times as many jobs as Gen Xers someone another place I read like 17 to 19 for many, and what that says to me and I think a part of what we’re about here is helping people really get that training that’s going to get them to the
15:46:19 next step on the next path to the next credential whatever it is that they need to move forward. It’s like, What have we but our skills to carry forward with it, whether it’s, whether it’s, you know, an entrepreneurship which you talked on talks about
15:46:31 or in a large organization or small organizations, I mean, you know, ultimately, with a constant change and churn, we need to be able to like that’s fine, that’s the way it is and we need institutions, I can keep pace with that.
15:47:03 colleges really are about how I’m closing comments from you before we let all our, our folks go here. Absolutely, and full transparency Christopher lewis is my son and he took that class ability college.
15:47:00 And one of the reasons we asked him to be on the panel is we talk a lot about entry level jobs entry level opportunities. But what we also find is you got people who are in careers who want to transition.
15:47:12 And so just like your entry level folks that are looking to move to the next level, you got mid career people that are looking to move to the next level and Chris and we all have examples every school because Kris was working for Accenture the time you
15:47:37 entrepreneur, and all of us has Community College have those kind of stories. And I think that we want to make sure that we tell those stories as well as the stories about the entry level.
15:47:44 This has been a fantastic show I think the presentations, have been very fantastic I wish we could all be together that would be good I can only imagine the energy that we would generate all being in one place, but I want to thank all the speakers and
15:47:57 all the panelists for being here today as we kick off on mobile and this great new adventure that we’re on doing back to you know and thank you so much for for doing this and I feel like you know maybe if we could throw in a few jokes we can be a comedy
15:48:10 team.
15:48:12 Absolutely, yeah just saying I want to thank all the speakers, everyone who attended.
15:48:18 What an amazing group. If you wouldn’t mind, Tiffany forwarding this to the very last slide for us.
15:48:26 For more information, feel free to contact me jL said at social tech.ai and I will make sure I can actually with anyone you want to connect with in this session.
15:48:36 We also would love to, you know, have conversations anyone that wants to be a part of this we really are looking for partners in crime that that get it and want to help us bring education, learning to the future.
15:48:50 Thank you so much to me right presentation. Thank you so much for being part of the closer community and sharing such an amazing project, and platform.
15:49:04 So we appreciate all of you, and we’ll be back.
15:49:10 December, 3 with chance certainly Lambert, who’s going to be our keynote, so we’re excited about that. Stay in touch with the closest community and again, thanks for mentor, and the entire team for the great presentation, thanks to me.
15:49:30 Thank you.
? 3Dec2020: Lee Lambert
Why SHIFT happened and what now?
Transcription:
13:13:58 Here we go. So welcome to close it.
13:14:03 December, 3 We are honored to have.
13:14:08 Chancellor lead Lambert.
13:14:21 He was also a lawyer by by profession here with us from Pima Community College. I had the opportunity to meet Lee. Gosh, I feel like it’s been longer than three years but I think it was four years ago had been so impressed with the work of Pima Community
13:14:29 College, and not just as a college but as an entire community. and obviously your vision and your leadership Lee on taking risks, and the many things you’ve done throughout your career, both in Seattle, and at Pima.
13:14:49 So welcome, we’re really honored to have you. And we will be sharing this with the broader community as well. So thank you. Well, thank you and good afternoon everybody.
13:14:58 It’s a pleasure to be able to join the closet community. I’m now going to pull up my, hold on.
13:15:12 PowerPoint. There we go. Hopefully everyone can see that.
13:15:15 We’re good. Yes, we’re good. Got it. Yeah, I thought I first start out with a story, and then talk about what I’m going to explore. So can you imagine one day you arrive in your office, and you’re getting ready to start your day you have your calendar
13:15:32 meetings, etc. And your assistant walks in and says, there’s a phone call for you. And you reply well you know i have my calories pretty busy Can we just schedule a time for me to talk with you.
13:15:46 And the assistant says, No, you need to take this call right away. It’s urgent. So you take the phone call, and you just found out that your organization that you’re the president ceo now is owned by a company out of China.
13:16:05 And you quickly realize to yourself.
13:16:08 You don’t even really know where Shanghai, China is located.
13:16:14 And during the conversation you also learn that this new owner of your organization is going to expect. Each and every employee to be able to speak Mandarin.
13:16:28 Why shift happens and what now.
13:16:33 As you can see the shift is already happening and what I’m going to do is talk a little bit about some of the drivers of the shifts, and then talk about what now, and I’m going to use Pima Community College as the vehicle to really explore how we’ve been
13:16:49 positioning Pima, and I’ll touch on some of my experiences in Seattle, as well. And by the way that story is a true story. And and one of the, one of the key shifts or drivers of change and trends is globalization and and of course demographic shifts.
13:17:08 Advances in technology the birth dearth and and the list goes on and on. These are all.
13:17:15 At this point, very well understood I hope by many The question is what are you doing in response so I thought I would just share a little bit about what Pema is doing.
13:17:26 In response, but let me just say a little bit about Pima Community College. We are proud Hispanic serving institution. We are the number one graduate at the community college level of Hispanic students in the state of Arizona.
13:17:42 As noted by accents ox cell NCI in education. So we’re very proud of that fact here in the state.
13:17:52 Most of our students when you take our Hispanic students or Latinx students, combine that with their African American students are Native American students in our Asian American students and Pacific Islander students.
13:18:04 We are well over, we’re clearly a majority minority institution We’re located just about an hour north of the border. and we have, as you all know a research one institution in our backyard just down the street from one of our prominent campuses, the
13:18:20 University of Arizona. We serve in any given year credit and non credit, probably around 45,000 individual so we are a comprehensive community college with five campuses, with many other smaller locations throughout Pima County, and we have a location,
13:18:41 just right at the border in partnership with the Santa Cruz provisional Community College District.
13:18:48 So, so I like to pose this question and as a lawyer I like to pose a lot of questions so I may pose a number of questions you don’t need to answer but think about them as I asked them.
13:19:02 And the first question, I, I often will talk about is, is higher education, the 21st century version of salt. So why would I use the analogy of salt. And if you’ve not read the history of salt, I highly encourage you to do so it’s a great read it’s a
13:19:21 fascinating read, and I think there are many lessons in the history of soft that we can take away.
13:19:28 As a community of higher education providers and learners. So, as you know, throughout history salt has been an important vital part of our human existence.
13:19:40 And at one point in time there were lots of salt makers, but as, as time evolved, the importance of salt never really changed.
13:19:49 But how we access salt, the cost of salt has shifted as the technology has shifted. and that’s redefining the uses for salt. So, today, that the major players that we probably all are familiar with our Morton, and Cargill.
13:20:10 Certainly there are some others, but those are two prominent ones. Well think about it for a moment how many colleges and universities do we have.
13:20:19 Now, think about the advances in technology, think about the rise of the mega universities thanks to online. Thanks to these incredible innovations that are really offering an opportunity to create greater access greater affordability, if properly leverage
13:20:39 to do so. So that’s why I asked the question and many others is higher education the 21st century version of salt, and more importantly, if these advances continue to to go on how many of us will continue to be able to be a salt maker, or provider of
13:20:55 higher education in our way we currently do it. Are we going to have to really think differently, and adapt and really consider ourselves more of a specialty sock, especially for those of us in the community college sector.
13:21:09 So what’s what’s really driving all of this.
13:21:12 This level of disruption and and so Pat Gelsinger, the CEO of VMware wrote a great article just a few years back, called the four superpowers. And if you haven’t read that I highly recommend you Google the four superpowers, and they are not countries,
13:21:29 they are those pieces that you see on the PowerPoint screen.
13:21:34 But what are they, enabling is really important to understand their their enabling the industry 4.0, and that industry 4.0 pieces are really the truly true integration of the digital with the physical and the biological in a true integrated way, causing
13:21:57 such levels of disruption, but at the same time, levels of opportunity and if we, if we seize upon that. And what I’ve shown here is an example of how something that we’re doing a Hema in collaboration with too simple.
13:22:15 be familiar with two simple, they are autonomous vehicle vehicle company, their production facilities are located here in Tucson, Arizona, their headquarters.
13:22:36 Their North American headquarters is in San Diego, California, and their CEO and chairman is of Chinese ancestry.
13:22:39 So, and they have their startup organization and they have reached unicorn status so why do I highlight them, their technology is giving rise to what they talk about is the virtual railway.
13:22:55 So can you imagine for a moment from Long Beach, California, all the way through Arizona into New Mexico and through Texas, through the Gulf Coast, all the way through to Jacksonville, Florida.
13:23:09 That’s it.
13:23:11 And imagine that I 10 now becomes a virtual railway. So you’re, you’re taking that width of a railroad, which is this less than five feet, and all sudden you’re expanding it out across four lanes six lanes, if not more.
13:23:27 And it’s all virtual all being powered by things like the Internet of Things, by the artificial intelligence. This collection of the enormous data through the cloud, and then mobile technology being important aspects of all of this.
13:23:44 That’s not science fiction that is happening today.
13:23:49 And too simple as running trucks today autonomous trucks.
13:23:54 Right now from Phoenix to Dallas Texas is just a matter of time before it’s from coast to coast, and at some time throughout the United States. But what does this mean as a point of disruption.
13:24:06 That means that the single largest employer of males in our country will be displaced, and become dislocated workers, unless something is done so we partnered with to sample.
13:24:25 A Thomas vehicle driver certification. So, so think about that and that’s why this partly why the shifts are happening, but also another piece that I touched on it earlier the globalization piece.
13:24:39 And, and, can you imagine one day, that your, your college is no longer your college.
13:24:45 I know it’s hard to believe that, but who would have ever thought that Pima, and Maricopa Community Colleges are no longer state funded.
13:24:52 Could you imagine that to community colleges could ever or any community college would never be courted by the state again, that has already happened.
13:25:03 So what now.
13:25:06 And so, so when we talk about how we have shifted Pima Community College to really leverage these drivers of change, these, these trends and signals that have been going on.
13:25:19 And it begins with a mindset and and and you really have to I think reach down deep and Sarah you really have a fixed mindset, or are you really have a growth mindset.
13:25:31 And, and sometimes that’s hard to self assess yourself right and and so do you believe that skills intellect and talents are pretty much set and unchangeable or do you believe that skills intellect towns can be developed through practice and perseverance.
13:25:48 Do you have the courage to assume the level of risk to make the changes that are needed to respond to those disruptions those shifts that are that are happening.
13:26:01 And that’s something that we, we, that I talked a lot about here at Pima, you know, our mindset is that we’re going to grow, we’re going to be responsive to the realities of change, and that we’re going to show the courage in the face of the resistance
13:26:17 you’re ultimately going to meet.
13:26:20 And so, so as you look at all the data. I think it’s important to then take that and frame it in a way that are actionable and that’s what I refer to as minding the gaps.
13:26:33 And so when I was in Seattle, as the President Shoreline Community College and looking at the, at that time there was an important report that came out that AC t published it was called the perfect storm.
13:26:47 And when you look at that report you combine it with Jared Diamond’s work collapse and some other things that were going on, they started to become clear that there were at least five gaps that I thought that we had higher education, certainly, especially
13:27:01 in community colleges needed to be responsive to the educational achievement gap. The Global Diversity gap, the technology gap sustainability, which is, you know, green job opportunities as well as our fiscal our financial viability is organizations and
13:27:17 the skills gap. So, I’m not saying that’s what everyone needs to do but this is what is guiding the focus of Pima Community College, to be in response to those, those forces of change that are that are happening as we speak.
13:27:33 But what is your individual commitment to, to a lifetime of learning.
13:27:42 And so examples of that, are, are you coding.
13:27:46 Have you tried coding, are you blogging, are you using social media, are you podcasting. Are you are you embracing the digital skills so that you’re also modeling for for your employees that you, especially if you’re a CEO, that, that we all have to start
13:28:06 to embrace this new digital reality, I had the good fortune myself and my team. We went up to, to Apple headquarters. We were invited there. And, and in less than 30 minutes, I was coding, can you imagine a lawyer of my age, you know coding, because I
13:28:27 didn’t grow up coding, so it’s not as difficult as it might seem, but it was actually very fun to be able to code and see the little robot responding to the messages we were sending through our coding.
13:28:40 So it’s exciting times, but also the reason why I shared the Lifetime Learning piece. I want to share a partnership that we’ve entered into with caterpillar.
13:28:51 So some of you may be aware Caterpillar relocated to surface mining headquarters to Tucson, Arizona, once they got situated on the ground. They came to us and they said you know we have, we have this problem that we want to work with you on to solve that
13:29:12 problem happened to be that they they realized that they needed to invest in the upscaling of their engineers engineers come out of their various universities, well prepared and grounded in the theory, but many of them don’t understand how basic machining,
13:29:29 a basic welding, or any of those other critical pieces to the work they do as mechanical and electrical engineers and the like. So we created in partnership co develop the curriculum.
13:29:45 The advanced technology Academy.
13:29:48 And an interesting thing that happened once we did that was Raytheon which is another large employer here in Tucson, Arizona, also came to us and said, Can we participate in that advanced technology Academy to send our engineers to be up skilled, as well
13:30:05 as the University of Arizona came to us, and many others to want to be part of this unfortunately Caterpillar was open to this not being just about Caterpillar, but really about supporting a whole ecosystem of learners so we created that exciting advanced
13:30:21 technology Academy, but it also highlights white partnerships are essential. I think to understand those drivers of change.
13:30:30 And those trends, it really requires to be in partnership with organizations that are actually driving a lot of those levels of disruption. So I’m so proud to be be associated with the National Coalition of certification centers, a private public partnership
13:30:48 focused on on community colleges, and other educational providers, really, meeting the needs of the business and industry.
13:30:57 We have a number of multinational partners, many very known brands mentioned a few and then I’ll just highlight a couple examples of what we’re doing in terms of NC three and then also outside of the work we’re doing with other partners as well.
13:31:15 So, snap on industrial is one of the partners fastow’s, another partner Greenlee, and the list goes on.
13:31:25 But burger I want to showcase is trained company.
13:31:30 And you’re all familiar with train company they they make RHVAC systems that go into our businesses as well as into our homes, and they were working on an exciting project called the virtual living lab.
13:31:45 We also wanted to take the entire Pima Community College and turn it into a living lab, so that our students could use the entire college to learn how to manage energy systems.
13:32:01 So, so we connected with train company trains a partner events eatery, and we are now in the process of creating this virtual living lab, which essentially means that the students have to simplify it, students are going to be able to take the data from
13:32:18 Pima Community College are our facilities, and use that information in their learning. But it but it will be it will always be lagging so the students would not be able to come in and disrupt what we’re doing on a day to day basis at the college.
13:32:35 So that’s why that virtual components so important. So we’re really excited about this partnership and. And as you can imagine living here in the desert, especially in the summertime HPC is all important to what we do.
13:32:51 Another important partnership, I think there’s going to be essential as we go over time. And we hear from the cyber community that many of our colleges and universities produce.
13:33:05 You know cyber train professionals, except the challenge is, they’ve not actually done it in real life.
13:33:15 And also, the cyber world is changing so quickly. So fortunately, we have a fortune 100 company who happens to be located in Phoenix, Arizona, they went and approached other colleges and universities about setting up a cyber warfare range, and all they
13:33:35 kept hearing was no.
13:33:38 So fortunately I met with the folks at the, at at Tech Data Tech Data is the company, and really started to explore the possibilities of creating a cyber warfare range live fire on one of our campuses.
13:33:54 Now at the time that seemed pretty scary pretty risky. And I think that’s why a lot of folks weren’t comfortable doing that because, would you be susceptible.
13:34:17 Your in college to additional cyber attacks by having a live fire cyber warfare range. So that was probably the biggest single biggest concern. And, and we were able to create this partnership, create a dedicated private line that comes into the CYBER
13:34:27 warfare range, so it’s not connected to any of our systems at Pima. It’s its own dedicated line, we established this this range. And so we have MIT we have these wonderful cyber patriots in our community who come in and volunteer their time at the range.
13:34:46 And we have folks who drive in from Phoenix, who will come, volunteer their time at the range, and what it allows us to do is to then align our cyber security program to give our students an opportunity to, to be mentored and coached by these professionals
13:35:05 and also be guided by these professionals in real time by going into the dark net. So our students are getting real time live experience.
13:35:18 fighting. As a cyber patriot so we’re really excited by that and but it took a lot of at the time a lot of risk and a lot of courage to make that that happen at the college.
13:35:29 So can you imagine for a moment.
13:35:34 If we could create a platform where the learner.
13:35:39 The provider.
13:35:42 In this case, community colleges, and the employer could all come together in a common platform, and that the learner could do some career navigation pieces that the learner could see that if I took certain courses are certain programs, which employers
13:35:59 were hiring people who receive those credentials, and that the employer could come into that platform and see which educational providers are willing to provide those certifications, and in some cases taking the certification from employer themselves
13:36:19 like Google, or co develop something like we did with two simple or partner with the end leverage the FAA regulations to allow for.
13:36:35 In this case veterans coming out of the military to take, take a short courses with us, and then go sit for the FAA licensure to work on commercial aircraft.
13:36:46 So, this is not something that is conceptual.
13:36:50 We, in partnership with six other community colleges and social tech have created what is called now, the model course the jobs marketplace.
13:37:01 This is the community colleges response to Coursera to Udacity, and so on. But, and to add to go and all of those because we have the ability to create a talk about original content in collaboration with employers, linking back to the learners in this
13:37:22 digital platform.
13:37:24 And it’s so exciting. We went live with this last month.
13:37:30 We have already added well over 100 courses into the platform we’re looking to do a lot more. Those of you if you’re interested, please feel free to reach out, we’d love to have a conversation with you.
13:37:43 And, and but here’s the unique thing about this too is that that the edX is, and of course Sarah’s don’t have, they don’t have an actual airplane.
13:37:55 They don’t have an actual cyber warfare range, they don’t have an actual autonomous truck. So we’re able to take those learners who are learning in this platform and say go to your local community college who are part of our partnership network.
13:38:11 And you can go and actually touch the very thing you just learned about.
13:38:16 So I think that gives us a unique distinct advantage, specialty salt, as we as we go forward. Now, this piece, we started this journey over a little over a year bartender Jessica Jemaine was part of this merrily and and so many other people Julian Assad
13:38:36 is now part of this and, and others, and started with the concept.
13:38:43 And that concept and less than a year, we now have this platform. This is a Rosetta Stone, this is that transcription.
13:38:53 That I think is needed more now than ever. It is short term, it’s not credit and and in many cases low cost but not in all cases.
13:39:07 And another important feature here is we are very clear that if you take these courses and keep them that the colleges will translate that into actual credit towards a degree or certificate if that’s what you so choose.
13:39:21 But if you choose not to do that, you take the set of courses these employers are already employ people with.
13:39:30 With this background so this is what’s so special that’s going on as we speak, and and and so what all this is done is lead at least Pima Community College to be highly engaged in a many a lot of activities happening all over the country.
13:39:47 We’re so proud to be in partnership with, with the National Governors Association, with the American Association of Community colleges to be part of the 20 plus states that are working on the rescaling Recovery Network, to help revitalize our respective
13:40:03 economies in our respective communities. we were recently chosen as one of six community colleges across the country to, to develop and pilot micro pathways through the Community College growth engine fund in partnership with the ad Design Lab.
13:40:21 We are collaborating with Amazon Web Services, from our entire community college system in the state of Arizona is going to be delivering on AWS, cloud certifications and just recently as part of Bank of America’s $25 million jobs initiative which is
13:40:42 part of a larger 1 billion revitalization program. We are proud to say at Pima we are one of the recipients of that generous gift so exciting things happening when we pay attention to the trends, we start to focus on those signals that they’re sending
13:41:00 us, and we start to create a programming in response to that. And so I’m just proud to say that we recognize that Pima, we are really a specialty salt.
13:41:12 And as a specialty so we have a unique place in the ecosystem. And I believe each and every one of our community colleges especially occupy that unique position that no other entity can fulfill in our respective communities.
13:41:26 So with that I’ll be glad to take questions.
13:41:30 That’s awesome. What kind of salt was that can you put up rock salt.
13:41:36 I think it was rock salt.
13:41:38 It was pretty. Okay, um, we have one question here in the q amp a you can either chat it or put it in the q&a, um, and Lopez said she said that’s killing enterprise and they’re working to identify skill gaps of scaling and re skilling similar to what
13:41:58 talking about with thanks Maria American Center, so how, how would you work with companies in the region and how are you working with companies to look at the skill gaps that are unique and set aside the red tape, create solutions, mean that’s it, that’s
13:42:18 a great question, and, and I think the two simple example, really illustrates and goes to the point that you’re making. And so when, when two simple sat down with us and said, you know, can we create this new program, and became quickly clear to us that
13:42:38 when I say silos, you have your Dean’s, they have their portfolios, and then they have their faculty, but what, what, two simple wanted to create was something that had to cross all of those.
13:43:02 So we had to bring all these folks together start to break down those silos and say, how do we create a more integrated program that that starts to upscale and reschedule the truck driver to understand, logistics and trade, understand how to actually
13:43:19 service, a vehicle understand the, the electrical components that the computer systems that are now going to be on board.
13:43:28 These trucking systems and. And so, so, it required, courage, on, on the administration’s part to start to push to break down those barriers, then we had to sit down with two simple and be willing to collaborate with their engineers.
13:43:47 And remember, the engineers may not be schooled and creating curriculum to help work through the translation that needed to happen to create the curriculum, so that took some time to work through that piece, as we as we are going forward, but interesting
13:44:06 enough and then it goes even further. So now they recognize okay this the truck driver doesn’t need to have a bachelor’s degree.
13:44:14 But yeah, for other jobs they were hiring they were still requiring a bachelor’s degree. so we actually sat down with them, went through each of their competencies for certain jobs that they had, and we help them translate that to what are your actual
13:44:30 skill needs.
13:44:31 And then once we were able to break it down to that level and say, Well, is it really that you need a bachelor’s degree to do that.
13:44:39 And what it clearly shows that the bachelor’s degree as we all know, was a proxy for a lot of the skills that employers are looking for, because it was really hard to do this granular analysis.
13:44:51 Now, you know I’m not the expert in this, and I know we had dr john Boudreau and earlier presentation, shared what his work and his work really starts to break this down in a way that can be translatable.
13:45:08 So I think, you know, skilling our folks to be able to do that level of translation for a book, The hard part is you got to go from one employer to the next, we have to help educate the HR departments as much as the HR departments educate us.
13:45:24 So it’s this again this reciprocal process, but tearing down the barriers are so essential to to the work that you’re seeing us do.
13:45:33 And here’s a question, what do you what do you see as the biggest risk or opportunity.
13:45:44 Maybe, and or for Pima and all community colleges over the next year or two, you know, host co op ed.
13:45:54 Thank you for bringing that up.
13:45:55 So let me preface it with this and then answer the question.
13:46:00 Everything I shared with you almost everything I shared with you was happening, pre coven.
13:46:07 Okay.
13:46:08 And, and, and that’s important because we were already positioning the college to move into a virtual environment.
13:46:20 And, and we had built, so we had created a team online as an example, create a lot of quality around pm online, we had 30% of everything we were doing was already in Pima online before coven yet, so that meant we had already built the infrastructure.
13:46:36 Every, every course had a course shell on DQL.
13:46:40 We were already training our faculty were already moving in the direction of requiring every faculty member, to be able to teach online. Now we hadn’t gotten there yet, but we’re already moving in this, and then covert hit.
13:46:53 I say this is the decisions that you made pre coed around the things I just mentioned made a difference for FEMA. So we made the transition a little smoother I’m not saying it was smooth made it smoother.
13:47:05 We were also in a financially healthy position going into co then, so I have not to date had to lay off a single employee. Wow, because I had already been anticipating the need to reallocate and strategically invest in new areas.
13:47:21 So we started to ask people left the organization we would sit on positions.
13:47:28 So we started to as people left the organization we would sit on positions are now starting to reallocate so because of that strategy, and then covert hit, I had resources to where I could draw upon beyond my reserves to cushion us through this period
13:47:42 of time. Also I really believe this comes back to mindset and heart set that I did not want us contributing to the unemployment, and the devastation the economy, when we don’t have to.
13:47:54 So I made a commitment to our employees that I’m not gonna lay anybody off.
13:47:59 And as we went through the first phase of combet then once we got to the new fiscal year. In July, one I made the similar commitment, provided that that the employee understood that as we move through this current year that they have to be willing to
13:48:15 upscale and read skill, because we’re moving in this new direction, if you’re not willing to do your part.
13:48:23 That. Unfortunately, when we come out of this.
13:48:26 You know, the world’s going to be different at Pima. So, so, co. It is just an accelerant This is not just but it is an accelerant to what was already happening before coven, so we could not have anticipated this black swan event, but we could anticipate
13:48:43 if we were embracing the things you heard me talking about earlier, the partnerships addressing the digital skills.
13:48:50 Working closely with leading employers and the like that, it positioned us nicely and making tough choices, leading up to it you know the courage risk taking, etc.
13:49:09 I mean, didn’t you have three campuses and you went down to one. And so I had six campuses.
13:49:09 And, and so we closed one and sold it. Got it.
13:49:13 So, so that’s that courage to make hard decisions.
13:49:19 And then reallocate things in a way that continue to be responsive to the community, and part of why we do that just came online was growing, it became our, It is our fastest growing part of the college.
13:49:31 Wow.
13:49:32 And it’s still growing today even though our enrollments are falling.
13:49:38 And Dr. Dre was on. Thanks for the shout out bleeding. Very interesting discussion I wonder if there’s a place for payment others and metal etc. to actually develop lessons for HR and other leaders about how to deconstruct jobs insight into curricula
13:49:57 john we would love to sit down and talk to you about developing a curriculum to go into an unlevel platform to do exactly what you’re talking about. And so I’d love to arrange that conversation and bring Parminder into Jessica into the conversation Julia
13:50:19 Assad and others, and we can start to move in that direction. So that’s exciting. I’m glad you you you’re willing to explore that with us.
13:50:24 That’s awesome. Um, this came from my pregnant in Mexico Jamie Wagner, just said she loves to micro credentials micro pathways to learning. So that’s, that’s the Bank of America step that you were referring to right.
13:50:39 What is it, is the goal of that to work in a specific industry for these micro pathways, or what what is that goal. So, so let me separate two things out so there’s, there’s the growth engine fun, which was really focused on the micro pathways, on it,
13:50:58 and and and and then Bank of America is also focused on a similar thing. And both of them are focused on the equity.
13:51:06 You know addressing equity especially in the case of Tucson, Arizona, addressing the fact that many of our almost half of our workforce and low wage earners.
13:51:18 And, and then and then you take the majority of those low wage earners are our Latinx. And so so so then you overlay that equity piece into the equation, and and so then how can we rapidly reseal folks into better opportunities and so that’s where the
13:51:37 micro pathways comes in, and you look at, you know, someone may only need one or two additional coursework, and then you can move into a higher level opportunities.
13:51:50 Some people may need a little bit more time maybe it’s three to six months or longer, and then obviously there’s some people you’re going to need to move through a system, you know, a year or two or longer.
13:52:02 So the micro pathway is just another option that allows for that to happen. Now what we did, it’s contextualize to your community. So what we decided was.
13:52:12 It is one of the areas, healthcare, advanced manufacturing logistics and trade are the areas we’re going to concentrate on because those, those are where some of the better jobs are in this community.
13:52:25 we have a huge need for nurses here and that’s probably true in most of our communities. So can we upscale a real skill individuals quickly into that opportunity.
13:52:35 As an example, we need machinists we need welders, and so can we reach, we need more cyber, cyber professionals.
13:52:46 So, can we do some of that work and that’s where we’re.
13:52:49 That’s can be different in other communities across the country.
13:52:54 That’s awesome.
13:52:55 Does anybody have any other questions Leah I’m going to put something up on my screen real quick.
13:53:02 Does anybody else have questions for me about anything else.
13:53:12 So I see a question about fast tracking k 12 teachers. So we have a post back program.
13:53:20 And it’s fully online, and what, what it does is it is designed in a way where it’s earned the Learn model. So you could go and get at least in the state of Arizona, a temporary exemption to teach.
13:53:37 If you’re in this program that we have.
13:53:40 And and then, so we scale you over time and you can complete this, and I believe.
13:53:48 I don’t want to misquote I’ll say in less than two years, fully online. And then the other thing that’s happened is the state of Arizona has created.
13:53:58 I teachers Academy. What that means is they are providing additional funding for folks to do the do the reskilling or upscaling to be a teacher. So we’ve created that online piece that allows for rapid acceleration, creating the exception so you can go
13:54:14 in the classroom now, but be in this learning process.
13:54:18 So that’s the model will certainly be glad to share more and get you connected to people on the ground if you’d like to learn the details and specifics about that.
13:54:27 Can you guys see my screen, I’m going to shift happens or not.
13:54:32 You see that way.
13:54:34 Mm hmm. You do.
13:54:36 You did. I see it cuz I just was gonna say, anybody wants to read the paper merrily male, author, and co author. With me is shift happens and Pema.
13:54:49 I’m here it’s a website, and you can it’s on the innovative Education website. If you are interested in looking at and definitely.
13:55:07 One last question is about veterans completing their fa, are there other pathways and teamwork well to help veterans transition to new career, and what support to be seeing that are important.
13:55:14 So thank you for the question, Scott.
13:55:17 So, you know, these programs all very in terms of their links so what we did, another program that we have automated industrial technology.
13:55:28 What that is is formerly known as Megatron six. So we sat down with Raytheon and lucid automotive nest that electric vehicle company that’s in central Arizona and Boeing working with Maricopa and CAC that those are the other two can be college districts,
13:55:47 and we created this new curriculum called ait and and it’s broken out into two key semester pieces. And so, a veteran could come through and just be done in that first semester and get there at cert and go directly into the workplace if they choose so
13:56:07 you’re talking, less than six months, we can get you out there is not as fast as the FAA piece, but it’s certainly pretty fast. And what we’re finding is that people are moving into, you know, jobs that are paying $18 or more an hour.
13:56:22 By having this ability to understand the interrelationship so the electrical, mechanical, and the computer science pieces and integrated with the robotics and the like.
13:56:34 So we’re really excited about that. But the other thing we’ve done with this is we have now what we call I bested it. So if you’re not familiar with I best was first, you know, trademarked and developed out of the state of Washington where, you know,
13:56:50 I happen to be president shoreline. And once I came here we Pima also leverage I best so we created these integrated best education, skills training on ramps to these career technical education programs, so I can do it together so I’m not stuck in dev
13:57:07 ed first before I get into my program of study I’m doing it at the same time, then we’ve now layered in the adult ed piece into that. So if I don’t have my GED or high school equivalency, I can still get into this is a it program.
13:57:23 And thanks to a TV ability to benefit being.
13:57:29 Now, we’re able to offer it again. We now have this full suite of complement of the financial, the students support systems, wrapping around that student and the program of study, and we’re seeing phenomenal results from that.
13:57:51 That’s awesome.
13:57:44 Okay. Well, Um, I think this was amazing. I always want to me Lee, always. So, thank you. Any closing words.
13:57:58 So, this takes.
13:58:01 I mean, it’s over us right it does take a family to do what I described it’s not because of me the chancellor. I’m just one piece of it. And it really took everyone buying into a vision.
13:58:14 Everyone willing to work together understanding the needs of the community and really doing the right thing.
13:58:20 And I say, everybody is everybody literally, but enough folks coming together to do the right thing and this is what can happen when you do that, and so I’m just so proud of the folks at Pima, and so proud of our community colleges across the country
13:58:36 for what for what we do and and we look forward to we know partnerships and partnerships are the key.
13:58:44 So, as our mayor likes to say the first Latina mayor of a, of a major city.
13:58:54 She says Sonos owner.
13:58:58 We are all one.
13:59:00 And so I think that’s what I leave with all of you. We’re all one song as an awesome partnership we’re super excited tomorrow to hear from Marina.
13:59:12 Marina Gorbals with Institute for the teacher.
13:59:17 She is I think she got a whole new topic to talk about so I encourage everybody to listen and participate if they can and then next Friday we have Dr.
13:59:36 Angela Jackson from New profit who’s running that X Prize and the MIT solve, etc and then rounds that are year, and then the heads are really really getting busy working together the 11th and hundreds of the classic community, and we encourage you all
13:59:46 continue to build the knowledge across the community during this most interesting time in the history of our country. So thank you as always Lambert for your commitment to the greater cause of the teacher work and learning and two things.
14:00:04 Thanks everyone for being here with us. Thanks for having me happy holidays everyone. You too.
14:00:10 Thank you. Bye.
? 4Dec2020: Marina Gorbis
What Comes Next: Future of Work in the Post-Pandemic World
Transcription:
15:49:39 Hi everybody and happy first Friday of December, 2020 will never see it again so I hope you’ve had a good one. And I hope you’re coming weekend is full of peace and relaxation.
15:49:52 I am very honored today to have Marina corpus who’s the executive director of the Institute for the future, which is a Palo Alto I think a lot of you know about that organization.
15:50:04 I got to meet Marina through her workable features and feature work initiative, when Dr. Linda Jessica went over there.
15:50:14 marinas current research has focused on the transformation in the world of work. And obviously, if she was just telling me she’s been doing tons of research and Marina has a book the nature of the future dispatches from the social structured world, which
15:50:33 really explores many of the themes that she has researched over the years that draws connection between the changes in technology infrastructure, and organizational landscape.
15:50:45 So Marina speaks all over the globe. Very very honored to have you with us today Marina, and thank you for sharing your insights on the future work.
15:50:55 Great, thank you so much for inviting me and thank you to be back with this community.
15:51:00 You know we’re all look fondly on all the great events we’ve participated in.
15:51:06 And so it’s great to be back. What I want to do today is I’m going to share with you some of the most recent research that hasn’t been even published we’re actually in the process of completing a report and hopefully that will be out by the end of the
15:51:23 year. This work was funded by the James Irvine Foundation, and it’s specifically focused on low income workers in California, and how they’re fearing work practices and what does it all mean.
15:51:40 So you kind of getting a preview of something before it’s out there in the world.
15:51:48 What we did in terms of the research process is kind of unique and it’s something that we were very proud of, but the idea we pioneered, we call it ethnographic course side.
15:51:59 It’s a combination of sort of two different methodologies. One is ethnographic research where you go out and you interview people you observe them. You look at their current patterns of work life and how they’re doing it.
15:52:17 Just understanding people’s lives and routines. And so we recruited about 60 people, all making under $15 an hour as they said this was about low income low wage workers throughout California majority of these workers by the way are African Americans
15:52:36 and Latinos so they were over represented in this particular sample. So, one side of it was to bring them together and have our inter apologists of Naga refers to interviews around what to work experience is like this was done after the pandemic struck
15:52:54 so it was a kind of a unique moment with when all over the summer, over a period of several months and we analyze the themes we’re looking for big themes for this work, but what’s unique so that methodology is no properties understanding people’s patterns.
15:53:12 But what is that we bring that together.
15:53:19 Somebody is.
15:53:21 I’m hearing voices. Yeah, I don’t, I’m sorry I’m going to type everyone to please me, because I don’t I don’t know who whose voice we’re hearing Sorry about that.
15:53:34 Great.
15:53:36 Um, So as I was saying so the unique part is that it’s here and now and understanding what people are doing and how they’re doing it, but it sits within the larger context so we bring up together, a lot of our work on what we see as underlining trends
15:53:55 and kind of putting these experiences in the larger perspective, why are people doing it. What’s behind it. What are these kind of larger systemic issues that are shaping what we’re hearing and ethnographic interviews.
15:54:09 So that’s kind of the the research and methodology.
15:54:15 I’m gonna first. So what I’m going to do is first I’m just going to share you some of the themes. So once we do these interviews we record them. We come together and analyze what are the themes that kind of themes that we hear from a lot of people would
15:54:33 kind of the core stories that are emerging from this work. And so what I’m going to share you with you first. Are these core themes. And then I’m going to go into kind of the larger context like what are we seeing, why is this happening.
15:54:47 Is this something that’s unique, is this something that you need to cope with and what we’re experiencing or is there is a larger story there. And finally some implications for Workforce Development and for conversations about skills and jobs and and
15:55:04 work. So, I’m going to share with you some of the key themes. One of the core themes, is that we see sort of fragmentation of jobs into tasks and somewhere and sometimes into hours and minutes, so we don’t see people managing careers as much as we’re
15:55:24 seeing people managing income streams and these income streams may come from very different places. It’s people are sort of pulling to putting together fragments of things, it could be a part time job, it’s good bad jobs its full time, but doesn’t pay
15:55:44 enough, so people are engaging in various kinds of informal work whether it’s Uber driving of tax rap, or other kinds of platforms. And sometimes, some people are literally just buying hours, they’re selling hours so using all these different platforms,
15:56:04 they’re sort of patching together, income streams. So if you’re thinking of sort of jobs and traditional careers and advancement, those concepts sort of don’t exist for a lot of people when they’re sort of putting together all these pieces together, and
15:56:22 I’m going to illustrate it with some of the quotes from actual interviews. This is a 27 year old and she says, really, you can’t survive on one job in America, everybody, you just have to, it’s an expectation that you will have multiple sources of income
15:56:39 and she was particularly skillful at putting together all these different income streams.
15:56:46 And by the way, if you have questions or comments, go ahead and use the chat, and hopefully will engage in the conversation so fairly small group so it would be easy for us to engage in the conversation.
15:56:59 So as part of that the second theme is kind of connected, is that there’s a huge competition for ours. So people are actually seeing, you know, we think of traditional rewards or incentives in work as like great or pay bonuses, more vacation.
15:57:20 Actually, hours themselves, hours of work are becoming a reward in its own right people competing for hours of work. So, this is a great example and there’s a kind of a gamification of that going on where people are.
15:57:38 This is from a woman who worked in a restaurant where basically they divided people up into groups, and these groups were competing with each other, how quickly they can prepare a meal, and within the group there was a competition of who does best and
15:57:54 they were ranked on on different criteria, but guess what the reward was a gift card, or sometimes it was hours. People are looking at hours of work as the reward that’s a very different kind of environment and actually what we’re finding is the result
15:58:12 is that people are working all the time. It’s no longer 40 hour week people are working at night, people are working on weekends.
15:58:23 60 hour work week or more, just because they need to generate these income streams and the work that they’re doing is just not sufficient to generate that.
15:58:38 Now, the question is, of course, is it coded and are we seeing this as a result of that.
15:58:47 And really, from the interviews and what we know. You know Cove it, as we know, is it has been a great accelerator and a reveal or there is a historian of pandemics and he talks about he compares.
15:59:03 a pandemics to dramas in for x Act One is progressive revelation. This is where things were suppressed, or invisible, all of a sudden they just burst out and you can’t ignore them anymore.
15:59:13 So I think what Kobe has been doing is revealing a lot of these things, a lot of these patterns of work, a lot of ways that people are managing these fragmented work environment and of course it coded accelerated, but it’s not just about coded.
15:59:31 It was there before coded. So, this is one example this is somebody who actually did work before co bed 40 hours but then on weekends. He was also doing other kinds of work on platform he was doing this on task rabbit and other things and interesting
15:59:50 enough. What he said is like before co but I was working this job, and I was doing this stuff on platforms on task rabbit. And I was doing good platform work, but now I’m taking in bad platform work and good platform work, meaning that you can set your
16:00:08 own own pay.
16:00:11 You can decide whether to take it or not bad platform work is that when you take anything, and anything you can grab. But the important thing is that this phenomena is not just as a result of Kobe Kobe has served as an accelerator of it, so connected
16:00:29 I’ve been talking a lot about where are these people getting this fragmented work and where they’re selling their time and getting these hours platforms.
16:00:38 And, you know, we think about probably most of people that on this in this conversation, you probably have a profile on LinkedIn right or something like that.
16:00:48 None of the people we interviewed ever mentioned LinkedIn, what they’re going to is Craigslist and task rabbit and Uber and doordash. And in some ways, these platforms can become kind of safety net for these people.
16:01:04 As you lose your job, you could always go and find something on one of the platforms you can drive for Uber, you do the, the barriers to entry on these platforms are very low.
16:01:16 So pretty much anybody can do that. The other interesting so the quote here, you can see, we heard about all kinds of platforms. We never want once heard about LinkedIn.
16:01:28 So I think there is a kind of a polarization going on in terms of the kind of people who go to LinkedIn and have resumes and the people who are just using these kinds of platforms that part of it that’s kind of really troublesome is that, imagine if you
16:01:47 had to look for a new job every day. Right. So you wake up and you try to figure out, can I get this gig Can I get this gig Can I do this. And so this is somebody talking about how he’s spending two hours a day, just figuring out, and sort of managing
16:02:05 these fragments of work and sending out resumes and doing all these other things so this is a daily experience that’s obviously not paid work, but it comes as part of this kind of work pattern.
16:02:19 The other important thing is that what we found is that a lot of people go to various kinds of social media platforms to actually get ideas about the kind of work they could be doing so surprisingly this lady found somebody on tik tok, who was selling
16:02:39 earrings and making earrings, and it gave her an idea. Oh, I can do that too. So, particularly for creative work people are finding all kinds of ways to monetize their creative side on these platforms, but the other side of it is think about it, we’re
16:02:56 people are getting advice and ideas about careers. It’s not through traditional workforce development or sort of the kind of institutions where, when we think of that we think about in terms of formal institutions, they’re getting it from these other
16:03:12 people on platforms sometimes of dubious quality information, but a lot of people talked about that this sort of Tick Tock or Facebook or other places where they’re getting ideas for work and the kind of work they can do.
16:03:28 One of the most frequent terms we’ve heard in interviews is hustle, you’ve gotta hustle. You gotta be able in this world to survive, you gotta hustle and people are doing it.
16:03:41 Although it may be particularly stressful and hustling is not like entrepreneurship you think about Silicon Valley, entrepreneurs right, you have a business plan, and you get funding and you get capital to invest and then you grow this company know hustling
16:03:56 here is like looking at every moment of time and figuring out how do I monetize it.
16:04:04 Time is one of the few assets that people on the low income scale have, that’s one of the few things that they can sell. And so people are actively monetizing hustling every moment of their time.
16:04:18 And there are a lot of quotes about that this actually is a woman who works as a social worker, but on the side. She has been selling Mary Kay and she says, but that’s hard that’s not me.
16:04:29 You have to be a hustler, you have to hustle, to know how to do this, and another woman I mentioned Shonda before that she is an ultimate hustler she’s she has this hustler mentality and says, Hey, I’m kind of.
16:04:44 I’m used to that. This is how I conceive of work, and I can’t think of another way of being, it’s like as soon as I get comfortable I know that these things are not permanent.
16:04:55 So I’ve got to be able to hustle and monetize, and what else can I do with myself,
16:05:02 you know, as many of you who’ve been to lots of conferences on future work and you know we always talk about you know we have to have an agile workforce.
16:05:13 We have to have people constantly working on themselves and improving their skills and and people are doing it.
16:05:21 I mean, in every case, almost when we were talking to people and interviewing people people talked about things that they’re doing. It’s very improvisational it’s not traditional sources, but people are using online resources that constantly working on
16:05:37 themselves they’re, they’re learning from other people they’re buying books, they’re hiring mentors online, you know, influencers another thing but the theme of constantly working on self is very much it’s people are doing themselves, they’re already
16:05:53 doing it, they’re not doing it through traditional sources, they’re doing it in a very improvisational ways, sometimes it doesn’t make sense if you’re an outsider but this is very much a part of their lives and there are a lot of trade offs involved in
16:06:10 that, because you know a lot of people talk about going back to college or taking community college classes, but they have a lot of family obligations, you know surprised that not surprisingly, I guess a lot of people have care responsibilities in their
16:06:24 homes, particularly with CO but particularly women.
16:06:28 A lot of people have managing chronic conditions or their families or managing chronic conditions. So this actually adds more stress to their lives.
16:06:41 This is one of those sort of entrepreneurs or hustlers who talks about how he was laid off from his work, and he’s constantly reading books.
16:06:51 He’s working on himself he hired this mentor online somebody he admires, and he’s developing business plans, you know, as I said, some of it when you’re an outsider you just kind of go okay This doesn’t make much sense and how do you know this is a reliable
16:07:06 source, but this is what people are doing.
16:07:10 And And finally, there are more themes in the report you will see but I just picked a few.
16:07:16 When you ask people what can make your life better what would you hope for for the future.
16:07:24 The focus is all on self, it’s about me like I need to learn to save more, I need to learn this particular skill.
16:07:34 None of this is looking at, none of the people we interviewed looked at them and say you know the system needs to change like why is it that I’m making this little money.
16:07:46 So, a lot of it’s almost like one of our colleagues compared it to the obesity epidemic where you know so much traditionally been the focus being on self it’s like, oh, you have to eat healthy you have to diet you have to, you know exercise you have to
16:08:03 do all of these. And now the conversation is shifting to Hey what is the system that creates, so, so much obesity is it about our food system is it about our retail environment.
16:08:16 Is it about advertising is about the healthcare system. So the conversation is kind of shifting from sort of blaming individuals So, looking at obesity as a personal responsibility to looking at it as a systemic issue and I really believe that that needs
16:08:33 to happen with what’s happening was work, and the whole lot of other conversations about low wage work and why this is happening, who’s responsible and how do we get out of it.
16:08:45 So let me then go into kind of larger context, this is, I have to say that some of these interviews you, you kind of.
16:08:54 They were pretty distressing people are in pretty bad shape, people are struggling, they’re stressed out. And there’s a lot of management of various kinds of conditions from mental conditions to physical chronic conditions and all of that, plus the immense
16:09:12 stress that people are under. And as I said, this is not just about Cobra, this was invisible but it was happening. I have to has been tracking this for almost 10 years now.
16:09:22 And so let me give you just kind of a bigger context, why is this happening, how do we explain this, and why we think it’s not coded but it’s likely to expand and grow.
16:09:34 So, we have this, if you’ve been to it if we have this framework that talks about two curves. And basically it was created by one of the former presidents of the Institute and Morrison, and he talks about that in any period of large transformation.
16:10:05 kind of similar tenuously living on two curves. The first curve is like the curves that, you know, we’ve worked out how to live on this curve we have laws, regulations norms, all of that. But this way of doing things is kind of on the decline.
16:10:21 Is this whole sort of era of institutional work, the kind of where people work through large organizations or in organizations in formal ways with all kinds of benefits and assets you know vacations holidays, healthcare benefits and other kinds of things
16:10:44 that way of thing. Working is sort of on the decline. And now we have a new way of working, that’s emerging that’s exemplified by these people that we interviewed it’s fragmented, it’s patching together it’s using platforms it’s looking at income streams,
16:11:00 a very, very different work.
16:11:05 JOHN, we don’t have the report, yet, but hope to have it out by the end of the year or early next year so happy to share them.
16:11:15 So let’s look at it in context what has been happening Jerry Davis who’s a professor at Michigan.
16:11:22 He wrote this book on vanishing public corporations and wiki documents, is that, actually, the number of public corporations, these are corporations like GM and Procter and Gamble, who are traded on the stock exchange their number has been declining,
16:11:38 and it’s not due to mergers, there’s all kinds of things that are happening, it’s due to decline it’s due to shrinking due to all kinds of other things so it’s not just about mergers, so you can see that the number of these corporations is now almost
16:11:56 like third compared to 1990s.
16:12:00 And these corporations were large sources of employment for a lot of people, you know, GM was millions of people Procter and Gamble and others. The other thing is that the, we worked out all kinds of regulatory mechanisms hiring processes, all kinds of
16:12:19 things that applied to these kinds of corporations. And as that way at that sort of wave is declining as we’re seeing number of these corporations declining, we see new companies come on board but these companies have a very different sort of logic to
16:12:38 them, a very different operating system of how they make money, and how they’re making profits.
16:12:46 You know, Ron close who’s a famous Nobel Prize economist, he in 1930s he’s asking seemingly kind of silly question is like why do we need companies, or why do we need organizations, why can’t we just trade with each other.
16:13:01 And his answer was the reason you need larger organizations or corporations, is because of transaction costs, so it’s fine if we want to trade with each other on a small scale, you know, I’ll sell you apples and I’ll get this from you.
16:13:16 But if you want to scale that the way to scale is you hire more people right you need to hire advertising communications are indeed, or all these other things, and it’s more efficient to do it if you manage it all under one roof.
16:13:33 So that’s why these larger corporations grew over the last hundred years in sort of the last century and that was their operating model is that you grow you increase scale, while minimizing the transaction costs, right.
16:13:52 So now we have these companies that are operating on a very different basis and a very different operating system for how to make profits. Right, a lot of them you can take processes that are human processes caught codify them decode them and break them
16:14:10 down into tasks by the way, not all work can be done this way but a lot of work editorial work can be done this way assistance, can be done some of it this way.
16:14:21 So you basically create these processes you break them up into smaller bits, and then you crew large networks of people to fulfill these different tasks.
16:14:33 And I don’t know how many of you read the New Yorker, read the issue. December issue by Nathan Heller about this kind of work, where you are basically outsourcing, a lot of these tasks to the Philippines or Kenya or other places.
16:14:50 So basically, it’s not just people in the US, who are you thinking of your workers but you’re thinking of people all around the world, and obviously wages are very different.
16:14:59 And so you efficiently can route these tasks to whoever is available. And that’s how you break up the whole notion of a job into these kinds of fragments, as I said, not all work can be done this way, but a lot more work.
16:15:16 Can the comparison best comparison to us is the transition from crafts work to manufacturing where a lot of things were standardized, and you can automate them, and you can produce them very very efficiently similar kinds of things are entering services
16:15:34 in the same way so you can codify these things, you can break them up and you can do them more efficiently and use the labor force from all around the world.
16:15:45 So this is kind of the operating system for work or organizations, this is what a lot of these public corporations, still look like and have looked like.
16:15:56 And all of these boxes right there are ways of managing and collaborating and coordinating activities, there is a reason for that. Right. And now we basically have these platforms where we have these software API’s, and a lot of other tools that allow
16:16:17 us to sort of break up jobs into these pieces and then efficiently connect them get people to do work on this kind of ad hoc basis that’s, that’s really the basis for Uber task rabbit, you name it, many, many other platforms, operate like that.
16:16:37 And so, what are the challenges there are obvious challenges to this work.
16:16:44 It’s acid poor. So if you think about work and traditional jobs, it wasn’t just the pay and the wages, but in some of the older companies, people own stock workers own stock in those companies that’s equity day it came some of them with retirement benefits
16:17:03 it came with vacations and healthcare benefits. So it was a lot of other assets came with this kind of work, and now we’re seeing sort of emergence and growth of these, this acid poor work.
16:17:19 It’s not just the wages that people are making better not high, but it’s that they don’t get any of these kind of longer term economic security that comes with these kinds of assets.
16:17:30 There is a tremendous amount of Adam ization meaning people are working by themselves. Oftentimes it’s working alone, or it’s working at home, there’s a kind of a lack of aggregating voices like who’s advocating for these people.
16:17:50 They’re not members of unions that are not members of organizations. So, they are not able to even communicate a lot of times with each other, much less advocate for for themselves in this work, they haven’t there’s no identity yet even created for these
16:18:08 workers.
16:18:10 I think there are a lot of old risks that are still like misclassification and all kinds of other things that are happening, but there are a lot of sort of new risk like in this kind of work.
16:18:20 If you’re working at home possibilities of abuse possibility of
16:18:28 sort of being monitored, all the time and who owns that data do have control over this data.
16:18:35 They don’t have really ability to negotiate for wages, a lot of these things are set by algorithms. So there’s a kind of a possibility of old, and a lot of new risk because it’s very digitally managed and controlled kind of work, privacy all kinds of
16:18:53 other things. And when you work in this kind of way, obviously, a little bit of here a little bit of there. How do you advance. What does advancement, even look like.
16:19:05 So when we think about career advancement. What does it look like in this world and what we found in a lot of the interviews, is that these people are a lot of them are like jack of all trades it’s amazing the variety of skills that they bring it’s like
16:19:21 you could be an electrician, but you also work at parties as a you know clown or entertaining kids, or you’re doing construction work or you’re doing truck driving, so you never have enough, staying power in one place to actually being able to develop
16:19:42 kind of depth of knowledge and depth of skills or think about advancement in this work. So here’s the thing about it, it’s the way, when you think about these two curves.
16:19:56 It’s not like all the second curve and what’s happening now is sort of preordained. It’s really is not we have a lot of agency in shaping the second curve.
16:20:09 And the example I always talk about is the way we work is a is a product of not just acknowledge it’s not a technology deterministic outcome that people are working in this way, you know it’s based on kind of the social norms that exists, it based on
16:20:26 regulation that we haven’t worked out in for this way of working, the power dynamics, you know, who has power to do workers in in this environment, how do they Game Boys, and power.
16:20:39 Obviously labor availability and skills. This set of our social safety net. It’s interesting to note that the same platforms like Uber and others, they work very very differently in Germany.
16:20:53 And so the outcomes are very, very different because they have to work with existing operators, and the drivers have to be licensed and belong to a union, so it’s not because Uber, and this technology is driving this, there are a lot of other factors
16:21:08 that is shaping this experience for workers and that’s a good thing because we can shape this in a positive direction. I personally believe that it’s not that there’s something particularly bad about the platforms or particularly bad about this way of
16:21:24 working. It’s just that it’s sitting in a system that has not been adjusted to this type of work we’re still kind of a mismatch between the system that was created for those large banishing public corporations and the reality of how are people working
16:21:43 people are working, and that’s a gap that we need to fill and that’s kind of our duty.
16:21:49 I just want to remind us right now we think about manufacturing jobs as good jobs right, and everybody’s talking about how do we bring manufacturing jobs back, but there’s nothing inherently great about manufacturing jobs.
16:22:04 They used to be back breaking work, they there were a lot of abuses that utilize child labor, you know, long hours, we made manufacturing jobs into good jobs by negotiating by creating rules and regulations by setting expectations, all of the things we
16:22:24 did this in 1950s and 1960s.
16:22:29 We similarly need to do similar things for this new way of working, it’s like we need a new compact for work, that takes into account these new ways of working.
16:22:40 So, let me just get into the skills gap because, obviously, you’re all in workforce development and care about skills and I believe that education skills are important, but as I said, this is just one piece of the larger systemic issues that we’re facing
16:23:00 and let me just show you why.
16:23:03 We have the most educated workforce in history.
16:23:07 I mean, look at this. And of course if you judge by degrees which you can argue is is education or not but let’s assume that it’s Acacia is is a marker of skill.
16:23:23 Remarkable right we have more people with degrees than ever in history, right, compared to 1950s.
16:23:31 And then here’s the other side, the output pervert worker we’re very efficient has been going up against since the 70s, but the number of good jobs, has been declining.
16:23:42 Right. So the good jobs here are defined as jobs that offer good wages have benefits have stability predictability. All of these kinds of things. So, you can see that there is a kind of a mismatch that is happening here.
16:24:01 And we also know that the kind of jobs. If you look at those the operating system for this managing corporations right. And where’s the client has been what is a decline meant.
16:24:13 These are on both sides on the left side it’s low skilled labor on and on the other side is high skilled labor, and you can see that what’s been disappearing is these middle level jobs that are a lot of times required education.
16:24:32 This is what’s behind the disappearance of these public corporations and so you have a tremendous amount of work that’s being created on the low side low wages work, but you also have growth in these high, high wage jobs at the same time.
16:24:51 And, again, to the conversation about skills and jobs mismatch. This is for California. You can see for California workforce, something like almost 40% comparable to what’s in the rest of the nation have a bachelor’s degree or more.
16:25:11 But if you look at the workforce it’s under $15 an hour which is the workforce, the people we interviewed almost 20% of them have some form of a higher degree, they have a.
16:25:25 So, think about it 20% of people with associates or bachelor’s degree almost I think it’s 15% now are working for $15, an hour. So while we’re having this conversation about workforce skills and it’s very much needed and I’m a huge believer in education,
16:25:45 overall for just life in not just for work, but there is a disconnect, there is a kind of a broken promise between what you can get with your education.
16:25:59 So the challenge is what does it all mean for workforce development as a sector. I think we need to sort of level the conversation because I do think that skills and education are really important, but that’s like one side of the that’s the supply side,
16:26:15 we need to fix the demand side, we need to work on creating good, decent paying, whatever you call it, jobs or gigs or whatever, however, compensation.
16:26:28 We need to fix that side, as we’re having the conversation about skills and workforce training. So what can workforce development doing in this, I do think that it’s in the sector’s interest to actually advocate for good work to fix that to shape that
16:26:49 second curve that non institutional work to be just like manufacturing jobs, so that they’re good jobs we can do that. And part of it is of course we need to create a social contract for workers that takes into account this new way of working and recognizing
16:27:05 that we’re probably not going to go back to the age where these types of large public corporations supplied so much of the so many jobs for everybody good jobs for everybody.
16:27:20 I mean, unless you think that that’s possible I don’t think that’s possible. We need to shape that curve to create good jobs good paying jobs for people who work in different ways.
16:27:34 Um, I do believe and this was one of the kind of gaps that we saw in our interviews, we need to actually expand this scope of training, so much of the training is about actual work skills, but I think worker training should also involved, since there
16:28:05 a kind of a vacuum here, education about worker rights education about agency education about platforms and what to trust on the platforms and what not to. How do you calculate how much money or you’re making on the platform, what are your expenses, there’s
16:28:10 like education about how these algorithms work there’s a whole area in which it’s kind of a black box for people they don’t know how it works like why am I paid this and not this How does this algorithm decide this training around data, and what data
16:28:29 do you give up when you work on these platforms, how do you know what data, they’re collecting about you and how secure Are you in that, I believe, as I said, there was hardly anybody that we interviewed who was looking at LinkedIn, but they’re all these
16:28:49 these other platforms that are increasing that are becoming places where people are learning about crafts and skills and so I believe that somehow the workforce development community needs to recognize and meet people on those platforms and make them
16:29:05 part of their repertoire of how you talk to people, how do you access people Craigslist was like number one, everybody was using Craigslist, to, to find work in some way.
16:29:19 And finally, I have to say that as a researcher and somebody who’s been looking at data about work, and all of these things. It was actually really eye opening to be to hear from people directly to hear about their experiences so much of the work that
16:29:40 we do.
16:29:42 does not include real voices of people, where it’s kind of in depth ethnographic work to really understand what is happening and why and what is people experiences so I really, I’m very excited about this methodology that we call it the graphic for side
16:30:02 that combines the two, the two things that here and now and the larger context of why this is happening and explain so much of that.
16:30:13 So I’m happy to take questions or hear your feedback or anything else. Yeah, we have quite a few questions for Nina, that was, that’s just so fascinating and interesting.
16:30:29 So, thank you, thank you. So there were a couple of people that that as something similar in this Rebecca Corbin with the acceleration to the gig economy, what are the emerging trends from benefits like health insurance and retirement and you kind of
16:30:47 mentioned that but what does happen with that. And, yeah, there is some. There are lots of conversations so you know about portable benefits.
16:30:54 It’s, it’s early I don’t think portable benefits is necessarily the full solution, but it could be a partial solution depends on who pays for it. In this environment, one of the things is that risks are outsourced to people to individuals, and also a
16:31:10 lot of costs are outsourced to individuals so you know think about if you are Uber driver your own car, you know some platforms your own tools. So all of these things.
16:31:27 there are a lot of costs associated with even working at home you know you’re basically not paying rent or you’re paying yourself for your workplace. So, I think that that’s the conversation that absolutely one of the key is the structure of the social
16:31:56 safety net. You know can people accrue benefits, independent of what platform they work on. What does that mean you know who pays for these benefits. Is it me directly, or is it each employer contributes obviously each, each platform contributing is,
16:32:03 is a better way to go. So, emerging conversation, obviously if we have anything approximating universal health care that would be I mean that’s another thing when you compare these workers, less compared to Germany, of course, Germany has public benefits
16:32:22 that makes it so much easier to work this way.
16:32:27 Yeah. So Carl Albert, and john a big row boat kind of had a similar question. So, Kyle said that the beat Bureau of Labor Statistics 27 team contingent workers someone said there were 7% employed as independent contractors with seems really low.
16:32:45 And then john Joe said how big is this gig work on market, do me No.
16:32:51 No, we don’t. I would say, This is one of the most contentious research questions and I think partially because everybody measures, something different.
16:33:02 Yeah, there’s not a consistency, I’ve, I’ve seen everything from if you combine contract or, you know, temp work.
16:33:15 Work everything you could get up to 30% 40%.
16:33:16 Clearly, you know the purpose of this kind of ethnographic work is that early on, because you think it’s going to impact more people.
16:33:27 And, you know, I believe what’s going to happen with my answer is it’s growing. I don’t know exact nobody knows the exact number hopefully we’ll learn to measure it in some consistent way, even if it’s not the right way to create some kind of baseline
16:33:46 and start measuring the same thing over time. But, you know, I believe that as was a covert as an accelerator.
16:33:55 A lot of companies or platforms.
16:33:59 A lot of them will kind of move. It’s not going to be the traditional jobs that will be coming back, it will be this kind of work that people will be doing.
16:34:11 Yeah, I mean, I remember, I think it was six or seven years ago, Albuquerque being the largest city in New Mexico, the largest employer contract work, or the largest employer was manpower, because his contract work right.
16:34:29 And they did all the recruiting for the National Laboratories etc so it’s a it’s a hard number and and I think what john Boudreau said is ok so policy makers are fixated fixated on jobs.
16:34:43 So what in the world when you know we’re killing jobs like widgets and we oh it’s all about jobs and how will this change.
16:34:55 Yes, we’re trying. I mean, get on our side we’re trying to shift the conversation, really.
16:35:04 And because so much of the conversation has been around jobs and around certain kinds of jobs and bring those back. And, you know, the reality is that, in some ways,
16:35:19 there are a lot of positives.
16:35:23 They’re not this is not a great way to work, right, because of lack of benefits like a protections all kinds of potential abuses and everything else. But, just like with manufacturing, there’s nothing inherently terrible about this way of working, you
16:35:39 know, it allows people who otherwise cannot participate in work and make income, it allows them to get sources of income, it allows people who have care responsibilities to do it, it allows people with disabilities to make money.
16:35:58 There’s nothing inherently bad about it. It’s bad because it’s sitting within a system that is was not structured for it. So, we’re almost in the same place right now as we were was manufacturing in 1920s, you know, and it took lots of labor unrest and
16:36:21 other things that are pleasant to negotiate this new kinds of work conditions and create the social safety net, it’s, it’s almost like it’s remarkable it’s 100 years right so much is being repeated in this phase, and I think we should get ahead of it,
16:36:39 and recognize that it’s.
16:36:43 There’s nothing inherently bad about it we can shape it to be a good thing.
16:36:48 Marina from Samantha single, um, did you learn anything about what role employees want their employer to play in self improvement goals.
16:37:00 Um, you know, we asked people a lot about what what is a good job for them or what’s a good work environment for them.
16:37:10 And one thing we’ve heard is, it’s all about relationships, which was surprising that’s another thing that’s not in a lot of data when people ask surveys what’s a good job it’s mostly about paid benefits, but really social like being recognized and having
16:37:27 dignity, probably john wouldn’t be surprised with that but it’s, it’s, it’s very much about, it’s relational like being part of the family belonging being recognized all of that in terms of work.
16:37:41 You know, people didn’t really talk about expectations from employers in terms of
16:37:49 sort of their self improvement and upscaling, and all of that they’re doing it on, on their own. Most of the time, but the one thing that we did pick up, is there a huge trade offs in that.
16:38:05 So somebody we interviewed, he talked about how he’s actually a good sculptor and he was doing delivery for a dental office and realized that he saw what people were doing he said hey I’m probably going to be good at.
16:38:20 I can be really good at, can I be trained in that. And the person who was working for said, Oh, yeah, that you probably would be good but that means that I would give you have to give you time off work to do this and I can’t afford it.
16:38:36 So, these trade offs for time so people are spending their own time.
16:38:43 There’s a book coming out called overworked, or worked over.
16:38:49 And it talks about how, you know, we don’t realize how much people are working, we’re not counting, I think people are being literally worked to death.
16:38:59 And the scary thing about Kobe, but as I said, even before Kobe, is that, because there’s this. People are afraid there’s such a short supply of work that people are saying, I can’t complain because there is a line of 1000 people behind me who are eager
16:39:23 to take this job.
16:39:28 Right.
16:39:28 Yeah. Lovely. Dylan said do you have a sense of whether these workers would prefer the older system of working which is a big companies or do you think that there, and Emily change the views of the group of workers if they will have a little patience
16:39:44 for being in a larger org in the future.
16:39:47 Yeah, you know, we didn’t ask people that my sense was that it was kind of.
16:39:54 For some people, it would be probably better to be in a large organization.
16:40:02 But for some people they said there are people who have, like care responsibilities, or they have various kinds of disabilities that they’re managing or their families, or they’re just not, you know, work is not where their identity is it’s more like
16:40:17 oh I really want to be an artist or I want to be a craftsperson or I want to have my own time and be in control so I wouldn’t say that majority of people would prefer the old way.
16:40:31 But again, we didn’t ask that question and it didn’t come up.
16:40:39 Yeah. Um, so there is a lot of sharing and Marina, I’m going to share all of these links with you I’m sure you must know most of them but we’ve got. Brian Alexander who I know you know we drove and other people that are sharing different ideas and strategies,
16:40:54 I see that. Yeah, you know what I mean the thing about overwork, I can tell you from my own kind of experience is that if you’re listening to people and I was an interviewing colleagues of mine, or it’s like you have this sense of like you want to cry.
16:41:12 Serious, because people are living in dire dire conditions, and they are showing a tremendous amount of resiliency and resilience and hustle and entrepreneurship, there’s a huge, they’re huge assets that are being wasted, I think.
16:41:37 These people are amazing.
16:41:40 So this goes back to my personal interests and everybody knows what that is.
16:41:45 Why are they being overlooked What is it because they don’t have the four year degree, is it what what is the reason that so many people are being overlooked.
16:41:57 I think that a lot of this is invisible, and I think it’s all of our. I really like part of this work is to make it visible to bring it up because who’s speaking for these people you know the unions have union members and they speak for them.
16:42:11 But these people are there, that’s the result of Adam ization, they’re on their own. And a lot of times they’re working in their cars or in their homes or in somebody else’s home there, they have no means of coming together to make themselves invisible.
16:42:29 So Marina, if there needs to be employees for his future gig worker and we have all these amazing leaders as part of the community for the next six months.
16:42:41 Is there something we as a community could do to support this research to help advocate for more research, I mean, is there anything we can do as a group.
16:42:53 Yeah, I would love to do a lot of things that can be done. One is just amplifying it, and making it much more visible. I think, you know, there’s a such a vibrant and large community of workforce development has has been really focused on skills and education,
16:43:13 and it would make a huge difference if you as a community broaden this conversation to talk about the largest systemic issues in which I think it helps the community itself, because clearly the need for skills and education is there, but it’s just kind
16:43:30 of amplifies it, because otherwise, you know, I can be showing data like this and others can be it’s like yeah we have the highest educated workforce.
16:43:39 We have all of that but if you don’t fix the other side of the equation.
16:43:45 It doesn’t matter so that’s part of it. I think I would love to do more work, and really think with groups, about what can be done. You know there’s certainly King I’m thinking so john.
16:43:59 I’m gonna put you on the spot to help me think through what we may be able to do since you put it out there that in the closed community and so many experts within it, you know, Rebecca core Corbin with NACE to, you know, the large group of colleges across
16:44:17 the country around the entrepreneurship.
16:44:20 I think it’s fascinating but nobody mentioned LinkedIn I’ve always felt like that was you know definitely a societal issue.
16:44:30 One of the URLs that I still hold that I bought like five years ago is LinkedIn for the left out, which I think it’s worth.
16:44:37 I don’t know if anybody wants to buy it I’ll sell it for millions but no I mean it’s, you know, we’re and then Giambi drove into in Sydney here so does everybody just post jobs on Craigslist and make it simple.
16:44:51 You know, I don’t think that’ll happen because all of these platforms are for profit startups trying to make money in sale, but I think it’s also confusing aware when should go.
16:45:03 Well, and there’s a whole, you know, in the report we’re actually kind of very lightly touch upon solutions. So I think the form of organization, the enterprise form itself can be very different.
16:45:19 There was research that shows that you know co Ops, people have been doing better who’ve been organized into co Ops, in terms of during the recession and during this post quote with crisis because very different set of incentives and different ways.
16:45:36 The Enterprise form that actually, you know, for better or worse but this is where we are and I know the Business Roundtable has been trying to shift this conversation about stakeholder capitalism and what’s the purpose of the corporation but the end
16:45:51 of the day, it is a mechanism for creating profits for shareholders. Right. And that’s just the reality of how we structured the incentives. So we need to look at the corporate form or organizational form like can you organize some of these people into
16:46:07 corpse can they create, for example, you know, have been such cases where you can, you know, what if the Uber drivers or drivers organized a co op for local ride sharing.
16:46:23 There are all kinds of there’s kind of a movement to have people to create this platform co Ops, or other forms that are more distributed type of enterprise and that’s frankly we’re on my end are what are those forms there’s purpose driven companies are
16:46:39 stewardship love, which are profit they limit profits and they distribute them more, so it’s it’s kind of, but unfortunately they oftentimes don’t have capital to put into those and compared to the VC money that’s going into platforms.
16:47:00 But I think that’s a something that is really worth exploring.
16:47:05 Yeah and you know Marina one of the hub leaders for one of our hubs is Ben Brown, who has the Association of young Americans and his 45,000 members of young adults ages 18 to 30.
16:47:21 I want to go back with him and talk to him he’s policy he’s really pushing policy around this next generation, and I want to see what they’re thinking in this space.
16:47:33 I know they’re fighting, you know, higher education debt and health care and some of those things but it’d be really interesting when I speak with him on what he you know what they’re doing around this new gig, gig fluid worker economy, so it’s really
16:47:52 thought provoking Let me see. A lot of people had question and others had statements.
16:47:58 Does anybody. I need to make sure I’m able to capture all these notes.
16:48:14 Somebody can tell me how I do that before I lose I’m sure that I see person about their apprenticeship, I like that I like what Christian said on the apprenticeship, and it’s what you’re saying how do you bring a group together for boys.
16:48:21 And in some ways like this reminds me of old guilds, right. And in these professions or occupations, you know, I’m beginning to think about well what is the modern day killed look like because a lot of times they provided training and apprenticeship,
16:48:48 you know maybe they’re provide benefits because other forms of kind of aggregating workers are not there and benefits and other things so it’s interesting to think about.
16:48:51 But the other thing is, again, even when you think about apprenticeship and I know good Germany and Switzerland are often kind of examples of that and they do a great job but again it sits within a very, very different social context, you have public
16:49:08 health care you still have a lot of public investments and assets in all kinds of things Social Security, all kinds of other things. So when we think about apprenticeship in the US context it’s still very different.
16:49:25 Yeah.
16:49:26 That’s what I think that’s what we’ve always said, is why it’s so much harder for the apprenticeship model here. Okay. Um, okay so I got the recording, I’ve got a copy and paste of all the chat Marina I’m going to send that to you definitely been by far
16:49:45 our most interactive chat.
16:49:48 And I’m not surprised, I think your work is incredible. And we can’t thank you enough for the time that you spent with the closed community.
16:49:58 I’ll share this recording with you and your team Marina so you can do what do what do you need to do, and Kristen wolf. Are we so an imagined about what we do collectively.
16:50:13 Yeah, I really would love this and and really focus on what is it that we can do. Yeah, I will come back to you, Marina I’ve always respected the work of IFTF and I think we would love to do something together so let her and I’m sorry when did you say
16:50:29 that report will be published literally like it’s in production and editing.
16:50:34 So, Definitely by the beginning of the year. Great.
16:50:40 If anybody wants to be involved with this just to meet me email lovely maybe you some others have really, you know, have some passion around this work, and we will put our thinking caps on on how we could help work with marine in the team to, you know,
16:50:59 I know, several of us know people that are on the transition team I’m sure you do too Marina, and possibly getting it in the right hands apps we put some work behind it okay for us to bond.
16:51:11 Thank you for being with us everybody and have a very safe and good weekend, thanks Marina. Thank you. Oh wait, let me just say I’m sorry I wanted to say that.
16:51:23 Next Thursday.
16:51:25 We do have the undersecretary of the Department of Ed speaking, and that is Michael Brickman. I don’t have his bio.
16:51:41 At this point, but he isn’t Undersecretary and he is the one that was asked to work on the order for skills based hiring for all of the federal government.
16:51:50 So that is next week, and shoot my screen stuff proportioned right because I change the size, and then Dr. Angela Jackson is our final keynote next Friday.
16:52:01 Marina maybe you can join that it’s going to be wonderful. This is the X Prize, and the work of the prophets, and Evangelists going to be speaking, all about the work they’re doing on the future of work at New profit, and five $6 million X PRIZE with
16:52:18 the MIT solvent X PRIZE so looking forward to having Angela next Friday’s so I’ll be sending out reminders for that. And that is it.
16:52:33 So thank you.
16:52:44 Thank you.
16:52:37 Thanks. Bye.
? 10Dec2020: Michael Brickman
Why Skills Based Hiring Matters by US Dept of Ed
Transcription:
Good afternoon and welcome to this keynote today that I have to you know, get off a little bit and just say that it’s one time maybe the most excited about. We’re really honored to have Michael Brickman speak to us from the department of bed. Most of you all know the innovative educates been on the journey of skills space time since 2008 and I want to recognize talk to Marilyn Mayo who’s on the call with us, who was my true partner in crime when we started this work around skills based hiring in New Mexico a long time ago. So we’ve been keeping in test and reached out to the department um and requested for Michael to speak to us today. Um and he’s going to bring us some great expertise. Um As far as Michael Brickman, he has been working around the innovative education, workforce development pathways of the U. S. Department of Ed. Um As senior advisor in the opposite that undersecretary. Um he’s been advising the undersecretary on the entire portfolio for the last several years previously, he served as national policy director, the Fordham Institute, which was a national think think tank. And Michael also served as a policy advisor to Wisconsin governor scott walker, where he was very involved in school choice expansion in the first public competency based education programs. Um So, Michael is a native of Wisconsin, graduated from University of Delaware and he currently lives in Washington, D. C, which you know, there’s a lot of changes happening in D. C. So thank you Michael for being with us through what I would consider it probably a turbulent time in your department. Welcome. It is thanks for having me. I met the Department of Education and Look Forward to continuing to be there for many, many days, 41 days left to be exact. Um And I really would love to talk about all the different things that we’ve been working on over the last four years, but the one I really wanted to focus on today and I know is the greatest interest to this group is the, not just the Department of Education but the entire federal governments effort Iran skills based hiring. And so I would love to just kind of talk from first principles and how we arrived at the changes we ended up making and can talk a little bit about where I see things going hopefully from here, although as I leave, it will be in the hands of others. So, um let’s talk about where we are right now. There’s $1.1.6 trillion dollars in student debt. It is the largest category of consumer debt other than mortgages. This has steadily increased over the decades and has far outpaced inflation. And so as the cost gets higher and higher to get the same education for the same job, it’s getting harder and harder to then pay down that debt. And that brings us to the situation that we’re in, but that’s not the only costs, that’s that’s really talking about the traditional higher education system overall every year. So not overall or not Over time, the accumulated $1.6 trillion us we spend about 1.1 trillion in education and training After K. 12. And so that’s a huge investment of time and resources to ensure that people get the skills they need for the job. How do we make sure we’re doing that and then as an efficient and effective way as possible? It’s not just the workers who are trying to get more training, but it’s also the employers who are working to find these people and they spend about half a trillion looking for people, the staffing industry globally, um spends a tremendous amount of money. And often that results in a situation where you have applicants sending resumes that respond to job postings. And because that’s such an inexact science, it’s so difficult to really read between the lines and understand whether I might be right for a position or whether a candidate might be right for the position I’m hiring for. So much more and more is done by ai you have software that sorts through these applicants. It’s more than a human often can possibly read. And so very often we’ve all been through this, you submit your application and you probably that application never sees uh is never seen by human eyes. And that can be a really frustrating and difficult experience. And so the common wisdom for people who are applying for jobs just to send off as many resumes as possible. Um and for people looking for workers, you try to find, I spend as much time as possible because, you know, it’s going to take a while to sort through all of those applications, narrow it down. Very often searches fail. I know at our agency and I’m talking public sector where hopefully hopefully we’re less efficient than everybody else, because it’s hard to imagine sometimes how things could be less efficient if you tried. But um we have uh a large percentage. I’ve heard more than half of our searches do not result in a higher. And so that’s a tremendous amount of wasted time and energy from our staff, many of whom are excellent and are doing their best to sort through these applications they get, but they’re tied in through layers and layers of bureaucracy. And I know that’s true of the federal government, but it’s true of private sector employers as well. Um and there’s another there’s another challenge here that I think has really come to light, especially this year, and that’s this goal of improving diversity and inclusion. We all know about the skills gaps that go all the way back through K-12 and to early childhood education and even before. But a lot of those things are just kind of baked into the numbers with the department put out uh educational attainment numbers, as does the Census Bureau every year. And in fact, there are entire categories of difference between uh white, black and hispanic adults in terms of educational attainment. And so it’s it’s a lot of these structures that have built up over time where by the time you get to through through post secondary education and are looking for a job, there can be significant gaps in the level of attainment. So, um you end up with these big achievement gaps and if you are a well meaning employer and you’re really trying to diversify if you are just randomly selecting people with a bachelor’s degree and you know, literally drunk bachelor’s degree candidates out of out of a hat, you’re not going to get a diverse workforce, odds are because the because of these achievement gaps that, as I said, built up over time, and so it can be very difficult to achieve these goals, even when you’re really, really trying, if you’re only looking at traditional educational qualification, so that’s one reason we wanted to look at this. I know it’s a reason that many employers are looking at this, um but it’s a real challenge because the traditional higher education pathways are driving up the cost of education, driving the cost of HR and making it harder to link people who are genuinely qualified with jobs where they’re needed. And so as a result, there’s great research that’s been done, including by innovative educate on this problem. I know We’ve seen numbers like close to 90% of small businesses that are hiring or trying to hire, report that they have few or no qualified applicants. Um when surveyed, 75% of HR professionals found skills gaps in the candidates they’re sorting through. And as a result, the Average position takes currently about 36 days over a month and $4400 to fill. And so we get into this broken system, and often it’s way more about who, you know more so than what, you know, and that leads to a situation where you’re nine times more likely to get a job if you have a referral, it always helps to have a referral if you’re a candidate, but it really points to a system that is not directly linked to skills, it’s linked to relationships and that further can cement some of these inequities in the system. So talking specifically about um this problem that we’ve seen, we’ve seen it in our accreditation system where um it takes more and more education to get the same job and that gets locked in through occupational licensing, gets locked in through accreditation. But you have this problem of degree inflation. And a lot of groups have looked at this um about a quarter of America’s customer service representatives have a bachelor’s degree. There’s a study that says 20% of executive assistants have a bachelor’s degree, currently Only about one in five, but 67%, about two thirds of new postings require a degree, so there’s a very swift ramp up in certain jobs for a bachelor’s degree, even though the job has not changed all that much over the years and over the decades. And as a result, we find that about one in four bachelor’s degree holders are currently overqualified for the job that they have and they paid for this degree that they’re not using uh specifically from innovating educated. This is one of my favorite studies you all have done, Although 1% of, I’m going to quote from it, well, only 1% of disconnected, high risk young adults aged 16-24 could qualify for a job based on the degree requirement. Almost 33% of those same young adults have the skills and cognitive abilities equivalent to college graduates. And so we know there are people out there that we’re missing because of the way we hire, where it’s based on degrees, it’s based on years of experience and it’s based on who, you know, so why hasn’t this been fixed? Everybody who’s on this panel is um very familiar with the challenge. And I think we’re all working together to try to fix it. But I’ve observed some reasons why I think it’s not been solved yet. And the first is it’s just it’s hard, it’s hard to know if you’re not going to hire based on a degree. What do you signal for? That’s the ultimate question. And it’s difficult because we know there are really strong credentials out there. Um and we know there are really great applicants out there. But how do we how do we marry these things together? And I think the real problem comes down to this catch 22 where employers are not going to use non degree credentials, even if they’re really great Until there are critical mass of applicants who have earned them. So if you have a really great credential that 10 people have earned, What’s the point in putting in your job posting, you’re never going to find one of those 10 people who happen to apply? Um On the other hand, uh huh applicants are not going to pursue those non degree credentials, even if they’re really great if they’re not going to lead to a job. Um So you have this problem where there are lots and lots of credentials out there that if you have earned and few are signaling for in their job postings and no one’s going to change until we find a way around that. And I think we have in the public sector, I’m gonna talk a little bit more about that specifically how we’ve done that in a few minutes. So why else has has this not been solved? Often Ceos are very supportive of this. They come to educational gatherings that come to work force gatherings, they come meet with their peers in D. C. Or elsewhere and share their support. It’s hard to have a conversation about skills gaps or education and workforce without talking about some of these issues today. And yet they’re still does not seem to be tremendous progress, especially in the private sector. And so I think while the Ceos are supportive it’s really hard to implement and so there can be a disconnect between the Ceos and the chief human capital officers when Ceos go back to their office. In addition we know there are more online for your low cost uh really high quality resources than ever before. Um, and you can teach yourself almost anything on coursera, Udacity or even Youtube. But those credentials, if there even is a credential other than simply going through a course or watching a video are not necessarily going to lead to a job because they’re not recognized in the same way as a traditional bachelor’s degree. And so we have to solve for this recognition problem. And I know many of you are working on things like building better portfolios and helping applicants better communicate the things that they know, even if they didn’t learn them through a traditional pathway. So that’s yet another challenge. In addition, there’s, I think a lot of energy around well traditional, higher at isn’t working. So let’s build a better university and some of that is definitely needed, especially in the areas of affordability and ensuring that we’re reaching people who are not traditionally going to a a normal post secondary environment, we’re not going to a four year campus after they, immediately after they graduate from high school. So there do need to be new new approaches that work for today’s learners, but that’s often a really hi effort. Uh huh endeavor that can be extremely expensive and might not reach students at scale. There are 7000 traditional institutions, adding a couple more non traditional institutions, might not make the impact at scale, and you still run into the problem of if no one’s heard of the school you went to, because it’s brand new, you’re going to have a challenge, communicating that to a future employer. And finally, um I think there’s an overall two more items actually I want to mention, um I think there’s an over reliance by companies that really want to make a difference in this area on creating their own pathways, so we’re going to create a nontraditional pathway. Um but they run into problems where um it’s only recognized by employer acts, so it’s the employer X credential, it’s um all right, recognized by that employer, but if you want to take that to another employer, it can be difficult. And the same problem occurs with a lot of the upscaling efforts or the employer training efforts that exist today, where um you can train people to give them a bed, you can give them a credential and that’s better. That’s a huge improvement over the past, where you got nothing. And you just said, oh, well, I did this training at my last job, you know, I have some sort of demonstration of it, which is great and there are more platforms where you can share those credentials. But the next step is to ensure that there they’re truly transferable and they’re recognized universally and that’s just not something that exists right now for the most part. Uh And finally the problem that I mentioned before around um in over reliance on algorithms and ai to figure out who you should hire, I think those can be really useful tools and they can help humans make better decisions. Take out some of the drudgery of starting through various documents to better organize in a line. All these different resumes are all these different portfolios that you’ve received and put it in a a more human friendly way, but an algorithm can’t tell you who to hire. And I think there’s a belief that maybe we can get there someday, um maybe someday, but I don’t think any time soon. So it needs to be these tools are valuable, but they need to be supporting human decision making, not replacing it. Yeah. So we were looking at all of these challenges. Yeah, from the Department of Education, we were doing things to, through our regulations, uh, make it easier to build employer education partnerships of these skills, could be integrated into degree programs, making a, um, easier to hold, um, institutions accountable, giving our creditors flexibility so they could empower traditional colleges, universities to do these types of things. And of course, we’ve been supportive of efforts in Congress to allow for greater funding for short term training programs and things like that. And we hope those things will, it will come soon. Um, but at the end of the day, we realized that this is something that has to be employer led more than anything. Because again, if if you get in non tradition, if you go through non traditional path that leads to a dead end and doesn’t lead to a job, it’s not helping anyone. These pathways, um I can’t just stand on their own, and as much as it would be nice if uh simply the fact that one of these pathways was high quality was enough. The sad truth is, it’s not, there has to be some recognition, and there has to be um an endgame where those high quality pathways can lead to a good family supporting jobs. And so we worked with employers, we were working with interagency, other federal government agencies to support this type of thing, and vocally encourage employers to hire based on skills to recognize apprenticeships and other pathways that um, I could be more inclusive and more and more. We heard from some of those employers who were turning it back on us, and I think rightfully so they said, well, look, the federal government is the nation’s largest employer. Why are you not doing anything about this to? Because the truth is, the vast majority of federal government jobs um either require degree or preference a degree. And this is how this goes, because you’ll often hear, okay, now, it’s really only about a third of the federal government jobs require a degree, and that’s true. If you only look at the absolute requirements, you must have a degree for this job. But for the other 2/3, you then need to demonstrate either education or experience. So, there are two pathways to get in the education path. So we’re still talking about the same educational qualifications, even at a very, uh, even fairly low in the federal government pay scale, you’re required to have, uh, four years or more of post secondary education experience, or you can have, so you can have the post secondary experience or you can have the workplace experience of an equivalent number of years. The challenge, there is many agencies, including ours, have very few rungs low enough on the ladder where you can qualify um simply based on your experience or simply based on a non educational pathway. And so we say that there are these pathways there, but the problem is there are so few on ramps uh for people who have less than a four year degree that in practice, they’re really not there at all. And so in practice, the overwhelming a number of jobs really need you to have a degree because um even the second or third tier jobs up the seniority uh scale across the Federal government require you to get the experience lower on the ladder. And even those jobs require either some post secondary education experience or some workplace experience. But there’s again a catch 22 where you can’t get the experience with that to the degree. And and as somebody uh just commented, the work experience is just as problematic. Absolutely. Um It can be very, you start to get really subjective on, you know, what counts and it’s uh in the federal government you say, okay, if you’ve had a year of experience at the next lowest level within the federal government, check the box. That’s easy. Um Just like it’s easy to say if you have a four year degree, check the box, but once you start getting into these equivalency ease, okay, what’s equivalent work experience too? Um Federal experience, it starts to get a little dicey. Just like if you start to say, well technically we can evaluate a non degree educational pathway, but what’s equivalent And the safest easiest thing for somebody in HR to do is just put people in the traditional path because no one’s ever going to question it. No one’s ever, you know, no one ever, I’ve heard people say before, no one’s ever gotten fired for hiring somebody with a four year degree from a well respected educational institution. And that’s the problem. We need to overcome its its cultural within these employers as much as it is about changing the rules. But um we started to look at a change in the rules and and that’s the first step. And so what we’ve done is we we looked at the challenges and the federal government and we took up this challenge from the private sector employers to um, not just walked the walk or not just talk the talk, but walk the walk as well. And so we started to uh get together a few of us from uh me from education, some folks from the Department of Labor, Office of Personnel Management, Office of Management Budget in a couple of other places and started to brainstorm ideas around what was the most effective way to start to change this. And we realized that we needed to change. And not only the um educational requirements but the educational preferences as well. And so we wrote down these ideas and ultimately determine that it’s something that the Office of Personnel Management, which is really the leader on this could have done on its own. But an executive order is much more powerful because it has the force of law. It’s being directed from obviously the highest levels and it puts a little bit more urgency on it. And in fact, we included specific deadlines in the executive order. And so we we drafted this, we worked with uh folks around the federal government and worked with the White House Counsel’s Office to perfect this and get it in a way. Getting a format that was um going to be useful for all agencies. Need to think a lot, a lot about um kind of edge cases and make sure that our wording was was just right and they were really helpful in helping us perfected. And then ultimately the president signed it became executive order 13932 in June. And we then got to the hard work because it was easy to define what the what the rules around this should be. But now we have to focus on the interpretation. So how do you actually get beyond talking about this and actually start to do it? So the first step was to define the competencies that we were going to be looking for. A cross each of the different job classifications across the government. And there’s a lot to do. Their, the good news is a lot of that work had already been done by the agencies, surveys are regularly conducted, Subject matter experts were utilized and there is a definition of these are the competencies that should be used for each, each job. I I don’t have time probably to go into all of the details of how that can be improved. There’s still work to do there. But we had a starting place and that was the really good news there. And so from each of those competencies we needed a way to measure them. And The first at first ball, she said, Okay, well we need to look at tests and we need to look at 3rd Party credentials. Um but we can’t have third, we can’t have these tests be the only replacement. There are, there were many in the federal government who felt that what we really needed to do was to simply update the civil service was in because there used to be a single exam. That was your entry point into many, many federal jobs called the civil service exam. And um, it that’s another long story that I probably have time to get into, but that had gone out of use and they had actually been lawsuits around that because of disparate impact issues. But what I think after discussion, we realized we didn’t want to do was to replace this single door of bachelor’s degrees and just say, okay, well we’re going to get rid of the bachelor’s degree door and replace it with the assessment door. Um, that might not have excluded all of the same people, but it would have been similarly exclusionary and that it would be a single way in a single point of failure if that test doesn’t work and isn’t measuring the things he wanted to test, you run into some of the same problems. So what we realized is we needed to um for each of these competencies utilize multiple tools, so there can be still a pathway for people who have traditional post secondary education experience. We don’t want to just throw that out because it’s extremely valuable for many people if they can demonstrate that what they learned on campus translates to the job and they actually earned the competencies through a traditional post secondary education setting as many people do. Um So there’s nothing at all wrong with that. Um but that’s just one of several paths in that we wanted to create, and so we have that as one door. We have apprenticeship that can be a Dorian assessment. Traditional tests can be a door, but also third party credentials and particularly things um, that are valued by the private sector. We don’t want to reinvent the wheel and all of this where there are good assessments where there are good credentials that we can create and there are gaps, especially around things that are unique to federal service. Um, We want to create those, but we also want to look to the private sector and for righty positions, we should be looking to tech for um, grant making positions. We should be looking to what the private sector is doing to ensure that their staff know how to maximize impact around our discretionary grant competitions. Um, but we also realized that there were many positions where we already um had signaled a value for some sort of 3rd party credential and this was maybe the biggest take away and would be my advice for where the private sector should start with this. Because what we found is there were many jobs where we said, you must have a degree for this position or a degree in experience. And I talked about the problems with that. But then we said, all right, thank you for proving uh, you have your degree. We check the box. But here’s the thing we know you didn’t actually learn about, for example, federal discretionary grant competitions in your bachelor’s degree program, even if it was a political science or government administration degree, you just didn’t learn about that because it’s so seldom taught. And so we’re going to have you take this training program that’s offered by a third party vendor. And the good news is we’ll pay for it and then we’ll pay for the training and we’ll pay for you to take the training. Um and it’s it’s a price that the government has to bear. But we need to do that in order to ensure that people are properly prepared to start doing the job. Um Well, there’s a problem there. Somebody has just gone out and spent Perhaps six figures getting a bachelor’s degree and then they come in and their employer hes for them to take some sort of, excuse me, other training program that’s really designed to help the applicant demonstrate competency for what’s really needed. And so instead, what we’re looking to do is say, you can have the degree or you can go spend a fraction of the time and a fraction of the money going to get this training that we would have you take anyway. And then you can come into the same job at the same pay without the debt, without spending, without the opportunity costs of four or more years on campus. And uh it’s a faster, more affordable um path in the door. So I know, you know, this is not the federal government is not the only employer that does things like this. Um and a lot of our focus on on up skilling um while extremely justified could and probably should transform into a conversation also about um skills based hiring and ensuring that the skills were signaling a value for when the upscale are also being signaled when before people even come in the door. Because we might find that by doing that, we start to, first of all find people who already have those skills have already taken that training etcetera. Um but we also start for the long term to change the conversation to change the way people start to think about their post secondary educational experience. And we start to really create demand for these other credentials because there starts to be a supply of jobs where you can get a really solid family supporting job that for this much training where it used to require a full degree and the whole the whole bundle that you get when you get a four year degree and I don’t need to go into all of that. I know you are very familiar with with the benefits of doing that, but that’s that’s I think the way that we’ve started to Get beyond this catch 22 is to start where we’re already putting out a signal in other areas. We’ve we’ve broken down uh the credentials to or the competencies to um you’re kind of traditional hard skills. So you need to know these federal regulations uh in order to administer this grant program. There are also on what are often termed the soft skills. And those theoretically can be measured with tests are tests out there. Um But I’m not sure that’s the best approach because um there’s sometimes mixed evidence on the efficacy of those types of credentials to measure soft skills. Um And you also don’t want to have somebody who is an applicant for a position, Taking 10 assessments or having to demonstrate um That they have achieved 10 3rd Party credentials. That’s not realistic, and it’s not something that’s going to end up being scalable. So you want to really focus on the hard skills, the things that are absolutely essential for the job. And then start to look at other measurement tools. Again, getting beyond just, well, it’s either got to be a degree or or a test um and there’s a scale right. There’s, there’s kind of a spectrum of really high value, but often that comes with cost and time versus simplicity, which can often be um uh huh Uh you know, things that are quicker, things that are more affordable, things that can scale, especially going back to the catch 22 problem where at first not everybody is going to have these third party productions. Most of your applicants are still going to have either the traditional degree or they’re going to have to be literally trying to explain to you where they’ve got the experience or how they taught themselves. Uh These these credentials are these skills so high on the value list would be industry recognized training apprenticeship tests. But then as you move down, you can start to look at portfolios, um, structured evaluations of experience that can either be validated by You the employer or can be validated by 3rd parties. And there are a growing number of third parties that are doing that work, which is really important. Um It could be a signal for specific traditional higher education program, so um even that’s a step in the right direction to say, well, um we’re not just going to accept a bachelor’s degree as a check the box, but if you have a bachelor’s degree um from this institution or uh in this specific discipline, we’ve we’ve done our own validation. We recognize that that program is really teaching you the skills that you know, but we’re not just going to say any english program or any bachelor’s degree is good enough. Um And then you can even do things to validate certain competencies like structured interviews. And actually we’ve been embarking on a pilot in the federal government separate from this work for a while around doing structured interviews and really trying to make that process uh more efficient, more effective reducing bias. Um And I think that’s really complementary to the skills based hiring work that I’m talking about. Um And then you know if you don’t have any of that, if you don’t have the time, if you don’t have the resources to do that for some of your credentials at the very least you can start with just a simple short response. And like I said that it’s the applicant literally explaining to you this is how I have the this is how I earned um these skills and this is why I think it’s relevant. And the advantage of that is that you can start to instead of just having 100 applications with 100 resumes and they’re all kind of in a roundabout way trying to explain to you why they have the competencies. Um even though, you know, they probably took just took a quick glance at your job posting and essentially the same resume that they’ve sent to. 20 other jobs. Um You then have to kind of sift through these things and say okay we’re looking for um leadership experience. Where in the resume do I see leadership experience and you have to go through 100 times and look at that instead, if you directly ask the question um tell us about your leadership experience, it does away with the need for a lot of the B. S. Ng. We all know goes on with this process and allows for you to directly ask the question and then put together in matrix of here all of my applicants on one access and then here all the competencies on the other access. And you can really quickly and almost at a glance evaluate who are who are the top performers consistently across um each of the different competencies and that’s who you interview. Um That by itself those simple short responses. And by short I should point out we do not do essay questions, the federal government, they’re actually prohibited. So we’re talking about basically the length of a tweet, a couple of sentences that explains um the experience related to a certain competency. Um If you don’t have the tests, if you don’t have some other better way to measure or if you just don’t have the time or the resources to do it, you start there and so then you can compare those responses that helps you get to the interview stage. And then during the interview stage you use the structured interview dig deeper and uh and build upon your knowledge of, okay who really has this experience, Who really has these confidences. So as a result you then end up with yeah, as I said, many doors that people can go through to get to the same job, they can take their own pathway and they can end up with um perhaps a much shorter, much more affordable path to a good job. And so what does this do? Long term? I think it obviously can transform how HR does its work. I think it’s really beneficial and we’ve already seen that it can be beneficial for HR staff where there’s less drudgery, there’s less um putting together um just kind of wrote in a roadway going through these applications and checking the box. And because because we’re really there’s a lot more noise than signal in the in the old process, you ended up as an HR staff person having to go do it again and again. Because often um as I said a lot of cases um I should say in more than half of cases it didn’t result in a higher said you go he had to go back all the way through the process and start again and again. Instead of sifting through resumes and looking for the right words, you’re actually doing a meaningful holistic evaluation of the persons of the applicant skills. And so we get beyond this regime of job postings and resumes and cover letters. We start to really be able to impact diversity inclusion in a meaningful way because we’re not just looking at the same applicant pool we’ve always been looking at and you create a more enjoyable experience for applicants for hiring managers. HR. Um And remember this is the first interaction that somebody has with your company or with your government agency, and they’re they’re saying to you, I like you enough that I want to work for you. And yet the experience for overwhelmingly for the applicant can be extremely frustrating and and not enjoyable even if you get the job much less if you just kind of send your resume into the black hole and never hear back. Um Obviously this has the potential to disrupt higher education for reasons that I know this group is very familiar with and I won’t spend a lot of time there. Um But it also starts and I alluded to this, but it starts to create meaningful market competition for these credentials because if employers are actually signaling for them um then that credential can compete against other similar credentials um and can compete against traditional higher education, and that starts to be the employer endorsed pathway to do a job. And that’s what I think, and ultimately transform how people get an education and how they go on to the workplace. So we’ve, I will say it’s early in our process with the federal government, but I really do believe we found a recipe for success and I’m excited to see the things that uh, continue on after after I’ve left, and uh, as other people who are extremely capable, including the people at oh and the OPM, um, and the civil servants at my agency and all the others who are working to implement this, Really beginning this month and then into 2021 and beyond. So I think there’s a lot of potential here. There is really an opportunity for the government to be an exemplar to the private sector, which never happens. And I’m optimistic that um it can start to, because the federal government is such a big employer, can start to have a transformative impact on the market for skills and can really show that the things that we all have been working towards for a long time to make skills based hiring work are possible in the real world. And yeah, we’ll see where it goes from here, but I think we’ll leave it there and try to leave the remaining time for questions if you’ve got them. And uh, I just want to say thank you for having me and spending the time would be happy to, uh, if you just want to connect later. I don’t have a question kind of for the group, more than happy to, uh, discuss, more than happy to find ways to work together in the future. We actually do have some questions. Your first one for many federal positions. Um I’m sorry, this is from Marilyn Mayo um wants to know if we can kind of get a sense for how many federal positions have already changed their dog. Just job descriptions to allow for hiring Via alternative training course sequences or other alternative beyond the four year degree. It’s kind of a three part question. So I’m gonna go ahead and ask all three. Um and she would love to know which agencies and occupations have already started embracing this. Change the fastest. And then finally, whether it’s systems such as U. S. A. Jobs dot gov have changed their user interface to start adapting to these new practices. Yeah, great questions. Um So it’s some of this is happening all at once across all of the agencies. So all of the agencies are moving forward at once. We had education have tried to get a ahead of the game a little bit um just because we’re trying to be overachievers, but um this really will, as you kind of alluded to OPM has to change its policies. We have to update the way that our systems work and we actually use a different vendor than most of the other agencies, so there are additional complications there. Um So it’s a process um I don’t think you’re going to see every job posting In 2021 start to do this in a way that we all would like to see. Um It’s not it’s not going to be perfect at first, I can tell you that right now, the first step is to update the guidance and and to just simply allow for this stuff to happen. There are a lot of rules that need to be changed from the obvious like jobs, no longer requiring a degree too, you know, the more in the weeds where I was talking about the short response questions. Um that was, as I said, that s a questions are prohibited. And so we had to get written assurance that that type of short response would not be considered an essay question for purposes of doing that. So there are a lot of things like that. Um, but have you ever been on, Oh Peons website? Each job series has documentation that goes along with it. And in a lot of cases, these are big documents that need to be carefully updated and that can’t all happen at once. It’s just, it’s just not possible. And so, um, we’re working step by step, we’re trying to first remove the prohibitions and then we’re going to start to do this in a way that that really embraces this in the, you know, multiple pathways were affirmatively signaling for credentials, not just kind of allowing for them. Um, and that’s the part that will take time. And of course we’ll come with some culture changes because people are not used to doing this. So it will be an evolution for sure. And, you know, I’m hopeful that the next administration will embrace this just as we have. Uh, but it remains to be seen if they’ll make it as much of a priority as we have. So, I hope they do. I think it’s it’s certainly something that crosses party lines and is something that I believe they should support, but that’s ultimately up to them because I know they have other priorities too. Got it. Um, I understand me about 10 minutes left, so I want to ask, I think we have two and now three more questions. what are the barriers to better partnerships between employers and community colleges around industry credentials and skills Universities often teach higher and different skills that are needed and have much higher debt to students tends to be cheaper and shorter cycle to gain that sort of certification or skills, um, and then cost a potential employee could be lower and employers don’t have to do all the work themselves. So I’m sorry, his questions are barriers to better partnerships between the employers and community colleges. So some of them were our rules, frankly at the Department of Education and we tried to change that. There is some of our recent rulemaking, we want to not say that’s the only pathway, but we want to make sure it’s clear that partnerships with employers are allowable. Um, previously, um, those are often, those partnerships often had to go not only through the leadership change at the college university, but often had to be approved by the accrediting agencies board. So that added another huge barrier that often just made people say it’s not worth it. We’ve changed that to make it more efficient where staff and creating agency can now just make the decision wow, rather than having to go to to the board. Um, we’ve also um tried to explicitly um make clear that curriculum developed within an institution can be aligned to workforce needs. It doesn’t only have to be aligned to, you know, with the faculty decides. So if an employer has, if a colleges partnership with an outside employer, they can work directly with the employer and develop that as kind of an alternative or approve it through an alternative governance structure. That doesn’t just have to be about, you know, the traditional faculty sound all that. But the other barrier, frankly, is the, the college for all, everybody has to get a four year degree mentality. And often that results in of course, the, the kind of single track in high school. Um, you know, there are definite reasons to oppose tracking in high school, but the only thing worse is if there’s only one track, but it’s still a track, it’s college perhaps, um, that’s, that’s beneficial for a lot of people, but it shouldn’t be the only option in my opinion. Um, But let’s talk about is what happens at community colleges where increasingly, community colleges, uh, by enrollment. Some of their large programs are designed to prepare students to go through to your program and then graduate from a four year degree in the liberal arts. And there’s absolutely nothing wrong with that can turn out well for a lot of people and has turned out well for a lot of people. Um But the vast majority of people do not go, do not complete a four year degree and started after they’ve started with a to your liberal arts program. And the Associated Liberal Arts is not the most, you can look at our college scorecard, It has data on this. It’s really not uh you know that at the top of the list, in fact it’s near the bottom of the list in terms of labour market value for a degree, these two year Associated Arts that are designed to lead to a four year program. Um If the student completes that for your program, often they’re doing really well, but if they drop out somewhere in between, they usually have the debt and not a lot of skills to show for it. So that can be a real challenge. I have one more question I want to ask you before we close, We have about five minutes left. Um, this comes from a workforce development board. Um, what may be the potential that higher education can begin to accept these credentials as credits for further education to pursue degrees? Yeah, that’s a great question. Um, it’s it’s ultimately up to the institutions and to some extent the accreditors again trying to make that easier for through our regulations and to clarify um some misconceptions and put some things in our regulations that say, you know, you you have every right to reject transfer credit and credit for prior learning if you want. And some institutions just say we’re not accepting any and that’s that’s their right. Um, but what you can’t do is say our institution is better than yours, our faculty is better than yours. We are accreditors better than yours. And so we’re not going to um even look at your credit, there has to be a substantive evaluation of the credits, and um, you actually have to do a meaningful consideration of what a student is bringing to you and not just say, you know, not just have these policies in place that are frankly elitist where you’re out of hand rejecting somebody because they went to a school that you see as less than from the workforce board perspective, though, um there’s a huge role to play and I’m hopeful that workforce boards are able to band together and do some of this at scale, because many of the employers that are looking at doing skills based hiring are not in just one state, not in just one locality. And so they need something that’s scalable across um, all of these different jurisdictions, and they need to know that if they’re going to signal for certain credential and they’re going to hire people who have attained that credential, that there’s going to be workforce funds available in each of the places where they do business um to be able to hire. So I can’t see who that question was from. But um workforce boards are a huge part of this and the blood to discuss. She made that about wraps this up with Q and A. Mhm. Really, really good information. I have a million questions, but I’m not going to do that. Like Michael said, you know, he and I have had a couple of conversations prepping for this, and while we’ve come a long way, nobody is really really doing it from an equitable, I mean, broad scale companies doing this. Obviously, the government taking a lead on trying to do this is huge. And I do hope that um we see this next administration moving this. I do know that we worked with the prior administration around skills. So like you say it it hopefully is um nonpartisan very very important for the future of working in the future of learning, um Tiffany, um email Tiffany or myself if you want any Michael’s contact and we may just about to put it in the chattels, it’s perfect do that, that’s awesome. And you can connect with Michael Arlington. Um so that is it for this discussion. I want to remind everybody that tomorrow is our last keynote. Um we’ve got our friend josh copas previously within a W B now with JFF labs and Dr Angela Jackson talking about, you know, the workforce system and their role in the future of work and the X prize and M. I. T solve, which will be very, very interesting. Um, share it. Again, this is not about trying to get people to pay for registrations every day, it’s about getting the right people in the conversation and community acknowledged sharing. So, um, hopefully we’ll see you tomorrow, that’s a 10 a.m. Mountain noon eastern, all of these are recorded and they are put in the community platform for sharing and Michael, just for you to know, we have about 100 and 50 people in the community right now and this will go out to the entire community for them to listen. So thank you very much and we really appreciate the time that you put into this and obviously someone text me and said you seem to have more knowledge than most anybody as they have in a long time on skill space tiring and I totally agree you hit all the right point overly generous, but they hope there’s opportunity to work with the people on this group and people in your network in the future. So again, don’t hesitate to reach out and really appreciate you having me. Okay. Thanks. All thank you. Right.
?10Dec2020: Ben Brown, AYA
Giving Young Americans Control of Their Future
? 11Dec2020: Angela Jackson / Josh Copus
Work Reimagined: Transforming the way the U.S. workforce systems prepare workers for the future of work
Transcription:
don’t mess this up again, tip. Good morning from New Mexico and good noon from east coast and good evening in South Africa. Um, we’re really happy uh, to have this final session of uh, closer distributed as reminder close. It launched about six weeks ago, October 29 and the distributed model thanks to my co founder, Kevin Clark will written through May 26 where we hope to be celebrating together in santa fe New Mexico in May. Um, you know, I just heard this morning that our own healthcare workers in santa fe and when it starts getting the vaccine next week, so um, thanks for feeling promising. Um, thank you all for joining. Um, all of the previous um, keynotes that have been extremely informative are posted in the community community that participate community and today I’m really honored to have to people that have worked with a lot over the last few years speaking um, dr Angela Jackson, who is a partner in new profit and doing amazing work in the future of work and josh Lopez who is with JFF labs and brings tons of expertise around the workforce system over all. So thank you all for joining and I’m going to turn it over to you Angela Wonderful. And I just send an email to Tiffany, I’m hoping that you all can run the power point, is that okay? Yeah. Hey tiff, can you, you got it, you there, yep, give me one moment, I have it right up. Okay, so while she’s bringing that up, I’d love to just introduce myself. I’m dr Angela Jackson, I am a managing partner at New Prophet, which is a boston based venture philanthropy firm at New Prophet. I lead our future work investments and strategy and one of our latest initiatives is the future of work grand Challenge, which I will share with you all today and and really what we want to do with our my partner josh focus at J. F. F. Is like really do an inside look at the challenge and talk about some of the decisions we made to make it intentionally center equity and really think about the people who are going to be most impacted by the future work. Um so I will do a short presentation, I will then bring josh on board and we will do a fireside chat and answer some of the questions that you might have. So perfect. We can go into the next slide. So when I started looking at the future of work and new profit, we have a couple of big questions that we were thinking about. One is who is best suited to come up with the solutions for learners, who come from challenging backgrounds and disinvested communities, what should those entrepreneurs and creators look like and who should they be talking to? The second question? We think a lot about it, new profit as it relates to our future work strategy, is how can we incentivize the private sector, non profits governments and local communities to work in concert to develop innovative solutions? You know, as a philanthropy, you know, we had to really take a step back and then be a bit humble right to understand in this moment of unprecedented unemployment, that one philanthropy one employer is not going to make the difference, We need unparalleled collaboration. And so we thought about this, the challenges that are facing us, these are some of the questions that will address today. We can go to the next slide. So when we look at the pandemic, We started working on the future of work Grand Challenge four years ago And I came on board with new profit two years ago. And literally what happened, we’ve planned on launching this challenge in November of this year, but we moved it up to June because after the pandemic hit, there are a couple of things that we were all smacked in the face with right, 86% of the people who were initially laid off due to coronavirus made less than $40,000 a year. And we knew that we had with the future of work grand challenge and opportunity to create solutions to help these people get back to work. We also knew based on our research that the workforce system and sector really wasn’t working well for these people to begin with. And now they were being faced with one massive layoffs and furloughs into being deemed essential employees right without the considerate, essential pay. And so we’ve been again thinking about again how these low wage workers could benefit most from these in demand skills that would help them climb up to the next rung of employment and also have a sustaining wage next slide, please. So when we thought about this and advising our strategy, we had a couple of thought partners and that included walmart dot org Straight Education Network, the Joyce Foundation lumina adventures of extension, the CBO Family Endowment. And we thought to ourselves, what if we could develop a strategy that could incentivize the leading minds in ai behavioral psychology, experimental education to come together to develop solutions that could help get workers who are experiencing low wages jobs with higher skills. We thought, what if we can have them work together in a way to target this population? That opportunity at work says that there’s 73 million Americans who have the interests and the skills to do higher wage jobs but not have the opportunity. What if we could develop a set of programs and solutions that would target these workers to one help them up skill and to help them with the essential wraparound supports to find these pathways and higher wage jobs go to the next slide. And so what we came up with was the future of work grand challenge. And really what that is is three pronged strategy. We want to help americans retrained quickly, especially in this moment of covid. You, you know, I talked to people every day, we have a worker’s advisory board which I’ll share with you. But you know, there’s a mother that I was talking to, she’s no up skilling her working, doing remote schooling at home with her child during the day at night, she’s working an overnight shift and then the time she has she’s doing some online classes and she thinks about finding a new job. She doesn’t have time or the money or just the wherewithal to go back to get a four year degree. She’s looking at rapid accelerated learning programmes. The second piece of it is we need to equip americans with the job search and placement supports that they need, you know, think about our high school guidance counselor, whether they were good or bad or college advising, it was always important to have someone in your life to help you navigate the options that exist in this world, especially that exist in the future of work. There are positions that are being created now that didn’t exist, that when most of us right myself included, graduated from college. So it’s really important to understand what these new opportunities are and how do you train for them? The last thing that we wanted to do with our strategy is to come up with Solutions, a solution, an initiative that would help get 25,000 workers who have been displaced by Covid back to work in jobs with living wages. And that was really important for us, that we sent her equity with our philanthropy. We know at this moment there are many people out there looking for jobs, but with the future of work grand challenge, we’re really focusing on the people who have the most barriers to employment. So when we put out our challenge, we said to solution providers, we want you to focus on people who don’t have a four year degree, you know, people job seekers who didn’t make a living wage last year and we want you to focus on getting him into jobs with a living wage and with pathways, we can go to the next slide. So what we came up with, we’ve evolved from our first set of Ideation partners to a larger group of partners. Um, some of them, you know, jobs for the future X Prize, M. I. T solves. There are operating partners, there are boots on the ground are funding partners include lead sponsors walmart dot org, estrada Education Network. Um, but we’re also working with the Joyce Foundation lumina Adventures, the anti Casey Foundation, the Kellogg Foundation accenture, the mortgage, family Foundation, fossil Foundation, JPMorgan Chase Comcast, Universal Job Case and other partners like BRANDEIS University who’s helping us with our research agenda, Harvard University and Goodwill Industries beyond being a slide with a bunch of logos, really what this represents for us for new profit and our partners is the need in this moment to have massive humility. We know that with the unprecedented number of people that are unemployed, that one nonprofit, one employer, one you know, academic institution will not be able to solve this problem alone. And I’m so proud and excited to work with this group of partners who have decided to coalesce around a shared strategy of innovation and innovating for our most vulnerable workers to get them back to work in this future of work next slide please. So the first in our pong and our challenge, which encompasses the future of work ran challenge is the X Prize Rapid Re skilling challenge. We launched both challenges in june and since that time we had 100 and 18 fully registered certain teams for the X Prize Rapid Re skilling challenge and that’s really focused on surfacing solutions, Accelerated learning programmes that will help people train up and get to those again living wage jobs. What we’re really proud about that we’ve seen today data coming out of these challenges is that 60% of the solution providers, at least one of their leaders identifies as a person of color. Almost 40% of the solutions that were submitted were submitted by women. There are over 20 countries represented And the 38% of the teams are led by first generation graduates. So some pipe people may say, well why does that matter? Well, it matters because we want to invest in entrepreneurs who understand the live realities of someone who may be disconnected from the workforce, who may be the first person in their family, who is going to school, who understands the live realities of being a person of color and an entrepreneur of color in this space. And it’s our hypothesis. And we’ll see what happens that these solution providers with proximity will bring a different lens and different ideas that maybe we haven’t seen before to solving some of these complex problems like unemployment and the skills gap. The next slide if we look at also M. I. T. Solves very similarly we launched with them the reimagining two pathways to employment in the U. S. Challenge. So while X. Prize is focused on accelerated learning programmes, M. I. T. Is very focused on the wrap around and what we’re now calling essential supports. So once you’ve up skills what else do you actually need to make sure that you can get and sustain a job? So think about things like mentorship, think about skills assessment, we’re making sure what are the innovations that we can bring to bear and to introduce to the market. And you’ll see here with M. I. T. Solves the solvers who have given ideas and they’ve submitted. Almost 200 of them Are very diverse in relation to their teams and also their leadership. And if you look at the gender divide again, you know, you’ve got 50% male, 45% female, 5% other. That’s what we want. We want diverse founders. Proximate founders who are solving for some of these issues. I recently co wrote an article for the Social Standard. Excuse me. Social stanford innovation review about the importance approximate leaders and my colleagues. Sharon will put it in the chat box but that’ll dig more into what we’ve seen new profit when we funded approximate leaders. What type of ideas have come out of those relationships and how we’ve seen a different type of impact. We can go to the next slide. So beyond the innovators. The other piece when we think about equity is around centering worker voice. So to do that, we’ve employed a strategy which is the expert worker advisory board which is the next slide. And so working with our partners, Goodwill Industries and accenture. We convened a group of workers who have been impacted by Covid, lost their jobs or have been furloughed and really wanted to understand from them, what does it mean to search for jobs to up skill And retrain in the moment of COVID. So we have 31 experts. Um they come across from 11 states, 23 cities. You see that they have a very varied education background. Um but it was really important for us to have this group of people be are sounding board as we developed this strategy that was first and foremost, first and foremost. The second thing that they are helping us with is judging and selecting the actual solutions and weighing in on both the M. I. T. Solutions and the X. Prize solutions and giving their feedback on why or why not. They think these solutions will work for for their lives. We also had our experts do sol batons and workshops with our entrepreneurs so that they could have one on one interactions again with real people were experiencing this problem and all of this is just in an effort to make sure that we get better solutions at the end that are coming out of this challenge that they are you know, centering equity worker voice and really centering the workers lived experience and one thing of you, I want to call your attention this slide when you think about these experts, I am humbled by just their participation because as I mentioned they are dealing with the complexities of covid job searching, doing remote schooling of their kids at home. And when we asked them the reasons why they joined the expert advisory board, the first reason was that they wanted to be in community and they wanted to help others. And the second reason is that they want to learn skills. So even in the midst of this pandemic, you’ve got people who have this appetite, who want to learn, who want to help. And that excites me because that gives me hope for when we get past this academic, how we create a more equitable future of work. Where were are involving the people who are normally at the margins, we go to the next slide. So the last piece of the pillar, when we’re thinking about our worker advisory board is one is they’re giving us their insight. But one thing that we truly believe in new property is like reciprocity. So really thinking about what are they getting in return for their engagement? How are we learning from them? So one is, you know, from them, we’re learning from their research, their insights not only on the tech solutions, but like what is happening on the local level, in their communities. The second piece of it is our experts are acting as advisers and they’re able to build their skills and doing so. You know, when we’re asking them what matters most to them, I’ll give you an example, we give them stipends for their time. And we wanted to also, we found out for some half of our experts that they’re experiencing the digital divide where literally, you know, they’re having trouble with access to broadband internet. And so when we thought about giving them stipends for that, one thing that they told us about was that It’s an issue if they make too much money if we have to give them a W9 because then they hit a benefits cliff and so as we listen to them and we listen to the barriers that they have to up skilling and for us even compensating them for their time, we have to remember that as philanthropies, as employers, as innovators, as when working with them so that we can create solutions that work for them. And so what we were able to do was to come up with a laptop loaner program, right? We were able to rent um wifi for our experts. So again, thinking about creative work around solutions so we can keep our workers involved. And speaking of the idea of reciprocity, one thing that our worker advisory board members are doing by being part of this process, they’re also building their own technical skills, They’re becoming better consumers of technology and understanding what works from them under which context. And we think that that’s a powerful learning beyond our grand challenge. And additional to that we are also giving them 1-1 coaching support and career support. Like we said, everyone needs an adult, a thought partner to help them navigate this world of literally infinite possibilities. So the next slide just shows the last piece of our puzzle. Um We talked about the entrepreneurs, we talked about the workers, but when we’re thinking about systems change partnering with our partners at jobs for the future, we’re really thinking about how can we reinvent modernized, collaborate with the workforce boards and job centres across the country to make sure that these innovations and accelerated learning programmes and wraparound supports are actually meeting the people and reaching the people who need them the most. So for some of you who don’t know about workforce boards on the next slide, I will go over this quickly for you. Um workforce boards are semi government entities. Um what I found striking when I started this work is that in 2019 1 and 12 Americans went to workforce boards for up skilling opportunities and to look for jobs. And when we talk about the The population that we care most about when we think about the 73 million Americans who don’t have a high school degree, um when we think about people are not earning a living wage, this is the place these workforce sports and job centres are the place where millions of Americans are turning to for job placement, especially during the shutdown next slide. Um This new york Times article just talks about how there is an unevenness. When you go to job boards, a workforce centers, it depends on what neighborhood you live in, it depends on what state that you’re in and that’s not to any fault of the job seeker. And so what we aim to do on the next slide is to really think about how we can partner with boards. Um This is one job seeker. Um and his story was that, you know, he went to his local, was laid off, joe was laid off and went to his local job center for up skilling training. He went through a 12 week program and at the end of the 12 week program, there wasn’t a job for him and there’s many job seekers who’ve had this, this challenge. And so one thing that we did with the future work grand challenges. We talk about the accelerated learning programmes, we talk about the wrap around support, but the entrepreneurs who will win the prize challenge, they will win based on the number of people that they train and actually place in jobs with living wages. So I. R. I is truly towards getting people placed in jobs with living wages next live. So overall, including when we think about new profit in our future work strategy and we share this with our peers, we share this with our fellow collaborators, were really focused on three pillars, one surfacing solutions best in class solutions and having them targeted towards entry level workers and workers who are experiencing low wages. Some of you probably won’t be surprised to know that employers spend 80% of their professional development dollars on the highest paid employees. We’d like to flip that and see more investment with employees who are at the entry level middle level, so that they could have actual chance for advisement when you talk to workers, When you ask them where they expect to learn new skills, they’re expecting to learn them on the job, they’re expecting to learn them in the community. So we’re hoping to meet that need. So after we surface these innovations, we want to validate them. And that’s why you see our workforce boards as critical thought partners in that process, we are going to take the solutions and actually pair them job seekers with our entrepreneurs to see how many people that they can train in place in jobs. And then with the partnership with jobs for the future and BRANDEIS University, we’re going to document what we’ve learned about what works, what didn’t work and when it did work, who did work with and for why and be able to share those learnings nationally. And that’s our goal, is to scale that impact and to scale that learnings two additional workforce boards and also to additional employers and additional researchers and friends that are in philanthropy who are making workforce investments and we’re hoping that they may choose to make them a little bit differently. So with that, I would love to bring on my colleague josh Copus who is the director over at jobs for the future JFF labs just to talk about their perspective and why they decided to join onto the future of work. Grand challenge. Thanks Angela for inviting me to participate. Um I uh I I could say Angela, I’m just, I’m continually overwhelmed every time we get together just about for as short a time as we’ve known each other, just how aligned our our philosophies are on how we, how we approach this work and the potential that we see not only in in in these systems to to really confront change head on, but also, but also the potential that we see we see in people. Um I know that for a lot of folks on the line who are familiar with with me and some of my work um you know that that I have actually devoted most of my career to trying to understand how we expand on the promise of the nation’s workforce system as we know it. This this article that Baron just shared. I thought I had read all of Angela’s work I guess I haven’t, but this this potential and proximate leaders to really drive change in their communities and be responsible for kind of helping craft their their own destiny as a community um for what work they want to be doing and what work um provides dignity and value to the people that live in and around them. Um is what has really driven me and continues to drive our transformation work at J. F. F. Um I recently produced a piece on X surprises website, the kind of chronologically how I how I got here. Um and my story is very much rooted in what I was able to observe in my very early days in Pittsburgh, working with the local workforce board, seeing that power of Proximate leaders, seeing what happens when community leaders and business leaders and philanthropic leaders come together to really confront change head on Pittsburgh, I think experienced, you know, some of the changes were now all confronting as a country and as a globe maybe a little earlier than others. Um and I think, you know, Angela, the, you know, the thing is I spent 12 years now in Washington D. C. and I think maybe despite that time in Washington, D. C. Or maybe because of it, I’m increasingly convinced the kind of the true keys to innovation, the true keys to really starting to chart a new course for what the future work should and could look like, particularly for people that have been left out in the future work conversation as we know it. Um, lies within those communities, lies within those workforce boards, lies within those job centers and those community based organizations that the workforce system partners with, Um, you know, to help 20 million people a year navigate an increasingly dynamic set of circumstances that are preventing them from reaching their true potential. And Angela, our first conversation, had, I still think about it because you would have thought you and I were working to, to figure all this out for years because of of how much what you’ve been able to do and pulling together the technology partners with mitt solve an X prize to help us actually get to a set of solutions that we think are viable, that we think hold promise for helping communities respond to some of the challenges that they’re dealing with right now and then linking that up with the public workforce system, not only in an effort to to really expand on the potential that you and I both believe is embedded within that within that system, but also trusting in others, trusting in proximate leaders who are closest to the work to help us validate these solutions to test our assumptions. Um, that’s what this is all about for me. Um, and I think, you know, if you, if you ask me what, you know what JFS and JFF labs is doing, you know, broadly to try and encourage more transformation within the workforce system. Uh, this grand challenge I think is a, is a cornerstone of, of our work now and I hope well into the future josh, this is great and we were kinda experience like you said when we met, you know, I am a newcomer to the workforce conversations but spent two years talking to over 60 boards and just really learning a lot about what happens and what’s different in different communities. And then again when I discovered your work and JFF really focused on boards, I saw a complementary it is and I’m just curious just to hear from you, if you could just talk a bit more about the workforce board work that you and JFF had been doing previous to this like months before the future of work. Grand challenge of course. So I actually, I came to JFF labs from the National Association of Workforce Boards really with an express interest in trying to Uh two more deeply investigate how workforce boards were evolving, particularly how that evolution was both being prompted and powered by new tools and technology, um both tools and technology as as we would define them as consumer facing tools. How is technology being used in job centers to help workers access career navigation resources um to uh to access more more accelerated learning opportunities as well as looking inward at the workforce board themselves to try and understand what were some of the tools that they were using uh for data collection, for data analytics, for really improving their operational effectiveness and understanding how to expand upon the potentials that those organizations really have as as core capabilities and how would technology play a role in really helping expand on that potential? So Angela, I set out on this endeavor really focused in on, you know, trying to document specific tools and more specific use cases of of the whiz bang, you know, kind of stuff that I saw emerging and we we captured a lot of that and it’s been valuable, but in some ways, you know that nine months of research, Angela really has kind of grown into more of a behavioral framework of what what I was able to see and observe from, you know, some of the most um, you know, innovative leaders in the workforce development space. We refer to them as future forward behaviors, but essentially it’s it’s some of those often hard to qualify and quantify things that proximate leaders and that workforce boards do really to help inspire and help workers and learners navigate change at the local level. Yeah, I was gonna say it’s really it’s really fascinating as I shared with you. Like I interviewed, you know, 60 boards, but the other half of my job was trying to convince entrepreneurs who were like in this celebrated learning space to like Look at this population, to look at entry level workers because you know, a lot of startups, you know, they’re really focused where they can get customers. So, you know, I mentioned earlier that, you know, 80% of employers are spending their professional development dollars on higher their highest paid employees. So no one was really a tuning to this um, to entry level workers. And so as I went out to find what I was hoping to be the best and most promising innovations and talking to innovators, you know, I found that they had never heard of workforce boards and that’s why I offered that piece, you know, the best kept secret, not, and I’ll give you an example. There’s one entrepreneur, he just recently went on to raise $10 million but his name is Reuben Harris um, he has a program, you know, Ruben, He just raised a bunch of money to, yeah, he just runs a bunch of a career karma and when I first met him, I told him what I was doing with the future of our grand challenge and that we were going to take solutions and validate with workforce sports and he was like workforce sports, tell me more right? And I end up telling him, go and give him the spill and why you should partner with workforce sports. And then we, we hung up the phone and we didn’t talk for a couple of months. Next thing I know I get a message from him and he says Angela, you know what I heard what you said about workforce boards and I reached out to a board in Washington state and now we’re partnering and they’re going to have laptops and career karma in, in their, in their local job centers. And for me, I said there are so many other entrepreneurs out that out there who are ready to partner. And then to your point, there’s these future for leaders and boards. Um, I don’t know how the two would meet unless there was someone bringing and gathering, doing some matchmaking. I don’t know, tell me what you think, Angela, that’s my exact experience. And I mean, I think in some ways that’s what, that’s what motivated my might jump from WPT JFF labs was, you know, I was seeing it, you know, I was seeing this, this potential for convergence, I was getting a lot of those calls to, um, you know, but I I said to myself, how do we how do we get to a place where these where this entire this entire matchmaking, this this kismet that we know is possible between technologists and entrepreneurs and proximate leaders and workforce sports and job centres isn’t just up to Angela making an email introduction to somebody in Washington state who connects with Ruben. Um so I think that um that is that is one of my, I think, and I hope one of the most critical parts of the grand challenge as we’ve designed. It is, I think it it does create um not only uh kind of a person powered bridge between the tools and technologies that we we suspect can help accelerate the kinds of activities that workforce boards are are seeing and hearing workers and learners demanding um in this new world of of work, but it also is is starting to provide some some actual rigor um and some deep user feedback into into that process to really make sure that you know, we are we are doing we are doing our best to align those opportunities where product can really meet purpose and can meet problems in a way that those can be tackled together with these two worlds that for a long time haven’t haven’t been meeting. Um and Angela, if I could do, I wanna, I also want to add that. That’s a that’s a core concern for me, especially especially around the would be imperative here. Is that for for all my time in this space, I’ve seen a lot of cool tools and technologies built and put up on put up on the internet and everybody will benefit from them. No, they won’t. You know, people with internet will people who understand how to leverage some of these tools? Already, people have been introduced to an LMS as part of their community college experience or for your experience, um the you know, the workers and learners that that I know you and I are thinking about every day and that I know are our brothers and sisters in the public workforce system are thinking about every day there. They have not been privy to those innovations. They have not been privy to those kinds of tools and technologies. And in my mind until we find a way to embed those things in this community infrastructure with workforce boards, with job centres, with their community partners at Goodwill’s and United Ways. Um you know, we’re going to continue to be kind of creating a system that has always been inequitable, but now we’re digitizing the inequities and and that’s just, that’s just not gonna fall josh. I just want to double click on what you said because I, people call me every day and they as a philanthropist, as an investor, they tell me everything, all the great things they do they’re doing with technology on the web. I’m like, well, how are you reaching? My question is always how are you reaching that person? You know, I saw a video the other day, there was a kid um, doing remote school outside of a taco bell, getting onto their wifi, right? Like how are you reaching his mom and dad? How are we reaching the folks who are accessing the internet through their phone? And if you have not thought about that in your strategy, like you’re not doing anything innovative, it’s just marketing and I’m not, it’s not popular to say that and some people, some people don’t like it, but we have to really push ourselves to think about how do we reach the people at the margins who really need this the most, that it’s critical. Absolutely. And I think, you know, one of the other things that I, you know, I’m really excited about, particularly as we, you know, we dig into some of the, you know, some of the work with, you know, with our local partners in the workforce board. Um, you know, it is another thing that’s often overlooked when we look at these, you know, these these kind of tech driven training solutions, um, is um, is how important the freedom to learn is and about how how so many of us, myself included took that for granted, right, the university systems figure this out, right, we’re going to put a roof over your head, we’re gonna give, you were going to give you a meal voucher, we’re gonna take care of it all. You just focus on learning, right? That is not uh that is not an opportunity that everybody is gifted with. I do know that that is something that workforce boards and career counselors and navigators and one stops and job centres try to create that kind of room for people every day and I hope in this work, Angela, it’s not it’s not gonna be the easy part of the work, but not only is there a story to be told here about the intervention of the entrepreneur and the intervention of this really kind of amazing set of tools and tech driven training products that can help people really confront some of these changes, not only presented by the future work but presented by Covid, but there’s also a story to be told here about, about those kinds of supports that, you know, you talked about it in your keynote around, you know, having a mentor, having a coach, having a car, having that, you know, that that time in that space to, to dedicate um to learning and and trying to transition from one career to another. You know, that’s that’s not something that we should be asking people to do from, you know, from 10:10 p.m. to midnight. Um, we should be working to figure out how to create that space so that everybody truly does have that freedom to learn and that freedom to retrain. And I think from a public policy perspective until we take that seriously, uh, you know, any calls for a massive retraining effort in the United States. Um, I don’t think we’re taken seriously until we until we start calling more attention to those other resources and those other supports that we know every learner needs to be successful no matter how good the technology. No. And also I just I just been we’ve seen it right? Like I I’ve been talking a lot about childcare is an essential right? We’ve seen women who make $150 or $200,000 a year leave the workforce because they don’t have child care. So like what did we think was happening with the woman who made $15 an hour? Right? And so these are very true what you’re saying these essential supports. Um we’re going to open it up for questions and in one moment, but josh I do want to leave on a high note. If you think about this grand challenge and you think about what we’re trying to accomplish, you know, a year from now. If we’re talking about this was successful, what would you like to have said about JFS contribution and your contribution to the work? What would need to be true and different a year, is this a year from now, a year from now? Um We have we have these replicable playbooks and the hands of thousands of workforce professionals, career counselors and career navigators all over the country. We’ve identified a core set of entrepreneurs and technology solutions that have proven themselves to be um incredibly effective. Um and helping our initial cohort of of americans connect with new occupations, helping them manage this transition from a job they’ve probably lost due to covid to a new occupation. Um and I think, you know, uh maybe it’s too aggressive to think about, you know, thinking about us doing it in in one year. Um but I mean I could really see the work that we’re doing with, you know, our our five or six pilot sites um and you know, our dozen or so entrepreneurs growing to be something that is highly replicable across the entire national workforce system. Uh Angela, you’ve heard me, you know, you’ve heard me talked before about the just all entrepreneurs and technologists I’ve ever talked to are always are always fascinated by the potential scale. Um you know, the public workforce system is one of the greatest avenues for scale that this country has when it comes to education and training and helping workers transition from the previous occupations to new occupations. Um and you know, as far as the american job centre network goes, you know, there’s more american job centers out there than there are Home Depot’s chick fil A’s targets. So um you want to talk about an opportunity to embed new strategies, new way of thinking and new tools to really help empower a kind of a cohort of, of America that has often been forgot about when it comes to education and training. That’s, that’s what I’m talking getting. I hope that’s what you’re targeting two, that’s exactly what we are. And like we said, you ended on the last note that I was thinking like really making sure that we committed to this equitable recovery, right? This equitable future of work, because we know that it wasn’t working for a lot of people before, so we can’t return to normal business is normal, we need a new normal and I do want to just give a shout out to the six boards that we’re working with because without them there trust their collaboration, like we wouldn’t be able to do this. So we’re working with boards in Hampton roads Virginia, um we’re working with boards in san Diego, san Diego partnership with michigan Hartford Connecticut and also I always pronounce this wrong and I’m in boston, but worcester, uh, massachusetts, I think I got it right this time. I just want to thank you all just for your, for your partnership, your support and just really excited to do this work. And so now we’ll, we’ll open up to any questions or comments. Um, Jamaica, awesome, awesome. This was great. I have questions but I’m going to hold them. We have a lot of questions. So one is, what are the metrics that you all are using to monitor the success of your investments? I would think this is probably around the X prize. Yeah. Are you going to measure this? So there’s a, there’s a couple ways that we’re looking at, like how do we measure our success? One is around like did we just, with the teams itself, did we meet our goals about getting a diverse set of problem solvers? And you saw that that’s one benchmark that we started with that was like hands down, our second benchmark was like making sure that we had workers actual workers that we had integrated into the process so that’s happening third as it comes to the X Prize. You know our goal to those entrepreneurs is that they place and train 500 workers and living wage jobs according to the M. I. T. Wage calculator. So very hard numbers so we’ll know how close we got or if we hit over to that but that’s what we’re looking at it. Like have we measurably improved like the outcomes for these job seekers? Yeah. And the X. Prize put some pretty solid numbers on never drained right? That’s pretty solid. Well and I’ll tell you that wasn’t very popular and josh will probably chime in and talk about this. You know, there are a number of boards that we went to and they said, you know, we can train people, but we we don’t want to, we’re not sure we can guarantee that they’re placed for us. It was like really identifying and being willing to work with a group of partners that we’re as committed to placement as training because we know that anyone who goes to get trained, they’re doing it for a reason and that’s typically to get a job. That’s right. Well, most most likely for sure. Um, Chemo, Aloha, chemo kip in josh. What about apprenticeships most says, I will say chemo, we haven’t dug into that just yet. I do, I do know that there is some budding opportunity with our partners in capital workforce partnership in particular. Um you know, they’re part of of several uh several national apprenticeship initiatives and I know are really really zeroed in on trying to uh trying to capitalize on apprenticeship and work based learning as um you know, as a foundational tool that that organization is using to to help retrain. Um I think some of this, you know Angela still is still contingent for us to to see what kind of what kind of solutions we may be working with, both on the X Prize side and the mighty solve side of things, but chemo Yeah, I can, I can promise you that it is certainly coming up in the conversations and our consultations with our our pilot partners around um you know, this opportunity to integrate some of these new tools and accelerated training models into their apprenticeship and work based learning programs that they already have underway, but certainly even figuring out whether there’s opportunities to explore new opportunities and apprenticeship and work based learning, given what we might see come through the two challenges. Yeah. And I will add, I’ve looked at a couple of the submissions and there are a few that incorporate in protest ships, so we’ll see if they make it to the finals. Um, one thing I didn’t share is that we are going to narrow down all of the 308 applicants. We got to like 20, semifinalists that we’re going to validate in markets. So we’ll see which to Josh’s point, which one of those make the cut. That’s great. Um, we all know it digs a lot of resources to invest in someone over the long haul to get to a living wage, especially if they’ve had, they’ve had these barriers to employment after decades of unequal investment in education. So does surprise give forwards more funding to be able to meet these challenges. And how are you going to measure and protect against cherry picking or creaming in the challenge? Um choosing participants who might have succeeded anyway. Right? So we we agree with the boards on who the criteria that we’re looking at. So for it to count towards this challenge of someone that they’ve trained, it has to be a person who didn’t earn a living wage last year who does not have a four year degree. And that has other barriers to employment. Right? And so we understood that there could be some cherry picking but like if someone meets those criteria like they still have some real barriers to work. So we’re hoping that that by putting that criteria in place that were actually speaking to them. Um Great. So um you haven’t talked about K. A. K. 12 rolling from what I understand what M. I. T. And X. Prize. It’s really focused on work workers right? Yeah it’s post second you think post secondary and workforce. It’s you know some of these programs could be an alternative to post secondary they could be additive. Um so regarding to the X. prize what have you learned so far? What is working on strategy number three relating to getting displaced workers into jobs with a living wage? So that that phase hasn’t started yet. So a couple of things that we have done with X. Prize is that we are working through straight education network with EMC and understanding for six we’re going into six local markets with partnerships with work or advised worker excuse me workforce advisory boards. What we’ve used is like real time data analytics to understand who’s hiring in those markets right now. We’ve given that information to the solution providers. So we feel like the first step is to make sure we’re training for jobs that already exist that meet the criteria that we want with a living wage. And so the experiment will kick off in the first quarter of next year and so we’ll have more to share from that based on what we learn. I just want to double click on Angela’s point to around kind of are the embedded commitment to to using data to drive our decision making across all of this work. Um You know, it’s a it’s a key pillar in our modernization strategy at J. F. F. Um it’s one of the things that I’ve heard, I’ve heard consistently as I’ve as I’ve but literally traveled and traveled the country talking to workforce boards um is you know, is really trying to um not only use labor market information data through EMC’s and Angela, we also have job case as a partner who’s going to help us with some of the kind of the marketing and recruitment analytics that can really, I think help workforce boards expand beyond our usual marketing tactics. Um I think that’s one of the, one of the big challenges for our, our pilot partners here is the workforce boards have had a steady, steady stream of customers right literally coming through the job centers. Um that’s not so much the case anymore. So there’s a huge opportunity here for us to kind of expand our capabilities as a workforce system around using new digital channels and using data to help us better connect with with people that are prime for these kinds of opportunities. So um I would say not only is that running in the background of everything that we’re doing but we’ve really modeled um a lot of a lot of the work that we know will have to do on having really high quality access to data and a real commitment to analyzing and understanding what that data means uh and what decisions we need to based on what we’re learning right. Um An Elise from brookings did comment that you know the several people have common into me even be a text that this importance of this underserved and really broadening access is huge. Including anna lee says the need to tap into jobs nurses, community resources and means for childcare and trans trans um support career transitions. And I know the work we did with families and unemployment within A W. B. And you josh. I mean so much of the barrier is child care and transportation. It’s jimmy. It’s it’s one of the number one things I’ve heard over the last the last 10 months. I mean it is the issue that is preventing, you know, preventing so many families and so many people from getting, getting back to work. Um, so I think I will say, you know Angela, Angela is the fundraiser in chief here, you know, but I do, I will say, I hope as you know, as this work rose and as we start to, you know, better understanding chronicle where there is potential for additional investment beyond just providing some capacity of the workforce boards and certainly the significant prizes that are being offered to the entrepreneurs. Um Angela, I’ll say to you publicly, if you’re if you’re okay with and I do hope there are opportunities for new profit and jff to really teach them up to, you know, to try and investigate where there are other opportunities to inject new types of capital, you know, to help solve for some of these some of these other other issues that we know workers are dealing with as they’re as they’re in transition and as they’re working to pursue new types of training and connect with new new occupations. In fact, josh, you can say, because I think it’s critical and as I’m talking to other philanthropies out there and foundations and specifically in these six communities that were going. And as I talk to partners in those areas, I said, this is an opportunity for you to try new pilots. Like what does it mean to give transportation vouchers, internet vouchers to the people who are who are going through this process. And so that’s a conversation that’s ongoing. But it’s something that it’s top of mind for me, because again, we know as soon as someone’s car breaks down right there, they’re not able to get to their training, no fault of their own or if they have a child care issues. So we really do need to tune of these things in service of that equity, right? A friend of mine from Kellogg’s, she always says to me to british goes, you can’t train your way to equity, right? There’s some other things that we need to come to the table within these essential support for it, in my opinion. And that’s why I love Lady Romero’s work with the work, work like partnership because they do so much of that, you know, in colorado and elsewhere. Um, so I think we’ve answered most of the questions. I just wanted to make a comment. We have like three minutes left this morning. I reposted something Todd topper from degree post degree posted. And it relates back to what Michael Brickman from Department of Ed said yesterday. We’re a long, long way from a true equitable skills based hiring. I mean we have random acts of it and you know, these will be regional and and will help support the data behind it. But Todd topper posted something about corporations are looking more at a i for all of their selections. So josh going back to this, how in the world are we going to get workforce development boards to up their anti in in being innovative around hiring? Because if corporations are going to a i it’s still just kills equity. And I posted, we’ll grade is that ai gonna think like humans which is bias requires degrees or required experience, you know? So what what’s your final comments on this ai this technology and how it’s not going to crush equity both of you? Yeah, I can start and then josh you can go in. So Ai is real and it’s an issue. Um and a few people are very interested in this. There’s a researcher out of M. I. T. Has done a lot around Ai and bias. And one thing we have to do is investors is invest in technologies that are solving for the bias and Ai and analytics. Um There’s several companies I was talking to a woman yesterday, founder of a company called landed for example, um, there’s another one the gradient group um, that are looking at again. How do you input a job seekers information but take out those other things right that um about identity, about background so that people can be judged on the skills that they’re bringing to the table. So I think it’s gonna be important as investors, right? We’re creating this future. When you talk about these technologies, that means someone’s invested, that means an employer has bought them. And so that’s why we have to hold like investors accountable and we have to hold employers accountable for what they’re doing and really make the invisible visible and make the undiscussed herbal discuss able, if that makes sense. So having these conversations and people were out there who are using these technologies, you know, letting them know that this this does not work in this in this market right now josh, the new head of labor will maybe help with that. Just closing comments. I mean, I think everything Angela said is exactly right. I will say, I think um it’s the same thing we’ve been talking about this whole time is right. This next wave of Ai technologies of predictive analytics and all this stuff is it can’t just be cooked up in a lab, you know, by a small group of people with a certain set of biases with a certain narrow set of lived experiences, right? We need to start introducing these concepts to a broader, broader group of people within the communities and maybe we’ll find a way to tackle some of it within the context of the challenge. Even, I think um that’s that’s gonna be a big part of it is I think those of us that, you know, I still find, you know, some of those concepts to be too daunting or you know, we’re not we don’t know enough about that to participate, that can’t be true. You know, we need we need we need more people leaning in and providing that kind of perspective. And Jamais raising those kinds of alarm bells and red flags and and frankly, kind of holding holding technologists responsible. I don’t think it’s being done intentionally. Um it’s just being done because, you know, there’s there’s not that commitment to um kind of a more inclusive approach to how these things are designed and what the auxiliary consequences of them may or may not be. Yeah, I think we’re developing our next session because I know a couple of amazing innovators that are thinking about ai and doing this work and they can come in and talk about how they’re doing it more equitably. It will blow your mind. I’ve learned so much. I think we need to call call up some of our friends at google dot org because I can think of some people that would do exactly all the folks. That’s awesome. Well, on behalf of closing and all of the attendees and all of the community thank you guys. This was great. There’s lots of comments saying thank you. Excellent. All that. So I appreciate you all. And, um, close the community. This will be posted, um, knowing Tiffany pretty quickly in the community, and um, we will be in touch in to you next year, but happy holidays, Happy holidays, everybody stays safe and thank you again. Thank you. Take everyone. Bye bye.
? 15Jan2021: CompTia, ProjectARC, Epic
HUB Learning Session: Triangulate! What Works When Working to Learn
Transcription:
Good morning from closer distributed today, January 15 of a new year and I think everybody is really excited to be into the new year. Um this is our first session of the year and we’re really excited to feature the work of a number eight, which really includes kind of a network of some ecosystem partners, um, Kanta, uh, project Ark and Epic Games. So uh, thank all of you for being active in this hub and you know, for brilliant participating um in the distributed model as a reminder. We will um, have a chat for questions and answers at the end and um the recording will be busted and participate, so so anybody that’s not on, we’ll be able to listen to it. I just wanted to, I know I inundated people with calendar invites but wanting to just put up what’s coming up with distributed. Um next thursday is up number two, which is a learning session hosted by Nova Works and VW research on closing the achievement gap. Um, the next day we have a really great fireside chat with the author, Michelle wise, a lot of you may know Michelle from her work with Strada Education Foundation, she recently released a book and she’ll be talking, we talked to Angela Jackson about that book and the future of the worker, you know, the future of that worker. Uh we’re gonna have the first meet up of all attendees, which is really gonna be a social gathering on the 27th on the 28th. Epic Games will be speaking, hopefully come to you will be able to speak there as well and they’re going to announce a competition that will um be handled by Tello in a They educate a nice tap. So we’re really excited about that competition announcement in conjunction with closer distributed and finally something dear to my heart and I’m super excited about is a town hall with young adults ages 18-30 on the feature of education and higher education. Of course that is uh a young adult kind of time zone, which is evening and lb six p.m. Next thursday. Um Eastern time. So just wanted to go over that really excited about what we have coming up and we’ll talk more about the book that’s going to be published as an outcome of closest at are all intending meet up. So thank you so much, Tim and Dana and Amy for hosting the session. And why don’t you let it rip? All right, thank you to me. Take it away gina. All right. So before I start, who um Tiffany, are you, Do you have our power point that you’re sharing or tim are you going to do it? I’ll share for you. Okay, thanks. Yeah. And to all the participants out there we can promise you that this is not going to be just to sit and listen to us as we read through slides because we’re going to get you active and we’re going to have you doing a lot of participating because we’re all about participatory and collaborative work here. Project Ark. So we thank you for joining us this morning. I am in Harrisburg pennsylvania so we see that there are a lot of you all over the country so it is almost lunchtime for me and some of you are probably just finishing up breakfast. Um And as we get started we do want to thank so much um to our sponsors, we have a contract with us and Amy is going to talk a little bit more about what camp to does a little bit later on in this session that we were so excited to have a partnership with them um With the work that they do with certifications in I. T. And mentorships which we really love at project ark. I know that Jim May mentioned that later in this month on January 28 are other sponsor. Um Epic Games is going to have a session and we’re very excited to listen to what this new competition is going to be about because you know everybody knows Epic Games for their Fortnite fame but we really like their Unreal engine where they develop interactive experiences an immersive virtual worlds because we love that three D. Creation tool because the project ark were all about what we call that high level blooms creation work as we get our learners to really dive into authentic project learning experiences or what we call apples and the work that we do with the K. 12 world and in post secondary we partner um those students, those learners with community members so that they can develop those authentic project learning experiences. So you can see here on our agenda, we have lots of shapes going on as we’re going to take a look at the impact of COVID-19 on what it has done to our learning ecosystems. And we know that a lot of teachers have shifted to just purchasing curriculum that is out there so that they can plug and play online. And we really want to talk about what happens when we put curriculum into a box and the potential that we can actually get when we move outside of that box and start to create this work to learn ecosystem. And then we’ll talk a little bit about how you can actually join our conversation in the hub and beyond. So I think Jamais hit the highlight of some of this, but for those of you who are new to this conversation, a little background and context of what’s going on all through October and December of 2020, we can build up our hubs for distributed, add on the platform, participate. And if you’re not familiar with participate, we’ll show you how to join that platform later as part of getting ready for close it Hybrid in May of 2021, Um, the next couple of months we’re gonna have a lot of these kinds of hub gathering from the other 18 hubs um and some meetups where we can just sort of socializing is jermaine mentioned, we’re working toward a larger book project. We hope to see some of you at that final event in santa fe and if you’ve never been to a close it before, it is a wonderful opportunity to connect with all sorts of different perspectives about how we can close the gaps we know exist in our education systems and in our workforce pipelines. So um that’s sort of the larger context for this. Um and my name is Dr Tim cubic. I’m in his partner project Ark and we’re gonna talk a little bit about a hobby and then walk you through the model of what we think works when redefining work to learn ecosystems. Our goal is through our partnerships with santa and Epic in this hub to really build some promising practices that can set up a really robust community of teachers, technical experts and technology platforms that go beyond the walls of the classroom and connect kids to the vital knowledge and skills they need to develop in order to gain meaningful employment in the workforce. Um and they said we want to use this community of practice um, to really help learners gain some certifications, right? We know that that’s an important part of working to learn. It’s not just earning grades and test scores, but also key certifications and that’s where counties partnership comes in so critically um, and crucial for us is the notion that a lot of this work can be done by technology platforms. We don’t have to be in person with each other all the time to make these connections pop over to the next slide tiff. Yeah, we think everyone benefits in this. Um, learners obviously get better opportunities to grow uh, skills and attributes and knowledge that they need, but we found that the companies that we work with also benefit in gaining a better understanding of the pipeline that’s coming up the specific talents and personalities of the next generation of workers, that’s a really important part of our equation. It’s not just good for kids, it’s good for everybody in the learning ecosystem and if we do this right, it develops sustainable pathways for that rather than pathways that are dependent on grant funding and other things. So that’s the impact we have to get to in our hob conversation on participate, which is an asynchronous conversation um but you can join and we’ll show you how later but right now we just want to sort of walk you through what our ideas are at work in that hub mm and this is where you get to start to participate. So I hope all of you are ready to share some thoughts and ideas because we have for going on a year now been living in this, you know what everybody has defined as the new normal and um it has been interesting as a parent certainly. Um, and as someone who works in education to see how things have changed from last year at this time, moving through the spring. Um, and into the fall and whether you are directly involved in education or working with adult learners or young learners, we’re very interested to see um what your thoughts and ideas are of what you have learned about learning in the age of covid. So what we’re gonna do is we’re going to do something called a chat storm. And what I’m going to ask all of you to do is to take approximately two minutes. And I’m going to have you type into the chat, but I’m going to ask you not to pull your trigger finger and hit the send until I tell you to do that. And that’s why it’s a chat storm because everything is going to flood in at once. And as you think about that, something that you’ve learned over the last several months since last spring about learning in the age of covid, you could share a personal story about your own Children or about working with um, students, whether they be young students, adult learners, it could be something that you’ve heard your neighbor talk about, something that they’ve raved about, something that they’ve complained about. Um, it could be some sort of significant data point that you’ve read. Or it could just be this gut feeling that you have about how learning has changed and shifted. So again, we’re going to take about two minutes to do that. Don’t share it in the chat until I say push sense. So you’re going to do all your typing first. And it might be some uncomfortable silence, but that’s okay. Um, Tim and I are used to being in a classroom and have worked in classrooms for years, so we are used to what is called wait time. Um And the silence doesn’t bother us. So I’m gonna start my timer. I’m going to give you the opportunity to start typing. And um when I call time, you’re gonna all push send and we’ll take a look at your thoughts and ideas. Do you have a preference if it goes to just panelists or panelists and attendees? Oh, you can send it to everyone. That’s 10 days is great. Thanks for clarifying. Mhm. How caps here? Yeah. Yeah. And we have hit the two minute mark. So if you haven’t already go ahead and push send um for messages and we’ll see them pop up as we um discover what you have all learned about learning in the age of covid. So as these are popping in, um, I’ll just say very quickly before we start to go through some of them. One of the reasons that we like to do the chat storm and to give you that full two minutes is that you can really start to think about an articulate your ideas a little bit more deeply. And um, you know, chat storm if you’re doing it with 100 people can be very overwhelming. We have a small enough group, but a large enough group to share ideas so that it doesn’t get that way. Um, so we’re seeing things about equity and access. Those are some key buzzwords that have been popping up over the last few months. As some people have the technology, some people haven’t, you know, how do we shift into that mode so that we can create more access and equity not isolated to physical location. Um What is available to all being flexible work for the unique learner? Yes. And um Jeff feels sorry that that he shared a little bit early, but that’s okay. So looking at trying to keep that momentum going um certainly with adult learners and with employee skilling programmes. Um and with young learners as well, tim and I do an awful lot of adult learning um and training with teachers around the country so we can agree with that. Um People who have lost jobs not coming back now, they have to go to different occupations um needing to do professional learning for educators. Um more than just chromebooks for students. Yes, that is so very, very important. Um and there there is a whole shift to that online learning and it just doesn’t come with the chromebook. My doctoral work is an instructional systems design and technology. So I hear that loudly and clearly. Um Yes, digital divide being amplified uh paper pamphlets, yes copies of lessons and expected parents to coordinate dropping the information off to the school. Yeah. You know it has been a huge shift for all of us, especially if you do have younger learners. Uh wifi I shifted to a system now where I have my husband working from home, I’m working from home and two girls learning from home. And sometimes I wonder what’s happening with our wife because it can’t handle all of that at once adaptable kids truly are. Yes. Um teaching you things on virtual platforms. Um and I think that’s one of my favorite things. Whether it’s working with adult learners, your younger learners, it’s what I learnt. Some students thriving with remote learning and but not everyone. How do kids catch up? Change is hard for most people. Absolutely. Sarah. Um Social emotional learning. Yes. PBL design, thinking, Gamification, non traditional teaching methods. So as we look at all these um and you know, amy our sponsors sharing about the stress of the pandemic. Um and good practices that people need to remember slowing down. Being encouraged. Unplug. Yes. Get to the deep learning. Um And I know personally, I’ve seen a lot of surface learning from my own Children and that’s happening. Yes. School districts being left on their own, but being creative in that hard to plan for people and for lifeboat jobs because they need the work. Yes. Um New career options for re skilling. Uh All right. So as we see all of these pieces coming in and we will have, and it looks like we’re continuing to get more messages we’re going to have and be able to take and correlate all of these um as we move forward and we’ll share them certainly in our hub, as you think about these things that you’ve learned in the age of Covid, and now I’m going to ask you to do one more thing is Tiffany goes to the next slide. Um so as you’re considering what you have learned now, we want to share the question that we have for you in our hub. And that’s thinking about how we as educators as community partners is business leaders. How can we actually all come together to collaborate to think about the redefinition of our ecosystem to one that is worked to learn. So now I’m not going to make you do a chat storm, but you can, as soon as you think of a question that you have about the question that we are posing in our hub, you can type that into the chat and share it for example. Um as you are looking at this question and you might be scratching your head and saying, okay, dana tim, I’m not really sure what you mean by a work to learn ecosystem. You know, what is an ecosystem? I thought we just had classrooms, so that might be one of the questions that you have, uh see Jeff, we read your mind. So if you do have a question about the question that we’ve put up here, go ahead and share it because that’s part of the inquiry process and what tim and I have learned over the years in working with districts and working with teachers is that when we start with a wide open question, that there are always questions that come out of that and those questions really help us to uncover the solution to the challenge itself. So um as you think of those questions will let you go ahead and add them to the chat as we talk a little bit more about what all our circles, squares and triangles actually mean that’s you tim. Yeah. I was just capturing some of the questions that are people writing up there in the chat so that we have them as things to feed into our hub. Um And we need to give people a little bit of time to write their questions before we jump to the next thing. And if you hear a camera snapping in the background I’m just capturing pictures of the questions so that we have them with you to 10. Don’t worry. I know but I’m all about redundancy. You are an educator, yep. All right. It looks like maybe we’ve got the questions we’re going to have and mindful of time. Let’s move on. Um skip to the next slide and I’m going to ask you if you can no not that one. Back to the first one. There we go. Um If you’ve ever used Mentee dot com it basically creates word clouds of people’s thinking and while we’re looking at all these questions coming in there’s a lot of text now what we would like to do is ask you to go to that website Mentee dot com if you can depending on what platform you’re on right now. Um and enter that code that you see there. 41 35 43. And the question we have in a word or a phrase, what do you expect from a curriculum, what is a curriculum supposed to do when we talk about curriculum in schools, what do you expect from that? Um And uh we’re gonna be capturing that in a word, cloud and dana, you can share that on your screen I believe as it comes in. Right, so just take a moment to share a word or a phrase on that link or if we can’t share screen down and maybe you can just tell us what some of the words are that are popping up I’ll get it. Mhm. Yeah. Mhm. Um Tiffany, if you give me sharing privileges I can share that out. Thank you mm There you go. Mhm. Okay. Alright problems engaging, applicable ready made outcomes. Nice. Um Thank you for that, we’ll do a couple more of those and dana may re engage them. Roadmap comes up is a big concept maybe used once or twice if you’re not from there with this. Um Tiffany, can we bounce back to our slides, we’re going to go back and forth on this, but we think the visual is really helpful. Next slide. Then a couple just a couple of thoughts that we have about curriculum. Um, the concept is ancient and um, really cross cultural, right? You see ideas about surrounding learners in a circle, which the word curriculum has at its root, um, with either mentors or experiences that they can benefit from. All right. Um, and we try to make that as comprehensive as possible to prepare kids for a future that we imagine that they will encounter. Um, but the Association of teaching Mathematics did some wonderful studies in the last decade or two, um, sort of clarifying that whenever we have a curriculum curriculum usually breaks up into three different practices, right? There is the intended curriculum, what we spend the money to develop and right whether it’s at the large federal level, um, like the common core standards or whether it’s at a specific level, like a curriculum designed to help people learn ecology or curriculum designed to help people be better citizens. Um, that’s the intended curriculum, but there’s a transmission problem that happens as soon as that intended curriculum is delivered to teachers, they make their own choices based on the students that they work with and based on their district expectation that leads to an implemented curriculum, which may not be exactly the same thing as the intended curriculum. Um, and that means that what students get in the end, what they learn is an achieved curriculum and many of the gaps that we’re trying to close the conversations that we have to close. It are a direct result of these transmissions that happen. Um, and it really comes down to basic communications theory that no matter how perfect the message, just like a game of telephone, if you remember playing that game as a kid, um, the message gets filtered down as it goes through those different transmissions and yes, you can go back and tune and try to improve a curriculum. So it gets closer and closer to the intended curriculum. But the realities of changing differences in policy, the realities of changing teaching staff, the realities of changing community expectations almost guarantee the gaps that we’re trying to close will continue to surface. And if you’ve ever tried to work with schools on implementing a curriculum, um, you know, that schools sort of pivot like giant oil tankers very, very slowly and it can’t keep up with the world of work. So next slide, um, I’ve given you a hint, but I’m curious from your perspective and your experience with thinking about delivering curricula into a space for learning like a classroom. Again, go to mental meter, there’s a new code and in a word or a phrase, what do you know, happens when you introduce curriculum? What are those transmission gaps start to look like, what things happen when you introduce a curriculum in a classroom and we can bounce back Tiffany to the mental meter slide and see what thoughts people have about that. Um and I see questions about sharing the deck. Um Yes, I think uh that will go up with our video as well. You should be able to share now, dana. Right. I can, yes. Mhm. All right. So what’s your experience? What happens be as specific as you can be here? We’re trying to take the theoretical to the concrete. Yeah. And you could even use your own experiences in the classroom when you were a student one second and I’ll get the code into chat and they should be able to see it on top of the screen. There it is right there. Thank you. Okay, again, redundancy? It helps the head everywhere, like seeing a mix of words here, some positive, some challenging, right? That curricula do tend to spark creativity in educators and students, we’ll start turning, but there’s also some frustration and confusion that comes from Nunes. Um, of course, all of this assumes that the curriculum actually ever gets picked up and used. And I know that I’ve been involved in numerous curriculum writing projects. Um, where of the hundreds of teachers who are supposed to implement the curriculum district struggle to get teachers to implement those curriculum and so they may not even get used. Um, let’s go back to the slides, Tiffany. Um, in theory, the classrooms that we have set up in our schools, whether public, public charter, private parochial schools, they’re all the same. They follow Dewey’s theory that a classroom will be a safe and secure place or a learning environment that standardizes the delivery of a curriculum. It reduces the noise that distracts kids from the curriculum, but some things that people have written tons of books about and that we’ve spoken about a lot of close it over the last several years is that that safe space often becomes unchallenging secure often means constrained. You’ll hear teachers all the time talk about why they can’t do certain things because of their classrooms. Um, and finally the environment becomes really institutional. Um, you may have heard this phrase before, but it’s something that we encounter a lot in the field, where teachers complained that the only things their kids really learned at school is the game of school, like how they get along or go along to get along. Um and that trains the kind of thinking that none of us want in our workforce is right. That beats the creativity out um lowers risk taking etcetera and is sure is that some of the gaps that we’re trying to address it close it arise. So with that we’ll go to the main focus of this presentation which is triangulation and we’re just curious one last mentee with the code there, what does it mean for you when you hear the phrase that is used at close it a lot working to learn? Yes. Oops, I think I shared the wrong one. That’s okay, I’ve got my version of it open to just sort of fall along hands on a journey, job shadowing. Mhm. Yeah. Mhm. So if any of you have not used a word cloud before, obviously when the words come in, it changes the shape. Um and if people were using the same types of words are the exact same words, you would see those words get larger as it did and one of the previous ones. So it’s really interesting when I look at the differences between the words that were put into the curriculum versus the words that come to your mind, when you think about work to learn, um when we think about the hands on pieces, when we think about job shadowing and apprenticeships and internships, um I really love the word specifically journey um and authentic of course, and so we really start to shift in our minds when we move from curriculums that are pre made to working to learn that can still fit what we need to um have happened in the classroom to meet the needs of our curriculums that have been written by, whether it’s the state, whether it’s the district themselves or that the teachers have designed versus buying something that is pre made and we can see the more words are popping in here. Um, so I’m gonna go ahead and stop this share and Tiffany, I’ll let you go back to the slides. Um and as we move into this working to learn piece, you know, it was several years ago when tim and I became acquainted with the whole close it entity and what really drew us to close it was their work plus learn focus. Um as we think about that learning by doing what is often termed in the pedagogical circles as project based learning or that learning while working. And it becomes very, very different than a learn to work model where we go to school to learn how to eventually go out into the real world and work. So now as we shift in this model to do the work and as we learn through the work, we see much more success with our young learners, with our adult learners, with our learners that are, that are grasping new skills and finding them itself is in a place where they have to change careers and that’s one of the biggest reasons in terms of practice that we got very excited about partnering with. Can’t see us so amy if you want to chat just a little bit about some of the work that you guys do, that would be wonderful. It’s my pleasure to be here with you today to represent Compton via the Computer Trade Industry Association. And we’re excited to be sponsoring this hub were the Trade Association for the Global Tech community and best probably known for our certification called A plus. That is, I like to call a ticket and a tech jobs, but we are more than that. And what we really like to the reason we like to be a close it is because we’re learning from the workforce and education community, how industry can connect and make a difference. And that’s a really unique um hub, a super hub that jimmy is put together and we’re, when we became acquainted with eight years a few years ago, um we’re kind of hooked on it and it’s real different than the average engagement that a trade association does. This feels more like a pop up think tank if I can put it that way. And I really appreciate the work that Tim and dana have done in this hub. And we’re excited to be co sponsoring with Epic Games because you know, what’s great is theory. But what’s really interesting is where we can come together as practitioners and theorists and educators and industry and find those overlaps or we can make a difference. Um, I think that’s a really unique thing and I wish we were all in santa fe with that wonderful energy and beautiful and surrounding so that our pop up think tank um could have the setting it deserves. And Jamais really is a wonderful host and knows how to really pull group together. Even online, we’re learning just like students, we are talking about how to do this virtually. So some of this communication will be asynchronous and I look forward to chatting with you in the hub. Um, but what we do come to you. Let me speak to that briefly. I don’t take too much of your time. I hope I can tell you in two minutes what we do. So trade association is a place for industry to come together. Our trade association started with certification because as a new industry tech didn’t have standards of what would let people touch things under warranties. Right? And that was the basis for our business. And as a nonprofit we plow the revenues for that back into philanthropic work. And so some of the things we do are relevant free to know about. And I think the biggest one that’s relevant to know about is our I. T. Ready program we’ve done for close to 10 years. We’ve trained 1000 people In an eight week boot camp. We’ve really proven our model that we can take someone with 10th grade numeracy and literacy to a tech entry level job. It becomes this first stop on their career training tech. We have lots of success is about that around the country. And if anyone’s interested in making, um, cooperating with that, we’d love to talk to you. We also have a huge program in, um, almost every high school and community college across the country and around the world knows about our program because we’re embedded in CTE programs and Angel Pinero is on the holiday and you can get his contact information from here from him to talk to us if you’re interested in school, becoming more engaged with a lot of resources for schools. And we really want to help them understand, you know, what industry needs from them when they graduate. And um, then, um, you know, we’ve decided and research shows that, you know, the sooner we can catch folks in their life to be thinking about tech. Um, the more likely we are to keep them engaged, especially girls. So a few years ago we acquired a nonprofit called Tech Girls T E C H G RLS and I’ll put this in the chat with a link. Um, it has a really wonderful camps and curriculum that can be delivered by professionals to groups after school or teachers could grab these as well to do a tech shop to teach a concept about data privacy. And let, for example, me teach my daughters class in the afternoon something so that it’s really um, someone coming from industry who wants to give back and teach and learn. But that doesn’t have necessarily the experience of being educator and that lesson plan that’s so valuable as your educators know to do that. So we try to facilitate that, um, closing that piece of the triangle. So there’s a lot more we do around advocacy as well. We look to um, think about how we can influence policy to really help these issues. And um you know, we’re a networking place for our industry as well, so we’re soliciting a lot more involvement in apprenticeship. We think that’s a huge strategy for us to move forward and we’re thankfully the recipient of a contract with the U. S. Department of Labor this year um to uh expand apprenticeship in tech occupations in the U. S. So in a nutshell, if you have any questions, I’d be happy to talk to you more offline. Thank you so much. I returned to you tim actually to Dana. That’s okay. Thanks amy. Um that was great. And can I just say your enthusiasm is infectious. So and I love the phrase that you use, that industry can connect and make a difference. You can see now that we’ve gone from our circle to a square to a triangle because we think that there are three really main pieces to this puzzle to create a working to learn ecosystem rather than just inside the box classroom. And we have, on the one hand, um, is amy alluded to teachers that are really great at designing lesson plans and have the pedagogical experience and the facilitation experience and um know how to manage a classroom. And oftentimes unless the teacher has been in another field before they came into teaching, they don’t necessarily have the technical expertise that individuals from somewhere like cambodia with the industry expertise can bring into the classroom and bring that background to provide help to the teacher in terms of designing real world experiences to provide feedback to the students to say, is this solution actually going to work in the real world and, you know, as those technical experts and teachers come together, it’s really, really important that in order to close that gap, um, that we have the technology pieces that are there too. And that’s why we also love being partnered with epic games and the technology pieces that they have because we know that in some instances we have schools and organizations that are in very remote parts of the country that have very limited, um, you know, face to face ability to connect with technical experts. And so we need those technology platforms. And even when we work in schools in the middle of new york city, sometimes we have students that have not left their neighborhood. Um, and so especially now in the age of Covid where face to face interactions are severely limited. Now that technology platform piece becomes even more important. So as we bring those pieces of the triangle together, we see this ecosystem come to life in a working to learn component rather than that learn to work environment, that is more of that box. And last year it closed it for those of you that were there, you may remember for those of you that weren’t, will certainly put it up in our hub so that you can take a look at it. But we did sponsor the Talent Trio Awards and we had a teacher from New Jersey actually Hood won that Talent Trio Ward that was as the teacher working with technical experts in the technology platforms um as they were looking at watershed systems um in their community and so now with the teacher of the technical experts in the technology, we can move more into internships, mentorships, apprenticeships and most importantly again what we like to call it at project, our car apples are authentic project learning experiences that are at that creation level blooms that empower our students to really um potentially affect change in their community. And all of these connections together begin to reduce the gaps that we see in more traditional curriculums that tim had talked about earlier. So we do have one more slide um just to kind of close things out and then we’ll open it up for some Q and A. Um actually I think we have two more slides, but that’s the problem. So if you’re wondering what’s going on in hub eight, our project is not to create a new curriculum that will help students be better prepared for the new learning ecosystems of the 21st century. Nor is our project to do a lot of work on classrooms per se. We want to build a lot of these triangles. If we can, we want to collect examples of the tens of triangles that we’re talking about that bring teachers, technology platforms like epic games and collections of technical experts like Canta together. So if you know about those, if your organization is participating in those, if your child’s school would be interested in helping build those kinds of triangles, that’s what we’d like to do in hub eight is really get a conversation going there about what are the promising practices in particular? Since we come from the education front, What do organisations full of technical experts feel that they need to know in order to be able to fully engage and participate in this new ecosystem. Um and to shift their thinking about how better to reach schools and other institutions of learning, including hiring so last slide dana. And then we’ll take some Q. And A. Mhm. Thank you. So obviously if you haven’t already registered for close it um you should do that for our may component, but please join us in hub eight as we facilitate that asynchronous conversation on participate. Um and we would love to also connect it with all the great work that is happening in all of the other hubs. Um Also if you aren’t busy on monday afternoon um it is from three until five eastern time because I’m in pennsylvania so you guys can do the time zone changes where you are. Um We are holding our displaced three point oh um we did some shifting in our own world. We were supposed to have an in person conversation uh conversation in philadelphia last june obviously that didn’t happen. Um and we wanted to host a series of participatory conversations um so we did a little cat storming here today, some mental meter, but on monday we’re doing an actual engagement in problems of practice from the field. So we have some individuals that are presenting some problems of practice. We’re going to have breakout rooms. Um, it’s going to be very participatory. Um, or maybe you have a problem of practice that you would want to share um, to engage with. We have individuals from Uganda that are coming from Australia from all over the United States. We’ve had lots of international participation and that. So it’s great to see diverse perspectives. Um, and we’d love to see it displaced three point out. But that being said, join us in hub a join us on Monday it displaced 3.0 and um, you can throw up any questions that you might have because we wanted to make sure that we gave about 10 minutes for some Q&A tim and dana. I have added in your deck on to participate. So anyone that was asking that’s available and I’ll be sure and add this video as soon as it. Yeah. Thank you for doing that. Tiffany. Any questions or examples that people want to share in this last few minutes. Yeah. And um, Jeff, I’ll just throw out there that we do work with post secondary institutions as well. So obviously it close it. We were kind of focused on decatur on 12 piece because um, you know that that’s kind of uh where that some of the gaps were close it, but we do um, a lot of work with adult higher also and attendees feel free to raise your hand. I can allow you to talk and go ahead and open the conversation. We don’t have anything. We can go everyone 10 minutes back of their day. Let me just share one thing really quickly for those are interested in some of the research that backs this up. I’m just going to share a link in the chat uh to an article that we have in our hub and we are collecting other resources as well. Um rather than drag you through all the research, we’ll just share it with you here if you have an interest, um uh and it’s on research about effective youth adult partnerships, which is what we’re really focused on here. Um so I’ll share that link. So you can dive in with further research. We hope to see some of you in our hub which will remain in a synchronous space for building these triangles. Um and hope you’ll join us also on the 28th at 10 when lisa scenario from Epic Games is going to be announcing a contest around a platform that Epic has a technology platform that can help connect teachers, technical experts, and others. So, um, thanks so much for being here and I would say Jeff did have one question in their um, asking whether work to learn also applies um, K to 12 and it does absolutely. Um, you know, it works at the pre K level. So I have a couple of different books that are out, that one that started pre K to three with tons of examples of work to learn where we have kindergarten students that are working with professionals and have even shifted and changed the teacher and the professionals, the ideas of what the project was going to be about, because they had their own ideas and um, so, yes, the short answer is absolutely, it doesn’t. And we have tons of examples on how that works. Yeah. Um, All right, thank you so much. Perfect. A huge thank you to Project Art and County as a sponsor. This was incredibly informative and engaging. And we’re definitely definitely looking forward to watching your activity in your home. Thank you everyone. Mhm.
? 22Jan2021: Angela Jackson and Michelle Weise
The Future of Work: The Future of Us
Transcription:
Thank you, um, good morning to everybody and welcome to the closest community of this distributed community. We’re really excited about multiple things this month, um, will review the calendar and then I’ll do some introductions, but today we’re really honored to have Michelle Wise, um, and we’ll introduce and dr Angela Jackson, doing a sounds like based on I, some little things I was listening, like it’s gonna be a fun fireside chat and we’re going to learn more about Michelle. Um, so thank you so much to new profit and Angela for bringing this session together. Just as a reminder, we have some really cool things happening this month as part of clothes and distributed. Um, next week, we’re doing our first meet up with all the attendees, having a lot of fun around some of the questions you entered when you first joined the community, um, and we’ll be meeting up in different rooms and having fun with that, so it’s kind of our first reception if you want to call it, uh everybody coming together, not around Akina, not around structure, but just having some fun meeting one another. We’re really excited about that. Then next friday we are having um an announcement and keynote from Epic Games. We’re super excited to partner with Nasa Gerald Solomon telling, inc innovative educated in the closest summit to launch a national competition for Epic games on the future of work is on the gaming competition, it is literally using technology skills within the technologies within Unreal Engine to develop a marketing P. S. A. For earth. Okay, so more on that, that’s just a teaser, but we were super excited to have students across the country compete in that and we will want you to share that to get as many as possible to to participate. Um Then we have next thursday evening, I’m sorry, that is thursday night, friday 28 thursday evening we have a town hall with young invincibles and Association of Young americans. This town hall is with young adults on their view and their vision on the future of education, specifically around the release report that was just released around texas, the cost and affordability of higher education in texas. That was released last week. I’ll send that out to everybody in my next email, but it showed that the average student debt for a student in Texas is $33,000 um and they got lots of opinions from students across texas on that. So we will have to be having a town hall discussion with a lot of policy discussion on what a y a young invincibles are doing with the transition team already around affordability of higher education, so excited about that. And then we did move his session to february due to some panel issues with have number two, so lots of activity happening behind the scenes. And the most exciting thing is the outcome of close it will be a book shift happens. We don’t know that that’s a title we’re still exploring, but that book will be co authored by the hub leaders and different folks across um this global community of the future work. So that’s it for that. Um we are really excited and I’m excited to um introduce Michelle. I’ve had a lot of you already know Michelle but Michelle is an author, the reason author of a book published called Long Life Learning preparing for jobs that don’t exist. Michelle is currently a senior adviser, imaginable teachers, which is a venture of the um in the art group and she is advising Bright and Hive, who is a data collaboration group. I knew Michelle through her career, but I remember the first discussion we ever had was when you Michelle word christian since the institute and you had released higher education and I was so excited about that publication because it spoke to so much of the work, innovative, educating our partners believed in. And since then I’ve gotten to, you know, stay in touch with you through your work. It’s new and Strada and we’re just thrilled to have you here. The most exciting thing um, is that just today, Michelle was announced As one of the top 50 thinkers on the globe. Um, Top 30, Top 30 Thinkers In the globe to watch in 2021. I’ll put that in the chat box. Um, but we’re lucky to have you on this inaugural day of being a top thing girl on the globe and we were just honoured. So thank you and welcome the shell. Thank you so much. It’s so great to be here at close it in this format and I’m so excited to chat with my dear friend Angela uh in a little bit, but I thought it might be helpful for those of you um who haven’t had a chance to take a look at the book yet. And thank you so much to all the people in the chat who have purchase the book already or have been reading it. This really is um, the culmination of almost like a decade’s worth of work. Um, and uh, I have been privileged enough to have different kind of purchase within this um, you know, this space straddling Post Secondary and and the workforce to take a look at lots of different innovations. Um and it kind of started when I was helping service members transition out of the military into civilian careers and everyone wanted to partner with this Edtech startup that I was part of to deliver online education. So we, so I got this amazing view into every version of early, early online nonprofit education. And then when I worked for Clayton Christensen got to see every sort of for profit version of Edtech and because everyone wanted us to write about them. And so it’s just given me this amazing perspective of the landscape. And then when I was at Southern new Hampshire University, everyone wanted us to buy their wares. So I again got to kind of vet a lot of these different innovations and then fund many of them through my work at Strada and at imaginable futures. And it really is um, the source of a lot of hope for me. I’m not a technocrat in the sense that I believe that technology is the solution to everything. Um if I’ve learned, you know, one or two things from the great Clayton Christensen, it is that technology is not the be all, end all it is, is it is just an enabler. And um, so I, what I, what I hope to do in this book was to set up the challenge um and show how our system is sort of pulled down with a fair amount of inertia, inability to sort of communicate across boundaries across silos and show the way toward the future, because it’s not about sort of blowing up the system. In fact, the term that I use over and over again is this idea of a better functioning learning ecosystem that we need. And um, I think I take the metaphor pretty far, especially in the, in the final chapter of the book, but the general idea is that and this is again stemming from my purchase, you know, seeing all this incredible, um, uh, innovation and solution is going on. One of the hardest parts of being in that position is also to see the vast duplication of efforts and the parallel efforts and the lack of coordination and the lack of orchestration. And so what we’ve had thus far right is that we’ve had a separate K 12 system, which is distinct from our post secondary education system, which is separate from our workforce training infrastructure. Um, and I think it really all came to a head right in in March of this past year, where All the people and there had been already over 40 million people falling through the cracks of those different silos because there was not enough, uh, you know, interstitial tissue there. Um, it became very clear that uh, that what we’ve been doing thus far is not sustainable for the future. Um, and so how do we actually move toward a better future? And so in this ecosystem metaphor, we really need stakeholders to behave differently as we, as we think about what is needed. And I’ll go into this later with Angela, but my particular focus is on the people who have been, you know, in that group that has already been left behind by all these different conversations about the future of work. And what I’ve tried to do is we’ve in a lot of human stories. So it’s based on the obstacles that so many of the folks in the bottom quartile of our population who are not thriving in the labor market, who are not earning a living wage. To highlight the different kinds of ways in which that system feels rigged to them to show the ways forward and the things that we have to sort of unlock for the future. Because the important thing here is that this concept of long life learning implicates all of us. I think in the past, as we’ve considered this term of lifelong learning, we’ve sort of assumed, oh that’s kind of, you know, an individual, you know, in their fifties or sixties, finally pursuing their passions or their curiosity and doing this kind of independent, self guided learning or, you know, lifelong learning makes a lot of intuitive sense, it’s something we should do. But somehow, maybe magically extension schools will take care of it or moocs will be the answer. But in fact that that that idea of lifelong learning is something that we’re all going to have to rely on for the future. And that is because we can expect an extended life and extended work life and just more job changes than we ever anticipated because even today, as we look at the retirement, Uh and the changes that, that um early baby boomers are experiencing on average, they have about 12 job changes by the time they retire. So for the rest of us who who still have years in the workforce left, we can only extrapolate from there that maybe we might have 20 or 30 changes to to navigate in the future. And if we just think about how inordinately difficult it is to navigate a single job change today, how in the world are we going to navigate a multitude more And as we think about the challenges that even newly minted college grads have as they face the labor market and they contend with high rates of underemployment and the persistence of underemployment that kind of dogs them For five and 10 years out. How can we do this better? And part of that comes with this laser focus on the people who are experiencing all of those challenges today and how we solve for those pain points. Um I’ll go ahead and stop there and Angela you and I can just kind of jump to it. Oh I would love that. And you know, I’m just like leaning in and listening to you, I just want to share with the audience. Michelle and I met through my work at New Prophet where I’m the managing partner of our future work Initiative. And Michelle was one of the first and early supporters of our future work grand challenge. And we talked about her and the focus of this challenge is really thinking about how do we connect entrepreneurs who are thinking about innovations and up skilling and re skilling and wraparound supports with people who are living at the margins who desperately need them. Michelle was like one of the first people that was on board through her work and our partners at Strada Education Network and walmart dot org. So I just want to thank you for that early support because What I’ve realized in terms of funders along the line, you have your early adopters and then you have the funders who want to see proof of concept and they’ll come on and then they’ll be partners who want to come in at the end and really expand your research. So excited to have this conversation with you today, excited to hear about think 50 naming you one of the 30 world leaders. I mean it’s not often, well I have to tell you, I’ve never had a chance to sit across from someone who’s been on that list. So, um I would love to ask you a few questions so the audience can kind of get to know you and I’ve had the pleasure of getting to know you. Um so a few popcorn questions. Um so right now as you’re doing this work, um what is your fight song? What is the song that you like turn on when you get frustrated? Because you know, this like learning ecosystem is not working as efficiently as it could. Yeah, I think it’s, I mean it’s a little bit older now, but it is um it’s pinks, what about us? I just, I just love pink, but it’s also this um this question of who is being left behind and how do we kind of pay more attention to them? And you talked about what started in March of last year, right, And that it had started before then, but it became so hyper visible to most of us. What was the most surprising thing that came out of the future work last year that you were surprised, thought you might never see in your lifetime. Yeah, I think the thing that was pretty stunning was prior to that moment. There was just so many trending conversations about the future of work and so many economists and prognostications and forecast about job obsolescence and automation and ai and then suddenly it just sort of came to a screeching halt, that sort of emphasis on On the future of work. Um and I think, you know, it was sort of rightly so because we no longer needed some sort of crystal ball to tell us you know what the future of work would look like because the future of work really arrived in March of 2020 when we saw everything just come to that that screeching halt. I know it was like the future work became our present, right? And everyone’s like, when would that happen? Well it’s like happening right now. Which was like shocking. Um Just building on that. Just thinking about what we’ve been. You know, a lot of the media and a lot of us in the future work I’ve been thinking about is this like triple pandemic right? You’ve got covid you have a racial reckoning and you just have just the economy that’s you know, in free fall for so many. How has that really informed your thinking and and the way that you’re looking at your work? Yeah, I like that. We named um the this this session the Future of workers, the future of us because that is the kind of um mental shift. An important shift that happened. Um because of all of these pent up conversations around, you know, economic immobility and racial injustice and it’s it’s actually I think um then the chapter title of one of the parts of the book um so what what was really interesting right, was to see how the economic crisis and that kind of reckoning around racial injustice really became inextricably tied because we saw in real ways how more black and brown communities were disproportionately affected and hurt by the pandemic, both in terms of economic security as well as physical well being. And I feel like this pandemic has taught us an exceptionally painful lesson which is that our systems of learning and work are not well equipped to facilitate, you know, the transition of large numbers of workers to jobs that are in demand, right? When we saw those unemployment claims pile up so fast, it just showed us like all the fundamental cracks and problems in our system. So in a way it was like a lot of african like the pandemic has been actually this strange sort of affirmation of a lot of the research that I was doing, because prior to that moment, I was trying to figure out how do we build up the sense of urgency that we can’t move to a future to a future of education or future work state unless we figure out what to do with the 41 million people were leaving behind already, right? And um I was trying to with my team, we were trying to figure out how do we galvanized and mobilized people differently to help them understand like how urgent this problem is. And so in a way the calamity really kind of helped um just sort of shock the system and I think it forced a lot of people to recognize that we can’t just sort of keep moving along in the way that we’ve been moving, we actually have to build a common agenda and we have to get clear on how we center on working learners, which is all of us, right? It’s it’s all of us, it’s not just the people who are being left behind, because if these are the fundamental sort of, um, you know, challenges in the system, we’re all going to bump up against those same, those same challenges. So how do we stop working in parallel with one another and sort of figure out that more interdependent state where we are recognizing how we all fit together and how do we make this so much more seamless for any job seeker? I appreciated that. And that was like really one of my favorite chapters, you know, in my work leading the Future of Grand Challenge when we talk about the people that were really trying to help with our philanthropic dollars. It are, it is the people who are in the bottom quartile, who are living at the margins, but we’re not doing it at a charity right. We’re doing it because it directly benefits everyone if we uplift them. And it was fascinating for me to see when the pandemic hit. It was These industries that we thought were recession proof, like hospitality, travel, tourism and and really we found out they weren’t. And so you have people who have, you know, worked in the hotel industry for 20 years, who are now thinking about how do I find a new job? You know, what are my verbal skills? Yeah. I think we’ve always kind of had this assumption of linear progress, right? And I think most of us realize we have very nonlinear realities. And yet, you know, even with the the idea of sort of retail and hospitality, food services, transportation, these industries that were completely decimated early on, the idea that somehow, if you start off in retail and you kind of advance, we just sort of have this sense that there’s a way to advance within a specific industry. Once these, these, um, these domains were just completely hit, there was no way to think about how you transfer skills from one seemingly unrelated domain to another. We’re not great at helping people actually identify those portable, transferrable, deeply critical sort of human skills that that are the basis of any potential career trajectory. So that was that was pretty striking as to see as much as we love this idea of thinking about baseline competencies or transferable skills because we didn’t have the infrastructure to validate those sorts of skills and to assess them, there was no way to tell people, hey, you know, even though you can’t pursue anything further within retail, you can actually look toward pr and advertising or human resources because your your partially there, you just have a few gaps to fill. We don’t have that kind of infrastructure yet, Right? And, and you know, someone just put in the chat that community colleges could be a great partner for that. But it’s the idea that we all need support navigating, right? It’s like that one and done. You go through four years and you go through four years plus graduate school like that is not going to be enough. And as you pointed out in your book, When we think about the long life learning, people are estimated to live longer. And one of the stats that you put in is like people have already been born today, that will live to be 120 years old. Can you just share more about that? Yeah, I mean, there’s all kinds of different, um, futurist and experts on ageing and longevity who are talking about death delaying death. And uh, and some are projecting that the first people to live to be 150 years old have already been born. And even this industry of death delaying interventions is becoming this huge potential investment area for um, you know, for Vcs and uh, you know, financial experts. Um, but the for me, it doesn’t even matter if it’s, you know, 8100, 150 years or immortality. What becomes very clear is how tenuous and how unsustainable it feels to sort of front load all of our education Before an extended work life because even if people and this is already happening today, people are staying in the workforce well into their 60s and 70’s and you know, we’re kind of having to fumble our way through and re skill or just sort of, you know, find something on our own, it’s always on us as individuals. Um and so the burden needs to kind of shift in terms of the onus transferring not only on two systems of higher education or community colleges, but also onto our employers who have really retreated from training over the last few decades. Um And there are and and the comment about community colleges is, you know, is certainly the case where they have long played this role of mitigating workforce shortages. They are sort of like the workhorses of our of our higher education system, but also community colleges are pulled in myriad directions, right? It’s not just this focus on the people being left behind, and the critical thing we need to think about for the future is how do we stop trying to sort of force fit are nonlinear realities into that rigidly linear system? Right. Because even if we can leverage some really cool ai powered platform of which there are few really interesting ones out there, even if we’re able to sort of surface our competencies and our skill sets in our talents in a very granular way And say, Oh, I just need these 10 or 20 skills or competencies that I need to kind of develop in order to move in these six or seven directions that I never entertained before, even if we can get there, which we can with some of these with some of these platforms. When we’re actually trying to match a learning pathway to help us fill those skills gaps, we are again trying to force that sort of, you know, square peg into a round hole where we’re not able to get to really precise targeted educational programs. It’s really hard for an individual. If you take anyone off the sidewalk and say, how are you going to fill your skills gaps? You know, we have to kind of throw our hands up in the air. We don’t know how to make sense of the over 730,000 credentials out there today, and employers certainly don’t know how to make sense of it either. So there’s this huge kind of linguistic barrier going on. We’re just friction. And uh, how do we solve for that? How do we actually meet the moment and stop talking about meeting learners where they are and actually start crafting really precise targeted educational programs that get people moving more quickly along their way. I’m curious just in your research, what entrepreneurs organizations have you come across, you think are making inroads in this area in terms of sort of short burst programs? Yes. Yeah. So, um, uh, the book kind of features quite a few of them and it’s just this idea of an on ramp. So I think, you know, starting back in was 2014, uh, you know, when coding bootcamps really started to kind of emerge in the marketplace, everyone kind of got excited about these, this kind of alternative way to skill up and the challenge with coding boot camps or some of these last mount training providers is that, Um, they were often more geared toward, uh, folks who already had a bachelor’s degree or sometimes who were more affluent who could actually afford to pay out of pocket that extra $20,000 that would help them get a very marketable skill for the labor market. So it wasn’t really geared toward the population that we’re talking about today, but over time. Um, and some of them have actually been in existence for a while. They just haven’t may be scaled or figured out how to um, uh, sort of move their services online as fast. Um, but there are these groups that uh, I call on ramps and this is a term that we use that strata Institute and with some research we did with entangled solutions. And it was just to sort of mark out these groups that were doing really unique onboarding techniques of getting to a different um, talent pipeline, a much more diverse talent pipeline, those overlooked populations, um, also providing really unique wrap around support services for adult learners that helped them navigate public benefit systems. These, some of them were formerly incarcerated adults who needed different kinds of Ways to adapt to their new lives. And so some of it was connections to mental health counseling or accountability coaching. They really kind of uh, focused a lot on these kind of wrap around 360° support services, but at the same time they were working locally with employers to feel specific job demands in advanced manufacturing, healthcare, um, you know, cybersecurity, these weren’t just kind of, you know, low level, low wage jobs, these were actually really important careers. So groups like JVs, icy Stars, tectonic launch code, um, uh, you know, even um, cooler berry was doing some really interesting work for data science, boot camps, merit America climb higher. These, these groups that were sort of approaching the problem differently to say how do we how do we make this fit into the lives of learners? How do we how do we meet them where they are? How do we give them not only this technical skills that they need to thrive but also the really important human skills that are so valued in the labor market. Um And it’s the short burst sometimes six weeks sometimes six months training programs that are tied to direct connections to the labour market. So some of them use really interesting kind of outsourced apprenticeship models. Some of them are on the job training where JBs Excel. The learners are actually doing um medical assistant training on U. C. San Francisco’s campus. So they’re really interesting models out there. And it also offers up a potential for institutions to think about how do I partner with these groups instead of building from scratch and reinventing the wheel or trying to just do this on my own? How do I leverage the great learnings of these groups who also are right now more funded by philanthropic and government sources and need to build a better get business case for themselves. There’s a real opportunity for institutions of higher education who are seeing the need to pivot to really cater to adult learners to think about new models of partnership there. No, I appreciate that. In the book. You write about non consumers and that’s what we’re calling this kind of target population who may not be able to afford to pay for these services. And what I’ve seen in my work is just the disconnect, right? If you have employers, they spend about 80% of their professional development dollars on their highest wage earners, right? And so that leaves people were at the entry level without the opportunities to up skill. And when they do get it, it’s more about compliance. And so thinking about like how philanthropy and how partners can be the wind beneath these entrepreneurs who are really thinking about this population because I believe they’re going to show a way forward for, for many of us, for all of us. Yeah, yeah. You’re, you’re absolutely right in terms of like the, the amount of sort of up skilling opportunities in, you know, in companies today. I think Peter Cappelli over at Warton talks about how in 1979 we used to offer like 2.5 weeks worth of worker education and training on the job training. That wasn’t all about risk mitigation, it wasn’t all about compliance training, it was actually about building new skills, Um, that dwindled down to about 11 hours per year by 1995. And today, just two years ago, there was a stat that 44% of companies don’t offer any up skilling or re skilling opportunities within. Uh, meanwhile, the industry spends $200 billion on talent middlemen to figure out how to connect us to talent more, because we’re always trying to buy and recruit external talent instead of building up our existing workforce so that that you’re going to see a shift that happens in these coming decades of really kind of focusing within, because that that move outward is just also not viable for the future, is it’s just too much waste. Um, and we really have to start getting better at articulating our strategic goals, trying to analyze, you know, the talent supply that we we have access to and how do we, how do we start shaping them toward that future? But I just totally forgot Angela what the question was. Sorry? No, no, I I love that and I’m also thinking about like Covid as the ultimate disruptor as you mentioned earlier and just thinking about your career, I know that you know Jamais mentioned that you worked with clay Christensen who you know non consumers. Yes, yes, not consumers. And it makes me think about clay’s work. And can you talk about, tell us a bit more about your work with the clay christians and institute and like that work around and research around disruption and how it’s informed your view and your research. Yeah, yeah. So I think when people hear the term disruption and this is something that plagued clay throughout his life, he he sort of wished he had called it something else because it was so it was the term disruption is just used willy nilly and often wrong. Um and so the focus of Clay’s theories is really this concept of non consumers are people for whom the alternative is really nothing at all. And so it’s interesting because like within higher education, the first non consumers and the first potentially disruptive entrance to come into the uh, into the market were groups like the university of phoenix or devry university. And the reason why that’s kind of startling to most people, because I think from a, you know, for folks especially who work in traditional institutions or who went to traditional institutions, they think there’s a quality difference in terms of what online education provides and what a traditional institution does, but that’s precisely the point that Clay was trying to make, which is when a disruptive entrant first comes out in the market, they are actually catering to a population of learners who don’t have as much money or access to the same kinds of things that exist in the center of the market. And those first innovations are usually of a very different, they’re performing at a different level because it’s a different level of performance. So the first non consumers of education where people who are already working, they couldn’t forgo their wages in order to pursue a degree. And so something that lent more flexibility and convenience, even if it seemed of lower quality people flocked to these solutions, that’s what’s kind of incredible. And even when um, the Senate hearings kind of crack down on the for profit industry, it’s really fascinating to read the language in um in the federal registry about what those groups were actually uh, prime to do. They were actually, they were there to meet the needs of learners who had access to no other solution. And so as we, sorry, as we kind of take that that concept to a new level today, and we think about who are the non consumers of education today? Obviously they include the folks who already have tried higher education and have opted out for some reason or another, right. The 36 million who never made it all the way through and out. But there’s also this huge set of learners who only have that high school degree, who are not thriving in the labor market, but who cannot like it’s just a bridge too far to conceive of investing in this thing on top of everything else they are doing in their lives, right? These are students, these are parents, these are working adults, There is a lot of life that gets in the way. And so how do we, how do we really think about packaging learning differently and also think about how do we reimagine the workplace as the classroom of the future? Because some of these people cannot actually afford to kind of take time out. And so how do we do this in an integrated way where people can earn and learn this is what the the real kind of core meaning of focusing on non consumers is is is the people for whom the alternative is nothing at all. And I wonder about that disconnect between higher education, you know what I was doing my doctor degree. You know, we talked a lot about what is the purpose of education and it’s really interesting. I’ve noticed the disconnect between academics and what they feel the purpose of education is and what we would call these non consumers, like what they see as their purpose and mission and going back for education. Can you talk just a bit more about that you wrote about that in the book? Yeah, I have a part in the book called sort of the never ending debate between education and workforce training and it’s this idea that, you know, we really kind of um had this this ongoing debate about who who bears the onus of getting people prepared for the workforce. Um and for a very long time, it’s been very hard within academia for us to sort of recognize that um our our role has shifted over time because of the sort of tectonic shifts around us. Right? It used to be okay that people could kind of find their professional careers in professional schools because it used to be affordable, used to be able to pay off a public education through summer jobs and and entertain the idea of advanced degrees right today. It’s just you see the risk aversion of younger learners out there who are not willing to make their questioning this, this idea of the return on investment. So it is, it is again this idea of who, how do we, how do we make it so that instead of individuals always feeling like they bear all the risk? Because right now we do students and families, we all as learners bear the risk of the financial side of this. And also wondering, does this thing actually mean something to a future employer isn’t validated or endorsed in some way? There is not a lot of transparency in the market where we can say, oh, if I take this program, it’s going to lead directly to this outcome because actually, that uh, data infrastructure is um, you know, buried in legal disputes. There’s a federal ban on the student unit record, right? We have a lot of things that get in the way of kind of stitching together transparency and outcomes data. Um, and then of course, as I mentioned before that real retreat from employers saying, I just want to find the person who has exactly what I need, right and spot talent and just kind of um pick what I need and and not invest any of my resources into my own people. Um, so it’s, you know, I think the um The, this sort of notion of an inflection point is very real today, where, you know, when we realize that, Oh my gosh, by mid-2030, the number of potential traditional college going students just falls off a cliff. And we’re already right seeing a contraction in the market. Even since 2012, we used to have over 4700 Colleges and universities. It’s already gone down to 4300, um, in just a few years. And so we’re seeing a contraction in the market. And with Covid, unfortunately, there’s going to be that kind of greater challenge ahead where most universities are seeing a drop of around 15% in their enrollment. So There there is this kind of reckoning going on within higher education of who’s going to be the ones who actually attend to this untapped market of millions of adult learners who want to skill up. Almost 90 of adults recognize that they need to skill up in order to thrive, but they don’t know where to go. So where will be the universities that sort of say, I’m going to actually sort of shift and try to figure out new models to cater to this huge population um, out there of these non consumers and for the for the forward thinking employers out there, Who especially those who signed on to that business roundtable pledge in August I think it was 2,019 where they said they were going to invest in their people, right, and invest in their skills for the future. Let’s see where that translates into action. How do you actually go about doing that? No, I love that. And we’re going to turn to the audience for questions. But 11 last follow up to what you just mentioned, you mentioned that employers are going to have to make a shift. Are we already seeing employers, have you seen employees who have started, who are leading in this aspect, who are investing in their base, Who are also thinking about their their hiring practices and like making them more transparent? Yeah. So the trendy new thinking right is around skills based hiring and it sounds wonderful to hire based on skills as opposed to pedigree and it’s certainly something we need to aspire to. But at the current moment it is more aspirational than happening in practice when you look at the data, even though so many different hiring managers and the majority of hiring managers say they would prefer to hire based on skills and experience as opposed to degrees or these other sorts of credentials. We don’t actually see that bearing out in the data yet. I think we can get there and I think it’s great that aspirational we were moving there and that there are these major corporations kind of saying we’re going to we’re going to start dropping the degree requirement. That’s that’s huge. Um There are really interesting models emerging, emerging like Grayson bakery actually has come up with this concept of open hiring right? With the Body shop where um they’ll say if you can lift packages at this weight you got the job right? Like that’s the criteria so they’re really making it. Um as you know, they’re trying to democratize the process. There are other groups that are also blinding the hiring process. Their groups like skill list and um parker Dewey where they’re trying to make it so that people who don’t have the fancy degrees from the prestigious universities actually get to perform and follow up and do a task that an employer actually needs to prove that they know what needs to be done and they can do it even if maybe they weren’t um their first choice. And because the platform is actually you know hide certain information, people can’t make assumptions about the race, ethnicity background, you know, whatever the case. Movie age of these different learners and say, let’s just give them that fair shot. Um but the other, the other piece of this is the employers who are getting real about building mobility pathways internally, like making that transparency clear. It’s really hard when you’re in a company to know exactly what you need to do in order to move forward, right? And so there are groups like aliens, the insurance giant who are trying to, you know, do data work around job families to show how you skill up towards something within the company. Um there are also groups really interesting work for instance, coming out of wal mart where they’ve created these walmart academies where people learn very quick lessons on an Oculus VR headset and then they put them to practice immediately on the warehouse floor, so they’re trying to show the real outcomes of that learning and how you practice these skills. But these are these are these are great signs and again, like sort of seeds we need to see a whole lot more of but it begs the question any time you see these remarkable, you know, $700 million that amazon is putting toward up skilling their warehouse workers or JPMorgan Chase’s, you know, however many $100 million initiative over here, the challenge that you’re going to always need to ask, or the question we need to ask is what are those employers actually doing to carve out time for re skilling? Because the assumption the the implicit expectation today is you job seeker or you worker or you learner are going to go do this on your own, on your own time, on top of everything else you’ve got going on in your lives, you’re going to find some time to skill up. But the, you know, the reason why I mentioned these other groups is because there They’re actually figuring out how do I carve out time, whether it’s 30 minutes a day, an hour a week, you know, an hour a day, how do I make it so that all the burden doesn’t rest on the individual, because it’s ultimately going to benefit me. It’s, it’s in the corporate self interest to do this work, because it’s going to um, it’s going to lead to better sort of long term competitiveness. It’s just very difficult for employers to think about right now. It makes a lot of sense. So we’re going to turn it to the audience. We have a couple of questions that are starting to come up. Um and one of them was just about employers and just resources, who can they work with to do this better. Now. You mentioned skill us and some others are their partners out there and I’m thinking really on the level of government and employers that makes this more available and sustainable for employers. Mm hmm. Yeah. So I mean they’re interesting different kinds. You know we talked about how the calamity turns you know crisis into opportunity. Um So they’re interesting coalitions that are starting to form. Um I happen to serve on the board of one called skill up um Which is an attempt to instead of just sort of reinventing the wheel, how do we get lots of different stakeholders around the table and get them contributing resources and I. P. And learnings into you know different sorts of ecosystem building efforts across the country. So what they’re going to try to do over this next year is to work in six cities to actually show how you stitched together to the data for better career navigation, how you get folks connected with some wraparound supports in the region or some coaching. And then how do you uh, connect them to a learning pathway that will help them sort of fill those skills gaps? So they’re identifying, you know, three or four high demand career pathways for folks who only have a high school degree. Um to say actually these are jobs in your region that you can, that you can work toward. And here the learning providers out there here are the employers that are That are working. So that’s, you know, that’s one um instance of of um of the kind of coalition building and the change in behavior we’re starting to see. Um, but really almost every single uh, chapter in the second half of the book, I think I feature probably about 40 different innovators and innovations and and and sort of forward leaning um institutions and organizations and employers that are moving in this direction. So, um that’s really like a place to kind of go for some great ideas. And so there’s another question around higher education, how do we encourage higher education to make a paradigm shift to lifelong learning? Um we talked about the market forces that are going to do that, but what will be the other, like lovers that will like kind of fast forward this shift in higher education in higher education? I think one potential avenue for kind of building in space for experimentation uh is uh is connected to new funding mechanisms. Because as we think about this idea of long life learning and funding long life learning, where you know, who’s going to pay for this, where are we gonna, where are we gonna tap into these resources and um our our go to when we think about things is is in that kind of tuition assistance, tuition reimbursement space with employers where you know, that’s where that’s where workers can kind of access funds to skill themselves up. But again, that’s kind of only good for regionally accredited institutions who may not be offering some of those um skilling programmes in high demand pathways. Right? Like if you’re trying to get quick smart in A. W. S. Or logistics or design thinking or whatever, the kind of new hot skill, maybe it may not be offered through through those programs. And again that those are also programs that aren’t carving out time for the employee to do that while they’re while they’re working. Um But That is actually human resource benefit. Another part of an employer budget is in this training and development and learning and development budget and it is much bigger actually than that. Human resources benefits space and it’s not capped like the $5,000 reimbursement amount you can get. Um So if we think about moving outside of regulation outside of traditional kind of accreditation measures and try to get inventive in these different sorts of um funding areas, we can actually start to experiment more with things that don’t always have to end in a in a degree or a certificate, right? They don’t have to look like what we’re used to providing within a college or university. So that’s where I think there’s there’s real space to play is actually, you know, and I talk about in the book, we tend to sort of look at some of the innovations out there and and and assume they’re there um disruptive innovations. Like when we look at mega universities that have over 100,000 learners, we just sort of tend to think, oh, those are disruptors, but actually they haven’t carved out a disruptive business channel, meaning that they have, they’re still working within the confines of our regulatory barriers are accreditation constructs. And so we really haven’t actually reinvented the different kinds of channels where we can be um playing around with more flexible creative pathways for learners. Yeah. And what I took away from reading the book is that we’re gonna need people to like narrow higher education and narrow their focus instead of trying to serve everyone with everything, like that’s not gonna be plausible. Yeah, it’s interesting because I think when people even this, this the notion of narrowing, I think when we think about skills, we tend to quickly sort of move toward technical skills building or vertical expertise. And I think what is really fascinating about so much of the literature on the future of work, right, is that we actually need to be building the skills that will help us out compete machines or robots or computers, Right? And those are those kind of human skills are those uniquely human skills. But what’s fascinating about human skills in general, you know, those are things like we have different names for them. Soft, non cognitive. Um but as you think about things like communication, collaboration and teamwork, critical thinking. These are all skills uh that we also can note or associate with a liberal arts degree, right? And these kinds of liberal arts competencies, these are also skills that take us a long time to manifest and build. I love um the author, David Epstein, who wrote Range, where he talks about different experts, talking about how deep learning is slow learning and deep learning also looks like failure in the kinds of ways in which we test and assess today. So how as universities, so not only do we not have to maybe offer all 200° programs that every other university does, but we also have to think about how do we offer experiences that help more mature learners brought in and develop and hone those human skills over time. That and it’s kind of this conundrum because so many learners need more short burst training programs or things that are integrated into their work life so that they can survive right, that they can thrive and earn family sustaining wages. But how do we also reconcile that deep slow learning around human skills with this kind of, how do I get what I need in order to move forward? So there’s there’s there’s this fascinating opportunity for universities to translate this idea of how do we build these really important liberal arts competencies? Are these human skills? But how do we also make them available for more mature learners without telling them? Oh yeah, you just got to come back and get a degree. It’s just it’s not it’s not it’s not feasible for many of these learners. Yeah. And in light of everything that’s been going on with our government, the election, it was so interesting the story you told of executive at one of the tech companies, uh an engineer who said he was so grateful that he had taken an ethics class, right? Because there’s so many, you know, problem solving decision making and just really moral choices that we that workers will need to make as they learn to work beside computers. Yeah. Yeah. I don’t know if you’ve watched that documentary, the social dilemma, it gave me a nightmare. It is the perfect in substantiation of why we need, you know, this human and technical skills building how we need to like have mechanical engineers. No, no great amount about judgment and ethics. Um so that particular guy, he’s a friend of mine um Gregory chan he was saying I’m so glad when I was at stanford, I took this ethics course because when he’s now doing work at Apple, it’s a really unique situation, right? Where when you release a product into the world, suddenly millions upon millions of people adopted within a matter of minutes or hours. Right? And so they he’s thinking like what are the 1st, 2nd, 3rd order effects that we can anticipate from this? And that documentary, the social dilemma just shows what happens when you don’t think about and consider the volume impact repercussions of what you are producing, right? And this is what happens when technology, you build outstrips your ability to manage it. So this balance of human skills, but also enough domain and technical skills to understand the Ai and be able to question it and intervene at the right times is so crucial for the work ahead. Well, Michelle, thank you. This has just been such a pleasure. I am going to turn it back over to Jamaica for some closing thoughts. But we could continue this for hours and and look forward to doing it online. So, thank you again. Also, you guys exist. Was just so informative. I’ve had people texting me saying how awesome it is pleased in the video, It’s just great. And you know, I have my own questions but there’s no time for him. So if if anybody does have questions, please feel free to shoot him to Tiffany at close it dot org and Tiffany will get those two Michelle, you know, and Angela, um, it’s just been awesome. So too close. We’re going to, I think we’ve got a little um, I wanted to mention the shift towards, because the shift towards are happening this year, run by our partners at Sherm, a few different chapters of Sherm and we’re looking to recognize these employers that are shifting from their traditional hiring and the nomination is on the clothes outside. Um, Karen and Cindy, her both members of Shermer helping with this. And last year we had Myer’s bakery who is just doing significant work in previously incarcerated. And Graystone was a winner. So please think about people companies small, medium large that are working and I didn’t identifying talent in new ways and and nominate those. Um, the submission deadline is march fists. You have plenty of time. We did do the drawing and I think we were able to cut the music in the background. So here are the winners. Um, the music working. It’s supposed to be pine pink. Okay. We tried to put up your team. I guess it’s a mute myself. So you could actually hear it. Here we go. There you go. So here’s the song. So, um, I’ve got your address from your registration. We will order the books and ship them to you if your address is different or if you’ve already bought the book and you’d like to have a go to someone else email me. So let’s close by listening to the song and the happy friday. Thanks everyone. What about all the broken happy ever after time. What about What about? Mhm.
? 28Jan2021: Epic
Hub Learning Session: EPIC Games – Unreal Engines Competition Announcement
Transcription:
distributed as a reminder. It’s distributed for a reason meaning everybody has just time challenges and time warp challenges. I mean I still can’t believe it’s been almost two years since we got a hit with a crisis of a lifetime or of a century, but this will be recorded. I’m also picturing linda in the next ship blog and so that will be going out and we’re super excited to have linda join us today, um, to represent and real teachers, which is a division of epic Game said linda is overseen. Um, I wanted to just pull one thing up about linda, just give her any introduction. So linda, she’s going to share her own journey, but linda is one of the creators of an Unreal fellowship. She’s a 30 day intensive program to learn and real engine. So that’s something we’ll talk to you about as well. Um, so welcome linda. We’re really have you. And after I talk to you further I was like, oh my gosh, you’re like, you’re like one of those famous people that’s been doing this before anybody knew what this was. So um I would love to have you introduced yourself, kind of your role and then tell us about your own journey to where you are now because obviously we talk constantly about the future work and learning not being a pathway in one industry, but kind of what sparked your interest and how you get where you get. So I would love to welcome you and kicked us off with your own journey. Great, well thank you very much and I’m happy to be here. Want to make sure I don’t have any echoing. Sounds good. Anyway, I’m linda Solheim and I’m the education lead at Epic Games. So I manage were a relatively small team at Epic and we cover what I like to call cradle to career. So we work with secondary schools, we work with higher education and we work with um career changers that are you know learning new things And I’ll talk a little bit about my journey because I’m the ultimate career changer who entered technology later. I I have a degree in illustration, visual arts and worked for years in that industry back before uh things were really digital. And then I’ve kind of spent a lot of my time going between the physical and the digital space is I worked for large toy company designing toys And then I sort of segued into my own business and did a very high end fashion line for about 10 years. It’s with the reps and major department stores and a lot of learning there was we did a lot of stuff with embellishment and exploring dying and and playing with textiles. So I’ve always had a love for going, you know, in and out of the two D. And three D. Space, the real duty in three D. And then when the digital tools came around in the 80s with Adobe, it was just a game changer to start to learn these and apply them to the work that that we were all doing at the time. And then slowly the video game business sort of, you know, came up and initially the graphics weren’t very exciting if you’ve read any of the books on the history of the business. It’s interesting because the illustrations on the boxes sold the games because the artwork in the games was still developing And in the mid 90s that started to change and I fell in love with three D. So my my first reaction when I when I started learning about games and the tools that they are you that they used was why aren’t people using this game this game engines for other things? I was just fascinated. It seemed like a great tool for visualizing and solving problems. And This was in the late 90s and I decided to go back to school and do an MFA and I did all my research and experimental game engines and taught. So I spent about seven years in education and just fascinated with these tools and what students were learning And how the careers they were going into. Even back in 2005 I would see my students graduate with a game degree but yet some of them are going in to work for you know, companies that were doing work visualizing exhibition sets and you know working with big conferences and even then you were starting to see architecture and real estate sort of play with these tools. So It’s the pathway to interact with three D. is just fascinating. And then I worked at Auto Desk for about five years helping students learn those tools. I ran secondary education and have been in this space, this technology and learning space. I went from there to um Lynda dot com, which became linked and learning where I managed all the tools around three D and cad all that learning. My team created all the courses that you find on Lynda dot com or Lincoln learning now about this subject. So I’ve witnessed this for a good 15 years and The what we’re going to talk about more today is the careers involving interactive 3D in real time are just booming. And I always, when I talked to students and You know, it’s like we, 20 years ago, we all didn’t imagine this world where mobile would drive so much of what we did And when we talk about these real time and interactive three d tools there, they’re going to be part of everything. We live in an immersive world. Now we expect things to turn around. We expect to be able to for shopping for a pair of shoes to see it from every dimension and everything is being affected by these skills. So if you look at our verticals, things like simulation architecture, but it’s not just architecture, its architecture, engineering and construction, it’s even in the construction business. So people need to visualize what they’re doing. I mean you think about what they call previous and film, there’s something very similar in construction and previous of construction sites. How do we know that crane, you know, won’t fall over and do this or how will it affect how the flow on the construction site goes? So it’s just it’s endless. We’re seeing an automotive aerospace, I’ll give you a little sneak that the project we’re going to talk about Unreal futures is part of a whole group of projects we plan to do. And one of the areas we’re looking at is fashion. So real time technology and three d. and fashion. It’s just fascinating. So last year, uh, Jemma has a slide up here. We commissioned burning glass to work with us on a report to look at three D graphics and real time skills. So you’ll see the terms three D graphics and real time and then interactive three D. We use We use real time and interactive three D. Kind of interchangeably. But when we, we use interactive three D. A lot when we’re talking to educators because it covers such a broad area. But in the report, you can see the numbers here. I mean people that have these skills, there are so many jobs out there. They just, it’s a new and emerging area and we’ve been doing a lot of research. There’s another report that we did and I think the link is in here, the creators field guide where we look at a handful of these emerging careers and sort of the skills you need in real time using unreal uh to move into them because we really want students to understand and know that these are the opportunities. I mean we’re educating universities and community colleges and we’re really trying to get people up to speed in the faculty and educators to understand these opportunities. So they incorporated into their programs and the exciting thing about working in the secondary spaces. The students catch onto these tools so quickly. And um it amazes me because what they’ll do with them in 5 to 10 years, they’ll, they’ll, they’ll amaze us with with where they take these things. I mean, I’m just amazed and you know, I think most of the closer community knows linda that I’m not a technologically savvy person. But I mean when I started reading the report, I posted the burning glass from port for everybody. You know, I mean, I just want to ask you, I’d like to show the video real quick, but, but I want to ask you, we all know and no offense kevin drum and other educators that might be on the call. Hi read in public head. It moves really slowly. So how in the world besides, you know, the exciting competition and awareness, How are you guys approaching reaching secondary? Both, you know, like I guess my question on higher ed is what school are you going to? Is it is it architecture? Is it all the schools? How do you, how are you thinking about that? Well, we’re seeing we’re seeing adoption. I mean obviously there’s been game programs around for about the last 10, 15 years. They started to come in and and we’re pretty well saturated in those programs and you know, they have to use game engines are making games. Architecture has been around longer and we’ve we’ve worked with a lot of the big architecture schools. I I think what’s exciting is seeing this expand into more of the vocational and technical schools to use the tools. We we’re a small team, we don’t really train. We like to think that we get people excited, We get them interested, we get them, we show them the opportunities to use the tools and how to build it into their curriculum because no one has a class called Real Time three D. Well maybe a few people do, but I’ll give you an example of one of my um, one of the high school teachers that I work with really closely and he’s very innovative and he teaches at a stem school and he teaches history. So he uses the Unreal engine to have his students create history museum. They pick a topic and it’s a great project and it’s a really easy entryway into the, into a professional tool and they build a three D. Museum that you can interact with and walk through and they tell the story of whatever women’s history was. One semester he did. Um he’ll pick different subjects and then the students work as a docent and bring people through the space. We have another teacher that’s using Fortnite Creative to teach geography and Economics in middle school. So there’s the opportunities are endless to get students engaged and actually using the tools. The students will drive it once, once you kind of figure out how to bring it in and I always tell teachers you want to facilitate you really, you don’t need to become an expert with this. I’ll use an example, pretty much everybody uses Photoshop anymore, but who uses all of Photoshop? It’s a gigantic tool. You use it for what you need to and with with the unreal engine. I feel the same way. It’s like there’s a pathway for everyone to come in and there’s an easy entry way and why I’m so excited about the Unreal Futures a project is that that’s what we created here. We wanted to create an easy on ramp. So you understand the industry then you you there’s videos with career interviews and it’s so well done. We partnered with Media Monks, which is an advertising company that’s exploring new ways of doing things and we’ll show the video in a minute. But we really wanted to create an easy on ramp for teachers and students to explore this tool and do a small project. So a real slice of life project, not a made up project. And what I like, we’ll go to the video next tip. But what I like is that it gives me done in the classroom, formal curriculum or a student can just go on their own. Absolutely. We, we designed this, I called it kind of a kit when we started out, but we were trying to think of something that we could do. Uh, not only in school, but let’s say we visited a boys and girls club and and wanted to do something with them that could be done in a few hours or stretched and done over a period of a week. It’s it’s pretty easy learning and the videos are really great. So I don’t know if you want to show the teaser now. Yeah, here you go. We can talk a little more about it. There’s never been a more exciting or empowering time to be a creator. That’s because a technology called Interactive three D. Is changing the way we live and work where you’re creating things on this platform. You’re creating it for all the platforms. Interactive three D. Simulates the real world in a meaningful way. The result isn’t a simple image or video, it’s a three dimensional world you can explore and change in the past. It may have taken hours if not days for a final image to render. But with real time three D. Tools like Unreal Engine, the process is almost instantaneous in this project. We will explore how Unreal is being used in the advertising industry in the rest of this series will explore step by step how media monks achieve this finished product. And you can follow along as we work through a similar shot together. No prior experience is necessary. We’ll provide you with all the files you need. So let’s go. Mhm awesome. So what, so but about this project is, you know, real time three D is new to the advertising industry and Media monks was one of our mega grant partners and they wanted to explore um using real time tv and television commercials, you know, with products because that’s that’s one of their their streams of work and their partner in this was Oreos. So the students actually create a shot in the tutorials that are part of the, you know, connected to the competition we’re doing here to create a real shot that was done in the Orioles commercial. That’s just incredible. And I think you said something about um there’s how many flavors of Oreos So I bet everybody didn’t know there’s 88 flavors of Oreos and I learned that one of the flavors is Swedish fish. There’s actually a, oh the hot sauce everybody loves, there’s a hot sauce oreo. But anyway if you look at traditional um product shots and tv commercials, so let’s say they’re gonna do a commercial with a package of Oreos which you’ll see in the thing and they bring in the Swedish fish oreo and then they shoot, then they take that package out and then they bring in the next package which might be the mint oreo. I can’t even remember hardly any of the flavors. But so now this can all be done in three D. And I always tell people well You know most of the cars you see in TV commercials anymore. three d. They’re not real cars. Have you ever saw how they used to shoot car commercials? You’ll understand how they can control the reflections and things. So you know lots lots and lots is changing because of our ability to create these objects these three D. Objects and then interact with them. And when we talk about real time we’re talking about real time rendering so you can actually see what you’re doing. Make changes And then render and it’s quick where if you know in about film like you can take 24 hours to render. A couple of seconds of film. So they talk about render farms. So this is all being done real time seen. You can make your changes. I bet a lot of people here have seen the Mandalorian and the Mandalorian was all filmed using virtual production. So if you read any of the articles about it, you’ll, you’ll get sort of a feel for how it’s really changing the entertainment industry also. That’s incredible. Um, so let’s go to the first, maybe, uh, you know, let’s go to what this competition is going to do and then we can kind of show another video of, of a final production. So, um, let me just tell the audience and you know, the close of some of these super, super excited to be able to do this competition with our partners. You’ll hear from our partners in a few minutes from tallow and nice step. Um, but linda, why don’t you talk about the competition and kind of what we’re trying to accomplish with this? Yes. So the way the contents laid out in the course, which will be released soon, um and then everyone will have access to all this content, but it’s about 68 videos that students will work through and then you get, and then you get your big picture view of the industry, you hear about the careers and stuff and then here’s your job, okay, you’re gonna learn this and you’re going to create this shot. So after you’ve learned this now, you have these new skills and that’s the competition. What we’d like students to do is to create a public service announcement um and an ad for Earth Day, the timing’s Great Earth Days in this, you know, end of april and um it’s something that a lot of students do in school or people are involved with community projects on their own, so it’s really great and you’ll have these new skills, you can apply and create something really fun. Um, I want to talk a little bit about the, about what we call assets, or three D assets. Students can create their own, but you can also, we have three assets in our marketplace, so everything you can really get everything you need on Unreal Engine dot com. So that will be great for students. A lot of students will have three D skills, but the great thing about an engine, it’s like props, you can download them from other places and bring them in and they can, you know, tell their story. So do you want to, I also want to just say talk about the badges, like what are you guys trying to do with the badge? Because I like that, they get a badge and they can post that especially. Yeah, Yeah, well, the badge is basically um, a symbol of the skills that you acquired, and we’re working on a broader skills platform. So your badge just add up, you can do this course and get a badge. We obviously, we have some other courses for teachers. We have a course on, on teaching with Fortnite, and we have a new one that will be coming soon on teaching with Unreal, because we look at the sort of teaching with is different than just using. Um, So we have badges, all of our courses on our online learning have badges, the students can build their skills in this area. That’s very cool. Um Yeah, and, and can they, is there a link that they can post it on lengthen since you worked there? Can they post that badge, Arlington or copy the badge or do something like that? I believe they can. I don’t think it’s automatic, but I think you can download it and then posted on your profile. God, um, okay tip. Let’s show what the finest. So just to review this, there’s two age brackets, we’ll have this whole on the fire. Um, prize categories for each age bracket. We announced it today. We’re launching the 12th. Um, we’re going to get the word out amongst our partner organizations in, in any, any, um, any of you that can help share that word, please do. We’ll have something. Um, you know, somebody asked Over 18 to 25 um, uh huh. It’s only 2 25. Sorry. We’re just doing youth and young adults. So there’s 13-18 and then there’s an 18/18. So if you’re 18 and one day you fallen over 18, 2, 25, to top because we really wanted this to be for youth and young adults. So I hope that answers that question submissions are doing the april if anybody knows Greta better than I do. She was a third contact on, linked in with me. I emailed granted to see if she would be a judge um if anybody else knows her credit thunberg, um you know, but Gerald can, you know, maybe touch on who’s gonna be judging, but we’ve got a really esteemed panel of judges lining up and then we’ll announce the winners on Earth Day. So, tip, why don’t you run? One of the sampled PSA is just so people get, can get an idea of what that looks like. Yeah, Yeah. Okay. Mhm, mm. Yeah. Mhm. Yeah, thank you. Yeah, Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, and that’s just one example. I mean, there were three or four and we hold one that wouldn’t be quite as long but you know, I can’t wait to see what these students do. Yeah, that’s a professional piece and really, you know, extravagant. But I I’d love to see what students do when they bring their own personality and view of the world to it. And um I think we’ll see some really great stuff. Yeah, me too. Okay, so um let me think if there’s anything else I want to ask you, um can you tell us? So they’re doing the advertising module? You mentioned that there is going to be a fashion module which is super cool. Um What other modules are going to be coming out from from an industry perspective? Well, we hope to um, to look at virtual production and really the way the film business is being changed again, that’s a little bit on the movie side. And then aerospace, um simulation, automotive, there’s and and architecture engineering and construction. So those would be the ones we hope to do this year. And I noticed somebody asked about applying these two career exploration, that was the goal from the beginning to really show how these, how this stuff is directly related to careers and why it’s important and make it, you know, fun to do and interesting to learn about this because as I said earlier, we find that even in in colleges and stuff, people are just learning about what these skills are and applying them to their programs. Yeah. Um, I really like a couple of things. First I wanted to recognize Amy um Cornell with Conte A because I know Conta is part of your hub. I’m thinking about all this certification training they do and I’m hoping, you know, Amy Made here, this is, you know, rallying your brain a little bit on on ways to work on this type of technical skills then um john dr Boudreaux, My HR Cielo pron love, might there be applications here in training? Learning and corporations. Do you work with CLS CLS, Chief Learning Officers? So what are you guys thinking about that linda? Um you lost me for a minute there, I’m sorry. But yeah, no doctor john Boudreaux has been, you know, he has been working with HR and Chief Learning Officer for many years, um big companies and he’s saying, you know, might their application be applications here for training and learning within corporations and I’m like that. Absolutely. I mean a lot of this, the same stuff that we’re doing these industries are so new and emerging that we’re finding that I always tell people that I taught tech for a long time and You know, when someone is learning a new tool, they’re learning a new tool, it often doesn’t matter if they’re 15 or 50 and we’re finding that a lot of this really applies across the board. That’s why we talk about being in our education team from cradle to career. Because, you know, we really feel that that the a lot of the content we do applies across. I can talk for a sec about the fellowship if you’re interested. You mentioned it earlier because that really addresses when Covid hit a lot of the film industry, everybody stopped shooting. You know, things were closed down all over all over the world and people were unemployed. And we wanted to look at a way that we could help them. We had our mega grant program, but we really wanted to think about what’s a broader thing we could do. So in, we basically built a school in six weeks using our, our learning management system slack discord and uh a lot of blood, sweat and tears and put together a highly curated programme that we take 100 people through a month long study to learn virtual production. We started this with people that are, are in the industry. So to get accepted into the program, you need to have some industry experience because we moved pretty quickly, but it’s a full time, 40 hour a week plus homework. And they produced a short film at the end of it and it pays a small stipend to keep people involved. And we’ve built in and an incredible sense of community, add community out of this. We’ve run a few 100 people through it and we hope to expand this idea. It’s been great during covid time. No kidding. That’s incredible. Well, they just named um Albuquerque in santa fe ever get to the top movie production areas. So you know, we’ve got some yeah, up happening here. So art Martinez, we’ll have to think about the workforce board and how we can go to netflix and some of those companies and get some of this happening. That’s exciting. Okay, so I want to just turn and introduced to partners and then we’re gonna open it up for questions for linda. Um, so we’re super excited to be hosting this competition competition, helping the competition. We are going to get at least 500 applicants um, to join this competition. That’s what we are working towards. And as I said, we’re moving quickly because it just kind of came out of the gate just to the beginning of the year. So when I introduce, um, someone that I’m really honored to work with and that’s Casey Welts the co founder and Ceo Tallow, so Casey, why don’t you kind of talk about what Talos role is going to be with this competition? A little bit about talent? Yeah, absolutely. Can you all hear me okay? Yes, Excellent. Well at first it’s really an honor to be part b part of this group. A Tallow, We really started out eight years ago under a mission and belief that everyone had a skill and interest and ability that somebody else was looking for. What was really missing was the connection and that’s why we made it. We really wanted to give the next generation of talent the ability to overcome a lot of those traditional boundaries and connect with opportunities anytime, anywhere um that all aligned to their skills and abilities and you know, just listening to linda talk and we’re talking a lot about these skills and the skills of the future and so often we see, right, we all know it. You think about the future talent pipeline which starts earlier is they don’t know what they don’t know and so bringing this opportunity to them is really going to be incredible. Um so really fast forward eight years and we decided to create a platform that could provide that future talent, that ability to showcase, showcases all their work, showcase their skills that they have achieved in one place and an end to end platform with the goal of connecting with career opportunities, post secondary opportunities that really align with their interests, their abilities, their skills, not just a regular opportunity. And so we fast forward that now we’re excited to bring this opportunity to, you know, over the nearly 1.5 million students and young professionals using talent today, I’m also really excited when you look at that is bringing this opportunity to that population that’s 40% ethnically and racially diverse. You know, they come from 27,000 high schools across the country, there in 4000 colleges and now they’re going to get a chance to learn and see truly what the future of work in this completely new industry is going to look like. Um and I think lastly, you know, part in this partnership and I know Gerald going to get a chance to talk in a moment but I feel like it’s really unique that you get to work with four organizations that are so skills and future focused um based and really pioneered their space. Right, Jamie, you look at the work, you’ve done it, close it and innovate educate, really pioneering the skills based hiring and learning side of it, right? You have Gerald is about to speak about how Nasa and the work that they have done about the incredible work about extracting skills and competencies from competitive sports. Um So it’s not just athletes more importantly what are the skills they’re acquiring that that are foundational that align to these careers of the future. Um it’s extremely exciting and then you know following up linda what you just shared with epic and unreal Engine bringing the most powerful interactive real time three D. Creation platform in the world. two students in rural and urban in different environments with different interests is really going to be incredible. So Talos role in this, you know it’s a it’s a free platform to help showcase students. They’re going to have a chance to come onto Tallow Register, learn about the opportunity, post it there, connect it, take that bad, showcase it there and connect with those employers that are hiring down the road and colleges that have those programs and really helping people to set up the journey. So really being part of the future of work and bringing it to the future talent pipeline. That’s what CAl is going to do, excited to have the opportunity to be part of this unique um and really game changing opportunity, Game changing. Love it. That’s awesome, Casey, Thank you. I’m so excited to have the Dello students learn about this, all your learners and and bring more learners to the platform. Um Gerald, my friend Gerald Solomon. Um super excited that you and I get to work on this together. So why don’t you talk a little bit about your role? Great thanks jim. A and it’s a real privilege and honor to have and be associated with such quality individuals and entities. Casey, You said it well, it’s really the alignment of people who are truly engaged in. How do you think about the future of workforce workforce opportunities? Our work at NASA began when I was running the Sam Waley Foundation for 13 years and we were looking at ways to really address the needs of the disenfranchised, the disengaged um students of color girls in particular around the skills they need for futures of workforce. And through that we stumbled onto something called esports and what we’ve done over the last several years is create pathways, not to play games, but to use gaming and gaming opportunities in the sports to develop the skills that students need in order to thrive and grow in today and tomorrow’s workforce in our relationship with Tallow and Epic and innovate educate is really long standing in a lot of different ways and this is an opportunity to use the concept of competition or play to get students interested in and exposed to what Unreal Engine. Unreal Ventures is really all about so that it can open doors and opportunities to be able to explore ways in which students again through gaming, through play through competition etcetera. Can have fun and learn at the same time. The benefit of what we’re doing is we have that competition platform, that opportunity, we have the rules and regs around the kind of traditional score games of, you know, um Rocket League and in other types of activities, Fortnite et cetera. I mean we’re just transferring it into this kind of opportunity for kids to learn the skills of linda and Epic. Talk about through Unreal Engine. We’ve been fortunate enough to our relationships to find judges who are really leaders in the field is Jamais alluded to. We have the executive producer of the lego movie, we have the person in charge of global marketing for Qualcomm. We have the marketing director for immortals, one of the leading e sports professional teams in the world, who are all going to serve as judges to be able to help kids think about and look at how they can use the skills derived and developed through Unreal and then be able to use it in ways to develop pathways for themselves and learning. So it’s a great opportunity to be able to expose tens of thousands of kids to these opportunities of future development and growth. And we at Nasa are really looking forward to working to be able to really make a difference. Thank you jimmy. Yeah, thank you, linda. Any closing comments before we go to some questions if there aren’t any. Um well we covered it pretty well. I’m excited to see, you know what questions people have. But again, I wanted to that we really created this content to get people on board with the engine and it’s, this is a, I hate to use the word simple, but so often with technology things get too deep, too fast, students get bored and we really created this with that that on ramp and pathway. And we hope that students would push it much further and enjoy some of our other learning content beyond it and explore on their own, which we all know they’re so good at, you know, thank goodness for Youtube. But we really, I’m hoping that the, the entries will just blow us away. Yeah, I hope so too. I really do um questions I know we kind of put those in like when john asked about the Chief Learning Officers questions. Um does anybody want to put something in the chat questions about anything they’re thinking about. We did kind of friend us while we worked. You missed a question from john earlier, he asked if there was a green chili flavor of Oreos. I know there’s a chili flavor and that’s what I was thinking earlier. There’s a sorry ASHA flavor and I posted these resources and participate for anyone who’s interested in these as well. I won’t say the next face to face event we hold, we’re going to order every one of those brands and we’ll have a tasting contest because I talk that there’s that many oreo brands. It would be fun to taste all of them. Let’s see one new message. You saw a lady gaga flavor. That’s crazy. Dad. He is crazy. Um, I don’t know about you all you all, but I’m a lifelong learner and I’m gonna go to Admiral Engine and do the course myself because I think it’s just um really cool uh to think about, you know what I can learn doing that. So I encourage everybody tim Great, great question. Can they do and really engine and a chromebook, her ipad. Um when those emails have been flying between google and and and and your team, can you talk about what we’re trying to do on that? Yeah. We’re hoping to offer a remote desktop virtual machines solution that’s still being worked out. If I will talk about a program, we have an Epic with par sec that if you’re doing this with a class. So if you’re a teacher and you have a lab but you can’t access it now. We can do something, we can do something where we virtualized the lab at the moment. That’s the solution that we have. An epic Jeremiah has been talking to people at google and we’re looking at a way that we can offer virtual machines and more of a one off way. Uh Chromebooks a little slow, you know? Um and of course it doesn’t run on an ipad. It will run on a mac but not on an ipad. Got it, that’s that’s good. Gerald is leading the world registrations with linda’s team. Um Then what just for final information is people will go register on Tallow. Um then they’ll be driven over to the un really immoral futures where they’ll actually go through that um when they finish that they will go back and load their badge, There’s some proof of proof of learning, you know nothing nothing huge for that. Dead learner. Um I asked linda how long it would take and I think we kind of talked about it. It was just a learner sitting down to do this linda. Do you have an estimate of what it would take? Our our rights um for the student to go through all the materials? I’d say, you know, an hour and a half or so to watch all the videos and read through things and then um to do the project to go through the tutorials, maybe another hour or more and then, you know, it’s creativity at that point, it’s sitting down and thinking through, I would encourage students to sketch and storyboard and you know, if they’re fun to work with a team or with a couple of friends and come up with an idea and then figure out how they can do it. Yeah, so I just, I mean in in my head I’m thinking this would take weeks. So I wanted to ask that question. So people understand this is, this is really an exciting opportunity even for a full time student in college or high school to sit down and do this over a weekend or whatever any other questions. Um, it looks like I don’t see any, we didn’t put up all these resources, we will be posting all of this. Um, I love that there’s secondary lesson plans here for people that are working with the classroom in video for teachers, et cetera. So I’m just thrilled and linda. It was so great to have you, um, you know, uh, speak to us today and learn more about your own journey. I do want to know that you develop a toy that was special to you. Uh, it was really cool or what was your favorite toy that you worked on? That was quite a long time ago, but I did work on a line of, of warrior women dolls very early on and we kind of competed with masters of the universe and but they do still have their own facebook group. Girls loved these toys. It was called Golden Girls and the Guardians of the gem sto. I love it so good. It’s it’s really fun to reflect on the crazy journeys that we’ve had. Oh yeah, okay, well, thanks everybody for joining. We really are glad to have you. Thanks for your interaction. As a reminder. There is a town hall tonight and I have no idea how many youth and young adults are gonna enjoy. But it’ll be a great converse realization on their opinion of higher education, specifically higher education reform. Um, what’s happening on the hill, both state policy and federal policy around the cost and affordability of higher education. So I’m looking forward to be imported that down hall tonight. I’ll just be a deepening because it’s being run by Young Invincibles and association and young americans, both organizations at A. D. C. And that’s how numbered. Probably 10. Okay. Thanks everybody. Thank you. Hi. Bye.
? 28Jan2021: AYA & Young Invincibles
Adult Higher Education and Workforce Townhall Discussion
Transcription:
welcome. We’re super excited to have people joining for, you know, a voice from the young adults. And I am just really excited to have met both A y a association of young americans and Young invincibles over the last mhm We got made Young Invincibles about eight years ago and then a Y A. We got associated with with Ben Brown, one of the founders about four years ago and he spoke at close it in Austin. So just really excited. I think we all know that the future is about their voice. The young boys, the Youth Boys, and it’s also something that’s really hard to capture. So I’m just Really thrilled to have two organizations that have captured that voice and um are doing great work in that area. Um Lisa Giordano is the executive director of Association of Young Americans and I believe lisa, why did you just tell us, you know, a little bit about a Y a how many members on what you all are doing? Yeah, well, it’s nice to see all of you here, Thank you for coming. Um Yeah, the Association of Young Americans started in 2016, and we are a membership based organization that basically has the single goal of increasing young people’s voice in politics. Um so we currently have 34,000 members um which is really exciting. Um and we brought on our first lobbyist in 2017, a year after we were founded. And that is Ali so you’ll be meeting her soon. Um And yeah, we work on a specific policy platform, specific issues that are important to young people, from higher education and workforce development, to climate change and health care. Um So yeah, we work hard to get specific policies and legislation passed that will improve the lives of young people. Um And we advocate for the voices of our members um every day in Washington. Um so yeah, it’s great to be here with you all and I’m excited to be a part of this discussion. That’s awesome, thank you. And then I’m gonna turn it over to our head on sam moderator, um master of ceremonies, Jesse Jesse is with Young Invincibles and Jesse, I’m sure you want to introduce the team and kind of dive into what we’re gonna be talking about. Well, thank you, Jamaica, Good afternoon, Good evening! Wherever you are joining us. Welcome as Jimmy said, I’m Jesse Barbara and I have the privilege of serving as Senior Director of External Affairs at Young Invincibles. We are a national nonprofit for our mission is similar to a Y is in amplifying the voices of young adults in the political process and expanding economic opportunity for all. And so I am so excited to be here at the close of the summit focused on their ninth ideation hub, which has the goal of including you youth young voices into this summit. And so tonight we are going to hear from a national and state perspectives on how young people are weathering the economic crisis, the solutions they want and how our organizations, a y A and young invincibles are working to make those reality. And so we’re going to follow this panel conversation with a town hall from 7-8 p. M. We’re gonna bring some of our audience members up to share their lived experiences with us and reflect on the conversation that we’re going to hear. So let’s get into it. So I have the pleasure of being joined by my colleague Malcolm, Sullivan who serves as the organizing manager for Why I texas and to my partner, my peer, my Alley Alley Bernstein Talcott, who is, as you heard a lobbyist for the Association for Young Americans. So what have we seen over the last year, young adults have been tossed yet again into the deepest pits of a recession and with it they’ve been straddled with mountains of debt and a cloudy path forward. Um as you know, the covid 19 pandemic through higher education into an unprecedented time of upheaval, campuses nationwide, closed down in person instruction and converted all of their lectures to online force delivery. What happened the disruption put on stark display the real inequities that have persisted for decades across all types of higher education institutions, students who relied on campus housing for shelter and meal plans or cut off from these essential things cost of travel burden these students and many others and students in underserved communities, urban and rural like struggled to keep up with coursework on the wrong side of the digital divide. But we know what needs to happen in order to ensure young people have the ability to prosper and thrive. We have to remove those anchors of debt, we have to increase disposable income. We have to reorient academic degree programs and enhance student support services. So our conversation tonight should push your thinking about the future of higher education and economic opportunity while also recognizing that the status quo before COVID was not working for the 43 million Americans shouldering a trillion and a half dollars in student debt. So just as the COVID-19 pandemic has disproportionately affected communities of colour. The student debt crisis and the toll on our economy has also hit people of color especially hard. So it’s a lot I know but we have two experts that are going to be unraveling all of that for us. But before we dive in, I want to just make sure you keep an eye out and send your responses to a few poll questions on your screen and in fact, Tiffany, if we can go ahead and launch our first question, let’s just get a sense of who is in the room. Um so with that I want to level set with both of you, ali and Malcolm. Your organizations are doing such great work and aligned so closely with their mission. Can you just set the stage for us about how you work with young adults, what you’re hearing from them and how you engage with them Malcolm? Let’s start with you. Yeah, so as you already mentioned, um we are really committed at, y I are young invincibles to really um empowering young adults to bring their voices um on the political issues that really matter to them. And so we have been involved in talking about student debt for a long time, particularly in our texas office. Um but we had the opportunity to really dive in on student debt um and write a report called student debt in texas, why it’s time to collect on the best interests of texas borrowers. Um and so to do that we really um activated young adults in in a number of ways. Um we have a leadership program that we run every year and so we really got to collaborate with those amazing young adults um to hear what they thought about student debt, to hear how it affects them day to day. Um and then we also realized that you know, a lot of the data that we see um you know, it speaks to numbers, but it doesn’t necessarily speak to experiences. And what we were hearing from young adults was, you know, they had these really uh potent experiences and so we wanted to um hear from from other young adults. So we listened across the state of texas, we went on a listening tour And then we surveyed about 1600 young adults throughout the state of Texas on their experiences with student debt. And you know, what we learned is maybe not surprising student that is a crisis. It’s really, really important to young adults in texas. Um We know that people are struggling. We know that people are putting their lives on hold. We know that people are sinking underneath this debt and that really, you know, one of the things that’s most surprising, um I think that that we learned um from all of this and just from our programming is that young adults feel so powerless and so trapped by the system of debt. Um In texas in particular, the texas legislature decided to deregulate tuition in 2000 and three. And since 2000 and three we’ve seen, you know, tuition go up and up and up and up for these public institutions. So these this education that we said was a public good, we’re now saddling young people with um and they’re paying for their they’re going tens of thousands of dollars into debt for um and you know, they weren’t even alive, some of them when this decision was made. I mean, it’s absurd. Um and so I I really think that what we’ve, what we’ve learned is that, you know, the young people are leading the way on this, they’ve been telling us this. Um and speaking as a young person myself, you know, we’ve been saying this for so long, um and it’s really time to to start listening to those voices and to start really thinking about what the solutions are, not to keep relitigating, but to really start okay, there are things that we can do in texas, there are things that I know a y a is doing nationally and it’s time to really um you know, get ready to do, it’s really time. Yeah, Malcolm, you bring up such a great point in terms of all of these challenges that we’re facing, they’re not new, right? They’re inextricably tied to what we went through a decade ago, during the great recession, right? And I think you hit the nail on the head in terms of the struggle to regain states investment in public institutions of Higher Education, which has just continued to erode and decline. Um But ali I want to I want to give you some time here, you know, same question. How is a y a kind of meeting young people and young adults where they are to kind of, learn from them and then be better advocates on their behalf? Absolutely, Well, it’s a great question, and I just want to like, Plus one million to everything Malcolm said, we are very aligned with my eye on, you know, the pressing need Um, to tackle the student debt issue. And it was actually why I was hired in 2016 to be a voice for a Y. S member as a brand new organization. Um, you know, we, the whole mission of the Association of Young Americans is to bring lobbying as a tool to our members and two advocates. And what I often tell our members is that you don’t need to be a hired lobbyists to lobby for yourself and you don’t need to be a policy wonk, Um, and an expert on, you know, all the things that you see in the news that you’re like, I have no idea what they’re talking about. Um, marching in the streets is advocacy tweeting from your phones is advocacy. And so, um, what I like and right, lobbyist is a dirty word if you’re outside Capitol Hill and there’s a bad connotation with it, it’s like, oh, the lobbyists have ruined the world, and it’s like, well, actually, um, you know, we’re trying to at a y reclaim that word and rebrand it so that all young people can be the best advocates and lobbyists for themselves. And how are we doing that? We’re doing it by utilizing the tools that we all have as young people at our disposal. And so that is connecting with our members across all the channels, right? So whether that’s facebook or twitter or right now not in person, um, and instagram and all of the creative ways that we as society have come together on social media. And so we formed things like member advisory groups, task forces. Um, we’ve done countless surveys similar to, um, you know why I’m like really wanting to hear our members voices, what are, what are they struggling with, what keeps them up at night and then using that information and you know, that those those issues that really are affecting their family planning there, um economic status, their ability to participate in the economy. And so, um, I think that, you know what we’re seeing in the news are the things that are rising to public awareness levels. And for the first time in, you know, a long time we have an administration that is talking about student debt. It was in the debates for the first time in decades, right? Like our advocacy as young people is finally making it to the government and getting their attention and look members of Congress check their tweets. So we are going to utilize the platforms that make a difference with those policymakers and we’re going to speak their language too. And so what I often like to say about what I do as a lobbyist is I’m a liaison between the sausage making on Capitol Hill and like what happens there and all the wonky things and then serving as a liaison and a translator back down to our members to give them what is happening in layman’s terms. And so I think the other big thing is forming coalitions and collaborating with organizations like yours, that we’re all in this together, we’re fighting this uphill battle together and the more tools at our disposal to make sure that young people not only march in the streets and take the actions and lobby for themselves, but like, run for office so that we can have some young people who finally represent us. And and we’re seeing that, right? The trend is happening right. More young people have been elected into office more than ever in the last couple of years, and there’s there is truly a trend to recognize that, you know, we can’t have a Congress that is completely out of touch, aside from, like, their grandkids, right, Like, they need to kind of hear um, from us in all ways and whether that’s old school writing an op ed, we’ll write an op ed. Um, and so, like I said, we’re just um, we’re directly connecting with our members and giving them the tools to be their own lobbyists. I love that’s such a great answer. And as a former lobbyist myself, I like to often say if you’re not at the table, you’re on the menu, right? And so that’s kind of what you’re doing. You’re giving the voice to young adults, right? You are being in the room where it happens, making the decisions, um and really elevating their voices in those circles. I want to want to draw us back quickly to the focus of kind of higher education, right? I think allie you just hit it on the head in terms of how canceling student debt and these cries have just kept growing louder and louder throughout the election in 2020 Malcolm. I want to start with you talk to us for a moment about how student debt specifically is putting the lives of a young adults in texas on pause. I know you alluded to some of the things that you, you found out in your report, but maybe what are like the moral implications of canceling students? How are we framing the issue as one of equity concerns? I think that’s a great question. Um, I know that you said just talk to us for a moment and like goodness knows, I could be here for an hour and a half, um, talking about all the, you know, we have, we have, uh, we have a town hall after this that we’ll see you there. Yeah, So, so I’ll see you all there. Um, but I don’t need to be the only one talking on it because I know everybody who has been touched by student debt has, you know, their own story to tell about this. Um, but it’s really, I mean to ali’s point, I think a lot of what we’ve kind of been hearing up until very recently is the idea that student debt is good and it allows people to get all these new experiences that they wouldn’t have otherwise. And what we really saw was um counter to that, we saw that it was really putting people’s plans on hold. Um People are delaying having families buying homes, buying cars, getting new jobs, We’re really seeing that people are building their whole lives around this death that they’re saddled with, that they expect to have maybe till, you know, they’re 65 like there are people who just don’t know when they will ever be free of death. Um And I think something that we found that was really, really troubling Um was it 65% of people who had student debt felt like they were prevented from getting what they wanted in life by that debt. Um so really like, you know, this, this, um, this investment that they’ve made, that’s supposed to open up the world to them is in fact shutting them out of it. And so that’s really desperately troubling. Um, but I think what’s even more heartbreaking that we found is that 50% of people with student debt so that paying off their loans prevented them from being able to save for an emergency. And if we’ve learned nothing else from the past year, it’s that having that cushion having that safety net is so, so essential. Like it is literally the difference between being housed in being a house for people and so knowing that we are putting people in this position where they have to choose between feeding their families and you know, paying off their student loans. Um, you know, there’s a really big problem there. And then, especially as you said, it is a matter of equity. It’s a matter of justice. We see that women are way more stressed out about their loans, for instance, than men. And then non women, we’re seeing that Latin X borrowers are reporting so much more stress and more anguish about their loans than about their white count than their white counterparts are. And we also know that in texas, the share of loans is not equal. We know that for instance, black borrowers are much more likely to need to take out loans and when they do take out those loans, They’re more likely to be larger loans. So, you know, when we’re saying that 50% of people with student debt, um, felt like they couldn’t save for an emergency, we’re not looking at like, you know, uh, equitable cut across the state of Texas. We’re looking at a very racialized, very gendered um group and really who that affects is going to be people of color. It’s going to be women, It’s going to be first generation college attendees. Um and we’re really setting people up to fail in a way that is so, so troubling and needs an immediate solution. Yeah, I mean Malcolm, you again, spoke the words that I was thinking about what today’s student actually looks like, right. I think universities from their origins were primarily serves the wealthy and powerful, but today, that’s not true, right? Today, I think more than 40% of students are of color, right? Two thirds hold a job while they’re in class. I think 30% are 25 and older, right? They’re not just always young. And moreover, one and four college students also has a parent or a guardian. Right? So they’re doing double shifts every single night. But I think to your point and why canceling student debt is so important, right? We are in a public pandemic where public health should be your first priority. And I think ali this comes back to the question I want to close to you write some assistance did come right. We had the cares act that became law and in some of the provisions provided student emergency grant funding um as well as some interest free pause on federally held student loan repayment. But I think clearly what is needed now for this moment is canceling student debt. But it’s the message that Malcolm is hearing in texas making its way to capitol hill. Um I think you follow the news is as closely as I do, joe biden last week has supported $10,000 of student debt reduction on the campaign trail. And yet he asked Congress to do the hard part of cancelling debt. Can you just talk to us for a moment about what the politics are around this issue federally and how likely are we to see something and who the hell is leading the charge anyway. Yes. Um, and this is, you know, probably the question I get asked the most is like, tell us what’s going to happen. It’s the crystal ball question. Um, and you know, it’s hard, it’s really a difficult question to answer. And um, for those of you who pay attention to the news and you feel like you have whiplash because it’s like one day somebody is saying this and then the next day ideal is cut and this is happening. And you know what? It causes real advocacy fatigue for the, for the public. Um, but you know, as again as somebody who is in it every single day, these things take time and massive change. Like I said, it was progress to even hear the word student debt cancellation and debt relief in in town halls across the country, in national debates and in executive orders and uh, you know, and relief, right? Because we haven’t had an executive order yet to cancel that. And so I think what, what we need to think about is that it is on the agenda right from the biden administration and it has been on the democratic agenda for quite some time. And so I think with this new dynamic, right people did not expect. I think I might have been one of the only few lobbyists who thought maybe it’s because I’m not jaded yet that Georgia was going to happen the whole time. And I had faith that, yeah, that Georgia could happen and really change the scenario. And so now all this scenario planning that we were doing, thinking that the dynamic in the Senate would be different um is now a reality for student debt cancellation. And I think that the pressure now is greater to do more because there’s a friendlier administration to that issue. And so I think um how do we how do we tackle these issues in this new dynamic? Right? And so while while there’s a lot of talk about unity, um and democrats are in the majority, there’s not unity yet, right? Like we are so far community and I don’t just mean unity with like republicans and democrats singing kumbaya and we’re going to fix everything overnight. I mean like there’s not even unity on how we tackle students at amongst the parties themselves, right? Like there are progressive democrats that think that like this needs to happen overnight in full and then there are more moderate democrats who are like, we’ve got to do this piecemeal And then you have the Biden administration who was in the press talking about possibly canceling $50,000 of debt and then people felt very scorned That it then went to 10,000 and then right now it’s like, Oh, but now he’s putting it on Congress. And so I think that, you know, there are a couple of different ways that this could happen and how this could unfold, right? And from our perspective, a way looks at these issues from two completely different angles, right? There is access affordability and accountability, which is like a comprehensive rewrite of the Higher Education Act to make sure that if student debt cancellation happens, we’re not just, You know, having a whole new set of borrowers that are under the same law that in 20 years they’re going to be in the same exact position as we were. So that’s like on the back end right of like the policy that needs to change to prevent this from continuing to happen. And then there’s the borrower’s side, the people who have already been affected and who are dealing with this every day. And that’s the relief side. And that’s the student debt cancellation. Um And I think that, you know, there have been lots of priorities um in both chambers that we’ve seen. So for instance, on the House side, the Education and Labor Committee in the past couple of Congresses um has made their priorities for addressing these issues. Um through there, you know, college affordability Act, which would have lowered the cost of college for students and their families, which would have improved the quality of education by holding, uh, institutions accountable. And then they’re, you know, they would have expanded opportunities for students. And so I think that we see these policies and we see how this is going to happen. But then, you know, we have the Senate which was under Republican leadership for a while, and and they under the Health Education, Labor and pensions Committee, which is responsible for doing higher education. You know, there was some bipartisan talks about what needed to be done comprehensively, but the public never actually saw a comprehensive plan. And so I think that under that plan, the, you know, we’re going to now see with Senator Patty Murray at the helm, um, what could happen here, um, in terms of what, what what does the Senate think needs to be done? And so you have a lot of competing interests. And so the crystal ball question is, you know, does this happen? I think, yes, but we as we, as the community need to understand that, that this doesn’t happen overnight. And, and the small steps are where we’re going to really be able to build on winds. And so, for instance, if it comes and if it’s $10,000 of relief, um, that happens through an executive order and then, you know, President biden says, okay, we did a small chunk of relief that affects, you know, the most, um, impacted borrowers and has an immediate impact on at least leveling the playing field a little bit, then then our community should build on that wind and say, okay, we did this part, but we’ve still got this. We’re not trying to move the goalpost to goalpost is the same, but it’s how can we move it? While still not losing sight of the bigger the bigger ask, which is like we can’t have a system in which we continue to put more students in the same position that we are now because we haven’t fixed the back end. Um, and so I think, um, I think, I think it could happen, it’s just going to be incremental. And that’s why the everyday advocacy and keeping these things at the forefront of members of Congress is mind and also thanking them when they do good things and holding them accountable, but also realizing the perspective, right biden can’t come in and say, you know what we’re doing this overnight because there’s been four years of policy making that might not get done in other very uh impactful areas. What I’m hearing you say ali is grab your phones. If you’re out there tweet at your Members of Congress, sign onto petitions that A Y. A. And why I send out to their member list serves get engaged. Make sure that you’re elevating your story in your limp experiences through alley through II, making sure that lawmakers and legislators here you because even if student debt cancellation gets done tomorrow night, the fight for equity and making sure that the actual root causes of student debt crisis are actually addressed later down the line. But I do want to make reference to an awesome poll. But I thought a Y. A did with AARP that actually looked at and it complements what you are saying Malcolm About 40% of students uh student loan borrowers said that the debt has prevented or delayed them from saving for retirement. And I think that that’s so big because millennials, for instance, are the most indebted generation in history who has negative net wealth compared to their peers. And I think what you mentioned Alley, in terms of, you know, the 10,000 model versus $50,000 model of student debt relief, you know what I have seen is if we cancel $50,000 worth of student debt relief, that is going to impact 75% of all households with followers. That’s great. That’s wonderful. But even if we get the 10,000 dollars in student debt relief, That’s going to be helping 30% of all student borrower household. So I think that there’s, you know, there are tradeoffs for both. Um, and I think we want to just be cognizant of all those things that are at our disposal. Um, you know, I think Malcolm, we talked earlier about all these intersectionality, ease of policy that are facing young people. Um, they’re all linked right. The inability to pursue continue to higher ed diminishes your lifetime earning potentials and lowers your access to affordable health care. Um And I think you can probably draw a straight line of education leading to better, more stable jobs that pay higher wages and then in turn allow families to accumulate wealth that can be used to improve their health. And so what we’re seeing now is an economy that is still super slow to rebound. This v shaped recovery that we keep hearing about. It doesn’t really exist. Youth unemployment today still stands at a staggering 11%. It’s even higher for communities of color. And so I wonder if maybe you can talk to us a bit about what sorts of things young people are demanding in texas to ensure that an economy will eventually work for them? Do they trust that there is this intersectionality of getting a higher education degree to lead to better outcomes? I mean, I think there is still um, a lot of people who do think that and I think that one of the things that we need to do is to support the the young adults who are pursuing college because that is what they think um and to make sure that that is something that is then possible for them. Um, so, you know what we talked about earlier about, like, who’s actually in school right now, it’s people who are working and people who are parents, people who are grandparents, if you know, it’s not, you know, the idea of somebody who’s like, just right out of high school, um, and doing full time classes and nothing else. That’s not necessarily the majority of people who are going to school in texas. Um, so we need to make sure that we are supporting student parents that we have appropriate um safety nets in place for young people in college um in terms of mental health, in terms of making sure that they have access to the bare necessities of what you need to be able to succeed in college. So, you know, you shouldn’t have to be worrying about, hey, do I buy food or do I pay my internet bill because I can’t go to school without my internet bill paid, but I also can’t go to school if I can’t eat. Um You know, these are not questions that young people or anybody should ever be asking themselves, it’s not right. Um But then I think we also need to really think about what other structures are there in texas that could um kind of be activated to take some of that pressure off young adults. Um to really like, okay, my only, my only thing that I can do to better myself for, you know, get a good job is to go to college. Um and I think um I think it was kelly pointed out in the um in the chat recently that, you know, it’s not just college degrees that get you good jobs um that get you jobs that pay you well. And so I think we have a pretty robust series of apprenticeships in the state of texas, which is great. Um but you know, I think what we would love to see is even more apprenticeships, um even more, you know, dual credit programs and to make them more appealing for um women and people of color because the way that they’re distributed is not always equitable. And then finally, um the biggest thing that I think that texas could do to support our economy and to support young adults and also everybody is really to expand Medicaid, We have so so many uninsured people. Um and the idea that, you know, you would have to rely on just having a very high paying job to be able to afford your own health insurance um is really troubling. There’s just not a good option for most people um who are not in deep, deep deep poverty um to be able to afford health insurance. And You know, we’re seeing right now, especially that if you lose your job and you’re not, you know, making $0 a year, um you know, there’s just no way for you to get health insurance and that really affects young people. There are so many young people who are not able to get insured. Um and that really had so many troubling implications for, you know, not not just the economy, but also like the morality of our systems. Um, but really, that’s something that we could fix very easily today and like make money in the state. Um, so it feels like a real no brainer. Yeah, I mean, I’m gonna stick with affordable health care for a quick second because President biden did just that an executive order today. So if you don’t have health insurance, there is a special enrollment period that is open through May. So make sure you get covered. Uh, that’s my little public health shout out there, but I want to stay here for a moment longer, just pivot over to alley because I read a really interesting new report from new America that suggested 80% of students are concerned about getting any type of job upon graduation. And I think Malcolm you highlighted this so beautifully, including 86% of latin X students and 90% of caregivers. In fact, I think the vast majority of students believe that the federal government should prioritize making higher ed affordable and ensuring that it provides good value to students, right? It makes sense. What is my return on investment for ponying up tens of thousands of dollars? So, you know, ali you can’t really talk about the economy and higher education has two separate things anymore, right? They are so intertwined and so maybe you can highlight for us, you know, the need to start reimagining higher education as a preparation tool for the workforce, how my lawmakers and institutions better prepare young adults in their transition to the new, their first job. Um, that is a great question and I love the plug because I was going to make it if you didn’t. Um, and I also love new America if you guys, you know, want really great resources on a lot of the policy talk that we talk about. Um they have just some phenomenal research. Um, so, you know, I think clearly a quality education is necessary to enter today’s workforce. I mean that’s what we talk about, you know, I represent um you know, People in the K- 12 space as well and it’s like that is the whole goal of our education system is to provide a quality education in hopes that we create uh citizens that can participate in the economy that can be fulfilled in their lives. That don’t have to put off things like family planning and self happiness and that don’t have to worry about where their next meal comes from or where they’re going to sleep, right? That that that the whole point of educating our citizens is something that like jefferson, right, thomas, jefferson understood the importance of providing, you know, a quality education, but I think what we need to rethink is like what are the pathways to higher education, right? And um you know, people are living longer and education comes at us in so many forms, like think about podcasts and all these amazing opportunities for educating ourselves in various ways. And I think that one, we need to start thinking about the multiple ways that our system already offers um a young american to get a quality education. And I think kind of breaking down this notion that it has to be a four year institution, right? The four year institutions are great opportunities for millions of students, but they’re also causing us to go into one point $7 trillion dollar deficit and debt Because 45 million Americans have have bought into this and are not getting what they see. And so there is this real fear of, you know, students graduating high school that are like I’m seeing what’s happening. And so how can I justify this four year gig if it literally is causing the future gender or the generations above me to go into literally insurmountable debt that is crushing their life. And so I think step on is we need to utilize the tools that are already existing. We need to think about breaking down the narrative that the four year institution thing is not for everybody and doesn’t need to be. But but that if it is what that individual would like to do, they should have an equal opportunity to do it, right? Because the labor market has not yet changed to um not require on resumes that oh we need a four year degree. Right? And so there is that labour market pressure for people to have that degree. And so again, I think that’s an access and equity piece. And I think that helping the labor market adjust is again helping lawmakers understand the need of the changing demographics of today’s traditional students. I think Malcolm and jesse, you guys covered it earlier, Right. We are seeing that the traditional student is no longer an 18 year old, like fresh face like person, right? These are people who are either already been in the workforce and took gap years because they knew they couldn’t afford to go to a four year degree right off the bat. These are students who were in dual enrollment programs. And so, uh took classes in their high school time to lessen the cost of going to a four year university. I think we need to um end the stigma of what two year community colleges do, right? Like those are amazing segues into um other higher education opportunities. Of course, they need to be high quality and held to high standards, right? But it’s not a one size fits all in the sense that like four years for everybody and should be for everybody. And so I think that um you know, we we need to understand that that there are programs right now at the federal level that we are that A Y. A. Is advocating for more money for dual enrollment programs, more money for work study, um career and technical education, right? Like there are some amazing career and technical education and for those of you who don’t know, that’s actually the the new lingo, the new name for what used to be called vocational education. But again, that had a stigma for some reason, what is with the stigma of a respected person who comes and fixes my electricity, or our plumbing or my vet tech, who saves my animals lives. These are respected professions and we need as americans to come together to recognize that not everybody is gonna be a, you know, professor or a researcher, right? Like they’re, these jobs are are respectable and and and they know so much more and they are making more money than I am as a lawyer, right? Like I went to law school and electricians going to esteemed career and technical education programs are coming out and having thriving businesses. So this is just, you know, uh this is a cultural shift right? That we need to make that respects work. Um, and and it’s about telling our society that we no longer want the workforce to make these unrealistic demands that the labor market is requiring a piece of paper that says, everybody must get this when it’s not working. And also it’s not giving the students who are graduating from these uh schools the actual skills needed, right? Like I wish I had taken a gap year and actually went into the workforce because I would have appreciated the furthering education after having some actual reality around me, right? Like what you learn in school as a college, you know, student and even in law school does not compare to what you learn when you are literally on the job. And so I think that we have a lot of work to do in shaping how the labor market views the need for recognizing today’s students. Um, the education system needs to, you know, really understand who they’re serving. And again, today’s non or today’s traditional student is actually not the 18 year old who are going into their freshman year. I’m really excited for all the things that, well not this year, right? But the college looks very different right now, but I think, you know, we have a job to do here and I think it’s part of breaking down some of these stigmas about, you know, what equality workforce is that helps the economy. Yeah, I mean you’re hitting the nail on the head all over the place and I think you both have said such great things, right? I think we as a nation, we really have to look in the mirror, you know, really addressed the longstanding barriers that have impeded entry into quality employment and job training programs as you mentioned alley for millions of young people. Um and I think it really focuses and narrows down into some of the discriminatory practices against people of colour, undocumented folks, um or even folks within the legal system. Um, We know today that those 600 plus DACA recipients and, you know, the hundreds of thousands of young adults in prison, they have the skills that employers need, and, you know, because of over policing, or the way that we view a quality job right there disproportionately left out, and those doors are closed behind them pretty quickly. Um, and so, you know, I think we have identified tonight a series of problems facing young people, um, we know the policies that we need to champion, but how do we get people in power to listen, right? And I think I want to come back to you Malcolm because you’re on the ground, you’re you’re really at the grassroots level, not only with an ear to what young people want day in and day out and your day to day job as an organizing manager, but you really have the ear of a state in which it’s shifting. Um I hope, I think, and so I really want to get ideas from you in terms of what priorities, why I texas has this legislative session. Um and how are you communicating them with state lawmakers who might be on the other side of the aisle? How are you building that youth power that can then transform the legislature into a vision that you guys see? Oh man, I wish you hadn’t asked that last, because if we’re if we’re gonna finish. No, just kidding. Um But yeah, I mean, I think that’s a great question. Um you know, I think some of our really big priorities for this legislative session are the things that we think are going to be most likely. Um, texas as a state is pretty reluctant to spend money, we don’t really want to dip into the rainy day fund um which can can really be unfortunate, but I think that gives um weirdly us a really big opportunity in texas because of the work um is not going to be done this year, so what we want to do is to do the work that can continue to build um and that we can work with again and kind of like refresh and like okay, we we knocked that one out, like where do we go next? And so it’s really about kind of that ramping up process. Um So one of the things that we’re really excited about is a student borrower bill of rights um kind of like they have in in other states um and not something that is budget neutral, you know, we don’t have to spend too much money on that um but would really provide some kind of infrastructure in the state to protect borrowers because right now it’s really easy for student borrowers of all ages to be taken advantage of. I mean, there is a pretty standard practice where, you know, somebody goes to take out loans, maybe they’re 18, maybe they’re 25. Um they go to take out that, you know, $50,000 loan to go to college, they have to read a bunch of paperwork about how it’s gonna go, and then 4.5 years later they get their first bill and they’ve not been refreshed on like, hey, here’s how their repayment process goes. Um We know that students in texas and young people in texas don’t know very much about their payment process, It’s very opaque and there’s not a lot of good information out there for them, so that’s definitely something that we try to correct at. Y I we really want to educate young people and give them the tools to educate each other and to educate their communities. Um but we see that that’s a really troubling lack of knowledge that is being like, it’s predatory, it’s not, it’s not accidental. Um it’s that, you know, these these um student loan services can get away with it and you know, a student borrower bill of rights would require student loan services to provide that education um and to provide information about, you know, maybe the standard repayment process is not right for every person, so to to provide information about other forms of repayment. So that’s something that we’re really excited to be working on this session and we’re really excited to bring young people’s voices to the ledge um in service of that. And so, you know, like kind of what you were both saying, Ali and jesse um, student and young people’s voices are so important. Um, whether we’re talking to people who, you know, we think are going to agree with us or we think might not. I mean, a personal story is so, so key. I mean, it is really people, certain people are maybe out of touch. Um, and uh, you know, not always because they’re being malicious or anything like that, but because they don’t have that, that real insight into what’s going on on the ground. And so being able to, you know, work with young people mobilize young people, get them to tell their stories about how they have been saddled with student debt, about how they don’t know when they’ll be able to afford a house, buy a car, start a family. You know, these are things that really hit home. I think maybe particularly in texas where we value that kind of like rough independence. Um, you know, that, that stuff that’s really meaningful for legislators. Um, and I also think the other part of what we are excited to do in terms of building, use power is, you know, work with our coalitions and bring student voices and student borrowers voices to our coalitions, particularly pace our education, our higher education and equity coalition, um, and to really make sure that that’s embedded in the work. So that again, it doesn’t just say this year when the texas legislature is in session, but, you know, that’s something that we can really build into our work going forward. Um, and so that we can, you know, build up the voices and the power of these young leaders so that, you know, even if in, you know, 25 years, they’re not eligible to be part of Why I anymore, because they’ve aged out of, you know, who we are talking about, primarily they still have these skills and they still have these this knowledge. Um, and they still know how to, you know, do what allie does and recommends to just like call the people who work for them to really make it clear like, hey, this is what I want, this is what I need. This is how I’m going to get it. You work for me. Um, and to really make sure that that’s something that we’re, we’re leaving young people with. Um because these issues Only go away when we all work together to make them go away. And so I’m really excited for this legislative session and I’m really excited for 2021 and beyond. I think it’s really promising. It’s beautiful. I hear such optimism in your voice, in your tone and I love what you said about personal stories because facts and figures and data points there unforgettable, but stories are really what carried the day. I think that’s what, why I endeavors to do every single day with our young advocates programs all across the nation, going deep with you know, 20 to 25 young adults understanding their lived experiences and then really being able to translate into a really graphic understanding for lawmakers and the media quite frankly and really turn the optics and the and the word choice from, you know, just trying to survive to actually how we create these thriving communities. Um, and so I love what you’re doing Malcolm. I want to stay here for one more second with you and then flip it over to Allie before we come to a close at the seven o’clock hour here. But I want to see Malcolm, if there are any particular activities or events that you are going to be leading in the next couple of weeks or months or specific legislation or advocacy tools that you’re hosting where young people can plug in today, what should they be on the lookout for? And I’m gonna ask the same question to you as well. L A. So Malcolm. Yeah, absolutely. So we are in the early stages of planning and advocacy day, um, for later in the session, so we’re really excited about that. I can’t tell you too much actual concrete information about it yet. Um, but stay tuned, It’s so exciting. Um, and then, you know, in the meantime, if you know the things that Ali and I, and Jesse are talking about, some really intriguing um, something that I was really fortunate to get to work on with this report that we just published was a toolkit that is affixed to the report. That is really for young people and be mystified advocacy. Um, so if you want to talk about student debt with, you know, again, the people who work for you with legislators who work for you, um, these give you the tools to be able to do that, um, and also are transferrable skills. So you can, I won’t tell if you use it for other things. Um, you know, that that’s also perfect. Um, so we’re really excited to have that launched and and to have that be a tool that young people can learn from and can share within their communities. Um, and so, you know, we can even be practicing before we have the, you know, the notices about like, hey, this bill is going to be read on this day. Like who wants to come in and testify with us? Or you know, like here’s our advocacy day. Um, that’s, that’s a really good thing to do right now. If you’re just raring to go, that’s awesome. Ali I’m gonna flip it over to you. Um, yeah. So again, plus one million to everything Malcolm is saying. And you know, again, you all don’t need to be, uh, lobbyists in the sense that you need to know how the reconciliation process works or how bills move through committee, right? Like, I mean, maybe one that’s like, I don’t know, right? Maybe you guys do know that, but you don’t when you are advocating to a member, whether it’s a traditional, if things go back to normal and you all end up on Capitol hill with our organizations for advocacy days, I just want to remind everybody that what we’re doing is giving you all the tools to actually share your stories, like the policy making and all the difficult stuff like that is our job to do for you and to help your stories make it to the ears of those members. Because it’s just, he said, it’s the stories that change the minds, the facts and figures to support the need while we’re talking all of our wonky stuff that nobody ever really understands, right? And so I think that keeping that in mind and that and remembering that that’s your lobbying and the advocacy is your opportunity to tell those stories. And I think, um, from a Y S perspective, you know, we’re going to be doing a lot of campaigns um, on the various issue topics. We are getting ready to do direct Hill meetings, those are obviously virtual these days, and I do them from my pajamas. So, uh, so that’s how lobbying has changed in this new era. Um, I text staffers right? Like there are people too right. And the other thing to keep in mind is that when we’re meeting with Capitol Hill offices were meeting with people our age, one of the things that I often do in our trainings is we get like a lot of people who are like, What a meeting with, like a 22 year old. And like I thought I was meeting with the member themselves and it’s like, well actually it’s those 22 year old and those 30 year old who won are more relatable to us. And so they hear us and they’re also the ones who are actually writing the legislation. And so the more we make the case to those staff members and those people who are doing the work on the ground, the more they can then go adequately share our story to their bosses, who then give them the okay. And that’s how, like, minds change, right? Until I think, um, from a Y. S perspective, again, just bringing it back to the fact that we are giving our members the direct advocacy tools and it’s so easy, right? Um, again, we can lobby from home, we can lobby in our pajamas, um, we can use things like phone to action to send a mass text. Um, and I think that the other pieces that instagram has been uh, you know, just blowing up in terms of um, the educational content about civics and how our government works. And so the more that you all can spread those facts right? Like hashtag facts about, like, the need for those things, the more good we’re doing, and that is advocacy, right? Advocacy doesn’t need to just be direct lobbying to the members. It’s getting more people to be comfortable talking about the issues that we are also passionate about and widening the circle of support. And so that’s something that a y is really working on. Again, we’re a relatively newer organization, but just in a few years, we’ve grown tremendously and I think, um, that, you know, advocacy is changing um with with technology and we’re embracing it. Um, and so again, I think, you know, the more so the other thing that I think people Think doesn’t matter are the endless letters that you see in the petitions, um, they actually do matter. So, um when a staff member who works on education gets 7000 letters to their inbox, They have to tell their boss about that, right? Otherwise that that’s going to be in the media, and people are going to say like, like, then there’s going to be an op ed that’s our constituents, wrote over 7000 letters and we didn’t even get a single response or acknowledgement that this isn’t a crisis. This issue is a crisis in our town. Like, for instance, like things like public service loan forgiveness, when, um, you know, firefighters and teachers were like, what? We were scared that we were gonna lose the possibility of public service loan forgiveness because we’re nine years into it and and it’s such a mess. And so I think, like, but then they wrote op EDS, and they did the things that matter in terms of the the way that a member of Congress actually sees it. And so those things that people get really fatigued and often, like I say, as a lobbyist rat on the wheel syndrome, um, they work. And so I would say continue those things even though they’re sometimes exhausting, but they’re also a click of a button on our, on our, on our phone. So, um, I just encourage us to keep it up because we are making a difference. Like we saw it on national television. So, um, and we will hold them accountable, trust us. Yeah, I think, I think I love that because they’re all different tactics and they’re all used for different ends and means even in the regulatory rule making process, if you submit a comment, those agencies are required by law to read it before the rule becomes final. And so if you don’t agree with it, you can have you and your 5000 best friends or 500 best friends or even just five best friends write letters on the proposed rule and it takes time. That’s a delay tactic. The same is true if you want to elevate your issue before Congress. But before I close, I want to give Ali a 10 out of 10 on room later. Uh, fantastic ruth Bader Ginsburg behind you. I love that. But I want to just close here. What has been an incredibly fast our, on behalf of all of us at Young Invincibles and the Association for Young Americans by thanking our two speakers, Ali and Malcolm for their time and expertise. But I also want to thank you all who took the time to join us for this virtual session and now don’t leave because we’re going to transition to our second hour town hall with young adults. So we’re gonna be joined by lisa Giordano from the Association of Young Americans for reflection on kind of what we just heard and hopefully bring some of the audience up on stage to have a conversation about either their lived experiences or how they’re advocating in their communities. So appreciate the time now. And let’s make that switch here. Yeah, it’s great to hear from both of you Malcolm and ali, that was a great discussion um and was in agreement with everything that was said. I thought it was really cool to hear the difference in state level versus federal level policy Malcolm, your experience in texas and what texas constituents are experiencing and ali how it is to be lobbying with our reps and senators. Um I thought a really interesting point at the end of the discussion was personal stories and hearing from actual borrowers and young people that have direct experience with these issues. And I’m wondering for our attendees if anyone wants to share some of their own experiences or issues that they face in the day to day, um that they’re looking to find policy solutions to or to advocate themselves. Yeah. Double down there. I heard some incredible statistics, right? And what I’ve just learned and walked away from here is to have an affordable, accessible and equitable higher education system. We’ve got a direct public investment to these institutions hands down. Um but we also have to couple that investment with accountability measures, You know, making sure that there are improved outcomes that empower graduates to actually get jobs in our communities. Um and we know that the weight of student debt that has impacted, you know, I think Ali mentioned 1.743 million student borrowers with $1.7 trillion Latin x borrowers. And so just as bad policy choices from the Great Recession have kind of exacerbated the financial crisis, we need to shift our mindset and lawmakers and advocates and young people really have to focus in on the equity focused approach to, I guess fixing and correcting our higher education system today. So we don’t repeat past failures. Yeah, acknowledging that these issues don’t affect all equally and that some populations are disproportionately impacted. Super important. So I’m looking at some of these polls here. Very interesting outlook here. The biggest concern about the future of work is the growing economic and income inequality. And I think that’s exactly kind of what Malcolm was hitting on earlier about putting your life on pause because of what student debt is doing to you. And then the heaviest weight of those burdens falling on our brothers and sisters in the Latin X and african american communities. Um, so that that falls in line exactly with the report that you just issued. Yeah, absolutely. Um also seeing um below that what skills young people almost need to succeed in the future. Um leadership and management. I think that as we were speaking about before, higher education is really important and giving us the tools we need to find the jobs that we want. But also these skills are able to be developed um without higher EDS we need to be investing in and focusing on other opportunities for young people to gain these skills without the four year degree or the paper. Um and specifically leadership and management can happen through various workforce development programs. Yeah, so I’m pretty, I’m pretty interested to know kind of where our audience lands on what this new biden administration can do in the next 100 days. So I would love our audience to just throw in the chat one action you want this administration to take on higher education. I’m very curious. You know, we talked a lot in this panel about student debt, but there’s certainly so many more actions, whether their equity focused or their accessibility focused or their affordability focused or even just support and wrap around services focused. What are some of the things that folks on this call are interested in the bible administration leaning in on? Yeah, maybe I’ll ask that same question to you, lisa what is one of the first actions that abide administration can do in your eyes to support young americans? That could be student debt? Yeah, Well, I think this past week we’ve seen a lot of executive actions that actually touch on a lot of our priorities as young people, whether it is climate, um, also like eliminating private prisons and a lot of like racial equity initiatives that biden has taken on in his first week, ideally, student debt cancellation would be the next executive action that he takes on that would most immediately and effectively benefit young people. So we continue to advocate for that. But as we discussed during the panel, um, we are also in favour of smaller let pieces of legislation and change from like employer participation repayments of college affordability. Um, we are heavily advocating for biden to use his executive power as he has been widely exercising for cancellation. Um, but we also continue to advocate for Congress and the new administration at large to pass policies that contribute in any way to relieving the debt burden for young people. So I would say that’s our first priority. But we are definitely happy to see all the action has been taken on climate and racial equity and, and other issues as well. Yeah, I think, you know, if I could lean in to an issue outside a student student loan forgiveness, I think I would, I would really look to see this administration take on, um, kind of a federal state partnership. It’s something I was talking to an alluding to earlier about state divestment that we saw after the great recession. Um, and I would love providing to work with Congress to, you know, eliminate undergrad tuition at public colleges and universities. I think that that’s a huge opportunity there. But you know, first performance. He could direct the secretary of Education to award, you know, media grants to states that can establish these federal state partnerships whereby the state would get a dollar for dollar match from the federal government for however much funding they appropriate for state schools. And I think, you know, there are certain provisions that we saw the cares act and the Heroes act that didn’t pass, but having a maintenance of effort requirement on the behalf of states so that State Senate at least some skin in the game, they can’t just keep walking away from the table, leaving you know, students out to dry. So I think that’s certainly one thing I’m looking for this administration to do. I don’t think it’s going to happen in the 1st 10 days through his blitzkrieg of executive orders, but it’s something I really want him to leave it to the moment on. Absolutely. And I think it’s important to recognize that biden is sort of focusing on large, sweeping changes at the moment and like a very broad agenda, but it’s also crucial that we continue to advocate for the inside more specific policies like such as a state, federal partnership or college affordability and other performs that can help on a smaller scale over time. Yeah. One of the things that we saw that came out of the great recession was, you know, a lot of students put their careers on hold because the market was so bad. I decided they were going to go back to school, sharpen up their degrees and skill sets and come out more um more ready for a job. But what ended up happening as you well know, is for profit universities, you know, took rise. Um and I think that the experiment of sending tax payer money to for profit colleges has been a failure. I think on average students attending these institutions earn no more than those who didn’t attend those colleges at all. Um and so I think the average for properly, you know, college certificate or even associate degree program, it costs about four times as much as a public college anyway, and you’re not getting the same return on investment. I think this goes back to exactly what Malcolm was saying that a lot of young adults, they do still believe in the four year degree or even two alleys comments the two year degree. We need to make sure that those bad actors, those for profit actors are actually getting clamped down and aren’t receiving those taxpayer funded money to kind of sidelined a career as a trajectory of young people. Yeah, absolutely. Hey, can you all hear me? There’s a good question from Kayla. Yeah, I noticed that Kayla had asked in the chat, what kind of programs are there available that can help pay off student loan debt? Um, One of the programs that we focused on the way over past years is a public service loan forgiveness program, um and it hasn’t been, hasn’t done so well, obviously, as we know from the last Department of Education, um very few borrowers actually received the relief that they were due, um but it was one of the first lifelines that we were offered as student borrowers um as a form of debt relief. And although smaller programs like that don’t provide the sweeping change that we need through cancellation, um, they are helpful to borrowers. For example, the public service loan forgiveness program allowed people working in the public sector, an education or nurses, um, to receive that relief over time after having worked for a set amount of years. Um And we can see other programs we hope to see other programs developed that will um create similar opportunities for borrowers. I don’t know if all you want to speak to some of the specific programs that it was advocating for now. Yeah, I mean, we are huge proponents of the PS LF program, and honestly, the program is very well intentioned and it is complicated. Uh, we haven’t had, unfortunately, in the last four years, an administration that was dedicated as the first cohort of people who were eligible for forgiveness, um, willing to take the steps necessary to actually implement a very complex and complicated, um, program. And so it’s not that the program itself is, mm, not worthy or broken. It’s that we needed governmental commitment to implementing a program that Congress created. Um, and in terms of, you know, other programs, right? Like the way that I was speaking about this earlier is that there are a lot of programs to make college more affordable, uh, on the front end, right? Like pell grants and scholarships and and direct grants. Um, but then on the relief side, it’s not that easy and there aren’t that many. And so again, this is where this issue is coming into play, that we have a system that takes care of making it slightly more affordable and, and, and easier to uh take out money or, and that’s again the importance of understanding what alone is and what a grant is. Um But on the back end, there isn’t that many things that that borrowers can do that will significantly reduce their payments or or eliminate their payments. And again, that’s uh, that was a policy thing, right? The government at the time felt like if Our borrowers are going to take out money, they should be paying it back. And only in a limited circumstances, like whether you are a public servant for uh, you know, 10 years will the government say, all right, we’ll pay this off for you. And so again, the options are limited in states and different companies have their own ways of doing that. But again, the federal government has a long way to go here. Yeah, Kayla. And you know, if you’re interested also, I would look into income driven repayments. Um you know, those are plans that set monthly student loan payments based on a couple of things, right, your income and family size. And so it allows you as a borrower to pay more when your income is higher. I think one of the things that has gotten a little confusing with I. D. Our payments is just that there’s so many plans available which kind of creates barriers to successfully navigating them. And I think, you know, speaking of bipartisanship issues, I think this is an area that is broad and bipartisan in the need to actually simplify and improve the I. D. Our system. Um And I think we’ve seen over the past couple of years multiple policymakers putting forth specific proposals to reform and streamline that. So um I would certainly take a look at those tools at your disposal. Keep yeah there are also certain services that can help you um like by savvy is one of them. And so far there are different kind of organizations and companies that will help you find a plan that works best for you for repayment. Um but yeah we are seeing this consistent issue of borrowers not being able to manage. Also we lack financial literacy as young people I think especially when we take out loans in the first place. I mean we’re 18 years old and we don’t know enough to take out six figure loans. Um Yet we take on that responsibility. And there are a lot of services and organizations that are dedicated to helping young people gain financial literacy and learn how their loans work. So I can also recommend them to separately if that’s something that you are interested in, you absolutely hit on that point. I know you put it in the chat earlier about the K through 12 financial literacy. Like what exactly is a y pushing there. What are some of the things that you guys have seen that work that hasn’t worked? Yeah. Well Ali can speak to K through 12 financial literacy after. But something that a way has been working on his forming partnerships with organizations that dedicate themselves to doing sort of the dirty work behind student debt payment. So for example, we currently partner with a company called by savvy and they sort of break down the student loan repayment process for borrowers and give them different options to refinance and and sort of give them information about income, general payment and other repayment plans. Um Something that we think about often as an organization is how to help our borrowers manage their existing debt, so we’re sort of twofold and the fact that we advocate for solutions to the debt crisis, but then also um secondly help our existing members that have debt right now manage that debt better. Um So I think it’s important that while we’re advocating for these sort of sweeping policy level solutions that we are also focusing on helping young people manage the burden that were already um that we’ve taken on. Um we’re looking at another partnership with a company called So Fi, um which I can put in the chat after. And they do similar work and they do financial literacy workshops, um sort of teaching people what it means to take on alone, like what that implies, and all the information that one needs to better management, they’re better manage their loans. And I want to point out that that there are good actors in this space and there are bad actors in this space. And so, you know, we as organizations need to understand that there that there are going to be um that that that there needs to be a heavy vetting process on those kinds of refinancing organizations or those kinds of um companies that do that kind of work. And so um you know, just just putting out the the disclaimer that not all of them are created the same. And so again, this is part of the financial literacy piece. And I think that even before getting to that place, right, like I think I was the person who put this in the chat about the importance of financial literacy In in K- 12, like these career decisions and Children saying, oh, I want to be a doctor, and then following the career path to be a doctor, but maybe there are first generation college student who doesn’t have a family to fall back on that has resources to, you know, take on the monumental cost that it that you know, that it is to become a doctor in this country. And so um and then again, that’s why we have things like PS LF, where it’s like, okay, you want to go into this public service field and you know, the government wants to help. But I think that like that in uh childs are in a, even at six or seven years old, there are ways to start incorporating basic financial literacy so that by the time they are a sophomore in high school and they’re meeting with their their college counselors there, they grasp the severity of what a loan debt actually means. Um As opposed to ah no, I’m filling out a FAFSA form, but I’m also taking out this and I know I don’t know the difference between a grant and alone and The school counselors, you know, they mean well and they’re so underserved, but that’s not their only job, right? And so I think that the capacity needs to be built out at the K-12 level and the infrastructure to ensure that that school systems understand that what they are producing is a crop of Children that are taking on adult risk. And I think that if we don’t have that um shared responsibility in those earlier years, then we’re doing our next generations a disservice. And so that’s part of what we advocate for. Um yes, I certainly wasn’t taught how to budget in school. I’m saying that I’m like, even still I’m not that great at it, right? Like my husband’s like really, really like I’m not getting sex, I’ll get myself in trouble. But these are real consequences. These have real life consequences. And the we shouldn’t continue to have to put a band aid after band aid after band aid because like that becomes an infected wound. If we don’t treat the wound and the cause of the wound, we will end up with what we have, which is $1.7 trillion dollars in insurmountable debt that we’re talking about an economic stimulus package right now, right. How could these people who have been so disservice by our our system possibly contribute to an economic stimulus and recovery if they’re worried about where their next meal comes from. And again, the Malcolm’s point like these shouldn’t be an doors, this should be an and situation I am able to get an education and health care and Social Security and a job, not, I mean these are basic human rights that we’re talking about for our american citizens and I’ll get off my horse now. Well actually, if I could maybe add on to that because I think it’s a horse that we all should be on, um because you know why I is also in the space of providing some of that um financial literacy and financial education and what we see when we not only teach the young people in our young advocates program, our leadership program, um but also when we then train them to go out and give the same financial literacy training about what student that actually is about, how you can pay it off um about like what PSLS is about, like, hey, there are people trying to scam you is that people don’t know anything. Um like I have had like I’ve been out of school for, I don’t know, like 34 years, I didn’t know like any of the information that was in that financial literacy training, it was all brand new. It is so opaque. And then, you know, you add on to that that there are young people or borrowers who are coming from families where english is not the language that they speak at home or you know, they are the first generation in their family to go to school. Like this information is not readily accessible to them. So there’s so much that we can and should do um you know, societally and culturally to make this information easier for people to absorb. We can put it in K 12, we can, you know, put it in college. But I think also, you know, there is really an onus on public, um, sorry, not on public service, on on loan services to make this information really easy to find. And they’re not, there’s no incentive right now for them to do it. Uh, now, jesse, there is a question in the Q and A. Yeah. Okay, so the question we have here from Leila is she’d like to hear more about coalition building. And this is something ali you talked about extensively between traditional students who entered their four year degree at 18 and adult students who may be attending school part time supporting their job. Um, what’s the number one policy we can get behind that forms a coalition between these groups at both the state level and a federal level. And what kind of organizing can we do together? That accounts for the different set of obligations. We have awesome question. Uh, so my favorite thing in the world is coalition building, because it literally how policies get moved and how people come together and sometimes even come together over a disagreement. Um, so in relation to is the question posted somewhere that I can answer the multiple parts? Yeah, go Q and A at the bottom of the screen there next to hold on to them. Oh, there it is. Okay. Well, I just want to make sure I’m answering all the parts of the question. Um, so there is an organization called the Higher Learning Advocates that a way recently partnered with, and it is exactly that it is a coalition of groups, um, and of the nontraditional students, um, who are, are, again, America’s, I want to say it because they are the new traditional students, Right? And so we keep thinking of the traditional students as these uh typical freshman that everybody has in their mind, but the majority of today’s students are exactly that. And so I think um a number one policy that we can get behind there, there are so many um and it really depends on what they’re trying to achieve, right. And so I think um we’re going to see some big bills introduced um on reforming the higher education system, as I mentioned, um in the past, uh Ed and Labor under House under Democratic leadership in the House has put out the College affordability Act and that was something to address um you know, better pathways um affordable education, higher education, um accessibility. And um so I think that in terms of building a coalition, you can start with your friends, right? Like building a coalition doesn’t need to be something formal. Um A Y A. Has an ambassador program that if you want to become um and an ambassador and you know, form a weekly meeting with like minded individuals or for instance, schedule your own town hall or appearance at a town hall and get together obviously in covid safe ways. Um I think town halls are being even this town hall, but official town halls where your local members are at, right, I think that coalitions can form very organically, or you can join formal coalitions that exist like um the higher learning advocates organization, which is bringing um which is highlighting who the nontraditional traditional student is today, and I think that um at the state and federal level, right policies are going to be different a lot of times, it’s easier to move things. Um, so for instance, Malcolm had mentioned a student borrower bill of rights California was able to pass that. Um, I think there’s been both in the House and Senate, various versions of a borrower student borrower bill of rights, but it hasn’t moved at the federal level because the process is just so different there. And so I think understanding the landscape that you want your coalition to operate in is incredibly important. Um and the one thing that can tear a coalition apart faster than its formed is not having like a singular, uh very pointed mission. And so I would say start small rather than start big on like what is this specific issue that we are coalescing around? Because there’s a million different coalitions for a million different things. Um, and then what kind of organizing can we do uh, Together that accounts for the different set of obligations. So, again, this is a great question. Uh We have tons of platforms, right? Like whatever works for you, if you operate solely and google docs and you want to start getting a data dump of people’s thoughts, do it in a google doc if you want to do a zoom, do it and zoom if you want to meet in a social distance circle in a park, because face to face and telling those stories you think will be more impactful do that? I would say right now, we have the luxury of doing all of these things that work for us. Um And again, we just helped in Maryland, a student who wanted to um take a ways, materials and resources and start his own a Y ambassadorship. And so we’ve helped him um coalesce a bunch of his students and colleagues um to start a mini a Y. A. Chapter so that they can get their voice out on campus about the issues that we’re pushing at the national level. And so I think um all of all of that is important to do and again speaking to this um the more people we inform the more allies we have. Yeah. And to speak to that point um Isa Ali was saying there are different levels of organizing, right? And I think joining a way joining why I like collaborating with Y. I is like a great move because we represent borrowers and constituents from so many different demographics and yeah, location situations and it sort of provides you with a trustworthy community which you can then communicate with um to come up with solutions for the issues that you um share experiences on. So while you can still be advocating your community and as ali said, we have resources to help you with that. Um, it is also helpful to join larger advocacy organizations that fight on your behalf and also connect you with other people who are having a similar experience, even though the demographic might be completely different. So I think it’s important to recognize the role that we have and doing that work for you and how that kind of serves as a coalition in and of itself and Leila, I’ll just add two more to list that Alley gave. I think no one um, implementing models of support that address students needs beyond just tuition, I think is critically important. Right? So covering the cost of books covering the cost of transportation, covering the cost of food. Um, I think at the state level, certainly, and we have a regional office in new york and they work with CUny, the city University of new york. Cuny has a program, it’s called the CUny a SAP program, which stands for accelerated study in associate program. Wow, that’s pretty good. Uh, and what they do is, you know, it’s a pilot program and they cover all of your basic needs. What we found is those students who go to this company, a SAP program also completed their degrees faster. They lead to improve job prospects and earnings. Uh, and research has found that when you combine tuition support with mentoring and money for expenses, you actually have a greater long term trajectory in your economic, uh, and wealth generation wealth building. So that’s like one area at the federal level that is being piloted and talked about at the federal level right now and in light of covid, so that would be, you know, wrap around support and services. I think the second thing, which is not lost on me and probably many young people right now is, but is ensuring students, mental, emotional and physical health are met and that the universities they go to, it’s incumbent on them to provide those services. So I think supporting students, right, It goes beyond basic needs and wrap around services. I think there’s this generational trauma that’s being brought on by Covid, that’s going to echo and reverberate for years beyond 2021. And so I think, you know, further campus based health initiatives really is something at the federal and the state level that higher education advocates could get. So That’s my two cents. And if I could actually maybe add a few more sense just to this because um, you know, teaching young people about how to organize um is I think one of the most important parts of my job um It really, I mean everybody has listed a lot of great ways to get involved, A lot of um great issues to get involved around. Um but I think really at the heart of any organising push that you’re going to do is get to know the people around you, um if you’re on campus, get to know the people on your campus, um talk to talk to the people in your classes, talk to the people that, you know, talk to people you don’t know yet and just ask um you know, what is important to them, um what do they need to succeed? You know, find those commonalities because that’s where you’ll find the, you know, things that you want to advocate around. And I think you will probably see that it will be, you know, some of these things that we’ve already brought up. But, you know, you really um, you can’t organize without building those relationships and start doing that if you even think you want to do this in the future, because it will never never serve you badly and we can help you with that. We love to introduce our members and connect them and also invite people to be members and uh give people the tools they need to then organized in their communities. So please please do that work. And we are here to support you. Uh huh Jesse. Do you see we have been at her comment from Shannon. She’s speaking to my heart. Speaking to your heart. I think I see you’re looking for a new bill of rights that sets up a laser focused prevention on the free market failings between transition from colleges to the labor market. Um, so I think what you’re getting at is, you know, should should universities and colleges be on the hook or have some skin in the game to make sure that their graduates have an opportunity to succeed in the labor market. I think that’s where we’re getting. Yeah. I mean, I think this comes back to the accountability conversation right? Like we need very specific measures in place to ensure that higher education institutions are accountable to their students and we need metrics. We need numbers to see how students are faring after graduation. Um if their degree is worth it, um, if they’re receiving a quality education, that then translates to yeah, job training and the job that they’re looking for, when they do spend the six figure debt. And a lot of what we advocate for is accountability and transparency is that higher education institutions are required to provide those metrics and have better channels of communication with students, um, to ensure that they are providing the services that they are meant to provide. Yeah, I think something like that already exist Shannon. So one of the bills that we were advocating at invincibles for last session, which had broad consensus among students colleges, universities, employers, policymakers, Probably your mom, your brother, your sister, your aunt. It’s called the college transparency act. Current law prohibits the federal government from actually collecting and reporting on accurate data on student outcomes at each and every college and university in the United States. And so I think to lose his point. Right without this information, students and families aren’t empowered to like make well informed choices about their education. Uh, and then with that, they don’t know if there is going to be that return on investment. So the college transparency act did not pass in the 116th Congress despite all this broad support, I think Two Alleys point because we didn’t see higher education reauthorization package come together, but it is slated to be reintroduced this year. I believe the sponsors of that were Senator Durbin, raja Krishnamoorthi Cory Booker. I could be, I think there’s a few others on there, but I mean this is a bipartisan bill and it, If it gets passed then when it gets passed in the 117th Congress, I think that’ll be go a long way to answer your question. Absolutely. Yeah. Well, I think that maybe all the questions, of course it’s almost 8:00 on the east coast. So you guys are rock stars, um, for, for doing this. I just think it’s been incredibly helpful to understand and, and you know, just, I think we all can agree that there is a definite shift happening and you know, there’s no greater voice in the young adult to not only voice her opinion, advocate for the opinion, but truly act, take action. And I’m so grateful to know about the work young invincibles is doing an a y a we will share this across a much broader community and I don’t know, jesse if you want to have closing comments or anything to think the audience, you know, I think, you know, I want to just steal a note from alleys page and I think if you’re going to be on the sidelines, I think you shouldn’t be afraid to get your hands dirty, you have everything at your disposal in this phone, um you have everything in front of you with a tool kit that Malcolm has shared with you on how to be your own advocate, and I think the technology that we have allows us to meet our lawmakers and our elected representatives where they are and hear from us, they are duly elected to represent us and you have the voice and you have the power to shift the conversation. And so I’m so excited for all of you for joining us for the last hour and a half, two hours. Again, I want to thank uh ali, I want to thank Malcolm, Jamais and lisa and Tiffany on the back end. I want to thank all of our attendees and again, please reach out to Young Invincibles and the Association for Young Americans were here to advocate on behalf of young people across this country. Thank you. Thank you for coming and for engaging in discussion with us. Um I feel like we all learned a lot in these couple passed last hours. Um Yeah, and I’m excited to hear from you into the future and feel free to reach out to a Y. A. It’s either near ali with any questions. Um Yeah. Thank you, jesse so much for moderating and being a great leader of discussion. Great job. Thank you guys have a great night. All right.
? 4Feb2021: NAWB and RTN
Transcription:
just Yes. Whoa, Okay. Mhm Mhm Mhm Well, yeah, yeah Mhm Mhm Yeah. Uh huh Yeah Mhm Mhm Mhm Oh, sorry, sorry, sorry, I’m getting on. Okay, so Lindsay’s here. I’m moving you all over. I’m sorry, promotes a Panelist. Hi, sorry now. Yeah, Y’all. I’m working away. I’m so sorry. Oh, sorry, sorry. My sound wasn’t on. I missed you. I’m just working away. I wouldn’t even paying attention to what I was doing. I’m so sorry. Good. Oh, hi there. I’m good morning. Oh, good morning. I was muted it. How good to see you too. How’s it going going? Well, um, jenny should be on momentarily and well, I’ll be switching back to just a regular viewer once we get started, but I’m here to answer any questions or anything anyone needs in the meantime. Hello? I say hi, hi. I don’t think we’ve met. I’m Jamais, nice to meet you, jermaine, My name’s tycoon, Nice to meet you. Where do you live? I live in the Bronx in new york city and your soul. What does it look like the Bronx behind you? I wish you have a doppelganger in Dallas texas. Just so you know his name is Michael Jamieson and I swear it, I’m looking right at him, Michael Jamieson, his name. I grew up with him. He’s one of my good friends. Yeah, I live in santa fe new Mexico. Oh wow. And I’m just south of you. I’m in Jersey, my son, Huntington Beach and my son’s in Brooklyn. My sister’s in Brooklyn. Really? Yeah, they just, they live and we’re in Manhattan and then during all this they moved to Brooklyn. I don’t know, I mean they just left, left man hasn’t moved, but they love to make it a lot more space, yep. Same thing for them. Well, great, well this is gonna be so much fun, I’m super excited. So you do you have a welcome cider? You want me to put up a close at welcome side? Closing welcome slides fine, but jenny’s gonna jump right in and get started, so, um, but yeah, good to have something up quick intro. Well, should I injure it, jenny? Um, she honestly can handle it, but if you want to, it’s up to, you know, no, I’ll just have welcome to close it and thanks for being here and I’ll just turn it over to jimmy. Perfect, awesome. Yeah, and then tip, if you can get youtube done this morning that I’m gonna get this week’s events last week, in this week’s events out, you do get in the way, way ones up. Um and I’ll work on the, the title slide for the video right now. Okay. I moved, I don’t know if you saw, but I moved everything. Close it back on the dropbox. So you now have access to everything in the 2020. Close it Germany and Tiffany. I got an interesting question yesterday that I did not know the answer to and I thought maybe you guys would know, but why is the organization called Close it? So when we started closing it, um, you know, closer to innovative educates brand for the conference, it was, it was um, closing the gap gap. got it in 2013, which is, Oh, how long, what was that? eight years cup? Um, everybody was talking about closing the skills gap. Mm So our first close, it was close to closing the skills gap and then it just kind of stuck. It makes it so it makes sense when you say explain that. Yeah, but it was just a contact at one of our partners and I was like, you know, it’s a really good question. I don’t know. Yesterday. Oh, the printer guy was trying to pick my printer and he can’t thank Claude. I never correct him because he was like, do you want me to send it to do me a closet? I’m like, sure. Yeah. It’s kind of a weird name. That’s why now we just have to set things. But once it’s stuck, everybody knows close it. Yeah, for sure. The skills gap like that makes sense. Yeah. That’s at around a whole lot. That looks really good. I had to try to find one that was all of my other ones are kind of like joking to find one. That was a little more. Mhm, mm hmm. It feels like it’s like, I think the february already narrow. It’s my daughter’s 22nd birthday today. Oh wow. Happy Birthday, February Birthdays are the best. 16. Oh, I have a good criminal And in my 17 year old turned 17 tomorrow. Oh my gosh, 22 17, those were my babies, wow, wow. Oh yeah, I can’t imagine what minds are 17. How old are yours? I have a five year old and a three year old, why? I’m right there with you. I have the one just turned nine and once turning seven in like three weeks, wow, Big. Yeah, it does so fast enjoy it because when you look up and they’re no longer be, you want me to um put up the shift awards while everyone’s coming on or just the welcome side, you may, I think we’re good. Um real quick um lindsey just so you know, we’ll do the, you know, the welcome. Like I’ll put this one up for you all whenever we get going. But just so you know, there’s always one slide after where jimmy just kind of talks about what’s coming up Mm Hmm. So we can talk about um February 11 with um them real quick and then we’ll get started in on y’all. I think let’s just put that at the end, Okay, time. Mr saturday in uh we have Tiffany if you’re able to make one change. Road trip is all one word and it’s a lower case. T you know what I have always wondered that good. It’s actually really confusing because that’s not grammatically correct but like road trip is two words. But the founders, you know, they decided to do their own thing 20 years ago, so thank you very much for correcting me. I will never make that mistake ever again. It’s all good manner was 20 years ago. This is our 20th anniversary this year, wow Dang. How old was he like 17? We were teenagers. Yeah. Walk this into some clips from the original road trip. The three of them you know did you? Because I would love to see that. I would love to do, I feel like a 20 year recap or anything. Yeah I like to do something. I would actually like to, I didn’t know that was his other panda. So it’s Nathan Gebhardt and um brian Mcallister and they were childhood friends and what’s up? Are they still there? They are, yeah the three of them this whole time. No way. Okay. I have got to do is ship blog interview with them. Yeah. Yeah they would love that. That is incredible. We’ll be doing its later this year, the actual anniversary. So we’ll be um you know putting some things together but it’s so wild to see them as like literally 19 year olds or I think they were 19 finish doing what road trippers do today. So it’s cool. That’s so cool. That is really, especially with three partners still being together, you know sometimes breaks people up. That’s really, yeah, it seems that they’ve remained good friends and been able to do business partners this whole time to they’re all very different parts of the brain too. So I think that’s why I work so well. Like these that super creative and brian is um like like business side development driven mike is too, but mike is very much the in front of people, you know, really good speaker and brian is more like behind the scenes so they all just take on a really different but essential role that is truly in their authentic there like always themselves. That’s so named. I’ve at previous jobs when I’m talking to the Ceo I feel like I’m talking to a Ceo. I’ve never felt that way talking to mike ever. I think I feel the same way about Casey. Casey. Yeah. What about me? Well we’re like family already. You’re not a boss. You’re like family. I was frightened of you though for like three years, three years. Oh my gosh. Finally, But she was always like one step removed. Like I never had like true interactions just with her. And I think like on my second, like a year to 2.5, that’s when I really got close with you. That’s funny. I mean I guess no, not at all. It was just like, like I said, I was always one step removed so I didn’t know. Well does she like it this way? Does she want, you know, I don’t know. It took me a while to learn You, did you read my mind? I was going to say now we have our own language. That’s what everyone says. Okay, so I got the video, the title video done. Um, the deck is ready to go. I got the run of show. Is there anything, any support you need from me besides just promoting these folks up to? Um, I am, uh, um, what am I trying to say? Panelists? Excuse me. Yes. We have more attendees here. Yeah. It’s really, really just making sure they’re able to jump on and off at the correct time and jenny will like verbally Q as well. So you should know exactly when, um, other than that, I think I think we’re going to go. So do you want me to leave everyone as panelists now? Like mike and Denise just joined us or you want me to add them when she says to, So to start out, let me pull, I wanna my continues. If you want to test out your video and audio just to make sure we’re good. Sure. Can you hear me? Sure can welcome unclear. Hey, Mike guys, I can always just um, oh, we lost Denise. Yes. Mm. We’re going to grab something both coast. So, um, Tiffany, initially it’s going to be jenny, she’s going to introduce Mike and Ron, Mike Marriner and um, Ron from any WB. Um, then it will be just road trippers that yeah. Uh, then, and jenny will be on in a minute, talk you through this too. But um, I started listening to the recording and then my boss called me and I’m sorry. Then we’ll introduce, um, Mike Temple and Karen, uh, in with the road trippers and we will thank the road trippers, asked them to hop off and we’ll just have Mike. Karen, Mike m and um, Ron to finish up. Okay? And just so you all know as a Panelist, um, the way that we have the view presented to attendees and I always have both, I’ve got both computers going so I can always see what it looks like for them if your video, even if you’re an attendee, I mean, even if you’re a m here comes jimmy, even if you are a oh, one more. Here we go. Even if you are a Panelist, if your video is turned off, they won’t see you only when your video is on. Will the attending to see you. Hi jenny, Welcome. Hi. Sorry, I was on the phone with mike. You’re perfectly fun. But we are all good to go jenny. Just so you know, I do have um, what, where to go? Hang on. I do have a welcome. Don’t look at my desktop y’all. I have too many things going at once. I’ve gotta just a welcome slide and for you guys. And then at the end we’ll just follow up with kind of our next event that’s coming up. Okay? Um we do have a C. T. A. Slide. Is that the slide that you’re talking about at the end? Uh So it’s a different one jenny. But I think we can put bars up at the very end and then Tiffany, if you guys want to put yourself after, that one has been up for a few minutes. It’s just me and Alberto’s contact information in case anyone wants to get in touch with us after. Um, but yeah. Okay. Perfect. Hi, I just wanted to let you guys up so you can test your video and audio, make sure we’re good. How are you hearing? I am doing all right. How’s everybody fabulous? A lot older than I imagine you are. What is snow? I’m in Jersey. I got a foot of snow on monday and I was hiding out in the desert in Arizona. I flew back last night. So, God, you made it. Hi, darling. Huh? Good to see you. Like, how are you? Yeah, Thank you guys. Hear me? Yes. Hi. Yes, man. What’s up girl? How are you? I’m I do you guys? I got something to tell everybody. I think. Three. Uh huh. You’re what I said. What’s up woman? I haven’t seen you ever. Mm I think Yasmin’s telling us to surprise God, yes, I’m connecting my video now. You guys, you have to excuse me? My for was underneath maintenance right now trying to get it together. But I am engaged. Congratulations. Yeah, congratulations. Thank you. Thank you. That’s what we definitely show you guys. My, my ring in just a second. I’m about to connect, get on like, hey, the knees, Hey, how are you? Good, How you doing? Good. Oh my gosh, it’s so good to see all of you. It’s good to see you all as well, Jessica, you all know before um we start getting more attendees on um when, when you’re cute, I’m gonna put you all back as attendees and when you’re cute, we’ll bring you back to panelists as you notice you kind of go out of zoom and you kind of come back into zoom. Um but don’t be alarmed, you’ll be added are back in. Um if you have any questions or any problems, I’m gonna put in the chat right now for you guys who want to write this down. This is my cell phone number. I mean if people turn off their video, yep, yep, yep. So there’s my cell phone number. If you are a Panelist, if your video is off, they won’t see you. Um as soon as you turn your video on they will see you. Okay. Uh Japanese there anyway, when we do the youtube, whatever that it doesn’t happen like it did last time where the person like I didn’t like that, let me get into them and see what I can do. I just want to make sure that when someone is the default format was in, that’s a deep called format didn’t like it. I’m gonna hop off video now that we’re getting close, but congrats Yasmin and good luck everyone, I’m so excited to watch the session today. Thanks so much for your help, Lindsay. Yeah. Okay, great. It’s really understand. My video is not going. Here’s my There you go. We see you. Yes man. Okay. Yeah, I got a new hair color to me. Looks good. Partnership color. Thank you. Thank you. Oh, that looks great. Thank you. Uh huh. Sure. Mhm. What’s up everyone? How’s it going? Good morning. He’s in a work truck, truck. I’m in the truck. How to get it set up? Yeah. How’s everyone doing today? Good. Where are you? Great, excited for this? Going to be so um and well, we will be sharing it with lots and lots of people. So I mean we’ve got about 50 registered, but then, you know, we’ll share it out big time. Ron Ron painter. Good morning. Good morning, love. How are you? I think I’m all right. How are you? I’m good. I’m good. What kind of socks you got on today? Did you get my message? What I said that you and I were going to be together a couple of times in the next few weeks and I was totally respecting the fact that I would not see gloating from you with regard to what many people consider a great off season for the white sox and a pretty lousy off season for the cubs. But I know that you will not hold that. I know that you would not bring that up. I’m not gonna bring that up. I leave it up to you to bring it and to acknowledge when you need to bow down. That’s all I Oh right. How are you? All right? As the weather in Senate California today? Oh, last night we went back as an attendee. Let me, yeah, we’re punishing him for his next weather and sunny California And that is jimmy. Yeah, the weather’s a little gloomy today but we always get great weather here. Yeah. Mike, you’re back. I’m back side by that. My better but like my better mike and mike, this is like the dream team right here. I mean we got the to be determined road trippers. We’ve got Aaron and Mike Temple, we’ve got Ron painter, this is amazing. This is like this is like the all Star game and we have to make a I know right, I’m just gonna enjoy, I’m just happy to be here and here. There’s awesome session. Yeah, I am, I’m really excited to hear from from you guys and kind of interested. I know one of the questions I submitted and I hope we get to it. I’m really interested in hearing your perspectives like after after you were there like did you have more of that? I I can do this. I hope so, but I’m really looking forward to the discussion. Yeah. My uh you know, Denise jasmine and to him we know you know Karen, but just, you know, Ron Painter is the head of the National Workforce board Association and then uh and then Mike Temple is Karen’s counterpart in Houston, so we’re beginning in new partnership with Mike and Houston kind of modeled after what we’ve done in Karen in Chicago. Um and so this is, this is kind of like the beginning of that journey. So we’re just, we’re just excited to ground it in your experience and your voice. And I think if anything, if we’ve all learned anything in the last year it’s to listen more and uh so we’re just really excited to kind of, you know, amplify your voices today and jenny will be leading that session first. But um I just wanna thank you all for just being such great ambassadors for road trip nation, we’re so proud of you guys and um, yeah, just, just so I just, I love the combination of people on this call, you know, on this session, so and jim a thank you for being our quarterback and giving us this platform to share our, share our voices. So we really appreciate you thrilled. Hey, my temple, I have to ask you, I’m sure you know Jack Steel, I was just gonna say, you know you and I have a couple of people in common Lori and Fran and Jack Steel Fran is one of my dear friends and I’m a big, I loved ex steel too, so yep, I’ll tell Fran, I talk to you good. I hear they’re doing okay out there in north Carolina. I think they love it a lot. They almost make sandpaper. They picked her. Um, I’m a Durham pan because that’s where I was before in the back santa place. Oh yes, To meet you, mike. Nice to meet you to Jamaica. Mhm. Okay, we’re gonna, we’re starting to get some people on good morning to our closet community and as normal will wait till about three minutes after to kick it off and handed over to Jimmy. So thanks for joining us and happy february 4th, My daughter’s 22nd birthday. Nice. Happy birthday! Happy birthday Panelist. Y’all can stay on as a Panelist. As long as your video is turned off, If you can just turn it on when jenny cues you, I’ll just leave you all in as a Panelist and still going back and forth. Okay, bye everyone. Good luck. Go get them. All right. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. The white sox. I close the community. We’ll get started in just a few minutes. Thank you. So everybody can chap where they’re from or what they’re up to and we’re gonna get started in just a minute. Southern California, santa, fe Chicago. Speak about junior jim bray. Hi darling. Mr highlighter. We’re all over the country brian alexander. Hi my friend Idaho who scott Brooklyn some. Okay, so good morning to the closing community. Super excited about today. I’ve been just really looking forward to this session because both of these organizations have been a long time. Friends of the innovative educating the closest summit. Um, so thank you. Road trip Nation and National Association of Workforce boards for bringing together this really informative and going to be fun session on the future of workforce development. I’m just going to immediately turn this over to jenny with road trip nation to kick it off. Hi jenny. Hi jimmy. Thank you so much and high closet community Welcome to have six. The future of workforce development um, like jimmy said presented to you by Road trip Nation and the National Association of workforce boards. My name is jenny and I work here on the events team at Road Trip Nation where an educational nonprofit with the goal of helping people find fulfilling careers that are connected to their interests. So to tell you a little bit more about us, I’d like to introduce Road Trip Nation ceo mike Marriner, Take it away mike. Thanks jenny. Good to see everyone. Um, Road Trip Nation, as some of you may know, is where one part, uh, media based, nonprofit and one part workforce development nonprofit. Uh, the media side is probably what most people know of through a PBS series and all of our media based work, but what most people may not know is that, you know, one of our real passions is a non profit is the workforce development side of what we do, which is anchored by a database of over 8000 media assets. We know that we can’t put every youth in America on a motor home to go across America, especially during a pandemic of course. Um, but we do, you know, believe passionately that uh if there’s one thing we’ve learned over 15 years of doing road trip nation now is that you need to see people like them in a variety of careers that represent the future of work. And so road trip nation, we have doubled down on the virtual offerings of retribution last year and trying to get our stories of resiliency to youth who need it the most. And one of the things we’re most excited about today is that a thing that we’ve been diving into deeper as well is really amplifying youth voice, especially in this time of Covid. If we’ve learned anything, it’s the importance of listening and amplifying your voice is especially as systems are being redesigned. So, um, that’s part of what the spirit was. One of the spirit of what we hope to get out of today is amplifying three of our favorite youth in road trip nation. Uh, and you’ll learn more about that later. So thanks mike. Um, so we’re proud to be partnering with N A W B on this panel. Um, and to give you an overview of their work is President Ron painter. All right, Thanks jenny. It is. We are happy to be here N A W B or the National Association of Workforce boards represents the nation’s over 500 local business led workforce boards across the US and the territories. We do that as most national organizations by advocating strongly for the role of local boards to do things like look at their own labor and a labor market. What are the skills, what are the occupations that are critical and then the ability to impact the number of individuals who are attaining the credentials necessary to enter those? We share best practices. We share common, common interests and we share successes and certainly you’re getting an opportunity to have two of our finest on the, on the the event today, Mike Temple out of Houston and Karen Norrington Reeves out of my second guess, my second hometown of Chicago. We’re, I’m enormously proud of both of them are enormously proud of, proud of the work. We’re also at the National Association, proud to partner with Jamais and all of her crew as we continue to discover and explore what is happening to the world of work. We’re also really, really excited to partner with Road trip Nation last year we did a thing when we could before the time uh, of going out across eight locations in America to listen to what was happening at the local level, around their optimism about the future of work, what they were fearful about the future of work In a conversation with business education and workforce boards, we’re happy to be thinking and planning with Road trip Nation to do that again when we can once again get out on the road. So if you’re joining us from a location and you’d like the two of us to come join you, please let us know at vibe at WP dot org. I’m really excited about today’s conversation. I think that it’s so important for us. As Mike mentioned to listen to understand the experience that people have when they think about workforce development, better ways that we can bring that experience to them, to the thought process around what kind of career is am I going to pursue, Where am I going to go and what’s happening? So again, on behalf of the National Association of Workforce boards, our board of directors, our staff and the hundreds of local workforce boards who are, are members we appreciate today and we’re looking forward to the conversation. Thanks jenny. Thank you so much Ron and we’re excited to have you here. I’m excited to hear a little bit more from you a little later. And like Ron mentioned um later today we’re going to be joined by special guest Panelist Karen Norrington Reeves, ceo of the Chicago cook workforce partnership and Mike Temple director of the golf course, Gulf coast Chicago cook workforce partnership and um, oh sorry, gulf coast workforce sport and workforce solutions. Sorry, that’s such a mouthful. We’re so excited to talk to those two and hear about how their workforce sports have been innovating new ways to connect with their communities. But first we want to talk a little bit about a very special project that we’ve been working on here at resignation. Last year, fueled by a TNT, we sent three young people from workforce development programs across the country on a road trip to talk to professionals about the challenges of moving forward in their careers. We filmed this transformative journey and turned it into a documentary series called to be determined. Our series aims to inspire anyone out there who’s looking to develop new skills and find fulfilling work. So here is a look at the trailer. I think if you unmute yourself will be able to hear, we can’t hear the audio jenny Jamais, can you all hear the audio? No, I cannot. Penny, we still have no audio. Yeah, give the latent tympani that you could share it. Sorry about that, everyone for the technical difficulties. Let me try that again. If you want, you can send it to me jenny and I’ll share it too. Okay, let me send that to you. Looks amazing. I can’t wait to listen. Mhm Two, Here we go, sorry about that everyone and get that back and running. Yes, yeah, as a kid jumping around me, share my screen real quick, could you hear that, yep, purpose? Alright, here we go. A kid jumping around from shelter to shelter, I would go through like these bouts of depression growing up, my neighborhood wasn’t the safest, it’s a lot of crime that goes on. A lot of drug addicts and a lot of drug dealers. I worked two full time jobs 80 hours a week and I don’t want to be stuck in that cycle just so I can help out with the friends and pay the bills. I don’t want to feel like I have to move out of my community because I can’t succeed in my community. I’ll be going on an RV with two strangers my cross country on a road trip for three weeks. It’s if you want people who started off with similar backgrounds like myself, wow and they’re gonna show us what they did to actually pull them through. Now I get a chance to ask some difficult questions, some things that I may be struggling with to actually see somebody that came from a situation similar to myself instead of going to drugs, instead of turning the other things you use the engine and put it towards something else Being a Latina and the finance industry, It’s kind of like if she can do it, then I can do a lot of places I work tonight. I’m usually the only person of color to see where he’s at and it just feels great if you can’t fly, run. If you can’t run, walk, you can’t walk, crawl, whatever you do, don’t, that can go. She’s planes with the engines and the reason attacked every plane needs a runway to take off all we just provide opportunities. You do the changing. Sometimes all you need is this opportunity, somebody doing investing and say, Hey, I see something different. I was one of those opportunities. You just need an opportunity. I just needed a chance to change my projected outcomes. Some of these interviews like echo in my mind before I go to sleep, part of our responsibility is to help the employers understand that our communities are filled with untapped potential. You are representative of the community as you came from. And now through your example, people that have grown up in the same community, see that they have options, the tribune and even over and I already have a different outlook on life ways. I want to approach different situations. I can’t wait to see what all the other interviews will be like. Y’all were not lying about. It’s gonna be a change from the city. Like I want to come home with as much information as I can. I want to see where else this road leads me house cannot transform. Um, thank you so much for sharing that. Still playing the next one. There you go. So you can watch that entire series online for free on our website. But right now I’m really excited to introduce you our three road trippers from the film who we have with us here today to him, Jasmine and Denise. How you all? Hi everyone everyone. Good morning, good morning, how are you all doing? Good, pretty well, pretty good. I’m hyped. Nice, thank you so much for being here. We’re so excited to have you bag. Um We can just start by introducing yourselves Denise, we can start with you. Sure. Hi everyone, I’m Denise. Um I’m from Brooklyn new york and I come from the workforce development program year up um here in new york city. Uh Currently I’m well I’ll tell you a little bit more about myself later about my journey but I’m currently um working in finance now. So very exciting. Thank you Denise to him. What about you everybody? My name is to Heem, I’m from new york in the Bronx and I’m from paris cola’s the workforce um development program and it’s been an amazing journey I got to take part of with road trip Nation and you’ll hear more about it. So I’m looking forward to sharing with y’all thanks to him and Jasmine. Hi everybody. I’m gas man, I’m from Chicago and also finished the car. What I’m currently still in health care care, I can tell you that for. Thanks so much. She asked me, we’re so excited to have you all here. Um Can you each talk about a little bit about what these last months have been like for you um And yeah, we can start with you this time. Alrighty. So yeah, in these last few months I have definitely experienced the feeling of not really being able to have a good stable job. So currently I’m sorry dammit. Yes, man, I’m sorry to interrupt. We want to really hear you and we’re having trouble. Can you turn it up a little bit? Are you able to hear me now? That’s much better. That’s better. All right. All right. I’m sorry about that. So, um yes. Um in these last month it’s been a little hectic. Again, I have felt the the access is of not really having a stable job. So right now I do work from home, which I’m not complaining about. However, yeah, I’ve just been noticing that it’s been a little hard to get resources when it comes down and taking care of business with everybody not being in office, so. Yeah. Yeah. And what about you, Denise? Have these last few months been for you? Um It’s been kind of a world whirlwind of emotions, you know? Um definitely, you know, working from home has given me a lot more uh freedom to spend a little bit more time my family and also, you know, definitely learning my role which I had started back in june. So, you know, it gave me a lot of flexibility and a lot of like um also thinking self reflection on, you know, everything that had gone through just a couple of months prior, like the year prior, we had gone on an amazing road trip altogether and now we were all in our small dwellings and you know, it really made me feel grateful for everything that I had and it made me feel grateful for, you know, having my family along beside me too because you know, during a pandemic, unfortunately, you know, so many um bad things affected so many people. So just to have everyone close to me um you know doing well and being healthy. Maybe more appreciative of what I have currently in my life, so you know a lot of collecting and definitely you know looking forward to what I can do. You know hopefully once the pandemic is going to laying down, absolutely thank you for that. And to him who have you been up to in the last few months? Hey um I would say very similar to Denise, I’ve just been kind of keeping my head down and focusing on my role. You know being helped us get to you, it has been a bit easier to transition to full remote work because in I. T. You’re trying to make sure everyone’s connected your hosting zoom meetings. But I’ve actually been approached by a lot of my friend’s like hey what can I do to get a job? I was working in the restaurant industry and it’s just not working out for me, or I was doing like something else that’s been closed down since the pandemic. And besides pointing them to like, europe or preschoolers or any other workforce development program that’s in the immediate area, it’s it’s kind of been and a bit difficult because like people aren’t like we’re approaching like a year working from home, so people are kind of fatigue now at this point there, like I just want something that works. So it’s been it’s been more of just trying to find out what works as an aid to help the people around me and I’d only keep their spirits up but kind of motivate them. Like you can get into this, this program, this is available I noticed on facebook there’s this group, you know, so it’s been trying to keep up with that. Yeah. Yeah, I would love to hear a little bit more about the programs that you all are in and um talk a little bit about the workforce development programs that um had an impact on you. And how did that help you in moving forward in the work force? Um to me, so let’s start with you. Oh man, like talk about impact because um first if it wasn’t for europe I don’t think I would be here where I am now. Um it all started when I was working uh you know just um jobs here and there all jobs and you know in retail and trying to juggle things to make ends meet. So um I actually found about europe on a newspaper, out of all things, like most people find out about these workforce development programs through referrals or word of mouth. And I just so happened to open up one of those free newspapers that they give out and I was looking at the job section and I saw your up and it was the closest thing to what I could see because there were so many programs and medical fields but I was always interested in finance and uh just turned out that they had this financial operations section and so I’m like okay let me just apply and like fill out a survey online. And then next thing you know, I was there for an interview and then I started off you know taking classes. So europe is a one year commitment and it’s six months of learning and development classes in person and then six months of an internship with no guarantee of a you know full time role, but at least you get that on your resume and you get the experience. So for me, you know being there for a whole year, I had really just focused on you know working and you know trying to pay bills and all that stuff so for me it was kind of like a risk like okay well you know I know this is for my future and I am very optimistic that I’ll give it my all and you know hopefully once the internship comes around like you know maybe there could be a possibility for you know a full time role and if not maybe I can you know at least get something out of the experience, you know recommendations, meeting new people, something that I wouldn’t have had otherwise. And yeah long story short I became an intern for six months at Neuberger Berman and then I became a contractor and then I was offered thankfully a full time role. So since then, um, I actually started even a different role within the firm uh, back in june yeah, congratulations. So it’s been a world wind of adventure is here and yeah, I’m just adapting and learning more as I continue within, you know, affirm the team and um, yeah, who knows, who would have said, yeah, thank you for sharing your experience. Yes man. What about you? What was the impact for you in the program that you were part of? Yeah, so for the Chicago could work for us. It was, man, it was like a dream come true. I’ve seen the school that I wanted to go to for a medical program and I could not afford it. So when my grandmother got sick I just took care for how I knew how because I had fire training to my other grandma being the Sienna. But when I got down and I was just like, I couldn’t, I felt like I couldn’t go back to a four year university, you know, without feeling the pressure of having to be great in so many words. So I went ahead and I just gave the Chicago local workforce and shot and I was accepted and I was like, okay, this is a start. And I got into the Sienna program and I passed and then I got into the providing program and I passed and I’m like, okay, I’m good at this. And I saw the difference, you know, instead of sitting in a classroom setting, I was still in the classroom setting, but it was more so hands on. It was like more kid to the person and not more credit to the paperwork in so many words and I loved it. I appreciated it because it got me, I’m not gonna be, but it gave me the chance to actually see what that field was like, that I wanted to get into. And I also gave me a bigger passion to be in that field because now that I’m training, I’m going home practicing and you know, who knew that I would have to be brought into a situation where I have to take care of another family member. So you know, now I got the credentials to do that. And I’m also in the process of becoming a wife, I’m engaged. So they give congratulations. Thank you. This has to actually share these things with my soon to be husband, you know, and as we’re talking about planning a family, you know, I have these resources that I can use and I can get to my Children and possibly to my God, kids or you know cousins or uncles, anybody is unlimited. So I love that I’m able to get that experience because now I can tell someone about it firsthand and it was doable and it was definitely helpful so I appreciate it, I love it and you know currently I’m still seeing a but I am in the process of going back to school so that’s why I can finish up my chapter being a PCT and crossing my fingers hopefully I can go back to college and become a guardian. So we’ll see awesome. All good things. Thank you so much for sharing your experience. Yes man that’s awesome. And taking, what about you? Let’s hear a little bit about your the program that you were part of. Well I would say um preschool is is um an I. T. And kind of like the technical training workforce development program and I’ve always had a love of music and before I was doing I. T. I was actually a security guard and I was expecting my second child. And there was a lot of ups and downs um to even starting preschoolers. So there was there was an uphill battle from the time I decided to enroll but the impact that it’s had on me um I’ve been able to almost, I’ll be that annoying older brother or family member. That’s like hey I see that you’re getting tired of doing the same thing every day. I see that you’re getting tired of going in the same circle. Why don’t you try something different? Why don’t you try this program? Like it’s giving me that op sense of optimism that I didn’t have before, it’s it’s taught me how to be resourceful. Um And I’ve even realize that more so with road trip nation because we have so much in common, so everyone that everyone’s story, every single person you speak to can be a resource in some way, shape or form and it’s taught me to appreciate um everyone’s story and you know, it doesn’t matter what skills you bring to the table. It’s more so the willingness, the willingness to learn that new skill and that’s what these workforce development programs are about. They’re like, hey, we got this bunch of cool careers and different um, you know, life paths that people are going through and we have these leaders here that you can speak through, why don’t you just, you know, take a chance on us, like we’ll take on you. And it kind of broke me out of my shell because I was, I was always like, man that’s not going to work or if it’s not up front money or payment, I’m not, you know, I don’t think it’s gonna pan out. But I took that first, you know, chance with preschoolers and then one thing led to another and I wound up working with road trip nation and I was like wow! And everyone there is Very like minded in each one teach one and I met a beautiful people like Karen niece and jasmine and Mike and you to journey and it’s just been like it’s just been ongoing from there. So the impact has been extremely positive and it’s been one that made me want to get back. Uh huh. So beautiful. Thank you behave. Uh My heart feels full, I love catching up with you three so much, but I would love to bring um a familiar face for you all to have a conversation. Um We’re going to have Karen Norrington Reeves joined us, the ceo of the Chicago cook workforce partnership, who’s featured in the documentary and then also joining her. Uh and also joining Karen, we’re so excited to talk to my temple, the director of the Gulf Coast, work for sport and work for solutions who we have been working with for a regional road trip in texas that will take place later in the year. Welcome you both. I would love to just give the stage for um the five of you to have a conversation. So I will hop off in a little bit. But yeah, if you, if you all have questions for each other, um please feel free to ask Karen, we can start with you. Great. I’m so glad to hear you guys are doing well. It’s good to see each of you. So I have a couple questions for you. One of the things we talk about that um that young people need most is a caring adults in their lives to provide some support and some guidance and so based on your experience, what advice would you give to mentors carrying adults, role models, parents um to help support the young adults in their lives? What advice would you would you give? Yeah. Um I would say for anyone who wants to be a role model in anyone’s life number one you have to be honest, you don’t get nowhere with lying to anyone and when you sugar coated or you know, shelter someone too long when life hits it hits for real. So I would say being honest is definitely key and also don’t be afraid to be empathetic. You know, you have to be able to understand what someone is coming from in order to really give them the best advice So you have to be able to be honest with them and also be understanding and empathetic to. You know just relate to them on a more personal level Tahitian Denise but your thoughts I would I would say Try to talk more about the times you messed up and turn it around than in times things just went right because there’s so there’s so much of a lesson and that and nine times out of 10 when I know as a mantilla I usually look at the mentor like you’ve got everything in the back already. So everything you say is like you know your word is is gold. But if you tell me about the times where you weren’t unsure of yourself and the times you you really messed up, I would remember those more and I would look for less than this deeper in that. I don’t think that just supplies. I mean, I think a lot of young people needed like that because you know, like when we’re young when I was a knucklehead, I was like, I don’t want to hear that, but it was more interesting when there was like a problem that was solved so to speak and the story was being told. Thank you. I totally agree with it, Sahim. Um there’s been times when a mentor will just, you know, maybe um tell me a little bit more about herself and then maybe she was in a totally different field than where she is now. So I’m just like, well wait really? How do you figure out that you really wanted to be? You know, um working here specifically? And you know, sometimes they’re still not sure about the next step. Like they’re still, you know, they’re kind of giving me advice and then they’re also thinking about well you know this is not this is not where it ends here, like you could always you know branch out elsewhere so don’t be afraid of you know, you know telling me that you might have an interest in something else or you know maybe instead of finance you could you might want to do technology with finance or you know maybe working non profit. So I think it’s very important for mentors to kind of have like a like a very um honest and um I guess maybe transparent relationship where you can feel you can tell them almost not everything but you know just tell them not be afraid of where you would want your career to go next because they can also have um you know maybe connections in that other fields or maybe you even know somebody from your workforce development program who might know somebody that that other person would be interested in learning more about. So I think that’s very, very important. It’s just like has been said, don’t sugarcoat it, give it to me straight. Thank you guys. Thank you. I appreciate that. I appreciate your honesty and your candor and sharing that. Thank you. No, no problem. I got just one question for the three of you and it and it’s a pleasure to see you again when we got together a little good before this. And uh, I’m just really curious. So did taking the road trip change your mind about anything when you, when you started, you had an idea about what, what it was gonna be when you got to the end, What was different man? Um I would say personally for me, what was different in the end had to be my personal attitude, like the way that I’ve dealt with things I learned that you know, your biggest enemy can tend to be yourself. So sometimes you don’t really, you know, try to fix what’s necessary within you. You can actually stop yourself from doing a lot and take, you know, conquering a lot of things because we kind of underestimate ourselves sometimes when we’re not together. So I kind of learned how to address my posture when I’m brought to different things and you know how to think. I’ve already, I’ve always been optimistic and thought outside the box. But I would say this road trip really gave me another level of optimism and it’s a lot so much pressure to me because now it’s like, you know, these things so if there’s endless possibilities just go for it. Don’t count yourself out before you actually try it. So that’s what it changed for me. That’s great. Fahim. Okay. I think I’m two things. One I doubted how incredibly hard it is to share personal things with the world and just people in general and especially how, how much harder it is when um, you’re in front of a camera. Um and it taught me like, it was like, I was like, yeah, this is, come on, this is nothing. And then when, when it’s on, you got it, you know, you, you got to turn it on but at the same time remain authentic and that’s definitely difficult. But besides that, I would say it changed how I felt about opening up. Like I always felt like it’s a harder thing to do with others and you know, you gotta kill someone out first, but if you’re yourself from beginning to end and you’re not worried about what they see and because I guess I was still, you know, I was still coming into my career 90 and I still felt like I didn’t have that much to bring to the table in terms of my being the lessons that I learned in life even now still and I had to, after taking that road trip, I learned that my story is impactful, Anything that I like, I said, every everything any one of us is going through can be impactful to someone else. We just got to be willing to share that. And going on that road trip broke down that barrier. For me, it was like, man, this is this is me, you’re going to get it one way or another, you know, right, that is great. Yeah, for me, it’s um before the road trip, I always felt, even while I was, you know, in the workforce development program, I always felt like something was missing in my life in terms of what I thought would make my parents proud. So I always thought that the road was always to get, you know, graduate high school, get a college degree, get a job in that field and you know, basically proving to the world that yeah, I did it because you know, I have a degree now and this is what I wanted and now I got it and for me it kind of didn’t happen that way obviously, but um for me it was kind of like, all right, I felt like my parents weren’t proud. I felt like a bit of a failure just because I didn’t have a degree and I didn’t know I ended up working all jobs, but at the same time during my road trip I like it really opened up to me that, you know, not everyone always follows a single path. Everyone’s life always turns into a different direction and you know, sometimes that could be for the better, like life’s a journey and you should accept it. And and for me, I took a long, hard, it took a long time for me to accept, you know, where it was and why I thought I wasn’t where I was because of my I guess family circumstances. So once the real trip came out and I actually saw it and while I was living in it, it really made me reflect on, okay, well, you know, you don’t have to be successful um just because you have a degree, like you can be successful in so many other ways and that’s what really made me change my outlook. Like once I was on the road trip and speaking to all these wonderful professionals who came from different backgrounds, it really made me realize that, you know, I shouldn’t be embarrassed, I shouldn’t, you know, just think that life is just a one way trip. It could be made up of many different adventures and even an obstacle that you may see as an obstacle could be a gift. So it made me very fortunate for what I have now. And you know, it’s so funny because my parents, like my family, once they saw the documentary, they were like, oh my gosh, this is amazing. Like, you know, we were always proud of you, no matter what you did and it was all yeah, it was just amazing and wholesome, so well Denise to him. I mean it’s an honor and a privilege for me to talk with you. You know, I’m an old guy, You can tell I sometimes think about what’s the world gonna be like with young people coming up and you guys inspire me. You make me think it’s gonna be all right? So thank you. I think the thing I think about with you all and you know, I got a special thing for y’all I just I just do I spent after day mike they interviewed me and I’m telling you I did not want to go back to work. I just want to thank you. Okay? But there’s so much wisdom In U three and so much power in your experiences in your words and in your perspective, how you view the world and how you see hope and possibility. And I am just, you know, it is it’s really just been an honor for me to be a part of this project and to get to know you and to stay in contact with you. Yes. When you owe me a phone call. Um but you know, the thing that I think about is um you know, the lessons that you’ve that you’ve learned on this path on this journey so far. And I wonder how those lessons come up for you again in in your current life. You know, there were a lot of lessons you learned on that, on that road trip. Uh so to Heem that vulnerability, right? We talked about that uh Denise, not not having any shame about, you know, your your background, your upbringing and recognizing seeing a Latina who, you know, looks just like you and has the same background excelling in her career, right? Yeah. Has been moving beyond brief and some of the trappings of of the community of Harvey right? And being able to X excel despite that. So I just wonder about if you could just share a little bit about the lessons that you learned the road trip and how you see those lessons coming up for you again in in your current in your current life. I actually have uh Karen I have something recently. I’m trying to get my mom into the first goal is right now and she’s like, I don’t think I can do this the math. I’ve never been that good at math. And it’s like not my my strongest suit and I’ve been trying on my own. I’ve been looking at resources. Um I’ve been doing like tutoring but it doesn’t seem to be working out. And one of the lessons that I learned on the road trip was to like never never give up. Like I didn’t like bugs for the life of me. I’m a city boy and going out there, I was freaking out. I was like, no, I can’t do this man. And I had to push through it and it’s the same, it’s not the same exact situation, but it’s a similar lesson. I had to like tell my mom, even when I was doing for schools, there was times where some of the work was more challenging and I was like, you know, you really got to think about how bad you want to grow, how bad you want a career in tech or a career in anything that you want when you’re up against something difficult, you think more about the end result and that makes it a little easier. And instead of like looking at a whole lesson, breaking into smaller sub lessons, like today I will learn how to do this problem instead of I will learn how to do this kind of math period, you know, small, small chunks. So that’s something I’ve I’ve definitely um I’ve learned from the road trip in the pot niece or Yes. Mhm. Yeah, so from the road trip I have learned how not to be afraid to start over again man. Um when we came back I have one more class to do just one more session and then the pandemic said no, so I had to wait to the school open back up, so she was waiting, you know, ready and able to take people back in and finish up courses. So I really have to be um courageous not to be afraid to start over because now I don’t remember the material, you know, so much something happened since the last time I saw in the classroom versus coming back into the building, so I had to be afraid not to start over again. And also I had to be afraid of um, the non traditional way of things because then I got put with the pressure again, everybody’s like go back to college. Like why are you going back to a trade? Go back to college now is the time and I have to get it made up in my mind like gas and it’s just not everybody’s life is yours. Take as much time as you need. There’s no time limit. So I really have to know, tell myself don’t be afraid to start over, but also take your time, do it at yas in space, not as someone else’s space because you always mess up if you try to, you know, fix your life to make everybody else happy, you’ll never be happy. So that’s one thing I learned just don’t be afraid to start over and just give it your all. Yeah and for me it’s definitely it’s uh you know enjoy but now instead of worrying about and stressing out the future or the looking at the past because the past has already been done. Instead of you know worrying over like oh I should have done this, I wish this never happens, I want to be in this place. It’s about taking all the negativity out and just being grateful for what you have now and thinking of you know what you can do to maybe just um make a better future for yourself or just learn how to take a deep breath and not stressed about the future too much and you know just reflecting on what you have and for me also, another thing that I learned on the road trip was appreciating my network, my network because you never know who you’ll come across and even during the road trip, you know, we met so many amazing people and you know, now we have so many amazing mentors, so it’s really about, you know, connecting with people. And now as an alumni from Europe, I’m definitely, you know, more than open to answering questions from, you know, people in the program and kind of doing even a small mentoring myself of, you know, students who have just started the program or have just, you know, started interning somewhere. So um, it’s very exciting to be able to lift as I climb, which is, you know, europe’s motto and you know, definitely continuing doing that just because on the road trip I’ve met so many people who have done the same for others, so that makes me want to give back and you know, look forward to it. It is so good to see you guys again. I think I’m going to kick it back over to jenny. Thank you so much. Thanks Karen and Mike for the questions. Um, I’ll have you to stay on, but Denise jasmine to him, like Karen said, there’s so much power in your words and your experiences. Thank you so much for lending new insights into, you know, what you’ve been up to and your experiences to us today. We appreciate so much your time and just catching up with you all. Thank you for being here. Thank you so much. Thank you Karen. Thank you Mike. So, so for this next conversation, we’re going to dig in how workforce boards can further help their communities right now. So I’d love to bring back road trip, nation ceo mike Marriner and N A WBS President Ron painter. Um the theme of this year’s closed at summit is shift has happened and that’s certainly been felt by work for sports across the country. Work that was once largely done in person services has had to shift to digital, valuable experiences like apprenticeships and job shadowing have been limited. The big question on our minds now is how can we get through to unemployed or underemployed people and help them build valuable social capital through digital experiences? So mike, I will throw it over to you to continue the conversation and I will be back a little bit later, awesome. Um, well, I feel like that was the perfect primary for this conversation or the meat we are. This is just the side dish. But um, you know, as Karen said, there’s so much we can learn and jenny and I think if there’s one thing that I feel like we keep learning over and over again with road trip nation is that the vulnerability piece, the powerful, vulnerable vulnerability piece and trying to think about like how do we, how can we, how can we make workforce development more human centered, um, and more vulnerable and less transactional And can we leverage the power of storytelling to into it as a tool to kind of make this with what’s happening in the world and we’re hearing this and all the work that we do is that youth are so hungry for stories of honesty and stories of, of resiliency. They don’t want to see your linked in profile. That’s just intimidating. Oh great. You’re the vice president of such and such thing. They want to know what was the tough stuff he went through? Did you have to deliver coffee? Did you have to pay off student loans? You know, how can we, how can we kind of re imagine what say an informational interview is in more of a model of human senator storytelling to create real relationships and not only empowerment but also social capital, which we can get into in a second, but um you know, we wanted to start off this session by just like seeing how you all are doing in this new world and how you’re pivoting and obviously like pivoting to digital. Um and that’s a big way that we’ve been honored to work with you all is to try to like help you all create more digital solutions and storytelling assets that we’ve kind of been scrappy and aggregated from road trip and try to work with you all on. But how how are you meeting this moment and trying to leverage the new, you know, yeah, leaning into this virtual moment and trying to meet youth where they’re at like what have you learned and you know, what, what, what can we, what can we learn from you, any of you, Karen or Mike or whoever feels inspired. You wanna go first. I was about to say Michael different to you. Um, so this is what happens when you have a panel with a bunch of gentlemen, They say ladies first. So I would say, you know, the point about meeting this moment is um, you know, this is, these are tough times. Right? So a couple of things that we’re doing, I’ll talk a little bit about us as a system and also about our team. Um, one like everybody else, we pivoted and made all of our services virtual, our training programs to the extent that it was possible, um, just the ability to access our services to be able to enroll virtually. Um, all of that was new to us and we, I was very proud. We were able to do it within just a couple of weeks actually. Um once that once the shutdown began, Um increased our social media outreach, our community engagement. Um, we’re doing a lot with the pandemic in terms of contact tracing. We’ve been facilitated the hiring of over 700 contact tracers and contact tracing supervisors within our region. And actually actively recruited youth. We’ve partnered with you all to launch our first ever youth workforce development portal. We never had a portal that was specifically focused on the youth community. We had our workforce site, um our workforce development site was focused on connecting people to agencies and we certainly had youth agencies identified. But the portal that we created with you all, or rather you created and we customized um is just really aimed at that at that market and is exciting and interesting for young people and I think, you know, but for the pandemic, I don’t know that we would have seen the real imperative for that uh as quickly as we did. And um, you know, and then the other thing is we’ve done a ton of media, I’ve done a lot of speaking engagements and panels such as this um, to really bring people into the work. And it is, it’s helped. I mean, we see such a spike every time we do um some media engagement were also leaning into all of our youth organizations. We’ve trained them in using the toolkit and the curriculum on the workforce development site, but the youth portal with road, Road Trip Nation and the curriculum that you created around informational interviewing. Um, but there’s still more, you know, there’s just still so much more to do here in Chicago. We’ve seen such an increase in crime that is being perpetrated by young adults because they have too much idle time on their hands and remote learning is not working. And so what we have risen to the moment, there’s still so much more to do in order to really address the needs. You know, I think workforce boards throughout the country have done just exactly what Karen was saying. You know, we have all had to pivot to a way to provide virtual service to any of our customers and all of the time. And that means online learning as well as just looking for work or talking to a camera councilor. Just think so. You know, I’m always pleased to talk to Karen and others in here that we’re all kind of doing the same thing I think, oh great, we’re all heading in the right direction, which is really good. We’ve done something similar with the contract tracing here in town, but we, they essentially created a community health uh job involved contract tracing and also just providing information to people. And uh we recruited young people from the neighborhoods that they then worked as community health workers, which was something really special I think, you know, it’s hard to reach anybody. Uh but it’s specifically hard to reach young people at a time like this when everything is so up in the air and so different and as jenny said, shift happens, uh it’s just, you know, you have to really work at it. One of the things that we’ve been really lucky about is we had a local Tv station, our AbC affiliate here in Houston, contact us and say gee, we’d like to have you come on once a week with our reporter. And we started off on facebook live, we’ve now moved onto the regular television set and their app to talk about whatever we want to talk about. And we have reached more people we’ve reached, we’ve had 1,000,000, we’ve got a million viewers. Yeah, since we’ve been doing this since last april. And so that’s a way that we’ve been able to connect with young people more than anything else because of course young people aren’t on facebook, right? That’s for us, old guys. Uh and that it’s more the reaching out to people that I think is the hardest part because once we get in a relationship as Karen’s been talking about, there’s so many things that we can do in so many ways we can help. Um somebody look forward, it’s like the road trippers we’re talking about. Sometimes it’s just a human contact and somebody to talk to and bounce ideas off of or expressing frustrations with on the journey to a school or a particular job or something like that. So, you know, it’s it’s given us this pandemic, has given us a view of how we can deliver service in the future that, combined with personal interactions, hopefully that we get back to is going to be a powerful way to reach a lot more people. Mike. I think that’s a really that’s a really good and interesting point because I think we can do things digitally, but I’d ask you both, Karen, Mike as you think about and somebody described this as the time. So if we think about how you delivered services before the time and now, as as you look like uh to post the time, that human element, have you thought about how that how important that was? And do your strategies, do you start to rethink your strategies around that interaction? That human interaction, that conversation between whether it’s the employer and your staff or your staff and and the job seeker, what are what are the kind of things you think about now? Yeah, I would say we’ve always been focused on the human beings at the at the core of it, even just in our business relations work has always been focused on discerning what the real need is, which you have to Dubai developing relationship. But one someone said something in in a staff meeting um about a week or so ago, that has just stuck in my craw and he said, I bet the majority of our career coaches could tell you more about real regulations than they could about what it really takes to coach and advise people. And that went right. I mean, it just that got me like, it just because all I could think of was, he’s right, he’s right, despite all of the best efforts around, you know, you can’t uh, for for people for whom it is not their intrinsic, you know, sort of their their reflexive nature to do the relationship building peace. You can’t you can’t make them do that. And so it has made me think about what are the types of shifts necessary within our system in order to ensure that everything we do is about the human being first. And even with respect to the employer engagement, how can we better help inform them around what it is they need to do in order to have an environment that is human center that recognizes the fact that, you know, my daughter is gonna come bursting through this door in any minute. My dog is gonna come bursting through this door in any minute. And that has to be okay because I’m not just an employee or a worker. I’m a mom, right? And I am working at home with kids who are, who are learning at home. And so it seems like it took it took this this awful experience to make people wake up and treat people humanely, right? Yeah. We we have a we have a long way to go in in that regard. Uh, I was just gonna say amen to all of that. I think, you know, going to this where you’re not in a big office where you’ve got a lot of people streaming in and you’ve got a lot of, well, I got a process you and I’m gonna move you from here to there. It’s more about talking to somebody face to face. You realize how important that conversation in that relationship is in helping someone move along. And Karen, you know, it’s like, like we’re the same person here, we’ve had the same conversation about, Well, so yeah, you can talk about the regulations, you can talk about a procedure, but can you actually help this person thinking about a career and a future. So we were thinking we’re rethinking about how we structure things, who we put where, how we, how we’re going to go forward, engaging people, not only in person because that does remain, that will remain important, but how we can expand that, back it up, uh, do it virtually first and then invite somebody to come in or see him first and then follow up with them virtually. And and work on our own skill sets so that we truly are looking at a human centered approach. Okay, Joey bishop And the other piece mike. Excuse me for stepping on either The other piece is we have power and collectively we are serving millions of people across the country and the other pieces. That part of why there is this great focus on rules and regulations because that is what is put upon us. That’s what we are measured against. That’s what we’re judged by. And so we have to to use our collective voice Ron my friend, this is my rally, my clarion call to you as our fearless Leader. We have to use our collective voice to get the legislators and others empower the rule makers to understand that every aspect of what we do is not going to be measured in a data point, right? And that there are these intangibles that matter even more than the volume of numbers and that I think the storytelling to Mike’s point helps to demonstrate that impact. And we have to get them to see those stories to understand those stories and to value those stories every bit as much as they do. The number of people served in the cost per person served. Right. Uh All right. So box put away. I just no, I think that’s really important. I’m gonna turn it back to to mike and jenny. But Karen, it’s part of what I was inspired as we visited 8, 8 regions, eight places across the country last year to to hear to hear communities coming together to hear communities asking themselves really hard questions about what lies ahead and how prepared are we. And that’s why I’m so excited As we’re thinking about what workforce ahead part two looks like that we’re teaming up with road trip nation because it’s the stories, it’s the stories of, of that, that journey as, as a, as the young people mentioned that it’s a journey and it’s the stories of the journey that really become impactful and inspiring. And we had, We had three Jenny Mike, everybody. We had three really amazing coaches to help us understand how important, how important the work is. So, again, on behalf of, of all of us at N A W B mike, thank you. Uh, and Jamais for allowing us to to participate. Hey, this was an incredible session jenny, great job. All of you spoke to the heart and everything you said is so true. Lots of excitement in the chat. Um, we’ll send out the video and share it broadway and I know you’re gonna get a lot of attention from this session. Um, thank you so much. It was just really, really inspiring to see you here, you and beaver minded, um why we’re all in this work in the first place? Uh huh. Everyone for you all. Thank you. Well, everyone, Bye. Bye.
? 11Feb2021: Hub #2
Hub Learning Session: Inspiration: CLosing the Achievement Gap
Transcription:
Yeah. Mhm. Recording. Okay, good morning to the closest community um February 11, so super, super, happy to be part of this today, I continue to learn from each of these sessions and but Luther Jackson and Phil Jordan have just done a great job with their hub, getting great participation. I met Luther last year at the closest summit face to face um and Luther it’s, it never works and um he’ll tell you a little bit about himself, his work in this hub, so thank you so much for pulling this together today, Luther thanks so much Jamais and hello, closing community, great to have you with us. I’m Luther Jackson from Nova works where workforce development board in Silicon Valley and on behalf of my co leader Phil Jordan from BW Research, I’m pleased to welcome you to this inspirational presentation. Our hub is designing workforce innovations, interventions that ultimately lead to greater workforce mobility and as we like to say, help get diverse talent on the field in order to boost regional economies. So our focus is one of talent, not charity. There’s certainly a lot of folks out there talking about things like career mobility, equity, social justice, particularly since this summer. And historically there’s been a lot of Money reports and conferences devoted to these topics. I just found the report from 2010 in Silicon Valley that talks about some of our problems here. And it says the report mentions, is the problem the persistence of poverty and low rates of high school graduation and post secondary training opportunities for many residents, both for Children and existing low wage workers. But despite all that massive gaps remain in education and workforce persistence completion and achievement. So what gives, Well, I’m going to suggest a two word problem statement. Low expectations, low expectations as in, come on, those people can’t do calculus, let’s give them something easier. Or engineering is too complicated for those people, it’s too ambitious. Those low expectations then get institutionalized and codified. So today we ask a big question, what would our world look like with high expectations? We are delighted to have with us leaders from City University of new york and Georgia State University to show us what’s possible and now I’d like to introduce Phil Jordan who will get us started, take it away Phil great, thank you so much Luther. Uh We are so thrilled to be joined today by two dynamic leaders uh in higher education Dr Alison calhoun Brown was the Vice president for student engagement and programs at Georgia State University and Christine brian yard. Uh the university Executive director of CUny Asep program at the city city of new york university. We so appreciate your time. Uh thank you for being here with us. I also just want to take a moment to recognize one of our guests today in the audience, keith Morrison helped us organize today’s presentation. Thank you for all your help and pulling this together. Um and uh you know look forward to to maybe here you and the Q and A. Um as Luther stated, low expectations are often codified and as a result many come to believe that the status quo is all that is possible. You know, I recalled back to the closet conference a year ago when Angela Jackson spoke as a keynote and she asked the audience to to raise their hand if they agreed with the statement that all people can learn and everyone in the audience raised their hand yet so often so often when we look across our programs and we see restrictions and lack of resources and other types of constraints, we start to wonder whether the systems that we work and really believe that that’s possible. Um and uh and as Luther said, ah, you know, sometimes the easiest pathway for folks is just to lower those expectations and that that’s all that’s possible. Our speakers today really prove otherwise. So drawing on their experiences from Georgia and new york, they can show us that if it can work in Atlanta and beyond and if it can work in the Bronx and all across new york city, it can work anywhere. Each speaker is going to talk about how their organizations have eliminated achievement gaps among populations that many have sadly given up on, we’re grateful for their expertise and their passion. We’re so pleased, as I said to have you here today to show us what’s possible after some brief presentations will have a Q and a period, so you’ll be able to enter your questions into the, into the chat, into the Q and a function and I’ll moderate those. Um But first I’d like to introduce Christine. I met Christine and the and the city University of new york, a SAP program uh about a year ago just before Covid 19 shut everything down. In fact, it was my last trip train coming back from new york city, seeing all of the uh all of the travel restrictions coming into place um where I was had the pleasure of learning a lot about this program as an evaluator. Uh and was pleased to see that the program actually won the innovations in american government award from uh the Ash Center at Harvard University. So a great program, Christine. We’re so happy and and thankful and grateful to you for joining and with that I will turn it over to you. Thank you. Thank you Phil and Luther, thank you so much closet community. Um, happy to join you. I’m gonna attempt now to share my screen with you. Let’s see. Make sure I am. Can you all see my screen or do you see a zoom screen? It looks great. Okay. You see my screen? Yes, Okay, well, for some reason I don’t see my screen so I’m gonna try this again. All right. All right, so you see my screen now. Sorry. Yeah, we see your whole PowerPoint. Oh, I see. Okay, I’m so sorry. I should have, I should have flagged this prior to the start here, let’s see if I can try this again. Technical difficulties. There we are. Ok, thank you for your patience and thank you again, Luther and fill for those framing remarks. I’m really, really excited to join you all and speak a little bit about Aesop’s history. Are our expansion and scale across kenya, our national replication efforts, but mostly just kind of echoing the framing remarks. Cuny is truly, is built on the premise that we understand that the nature of our students is one wherein when you remove all the known barriers, all the systematic and unnecessary complexities, all of all of the ways in which we, we really do put um unsubstantiated challenges in front of our students. Nonetheless, they can persist. But when you remove their, those barriers in a very comprehensive, targeted, an intentional way, there really is such limitless potential in terms of what can be achieved, especially in a very complicated institution like the city University of new york. So the city University of New york is, for a little context, is our nation’s largest public urban university system. We have a current enrollment of over a half a million students. We serve all levels of education from HSC G. D. Two P. H. D. It’s composed of 24 institutions across all five boroughs, seven community colleges, 11 baccalaureate colleges, six graduate and honors professional school. Um What’s most interesting I think about cuny as a university system is that it is so intricately interwoven with our city and state agencies. Of course, we are funded primarily through the city of new york. We have a very, very interconnected relationship with the priorities of our of our mayor. Um And we of course have a very kind of intricate relationship with our public dont system, so that then really does kind of lend itself to the way in which were situated um structurally. Um Often when the city of new york has large complex problems, they turn to the city University of new york and and leadership to really kind of investigate how we can we can co mine solutions. Uh The origin of Cumia SAp is one that is quite unique. Um The then Chancellor of CUny and the then mayor of new york, city mayor Bloomberg, they really wanted to understand how to address social and economic mobility. From the standpoint of the mayor’s initiative, through his center of economic opportunity, We understood that our cities, community college completion rates were dismally low, there were 14% 3 year graduation completion rates and we knew we could do better. We knew our students were capable of so much more and we knew that the nature of the way in which our our system and our mechanism of welcoming students into our colleges, we’re so so overly complicated and not only complicated to navigate, but also just the resources that students were able to then have to navigate an access were unnecessarily, um you know, in the shadows in terms of accessibility. So I would say that I just wanted to frame how we are organized because it really does lend itself to a different kind of paradigm in the way in which usually large scale program initiatives are kind of structured, especially in a system like uni. So I’m housed under the Office of the Academic Affairs. Um and then we work very much as a consortium with our nine implementing S at partner colleges ASAP is essentially a direct implementation embedded within each of our nine partner college communities. We have a dedicated staff who runs the program day to day, but our administrative offices really do provide a different level of program administration, administration of program resources in a very, very robust evaluation and data management agenda. So I can definitely elaborate on this, but I wanted to first spend most of our time talking a little bit about the model. Again, the model is very much structured in a way where there’s a comprehensive and integrated set of resources and services that basically work to eliminate all of the known barriers to momentum. Um, so I would say that the premise of a SAP when it was conceptualized was one wherein we understood all of the evidence based practices that were most effective to removing all barriers to full time enrollment. But there never was a full scale effort to really house those in a comprehensive and holistic manner, so that it really is what a SAP represents. It’s a holistic, comprehensive model that addresses academic momentum that achieves integration and belonging and that provides timely and relevant supports to students. Now we really do accomplish this through one primary delivery mechanism and that is our high touch academic advisement. We have modest case loads of 1 to 150 students and we really ensure that the nature of that relationship being intrusive, proactive, so individualized, that ensures that students are really able to gain the support and access to resources and navigational, a navigational perspective so that they are driving their own academic journey, but they have someone who really has their back. So we’ll talk a little bit more about advisement. But I wanted to just call your attention to the other ways in which we achieve academic momentum and that is really ensuring that students with their very busy lives and other responsibilities, have the access to full time consolidated course schedules so they can take their classes in mourning blocks and afternoon blocks and evening or weekend blocks if that’s necessary. That all the scheduling peace and the logistical pieces, certainly a mechanism to achieve academic momentum. We cover winter and summer intercession course taking to ensure they’re utilizing that full academic year and we’re removing all key financial barriers. We cover any gap that they have between their tuition and fees and they’re financially received. We provide textbook assistance and we provide them transportation support in the form of an unlimited metro card where they can use the the metro for for all of their needs and without out of pocket. We also really like to emphasize this notion of integration and belonging again, as I had mentioned, you know, when students move from their high school to their college careers, there often is kind of a sinker swim mentality, especially in a university system that’s, it’s so large as, as the City University of new york, we bring our cohorts in early, we ensure that our sf students get the kind of hands on early engagement that they require. So they are oriented to the resources that they have, their oriented to the technology that they’ll need to navigate. Um They’re oriented to, you know, how the program and the way in which they’ll engage with their academic advisor are the expectations to that engagement. So that early engagement is pretty critical. We offer first year blocked courses so that we ensure that our students are having that experience with their fellow sf students and having courses together um usually are general education courses um where we can achieve that in that first year, a number of different leadership opportunities are, are opera to our students. We have a peer mentor program, we have a student ambassador program that supports our recruitment efforts. So lots of opportunities for students to further develop a sense of integration and belonging, both within the program and within their college community. And then there’s the provision of timely and relevant supports, um timely relevant supports beyond our academic advisement includes program dedicated tutoring, embedded tutoring that students are able to access without stigma. So we definitely encourage students to participate in these kinds of study groups, structure tutoring um wherein it really is encouraged even when students aren’t necessarily academically struggling. We have personalized career development supports and we of course have basic kind of navigational support in terms of connection to additional campus based resources and community based resources that are available. So all of this is offered as a full integrated package of supports and services to our students and you’ll notice at the top there is an evaluation and data use for program management thread, so I really can’t emphasize this enough. When we first began a relationship with the city, um we really did have to demonstrate outcomes early and we had to create structure where in this program was launched with our then six community colleges and there had to be kind of a cohesive administration structure where there are certain expectations for program engagement and academic performance that we were able to monitor right up front. So we really did create a very robust evaluation agenda. And what underpins that is a very nimble data management tool, a homegrown database wherein it is accessible to all staff, whether you are an academic advisor or a program director or our own administrative staff. It’s a business intelligence tool and it’s also a mechanism to really monitor student progress at a very granular level so I can speak a little bit about that. But this is our model as we kind of academic fi it, but our model and our promise to our students is a little bit more straightforward and simple. This is kind of our logo that we have plastered all over the city of new york on subway trains and on all sorts of marketing efforts because our office does help support the recruitment of our students your year. But our message is simple. We have their back, we have their books in their MetroCard. Sometimes we have to use that carrot of the financial resources to get students interested. We’re a post matriculation program, which means that we really do have to ensure our students, I know about the program and they know that they have to first apply to be accepted to one of our colleges that offer the program and after they are accepted. Um We then engage them in active, more active program recruitment Um, in terms of program eligibility. You know, this is very broad. Um you know, we basically have a have a spot at our current scale for for quite a large proportion of TNT students incoming first time freshman in particular, we require that our students be eligible for new york city resident tuition at the community colleges or state tuition and all the all of our other senior colleges or comprehensive colleges that offer the program. We asked them of course to commit to full time study. Um and we asked them to file for financial aid every year, so both fast to in our new york city um tuition assistance program. Um just a little note on the demographic of our student, where in 85% of our students are a receipt of pell or tap or tuition assistance from the state of New York. So that demonstrates kind of the, the demographic financial need profile of our students. We also do except continuing or transfer students or students have no more than 15 college credits at the point of application. So just a note, you know, this is a quite unusual history. Again, we began in 2007, we had a very, very integrated relationship with the city of New York through the mayor’s office center economic opportunity. We were kind of all in at the time, but we started with a modest cohort of 1100 students. Again, the three year completion rate at that time was 14% and again, we knew we could do so much better. Um so we really did demonstrate outcomes early and quickly, and you can see by the trajectory through demonstrating this outcomes. The city university was able to then garner baseline support by the city by fall of 2011. That means that the allocation to support roughly 1200 students for academic year was a permanent allocation to the city University of new york. So that provided some stability to continue to run the program. But that, that surely was just a fraction of the eligible population that could benefit from the program. So I think our office always had a very clear prioritization in terms of continuing to build the evidence base, Continuing to prove how three year graduation rate increases had broader systemic implications. And so that’s really where you see things quite abruptly take off around the um you can see kind of in the transition by 2015 2016. That’s exactly the time that the results of our random assignment assignment study was released by our partners NDRC, That validated what we saw already, that validated what we were through our quasi experimental research and evaluation. Where in 53.4% of our students were graduating within three years versus 24.6% of our matched comparison groups. Students we knew this to be true from our our internal evaluation work, but it was just validated um and really kind of amplified in terms of the potential impact by NDRC’s release of their study in 2015. So at 2015, that’s really when the city, even through a mayoral transition moving from Mayor Bloomberg to Mayor Bill de Blasio, he was scouring, you know what works. And very early in his administration acknowledged that S. F. Was absolutely a sure thing. So he doubled down and that’s exactly when we really see more exponential growth. Where were we were basically on the fast track to expansion. So that’s really moving from 8000 students per academic year to our current scale, which is 25,000 students for academic year. So that is the scale at which we are now baseline to serve. So with that doubling, um you know, across over time, our allocation from the city also increased. So we are again kind of at a very Financially stable um you know, place right now, even despite our fiscal climate in this moment, um are are allocation from the city remained stable from last fiscal year to this current fiscal year in 25,000 students is where we remain service. I think our continual commitment to demonstrating the ways in which the program both maintains our three year graduation commitment and then our rigorous commitment to the way in which we look at the data, ensure that we’re really staying true to the ways in which we want to narrow that equity gap in terms of how we’re looking at the subgroup disaggregated data. If you see this three year graduation rate breakdown by subgroup, you can see the S. S impact on graduation rates is found for all subgroups. So within all the subgroups SF students are very close to or above that 50% graduation rate, you can see there’s some differential effects. You can particularly see that S. F. Appears to reduce the gap between black and white males and hispanic and white males. So I think that that is again, you know, our constant commitment to assessing the impact of the program ensuring that we are, you know, at disaggregated and looking at the data in ways where we are really looking to build more kind of proactive and customized programming for our students, particularly students who can see there is more work to do in terms of narrowing that gap. I had mentioned NDRC’s RCT that validated are doubling effect. I’d also just like to point that we did go through more rigorous cost effectiveness and benefit studies. There are a little dated but still very validating in terms of the savings SF realizes, which is $6500 per graduate versus the comparison group. Um, overall the net benefits for 1000 enrolled aesop students equals about $46.5 million dollars or million dollars higher than for 1000 comparison groups, students. So I think that that’s an area we would like to refresh our data given our current scale because I think we’ll find those savings and those benefits to be even more pronounced. But what’s actually even more pronounced is our current university wide Completates rates. Um, right now, at our current scale of serving 25,000 students for academic year, Asep students comprise roughly a third or 32% of the total associate student full time enrollment across the university. And as we continue to grow and maintain this scale, we project that the overall system rate of our three-year associate degree will go up from 18% for our freshman cohort who entered in 2013. We’re gonna boost that up to 36% by 2022 based on our current expansion and skill. So it’s really exciting to see that, you know, the program maintains our performance and therefore has a pronounced effect on our overall system wide completion rates, just a quick mentioned. Um We have adapted the model to the baccalaureate degree setting where we’ve launched it at two senior colleges who are looking to double our four year completion rates. We’ve been able to achieve that with our first cohort of students who entered in 2015, john j Criminal justice john jay College of Criminal Justice, um, their first cohort of a student, so that’s accelerate, complete and engaged, realized 58.44 year graduation versus um, it’s almost 16% points higher for a match comparison group of students. So we continue to build the evidence base for Ace, we launched a random assignment study in the fall of 2018 and we’ve been serving close to 2000 students. We’ve been privately funding that cohort to it by cohort, but the plan is similar to a SAP, is to build our evidence base and secure more stable state they support for the program and in our continual pursuit to, to build our evidence base. We’ve entered the national replication um, forum where we wanted to provide technical assistance to institutions who were interested in replicating the model with a high level of fidelity. So we’ve been doing that in modest scale. We formed a national replication collaborative where we’ve actively partnered with institutions in Ohio California Tennessee and now West Virginia, an interesting feature in west Virginia is that we’re really going to be looking at the wage and the labor market data. Uh, in addition to the graduation data, there’s an RCT launching for their first implementation cohort next fall. That’s going to really look at the employment implications for this subgroup of students who are going to be graduating at a much more um, timely. Right. So I wanted to end here, um, and I really am excited to engage with you all if you have any questions and I’m turning it back over to Philip. Thank you, Christine. Thank you so much. I can tell you that, you know, as I was there evaluating the program and learning about it. Um one of my favorite stories was that I got in a taxi cab to go up to um Bronx community College and um the guy just was making small talk with me and was asking me uh you know what I was doing down there and I saw a very loosely described this program and he said, oh you mean a sap? He said my wife did my wife today sep, it’s the only reason that she made it through uh through college and she was getting a four year degree and preparing to go to law school. So um talk about fortuitous right to have your value, evaluator, have that conversation, but really just incredible and the human element of meeting the students and the staff, it’s really, really wonderful. And so I hope that those of you who are really excited about the idea of setting those high expectations and finding ways of meeting them will um we’ll engage with with Christine and and and cutting and see what they’re doing there. Um I think uh well just in the interest of time, I’m going to very briefly introduce um dr Allison calhoun Brown, so from Georgia state. So Alison, I spoke earlier this week and I let her know that I have spoken to one of the professors at Georgia State about the persistence programs because you really can’t do any literature review on um successful programs for persistence and growth and achievement gap elimination without coming across Georgia state. But the real story was that I was at a very large extended thanksgiving day dinner um back when we used to be able to do those things, and my brother in law’s dad, we were just having a chat and I said, what do you do? And he said, I’m adjunct professor Georgia State University. And I reacted right with this excitement and he said, I think that’s the most excitement I’ve ever gotten from telling somebody that I’m an adjunct professor at Georgia State University, but we had a great conversation about some of the things that were happening from his perspective as a professor, um and the types of things that he was involved with and all the professors are involved with really, um, to make sure that we’re keeping and maintaining and setting those high expectations so that I will turn it over to Alison and thanks again for being here with us. Well, good, good day, everybody Phil Luther, thank you so much for inviting me to participate with the close knit community today. Thanks to Christine as well as the first time that I’ve heard a full presentation on the Cooney a SAP program and I could not be more excited to hear about the results. Uh it’s also exciting to hear that there are many parallels between those pro that program and some of the things that we’re doing at Georgia state. I have also prepared a bit of some slides to give you an overview. So let me see if I can successfully share my screen. Can you see the screen? Yes, we can. All right, very good then. So, um, The challenge really that faces all of higher education is a very big challenge. Right? The challenge in front of us. This is what this uh slide shows here that from 1970, you know, up into the 2000s for students who are in the upper income quartile or even in the third income quartile, graduation rates have doubled. But in the lower income portals, there’s not been a lot of progress. In fact, between 19 72,000 and five for the bottom income quartile, the graduation rate really only went up by about two or 3% points there. So there’s a really big challenge in increasing outcomes for students who have historically been underserved by higher education. Georgia state is actually as an institution essentially um involved really in this dynamic at Georgia State is in public Urban Research institution. There are 36,000 students in Atlanta. Um It’s a research university with the community college because 18,000 Students of the 50,000 in the student population come from perimeter college, a two year school that Georgia state was consolidated with in 2016 70% of the students at Georgia state are from underrepresented minorities. That number is up considerably from 2000 and 10, where it was 54% and nearly two thirds of the student population are low income or pell eligible. Uh in 2000 and 10, that number was 40%. So even in the last decade, the numbers of at risk students at Georgia state has increased and some people might say, well, that is not really a recipe more underrepresented students, more low income students are first generation population has also gone up significantly. Um, some people would say that, hey, that would be a really hard population to produce student success. But in 2000 and 10, instead, Georgia state doubled down on our objective to be a national model for undergraduate education, demonstrating the students from all backgrounds can achieve academic and career success at high rates. That’s going to be, that was going to be a real challenge. But the way that we engaged it was to start to ask, are we the problem, It’s sometimes easy to point the finger at K through 12 education or at state appropriations, which, you know, interestingly during this time, also went down by more than $40 million. There are lots of reasons sometimes external to the university that we might come up with for why we don’t have The success rates that we want. And at this time we really didn’t have the success rates that we wanted. Um at the four year school, the average graduation rate was about 30% and we had achievement gaps for African American students where their numbers were 5% lower than that, And for Hispanic students even 5% lower than the African American students. So we started a different approach where we would collect data pilot interventions, assess and revise what was happening and then figure a way to scale it up for maximum impact. Now this may not seem really revolutionary, but it did revolutionize the way that we were doing things at Georgia state, looking at retention progression and graduation, both in the aggregate and for at risk populations, not, you know, resisting the fact that we had at risk populations, but trying to figure out how can we create an environment where these at risk populations can succeed? It’s not, it’s not a program at Georgia State. Um you know, a lot of schools have programs where, you know, they’re trying to get their pell eligible students to succeed. But Georgia state has nearly 30,000 pell eligible students. So a program is not going to get it. We needed to change our approach. So, you know, we started digging into the data and we found some really interesting Challenges. So for example, in 2015, just to give you a couple of examples that we can walk through, we found that almost 20% of the freshman who confirmed that they were coming to Georgia state, who were qualified to attend a research university did not enroll. And when we started to dig down into what could be going on, we found that there were many hidden obstacles to enrollment. These are some of the same barriers that Christine was just talking about unnecessary complexities that actually hurt students abilities to persist. And so we found, for example, our students um, weren’t filling out or successfully the federal financial aid application. Many, many of those students because they’re low income and often don’t have sort of the stereotypical family situations. Perhaps they’re being raised by their grandmother subject to verification request. The state of Georgia has all kinds of immunization rules that are good for public health. And if you’re a middle income family, really easy to go to your family doctor and get that confirmation of your immunization. But if you’re a low income student, often, you know, if your uh, public health has been delivered by clinics, this can be a really big hurdle to get over. So we found lots of hidden obstacles to enrollment that were disproportionately disadvantaging our low income students. And so one of the things that we did, we became one of the first schools in the country. In fact, one of the first four schools in the country to use an Ai enhanced chatbots in the summertime that students can access 24 hours a day. In fact, we found that the most common time that students would access the chatbots was after midnight, uh, and they could get questions answered by asking our school mascot pounce. And here’s a, you know, on the slide is um, a communication around filling out fast to if you have divorced parents, you know, the kinds of questions that sometimes students would be hesitant to ask. They felt empowered to ask the check box and the chat pot would give them a response. And what we saw in three years was a significant drop in summer milk. And that translated to 360 more students coming to the university enrolling successfully and starting their college program. Another really good example is that when we looked at the data, we found that we were, that we had a retention rate for our most academically at risk students year over year of only 50%. Of course. That’s terrible. Students come with their hopes and their dreams and we were only returning on those hopes and dreams after one year at a 50% rate. So we changed how we admitted those students, we admit them in the summertime to something we call the Summer Success Academy. And we wrap around all kinds of academic supports, financial literacy training, uh, career uh, career development, professional development training. Uh, and we told them, hey, welcome to Georgia state as long as you come in the summer time where we can really support them more fully. And the Retention rate went literally year over year from 50% to 87% were able to retain many, many more students just by changing the way that we did things. And for the first couple of cohorts, the graduation rate for that group has been higher than the one year retention rate was historically. So it really stresses that changing the way that we do things as, as an institution or as an organization can produce dramatically different outcomes even for the same population of students. The last example that I’ll point to is the fact that, you know, Georgia state was losing more than 5000 students every year to drop out, stop out. And most of these students to tell you the truth, didn’t get going again. And so, you know, we would find out that they had stopped out long after we should have. So we engaged in a really big project of predictive analytics partnering with a company called Education Advisory Board where we looked at 10 years of Georgia state data, more than 2.5 million grades To come up with 800 analytics analytics based alerts that would indicate that students were going off path. We call it the GPS, just like a GPS, you know, the global positioning system to try to keep our students on path. And now every student is tracked daily for these markers. You know, the registration and tracking is based on academic maps. We, you know, monitor to make sure that the students are taking the classes that they should take and that they’re earning the requisite grades that they need to be to be successful. Uh, and if they don’t, someone reaches out and you know, just looking at this slide, You can get a sense of the difference that it makes. Look at the middle of the slide there. If you get an a or B in political science in your first political science class and go on to major in political science, you graduate from Georgia state at a really great rate. If you get to see that, that that rate plummets down to about 25%. Historically, we have done nothing to support those students who might have earned that. See now somebody reaches out and gets them back on track. Uh, and you know, this really is a combination of high tech and high touch because the tech gives us the insight that we need to know what’s going on with our students. But we also have scaled up our academic advisors so that they can reach out to the students with that information. And we’ve seen a huge return on investment for the students from this kind of intervention, Located the savings for the class of 2019 in tuition and fees, compared to the class of 2012 was more than $18 million. You know, other impacts that you’d like to share really quickly is that the graduation rate at Georgia state has gone up. Uh, the six year rate has gone up 10 points in the last 10 years. The five year rate up 11 points, The four year rate up 14 points. And since consolidation in 2016 with the two year Institution Perimeter College, where we’ve been able to implement many of these same programs, the graduation rate is up 16, uh, 16 points. Post consolidation. Also, you know, the percentage increase in the total number of degrees at Georgia state up 73%. And as encouraging, um, the rates for african americans for low income pell eligible students and for hispanic students outpace the rate for the student body over overall. And so this is something that we’re really excited about because it does demonstrate if we change the way that we can do things if we continue to hold expectations, but to provide the requisite support and make the necessary adjustments, we can absolutely succeed with the students um uh that we have and produce some better outcomes. So um thank you very much for opportunity to um to present on that. I’m sure I’m happy to answer any questions gonna stop sharing now. Thank you so much. Thanks for those presentations really just terrific. And um I mean even as many times as I see the data, um it’s just so, so very exciting and inspirational too to see it again. So you know, I really really appreciate both of you coming on here to show us what’s possible and to share with us some of the successes. Um I did want to just know because we’ve got a few questions in the chat about this, but as with the other presentations in the closet conference, this is this has been recorded and is continuing to be recorded and so um it will be posted um in the in the same way in the in the conference um website. And that is where we get a lot of the the traffic on these anyways. People have conflicts wherever they come in and and and view it, but certainly all the information will be available um that was presented today. Um I did want to maybe just sort of start us off with a question in both for both of you really. We’ll start with Christine. Um you know, I’m sort of fascinated when we look at the numbers and we see the RL i analyses and the other successes that you’ve had. Um but at the same time, it’s not like this is a uh you know, a small number right, in terms of what it costs to run a program that provides all those support services. And you know, Georgia State has implemented all of these uh new measures that obviously costs money. How did you build sort of a coalition of supporters within the mayor’s office or or maybe Allison in the Governor’s office or throughout the the university system to convince folks to make this something that is a funded at a level that makes sense and can actually work and be, is something that is seen as not discretionary or nice to have, but actually as I got to have. Um, so maybe Christine, I’ll start with you and and then Allison if you have any thoughts on that and others, others, if you have questions, please use the chat function. I’m I am looking at it and I saw one come in and so we’ll get to that just after this. Uh Yeah, thank you for that question Phil, and I think, you know, the entire underlying premise of of ASAP was the mayor’s office understanding and really adopting a stance that, you know, with completion comes increased lifetime earnings, increased tax revenues, savings to public assistance, criminal justice, public health. I think it was underscored with without kind of a short term hunger, it was more of a long term vision of understanding how efficiencies achieved through um quicker time to degree. Now there’s a question about the effectiveness, we didn’t undergo the actual cost benefit, cost effectiveness analysis until even beyond the city’s baseline investment in the program. So there was this core belief in understanding about the returns and in terms of kind of the implications to the, to the workforce and again, lifetime earnings and tax revenue, I think that that’s, that is really the kind of core motivator. Um but you know, I think the measure of effectiveness is really the completion time to completion towards degree. That’s really kind of the way in which dr Henry Levin approached the cost effectiveness study. But again, I think that the city always under understood very deeply that completion really was a social and economic benefit to the city more broadly. So we didn’t have, we didn’t have to kind of go through an exercise of convincing the city of that, that was the apprentice of the way in which the city that approached the city University of new york to then kind of address the completion rate issue. Um, and it was not until, you know, the city university, the university was able to essentially demonstrate in a modest scale the implications of accelerating completion And it really was an experiment and it was an experiment to even scale it across cuny to 25,000 students. There were so many modifications we had to make in terms of ensuring the fidelity of the model. We had to look at the way in which the academic advisors were able to effectively serve so many more students, we had to build a staffing structure that was sustainable. Um, there are ways in which we had to kind of, um, reconfigure the way in which we continue to build connectedness and a cohort community based, you know, maintaining all those key elements of the program. So I would say that the experiment was one where we entered with a little bit of blind faith in the holistic nous of the model. And again, we demonstrated and monitored the effectiveness and, you know, we continue to receive the support of the city through that commitment of demonstrating that great thank you Alison. Um, anything to add from your perspective in terms of Georgia and how you were able to convince, um convince folks at the university and state government that this was something that had to be done and was worth investing in. Yeah, I would underscore, I mean, and it definitely relates to what Christine has just shared the importance of data, right? Um, you know, and and results obviously, but you know, here, uh, in the university, university is full of academics. Almost every academic has been taught to respect some kind of rule of evidence. It’s different for scientists, perhaps than for those in humanities, but they’re always standards for rules of evidence. And so, being able to share the data really, uh, depersonalize is sometimes the problem. It allows people to really engage in a very objective way, um, in problem solving and in creative problem solving to produce um, some better uh, some better outcomes. And then really it’s it’s, you know, on some level it’s the scientific process, you know where you you have a problem, you you know, you assess, evaluate where you have a hypothesis, you assess and evaluate and then you make adjustments based on on on what you see um in order to get produced some better outcomes. And so that dynamic I think in a university environment works particularly well and then being able to share results with politicians and other stakeholders uh both in the university system environment but also with the Georgia. Legislature also works very well because there is accountability for the investment that they that they are making. And in terms of the initial sort of pilots that gave you that prove it, um model that you could use to build the data. Um Was that something that came from internal university resources? Um Did you have outside philanthropy or was there special funding to get it kicked off? Yeah, I mean much of this was uh, university resources at least to begin. Um There are some things that we can do for relatively low cost and you know, so for example, the success academy program when we started it, um, it really was just an enrollment model, right? Students had, um, they, there was no special scholarship students were able to um, enroll the way they always enrolled. But because our enrollments were so much um, smaller in the summer, you know, down buys a third to a half. Sometimes in the summer we have a lot of 12 month faculty, 12 month employees, not necessarily faculty, But 12 month employees who could support the program because they had extra capacity in the, in the summer. You know, since then we have sought um, some philanthropic gifts and we have some support, but still it’s a very low cost way to make adjustments. Um, and so we were able to do some of those things. And then when as we got as we, you know, made some momentum, for example, investing in academic advisors, for instance, that does cost, you know, cost money, but we were able to make the case for those resources because we were making progress great and Christine anything to add on that front. So I think that the expectation from the city was, as you have noted to, to demonstrate outcomes early in real time, because the year two year process of renewing the allocation really demanded that. So the first hire that our founding executive director made was a data and evaluation coordinator. That was just kind of a demonstration of really having dedicated staff to to that role of building our research and evaluation agenda was absolutely baked in from the beginning. And then it’s also reflected in the way in which our our models are staffed locally at our partner colleges where we have one staff who is fully dedicated to the rigorous monitoring of our program data and then are able to kind of synthesize and analyze that and share across the program to all of the program staff for their particular context setting. But we did privately fund for R. C. T. S. Um That was something that we of course we wanted to you know, kind of double down our evidence base and through investment of philanthropic funds have been able to kind of push that through. So we have private funding for our CTS, both for a sub historically and now for for our ace model. Right. Um So just a couple of quick questions. Maybe maybe these are both targeted to um to Alison. But one is um interesting finding about getting a C. Or lower an introductory course. And would that apply across most or all introductory courses? The illustrative courses seem remarkably diverse, music theory to chemistry. And then also another another note. And this is specifically for Alison. Um Question, do you want to talk about the panther retention grants at Georgia State University to help students stay in school who would drop out for financial reasons? And then maybe Christine you could follow that with some of the things that are happening in terms of tuition gap assistance and other financial support at CUny. Yeah. So talking real quickly about the introductory courses, those were just meant to be illustrative across a broad range. Um but we do find that there’s a lot of evidence for, you know, obviously if you don’t do well in that first course, if there’s not support or some kind of diagnosis for why you didn’t do well in the first course, it doesn’t take a rocket scientist, you know, to expect that the 2nd and 3rd course maybe more challenging. And so we actually monitor that very carefully. Um, you know, even where faculty have gone in, uh, sometimes and set, you know, where you have to have a C to take the next class, We’ve never gone back and actually evaluated with data about whether or not a seat would get it. And we found in our accounting classes, for instance, that, you know, a C in the first accounting class was not going to really set a student up for really great grades in the second accounting class. And so we were able to work with the faculty who are still completely in charge of the curriculum, but to use the data to make those adjustments, um, I would love to talk about the panther retention grant because certainly there is a financial component to student success. That is very important. And we were finding that we were dropping thousands of students for non payment and when we really looked at the data, the students that we were most likely to drop for nonpayment were seniors who had either run out of a door. We have a state sponsored scholarship That basically only pays for 127 of the 120 hours that you need to graduate. And so students attempted hours even so students would run out of money. And so using our panthers, something we call the panther retention grant, we were able to make small grants averaging less than $900 to these students who were most at risk and closest to graduation in order to keep them in school and moving forward in a way that they could graduate. And we’ve done all kinds of assessments, you know, on, on, on the panther retention grant program as well. And we have found that, that, that program really pays for itself many times over because you know, you had students who had invested a lot of money sometimes out of pocket, sometimes, you know, through state aid or federal aid, but they had a short, a small shortfall and they were being kicked out of school for the small shortfall. When we give them the money they stay in school, they have the small shortfall covered and Georgia state receives all the, you know, all the revenue in terms of tuition and fees for the student to, to stay and to stay in class. So it’s a win for everyone. It’s a creative way to really think about aid differently. And you know, that’s what I think part of this session is really about thinking about what we can do differently um to produce some better outcomes by providing the adequate supports. Oh, absolutely. Couldn’t have said it better. I think that, you know, understanding the the out of pocket um financial barriers of our students were in, you know, the cost of a textbook sometimes means, you know, the cost of a month’s groceries. I mean, these are very real challenges our students are facing and we wanted to eliminate all those financial barriers through comprehensive out of pocket supports. So we cover the textbooks, we cover the transportation out of pockets, which can be quite costly and in new york despite it being a public transport system. But the tuition and gap fee waiver, we ensure that our students have the support they need to first file their federal aid and their tuition assistance program, a message that Alison touched on in terms of just the navigational orientation of waiting through that process, you know, moving through verification, which in and of itself is a dysfunctional system with landmines of barriers that I mean even your most kind of, you know, seasoned adult, it’s very difficult to, to sometimes way through those. So just understanding the ways I want you to communicate the value of what students are essentially entitled to through federal and state aid, um, and then ensuring that any gap, even when they have to drop down to part time, even when they’re at the end of the road and their, their actual aid is dwindling. We make sure we cover that gap to get them over the finish line. Right, Well, we have, we’re just about at the end of our time. Um, I did want to just take a second to thank you both again for providing this incredible information. Um this is part of an ongoing process that we’re working on to try to really encourage organizations to start thinking in these ways of what’s possible uh and come up with that type of disruptive success formula that you both talked quite a bit about. I would just note that john Boudreaux put a very interesting and thought provoking article in the chat that perhaps we could take a look at um as we go forward and think of our work. Um so I’d encourage people to check that out before you log off and I’ll turn over a Luther just for some final uh for some final remarks and to close this out. But for my part, thank you so much for for being with us today. Thank you. This is great. So I would just say high expectations. What a breath of fresh air. Thanks so much to Alison and Christine. You’ve got my day off to great start and now that we are so inspired, we will continue on on or about february 25th with our next hub to design section sessions. So take a look for that. We’re gonna be starting with our interventions to various workforce challenges. And we’ll certainly use the inspiration we got today in these great ideas for moving forward. So thanks to both of you and thanks to everyone who participated was a great session. It really was. Thank you all.
? 2Mar2021: Future of Coming Together
Transcription:
Yeah. All right, everyone, I just want to remind you we’re recording this call. So, uh, you know, if you have any objection to be recorded being recorded, this would be a good time to drop off. And this is our very first the future of coming together. Ideation hub calls for those of you who are, you know, core team members are delighted to have you have you with us and you know, for those who are listening in or doing the fish ball, we’re delighted that you have an opportunity to participate real time or uh, listen to this later on. And you have my thanks, every one of you have my thanks for being interested in this topic. Future of coming together is a is an interpretation of the core spirit of what I created with jim abe live in the distributed process and practice. And so I want to uh invite Jamais to say a few words about how she feels about the distributed mission. We’re going to have time for all of us to introduce yourselves to each other, but Jamais is putting it right here to work right for the closing distributed conference. So Jamais, I want to share a few thoughts about what you think about the future of coming together and distributed. We’ve been hi everybody from santa fe new Mexico. I’m founder of innovative educate, which is national on profit and the coast Summit So close said was something that I’ve done for seven years, the 8th year Kevin and I came together to to develop distributed which is distributed, Ed E B. Really hoping to create a new environment for coming together. And that’s what you all are going to help us do with this working group, um, with distributed the conference that I’m running, I’ll just quickly highlight, We have 11 different hubs working. So we have all of this distributed work happening across the country around big things in the future work which distributes to work, distribute the knowledge allows people to join when they can. We really hoped to come together in May. Um It was going to end up there seven months with a final event. Um That’s not gonna happen this year. Just why distributed is good. Well we will have an event. It just will be online, it’s not going to be in person. All right. And One of the things that we co created are the 14 hubs that are meeting right now. This is one of them. Others have been meeting uh pretty regularly prior to this time on a variety of topics. All focused on primarily education and things that are related to practices, methods and ways to reinvent future of work. And uh you have some pretty great sponsors Jamais um you know, sitting behind uh all this, you’ve got Pearson, A T and T. Um, who else have you got lined up hate? 12 dot coms dried S. C. I C. What’s interesting is the outcomes that are going to happen from this because it’s distributed, you know, we’ve got one person paying as to run a national virtual internship thing as part of the, So we are going to be working with over 50 companies to her summer interns that all came out of this distributed model. So I mean as kevin and I dog through what happens with distributed, it really creates new lines of work, new new ways to think about things versus a three day conference where everybody’s just like give me your car, love it likes me, likes me to let you have it and then you leave them until so we we call this, flipping the conference just like flipping the classroom, right? And uh there are no one is in the audience, right? And the reason we say that no one is in the audience is that everyone has speaker on their badge, right? We’re creating content now and when we come together, uh everyone will be delivering the content that they have created inside their their ideation hub. So that’s exactly what’s going to happen here. We’re all on stage collectively in May, when the virtual close it distributed conference takes place. Uh so I’m gonna go around gonna call on on folks, if you could just uh you know, provide a brief ah who are you, what keeps you active and interested? You can do that, advocation or vocation your pick. And I want to hear, you know, what is the one thing that you like to do when, when you get a moment to yourself? Right, so I’m going to start with Kristen Little because Kristen is on our distributed advisory board and we’re delighted to have you with us, Kristen. Okay, well I’m delighted to be here, so thank you. Uh so let me see who am I? I’m Kristin Little. Um I am coming currently from my Tripoli Standards Association and I worked there as their public affairs um senior manager and I’m basically creating a bidirectional bridge between policymakers and technologies. So that’s been exciting um doing that globally and looking to start conversations on that front um and help understanding. I was also the people centred internets, Digital cooperation and diplomacy fellow, which was also quite interesting looking into how we can all talk together about um governance issues and the like. So that’s the first two. And then one thing I like to do and I’m not doing all of that is uh, oh, I would normally say photography, but this time I’m going to say, I am creating something akin to the little free library, but it’s called a little free art gallery and I’m hoping to create connection in my community by putting up this little thing that I’m building. It’s like a little art museum um that I designed and I’m building along with one of my sons and there will be little people, a little bench and three pieces of little art. And if you come and you want to take a piece, you’re welcome, just leave a piece. That’s me. I love it. Uh Well thank Shandra Story Stone for joining us because she completed the Hollywood squares. Look alright for zoom. Right. It’s fantastic. I love it. It is, it is important. Uh Next go to Kyle Shannon, uh Kyle’s joining us from Denver, Kyle from Sunny Denver, Hey everybody real pleasure to be with you. Good to see you all. Hey Todd. Good to see you sir. Um I uh I am the co founder and Ceo of a company called Story vine, which is a pro user generated video platform. Our mission is to democratize video storytelling. We’ve been around for almost nine years, it’ll be nine years in May. Kevin has been an advisor essentially from day one um and we’ve been meeting weekly for most of that time, so um first of all, thank you for your continued support there, but we spend a lot of time talking about um the value of video storytelling and one of the things storyline does well is asynchronous video so people can record content on their own time, it’s produced and it can be shared and viewed on other people’s time. So the whole thing of getting people connected for a zoom call I think storyline might offer another opportunity to do some time shifting in those conversations but still capture things powerfully. There’s also something about storyline is an interesting um It it captures qualitative content so stories but does it in a very data rich way. So when you’re capturing content and putting that in a database in a structured way there’s all sorts of possibilities of what you can do with that content. And so I think there’s potentially something there we can play with as well. So really excited to be a part of this. Oh and something I like to do in my spare time. Uh Similarly a photographer but in the that was in the before time. Uh You could go out. I I am a curious person so I tend to spend a lot of my spare time like learning new things. My my most recent is I’ve been learning about N. F. T. S. Non fungible tokens which are basically think of like digital trading cards. So I’ve actually turned a couple of my photographs into these N. F. T. S. Which are tangible sellable things. So it might be a way for digital artists to be able to get their work out there in a way that it can be traded and you know treated as a collectible. So I’m kind of curious about that kind of stuff lately. That’s great, Kyle. Thanks for for being with us. I’m just going to tell you for those of you who know me um when I spend downtime I uh I’m a chef right I got a chance to train in a fine dining restaurant, I love to cook. I just uh turned out the new york times Tardif let recipe that was you know in the uh over the weekend and I’ll tell you it’s really fattening alright, but it was great, it was really good. All right, so I I recommend it josie and it’s good to see you, you’re joining us from san Francisco today or some other place on the planet. I’m actually very limited in my traveling like everybody else. So I’m in san Francisco. Okay, you haven’t traveled much either, so I’m josie anne Marie and I’ve known kevin for a very long time, even though I haven’t been very present with these all these efforts recently in the past couple of years, I’m the co founder of a company called World meetings plus where a boutique meeting complaint company based out of san Francisco and and of course things have changed tremendously in the past couple of years for us moving everything to virtual essentially and not traveling. So what I focused on mainly now with the company have been super lucky um we have as a company been very very lucky because we’ve been able to stay extremely busy even though the the business has changed so much, we have moved everything to virtual events and I’ve been able to learn a tremendous amount about the different platforms available in how to keep your attendees interested in how to still deliver the best possible experiences. So I personally, so the company is still doing well and I personally focus on our main main client which is IBM and I still and I want pretty much exclusively for them now we have just so much going on because I focused on IBM research out of out of Yorktown, so especially the quantum division, so Quantum Kiss get the software, the hardware and the software part of it. So we’ve done a tremendous amount and especially since we’ve been virtual, tremendous amount of hackathons and and all sorts of client open houses and things like this. So really, really focusing on the of course on the virtual experience and how to make this as as as well as many networking opportunity as possible, as much education, we do a lot of educational events. So that’s been my focus the past two years. So skipping me super, super busy even though very stable here in uh in the san Francisco area, what I tell you something, the only reason that I could run 17 membership organizations at IBM advisory boards and councils is because between my office and world meetings plus especially Josiane, it was like a two cycle engine. All right. She took away all of the logistic problems so I could focus on content. Alright, so thank you, Josiane, you’re most welcome. And that’s still what we do. That’s still what we really focus on. Really, really trying to do all the behind the scenes so that our clients and and speakers and attendees only have to worry about everything that has to happen perfectly as perfectly as possible virtually. So there’s enough challenges there were trying to take all that backstage thing away from them. So still very good at that. Still doing really well. So I’m very happy about this. Lots of really good stories about what we’ve done lately, so very happy about that too. And what I do when I’m not working is nothing that requires my brain to work because I find those virtual events to be super demanding and actually harder than what we do face to face. You can you cannot just walk down the hall and go to the conference room and change something backstage with the JV team. So it’s I’m finding it so demanding that I actually love to be outside as much as I can when I have a few minutes. And I’m lucky because I’m not in san Francisco proper, I’m in a little town called Brisbane by san Bruno mountain and I actually can safely by to the bait to the to the gray, I can hike up that little mountain so I can have all the outdoor experience I want. So I’m doing really great visit when they take the restrictions. Yeah it’s a cool little space I can tell it’s a little gym. Yeah you and Irene had to have good good lifestyle. So next um inviting Todd Hoskins to introduce himself. Todd’s great to have you with us. Yes and it’s fun to see Kyle and Kristen and Sandra and I think I have heard stories or at least kevin mentioned the name of everyone else here. So uh pleasure to meet you the rest of you. My name’s Todd Hoskins, I’m In southwestern Michigan, about two hours north east of Chicago. Those are the sand dunes of southwest michigan behind me, the lake is right behind my head. Um and I started a firm called canopy gap. 12 years ago we do work in the field of organizational design. So how do you work together more effectively and relate more effectively? What keeps me interested in that field is dynamics, team dynamics. So the relationship between structures and how the structures change and then how do you have an energized team moving in the same direction and outside of working? Um I too, like Josiane can even in the winter spend at least an hour outside every day in the warmer months, 2-3 hours. I’ll often take phone calls or even some video calls outside. It’s good for my soul and when I’m inside uh try to every day uh tango dance. My wife and I are are intermediate level tango dancers. So we, we’ve got to dance just by ourselves with no meat Malinga’s. Uh for the last year, we’ve actually gotten better in the last year not being around other tango dancers. Yeah, wow, that’s that’s great. The and Todd is a member of our sense mapping practice to, he’s he’s he’s a valuable contributor there and because of his organization, design skills Gives us a good starting point for understanding the organization 1st, before we externalize their capabilities into the world. Great to have you with us brian Setzer. Um Hello sir, you’re nearby, but you’re you are all over the world to tell us what is going on in your world. Yeah. Good to be with everyone. So, um, Prior to COVID, I had spent a career in K-12 and higher ed with the intersection of innovation and technology being a big focal point. So from 2000 and 7 to 2011 led the north Carolina virtual public school. What that meant is a pretty large platform nationwide for helping students and teachers and leaders with how to go virtual or how to go blended. So even before Covid had all of the challenges that presented Folks with many scenarios from March 1st Forward, I founded a group called Setzer Group in January to start working at the intersection of future of learning and future of work. So you can imagine when March one hit and everybody needs strategies to do both of those things. Well, Things got really intense for us. And so we had a really interesting 2020 around providing advisory services for people who were trying to reimagine their business model, their academic models through the lens of blended hybrid virtual services products, uh, new models, they were just stating or in some point reopening or re imagining what they could be. So what’s happened recently is that all of our consulting services, all of our design services, all of our building services are now being pushed upon for what happens when we come back. And what does that version look like? And how much of it do we keep from what we learned during covid? How much of it do we transition and what should we never go back to? So this whole next normal conversation is really tied into all of what you all shared because I think we care about, you know, the human experience through all of that. So when I think about what I’ve seen over the last year, Some of it feels like 2007 all over again. And then what I mean by that statement is for me that was my introduction to working virtually and I’ve never been back And so I find myself talking to a lot of people who are in the 70% Who kind of experiencing all this for the first time, there’s that 20% who’s kind of incrementally trying new things And then there’s the 10% of the Mavericks like on this call that I would prefer to work with. So uh that’s kind of where I find myself these days as far as spending time, man, it’s been a while, I’ve got four kids and my two kids on soccer weekends. That’s a lot of fun because I lose myself in that. But if I could do anything for personal time, it would probably be golf only because I’m not great at it. But boy, do I not think about anything else while I’m doing it? So, it’s one of the rare times with my older son that I’m really relaxed. So how’s that going? It works. I have to do the same thing when I’m skiing. I’m I’m an avid downhill skier. If you think about anything else other than skiing. All right, you’re gonna hurt yourself. Right. So, I get you. I like it. Um And you know what a great economy for your for sensor group to emerge into, Right? Because you know the need for who you are and has been really great chandra store Wriston. Glad to have you with us. Um, Please introduce yourself. Thank you kevin, glad to be here. Great to meet everyone. I haven’t had the pleasure of meeting yet and hello to everyone that I have which is most of you. um so Ii co founded visible value in back in 2003 which Heaven renamed and Jim Qala, who I’m sure many of you know rebranded in 2014. Um I serve as as a Ceo and chief value creation officer and we really focus on helping organizations really foster sustainable value creation strategies so they can capitalize on pivotal opportunities during growth and transitions and transformations like many of our clients are now, so we’ve stayed very busy helping them evolve their business models, organizational structures, client employee experience as well as their goals. Um and I’ve known Kevin since 2010 and I also work together with him in platform U. X, which kevin etc. Ceo of um in platform UX we really hope clients focus on what they do exceptionally well and then making it available for others in a technology enabled platforms. So really exciting. Um and a great time to be doing that um when I’m not working um like kevin, I spent a lot of time cooking um also painting and photography and my husband and I are trying to both get better at golf and now the weather is broken, I think we’ll spend a lot more time at that. Um We’re also trying to explore dancing, unlike Todd and his wife, we are nowhere near getting the tangling but we’re starting with the baby stuff so maybe we can have a conversation about tango next year. All right, fantastic. And Tiffany Delgado delighted to have you with us, please say hello hi there. I apologize. I’m in my car. I am coming back from philadelphia so hopefully I have a good enough connection. We all can hear me. Um I actually started my career in workforce development and then through work um with innovate educate and kind of transferring over to the world of nonprofits. Um I was really exposed to the world of um employment and education technologies. Um And so that’s really where um where I step in for a little piece of this um is you know, graphic design, a little bit of UI UX. Um And I’m honestly here to learn whatever I can from all of you. Um Really taking that from in person uh to virtual or hybrid models. Um I am a lifelong learner um who honestly spends their free time learning jimmy can definitely attest to that um in any way, shape or form. I like to get my hands on it and learn as much as I can. So thank you very much for having me. We’re delighted to have you with us. Please be safe. Oh, that was a high risk introduction from my point of view. Uh, Jamais, um, tell us what you like to do in your downtime as we come into the home stretch. Well, yoga’s my life. Um, and I took up golf last year and I’m addicted. So my goal this summer is to shoot below 100. Um, I really love golf and my husband is a big golfer. So now that our kids are grown, we have one left going to be a senior in high school. I’m just really integral. Okay, fantastic. And we have an observer Kyle Albert and we’re delighted to have you with us, Kyle. Hello? Um, yeah, just observing today because I drop in between meetings. Um But yesterday I just myself I’m Yeah, as I as I said in the in the note Kyle, uh if you if you find the discussion interesting uh and want to join this group, you, you know, just write to me afterwards. Alright. But we’re delighted to have you looking into the fish bowl. Yeah, Kyle is with G dub Kyle. Help me Jor G W George Washington. Yes. Yeah. And we yeah, and I think you’ll be a great addition if this seems interesting. So good to see you. Yeah, we’re glad to have you with us. Yeah. Thank you. All right, So we we have uh we have all the puzzle. People put pieces on the table, right? Um As you can tell, this is from a professional point of view, a pretty diverse group that has has come together to understand, you know, the future of people interacting and coming together in the future. Unpack just a couple of things that we’ve kind of set the table, which is from a human interaction point of view, you know, jimmy and I agree that conferences, events meetings and trade shows can be on a spectrum of other, either completely in person the way that we’ve seen them or completely online. We don’t like the word virtual, we prefer distributed because virtual puts the technology first. We’re trying to put people first. Right? So that’s a core principle of, you know, of coming together from our point of view, is use the technology as enabler. Don’t make the technology the star the next is that they’re in between. We don’t see this happening right now, but we think it’s possible that groups of people could come together in groups of 10-20, uh in a city or within driving distance of each other And that the conference ballroom that used to have 2000 people could be cohorts of 20 people In 50 different locations and that they would be connected by technology. You’d have some of the intimacy of face to face. Um and perhaps the advantage of the people are coming together are people that you could continue to know because they’re in your region as opposed to there from all over the world. But yet you get the global connectivity of being able to do this, the hotels and meeting facilities that are suffering right now because they don’t have that catering and ballroom rental revenue ah could benefit from writing contracts, master contracts from their headquarters, you know the Sheraton’s the Marriotts, the you know a fair amount, you know, whoever that they would be able to Right one contract and put all those 50 facilities together for someone and get some, you know, catering revenue and some other things going. So we see that in the future it’s not happening yet and what we want to do is tap into your thinking um for instance what Kyle’s doing is how do we, you know, not only unpackaged from a physical point of view, but change it from a temporal point of view, that maybe it isn’t all happening at the same time, right? That there is an asynchronous nature to collaboration. You know, I’m not new to doing this one, having worked for IBM um we were doing this kind of stuff, I don’t know, 25 years ago, almost 30 years ago we were online, we were doing, you know, a lot of meeting uh and meeting with people in different time zones and work would move from one time zone to the next. And there would be handoff some protocols we were coding around the world um 30 years ago. Right. So, you know that that that part isn’t new I think is bringing it into the meeting and and coming together world is new. So that’s what we want to talk about. I want to kick that off. We want. There are no bad ideas. All right. We’re in the divergent thinking, modality right now. We’ll come together with some recommendations that we want to make as we get towards the but let’s just stay in in a completely open frame of mind right now. And let’s have a discussion for the next half hour that starts to get some of the big ideas that you may have been considering out on the table. So, brian, I see you nodding. So that nod says I’m going to call on you first. Okay. So um one of the things that I’m seeing is the identification uh selection and engagement prior to events like this are prior to experiences like this. And when people ask me to join them be a part of something, the keywords are flexibility, you know, nudging and reminding, making it frictionless because I’ve been involved in some that are certainly not. And I’ve been involved in some some that are kind of mixed bag and some that are just right? So the first thing I’ve been thinking about from a brainstorming is when you put this on before and you’ve had opportunities before on that whole pre experienced process, what what do we need to get right and make sure that people want to come, they’re excited to come that it’s as frictionless as possible. And they have as many options to participate as we can provide. But also not so many options that we can’t monitor or support. So it’s an interesting challenge. Right? But I want to call that out and then while they’re at the experience these are people who during covid or managing kids at home work commitments trying to figure out how to join. So one experience that I had years ago I think was Ed modo and modo. Con ed moto was LMS platform and they would do their P. D. Through Ed Moto Khan for two or three days and basically they were opened ended. You could join opt out, return easy, easily, get a recording. You know, it was all of that right now. Having said that people don’t listen to full our recordings, they tend to listen to short bite sized pieces of content that can be dosed if I missed it right? Like maybe something that’s like a loom L. 00 M. Or something that they can very quickly go to a Youtube channel and quickly get caught up if they want to know more with that person, but it’s not the full hour, it’s like three or four minutes. I think that in that in session experience has the same goldilocks challenges like what do we all think that has worked and what do we all not want to repeat? And then finally when we go to post, how does that whole experience become an ongoing, organic sort of um living knowledge capture that if I want to return on slack, if I want to stay in touch with these people on M. S. Teams or I want to have some sort of community, how does that happen? So I’m just kicking off questions right now. I got lots of thoughts and I’m sure others do on those three buckets of pre experience, inexperience and post. But I think we should talk about all three if that makes sense, could not agree more. And I want to say that close it distributed has created with Tiffany Delgado’s help and some intentionality on my part and J Mays, we use the participate social media platform, which is a white label for us so that there is a community for the conference, right? And that they will be able to persistently, you know, stay in touch with each other between times of activity. Yes brian last thing on that we recently had a client, the north Carolina Retired Government Association. Everybody on the Client side was 75 plus. So one of the, one of the areas they identified was moving into technology and if that sounds like it was dawning, it is, but there was a key lesson in there in other states who had their organization, The most popular place they congregated was facebook and you wouldn’t have said that maybe five or six years ago. But what happened was that was the, that was the platform. They knew because their grandkids were on it. They had sort of grown up in the last five years using it more for good and bad reasons, but they knew how to use it, right? So their experience was good. I think that’s a key in this is drawing and leveraging platforms that we think universally will attract our audience in the easiest friction ist way and I’m not saying it’s facebook, it could be several, but let’s think about that as we move on. Okay. I like it, brian kristen little um, what were you thinking about prior to us coming together today? No you need to come off you one day. I will get that right. Uh huh. So a part of what I’m doing with the Tripoli is looking at how we can participate in various different conferences and designing sessions for our experts to be able to talk about issues. So I’ve been thinking about a lot of ways that generate interest in the moment, I guess that’s where my focus has been because I find it just uh really awful how so many sessions are run and it’s just someone talking and actually reading what they came to say, which just makes me want to shoot myself. So I’ve been looking at different things like uh the chain reaction panel where you know, one person uh interviews the first person who then interviews the next person who then interviews the next one on a panel or an Oxford style debate or a circle Square event. I don’t know if you guys have heard about that, There’s someone who did that is kind of famous thing, but that’s in person but and adapting it to be virtual. Um But now that you’ve mentioned more about about what we’ll be talking about, um I feel like that needs to open up to something that’s less focused on the moment of when people deliver and more on the sort of broader structure and maybe I didn’t understand that, but I I was really um excited by what you were saying, brian, um I’ve seen a lot of uh flexibility in the types of sessions that are being offered. The I G. F. Is talking, I’ve been in there mag discussions on how to make things more accessible in many different ways. Um And also I think Rights Con is doing kind of an interesting approach to having you go in and you can see many different options and it tells you like for instance, I think Rights khan is one of the more straightforward um shows you the different options for how to join and how to present one is the typical panel, one is kind of a knowledge cafe idea, others are pre recorded, you can just google writes con, it’s a pretty good example um but uh I don’t know, I really liked your idea of staying in touch after the fact as well, something that just automatically puts you into a group. I’ve had this experience, it was now long ago actually we were automatically put into a facebook group I think, and to this day I think there are still people talking in that group and I have to say that was probably around 2011. Um, so I don’t know, I’m really interested in exploring that aspect of things, so I’m sure there’s more, but I was kind of, I’ll add as we go along, that’s great. Well, that’s what we want. That’s exactly what we want. I’ll just say, um, I’m gonna call on Kyle in a second, is that I just was invited to join clubhouse, which is this new online, uh, voice community, you know, where it’s more like radio, right? Where you can, you know, drop into conversations and, you know, the randomness of that and that people invite. Yeah, you ought to join. This conversation is kind of interesting. It’s, it’s difficult for me to understand how that wouldn’t become just a really bad time suck on my calendar, right? Because all right. But I think that, you know, if you had the, if you set aside the time with the people that you want to talk to or or whatever as opposed to just grazing in there. Um It’ll be it’ll be interesting, but it’s a new experience. It certainly is an interesting experiment that they’re involved in and Kyle. Um What are you thinking about this? And it sounds like you had some thoughts about, you know, clubhouse too? Yeah, there’s so there’s a couple of areas for me that, you know, over the past year, you know, are painfully missing. Um One of them is a sense of scale. How do you how do you create scale for an online event? Because, you know, C. E. S just happened and if you’ve ever been to see es in person, it is a massively overwhelming experience. And, you know, just getting to the venue or venues, right? It is an ordeal, right? And you’re meeting people and bumping into people, and then, you know, you walk into the Sony booth and the Sony booth itself is bigger than most conventions you’ve ever been to write. And then online it’s like click here to see Sony products, like, it’s just a hyperlink, right? Like, so how do you like? So, so one thing is sense of scale. Um, the second thing that, that I find is, I feel there’s a major misstep in a lot of online events. Um, you didn’t fall into the trap kevin because you’re good at this stuff. Um, a lot of times, it’s like, okay, here’s the panel, let’s start talking who are a panel, I don’t know who’s in the audience, I don’t like, you know what I mean? Like that, that when you’re at a real event, you have the cocktail party or you even have the 10 minutes while the ted cruz getting their shit together while you’re mingling with people and meeting the people around you, you go, okay, these are my people or these are not my people, you know, who does the best pre party in the world is Jamaica. Yeah, Oh yeah, she does a great pre conference party and you know, all the speakers are there. Yeah, I did it last year, it’s great. Alright, so yeah, they’re big value in that. Yeah, so what’s the digital equivalent of that? And I also, the, the idea of this hybrid sort of micro events that are connected with technology, I find really interesting, but but that idea of designing in time to learn who you’re with and who you’re hearing from feels important. And then the third thing that has really come to mind lately is it was to a great degree for me answered with clubhouse And so clubhouse, you can go into these rooms and you know, Elon musk decently famously went into one of these rooms, you know, a while ago and they had 9000 people in it. And so some of the rooms are super high profile and the concept is, you have a handful of people on stage and sometimes they’re moderated, Sometimes they’re not, there’s varying degrees of, you know, skill at that piece and then there’s an audience watching, right? The rooms that I find the most valuable. And the most interesting are the rooms with 20 people in them where I don’t know anyone in there, but there’s kind of a topic everyone in here is coming in to talk about how awesome golf is or whatever it is. It almost literally doesn’t matter because clubhouse for me is the first thing since we’ve been in Lockdown that represent that is equivalent to meeting the guy at the airport bar while you’re waiting for your flight. That was this magical conversation. And so that idea of scale also in terms of groups, right? You’ve got maybe a large group if you’ve got someone very visible speaking, but really designing those smaller breakout groups. And I think brian to your point kind of pre during and post session feels like, you know, there’s sort of levels of scale and levels of design interaction that can have, that should happen much more intentionally throughout that those three phases. I mean, one of the things that we know is, yeah, that some, I mean, we see some efforts at trying to get better at this, but it’s the that secondary benefit of meeting somebody that you didn’t know before you went to the conference, that it’s really hard to do that on zoom. Right. And so the the idea of using some of the technology that you would find in dating apps for connecting people, right? In a purposeful way, who have common interests because they decided to opt into this particular conference topic or whatever, um who needs to know each other as some of the stuff that we’ve looked at is very rudimentary, right? It’s just topic matching and it doesn’t get to the the the opposites attract that the people that really need to know each other, you know, are heterogeneous in terms of their their interests, but that they really do need to know each other because of, you know, together. All right, it’s like a mastermind group, you know, I put together a whole new cohort of people that I needed to know and that’s missing right now. We we don’t have a good way to do that. Even the groups where they’ve they’ve tried to do that where they’ll use zoom breakout rooms, like, you know, we’ve done this big thing now you go in the breakout rooms, like, Like I feel like the fact that they found breakout rooms is where they’re thinking stopped and I’ll get I’ll get dropped into a room and there’s no in there and I sit there for 10 minutes going, uh I guess I am a loser or I’ll get drunk, there’s no topic for it and it’s just an awkward son. Uh exactly, like, like yeah, how do you design that piece? Like, like, I feel like everything needs to be hyper intentional in this, in this virtual world because I think I need to know something, you know more like the dating apps that tell me something about, okay, this is kind of, this is the kind of person, it is, this is the, you know, this is the kind of relationship that I want to have and that would, you know, we need to go find out if we can borrow a cup of sugar right from, you know, that tech, you’re nodding your head todd. What do you think? Oh, I have so much to say, and I’m not gonna say anything, I’m not gonna say anything about clubhouse. If anyone wants a bearish perspective on clubhouse, reach out to me because I think it’s doomed to fail. Um, I think it probably will to uh, we would probably agree on a lot of that, but it’s going to be an interesting moment in time, right? You know what the house it is, but let’s not, I’ll get you an invitation jamais, I wanted to hate it more than I did go ahead Todd. Um so if we take the flipped conference, going back to that idea, and the old model of the conference is about a, there’s an assumption that it’s highly produced and professional and so part of the flipping is to make it highly intimate and interactive, not with the technology but with people. And I think that the missing piece of that, which you are just getting too in the conversation is facilitation. Like what would be ideal is when you go into all those breakout rooms, you have people who just have some at least light training in how to facilitate the conversation that moves things forward that connects people that understand just how that works. I think that’s key. Um and I also part of facilitation is there’s some guiding of experience without telling people what their experience is going to be. And so even if you think about the cocktail party or the or the cocktail hour at a conference, part of the guiding of the cocktail hour is that you have a bar that you walk up to and get drinks, you wait in line, you have a conversation there, then you have round tables, you go stand by a round table. That’s part of the guiding is that their structure to that. And so being able to, I think the scale happens when you can actually give intimate experiences to people and I totally on the same page kevin with there needs to be some similarity and dissimilarity and I think there’s a lot of room for how that can be worked out. Um and One of the experiences that I had that changed my perspective on possibility was the first U lab course through mit in 2015. Um so auto charmer Um had 30,000 people sign up for the mook And they managed to break into this was before the days of Zoom and breakout groups, they managed to break 30,000 people into hubs of five, Their geographical hubs. And then they had you had a work group of five people and that those experiences were guided enough not with facilitation, but with there was a task that the group needed to go through. Um and it was, it was incredibly effective both in the plenary sessions and then the asynchronous stuff. You had other videos, you watched, you had other conversations you were part of and then having those core groups that grounded everything. I’m not saying that’s the thing. But it it shows me that there’s there’s great possibility there. That’s great. I mean I uh you know that you know, the potential to recreate the social media trap of confirmation bias, right? Is so uh, you know, the diverse and innovation is based on diverse interaction, right? Not bringing the same people together all the time who have the same mindset. So we need to be able to mix it up, Josiane, what are you experiencing in doing this work? It seems like you’re deep in it right now. What what, what would you like to share as they have so many things got triggered by everything that’s been said so far. We haven’t seen this all over the place, but this, yeah, there’s so much, it is very um, we’ve used different tools and we tried to customize them as much as we can also, but creating all these were super important, very key elements, creating the interests before making sure that people actually do have a chance to network and know who else is there and get new ideas. So we’ve done things like, for example, with the hack a thons, we always incorporate a team building elements where everybody actually introduces themselves and then they can invite themselves through the platform and and community and get and build teams before we even start the work. Because then as a team, they will start working on a project. So we’ve tried to do this another event. It works really well with the capitals of course, because they saw goal oriented, they will just say, okay, these are, we just slays, people have a chance to enter the kind of project they want to work on. Everybody else sees that and say, oh, that project actually I’m interested in, we maximize maximum six people. So the first six who are interested to that project can join that team and then that team has their own platform, their own sub area of breakout room kind of where they can work and communicate and everything before they share it back to the whole group. So it’s almost, they advertise, okay, this is what I want to talk about and then people grab onto it and say that I’m interested to, can I join your team? And so that’s one thing that we’ve done and and it works quite well what we do when we do break out. So we do also events where yes, you have a chance to see all these rooms and have experienced with cal was talking about you get to a room and there’s nobody else in your thinking well I must really not be interesting because nobody else is going or did I pick the wrong room? Once again it’s empty. What we do when we do that is we try to at least have two of our speakers in these rooms at designated times. To the only open when we can have two people and we try but it’s super hard to keep it going but we try to have them at least have a condo station so that when people come there is at least something going on and two people are already there. We’ve also tried where at any time when we build and we have for example, five breakouts of five areas where people lounges where people could go and try and talk. We was trying to do it where one of them was activity oriented, like it would be a wine tasting class or a cocktail making class because there’s always somebody going to these and that’s the best way to attract people and get them to interact. And we always have it where there’s enough, it’s not too many so that they can all be on the screen if they want to be shown practicing the recipe or the or the drink that they’re mixing. So we’ve tried that and that definitely gets people to know, like, like a pre cocktail, you know, pre event cocktail. They actually get to know each other better and get to know people they don’t know, we used the tool ones that was doing random matchmaking and and they’re trying to now see okay what kind of, what kind of um factor can we actually build this on? So it’s actually more useful because you could get to meet anybody the way they’re doing it is completely random now, but that’s that’s as you say, that’s really hard because then they might much always with the same kind of people who have the same interests and it is Good to know people who don’t have the same interests at all. That’s because that’s how you get new fresh ideas, but right now they’re doing it where it’s completely random, but you only have a minute and a half, you have 90 seconds to be with each of them. You can change that if you want, but it’s super short. So it’s definitely like the speed dating thing, so you don’t really waste too much time if it’s someone that you see right over where you’re really not interested in. But it’s but it’s it was an interesting way that because we are trying to engage that way also um super important to have people stay in touch and not just hard the meeting and then leave. We’re using slack. So we use like a lot and we create a slack channel every time for that particular community for each of each of our events. And sometimes we even create one for the breakdown. So I mean I really like flag, but it’s kind of also pretty difficult because it can get into a situation where you feel like you have all these conversations going at once, it can get pretty overwhelming. But it is something that we create every time for each event and we try to also holds them on platform where they can do the UN demand and go back to see exactly the way it was recorded for your So usually we try to do and then if, depending on the event, if it can be relevant then and we update the content throughout the year. So once a month or something we actually reach out and say, hey do you remember when we did this open house, we know this huge announcement, go back, see this session again. That will give you where we were at a month ago and now listen to this new piece that we’ve put in the resource list and they can have access to that. So that’s uh it’s it’s interesting. That’s I mean there’s definitely that’s why you’ve got several of these set. I think there’s so much to talk about. Well there’s going to be able to talk about and we’re coming up to the top of the hour. So what I want to do, not everyone had an opportunity to express themselves. You’ll get that opportunity. All right, when we have a full hour uh on on the next call, the I want to give you some things to think about. All right. Um you know, since this is uh for an education conference, also it’s homework. Okay. Um your homework is the following, right? If you know me, um, you know, in the spirit of what brian was doing, you know, in his first comments is I want you to think about a list of words that you want associated with the future of coming together, right? So, um, you know, give me, You know, a, you know, your top 10 list of, you know, the key words that you would like to see that are going to drive the future of coming together. And I will also send you a value value proposition template for those of you who are not familiar. Um, you know, the core of of a business model canvas is the value proposition or why this is going to be important. And so we’re going to treat this as if it were a a new opportunity for each of you in the context of your practices or your businesses or you know, what you need for for your constituencies and, you know, so you’re gonna it’s kind of um a fill in the blank. All right. Um view. It’s very simple. So I’ll send that around and then we’re going to share that with each other and continue in the divergent thinking mode uh for another call. And then we’re going to have some calls where we’ll start to categorize, pull it together and make some recommendations. And then there will be a final call for those of you who opt in. There will be 1/5 call that, um, you know, well, before the people who choose to present at the closing conference, all of your names are going to be associated with it. But, you know, the I I don’t think that we’re all going to be um, you know, presenting simultaneously. Uh you make anything that you’d like to say before we, um, really. But I thoroughly enjoyed this conversation. It’s so exciting it as we have such experts thinking about this and thank you, kevin for leading the habits. You bet. It’s what I do. All right, So all the best and we will talk to you in just a couple of weeks. You take care. Thank you. Bye. Okay.
16Mar2021: Hub#10
The Future of Coming Together
18Mar2021: Hub#2
Career Mobility Design Session
? 22Mar2021: Unreal Futures: Fireside Chat with Epic Games
Transcription:
Okay, hello, closer community and friends interested in this chat this afternoon, March 22. And super excited to have some really awesome experts in the field of E learning and um three D. Interactive, three D. And the future of skills you know with with close It. Um Epic Games was an early um partner for closed at this year because um I was just astonished to see the the huge number of jobs requiring skills Rudy interactive technologies and I’ve learned a lot from linda and the Epic team steve and and in Gerald Your work. So this chat tonight this afternoon is with three people that are part of a competition that we launched as part of Close It, Which is an Earth Day competition. Thanks for everybody being here with us. We really wanted to go ahead and I have this chat because there’s still you know, time for young people ages 13-25 all across the country to participate in this competition to learn to earn money and get skills for the future of advertising careers. Um So I’m gonna just start by welcoming everyone that is here with us and welcoming the three people that are here to talk with us um today. So let’s start with you Gerald and I think just introduce yourself your affiliation and kind of what your role is with this and real teachers competition in in in collaboration with the closest. Um Great, thank you Jim A and greetings everyone. My name is Gerald Solomon. I’m the founder and executive director of Nasa, the North America scholastic Sports Federation. And we really connect learning and play and develop pipelines through fun in play for workforce development. And our work is to work with our clubs, our affiliates both in middle school high school in college to give them the opportunity to learn about Unreal Engine, through the in real ventures program and class and then to go ahead and experience what it’s like to be able to create a P. S. A. For Earth Day, There is nothing better than to enjoy learning. And if you can enjoy learning then all the better. It opens up lots of doors and that’s what we’ll talk about in a few minutes. Thanks Gerald Sterling, I was really thrilled to get to know, tell you a little better after last year’s close it and really love how many learners you all are able to reach and and health these learners to explore um career skills, higher education opportunities etcetera. So tell me a little bit about the Hello and what your role is for this Earth day competition. Yeah, sure. Thank you. Today, I’m sterling Holbrook, I’m the director of strategic initiatives at Tallow. Tallow is essentially, we’re an online platform and an app that connects talent with opportunities. So it’s a free resource for students. We have around 1.5 million users that are on Tallow right now. And we’re essentially the meeting place in the middle. So we work with colleges, companies and organizations from all over the country and we’re just that meeting place in the middle where we’re able to bring opportunities like this incredible opportunity we’re talking about tonight straight to you. Um So Tallow is the official platform for receiving all of the applications for the Earth Day competition. And a little bit later tonight I will walk you through um what you need to do in order to get your projects submitted so that it can get over to the judges. We’ve got a lot of money on the line for this competition’s. We want to make sure that you know exactly where to go in order to submit your project. So looking forward to the conversation tonight and welcome everybody. Thanks sterling and steve steve’s with Epic Games and Unreal Futures, which is kind of a learning side of the house of efforts. So um introduce yourself and tell us about what you’re up to. Sure. So my name is Steve Isaacs. I um actually I was a teacher for 28 years and just um took a full time position as education program manager at epic games. Um and I’m very invested as epic is in, you know, the educational opportunities for students and especially, you know, creating tomorrow’s creators. Um so the Unreal Futures project, which is something we just launched um really takes a good look at how Unreal Engine and interactive three D and Real time technology is being used across many industries. Our first example being advertising. Um We have a number of these other programs coming out um for areas like aerospace and fashion and such, but this particular um the first one is, you know, it’s about a three hour free online course that kids and adults and everybody can take in order to learn a little bit about the advertising field from industry professionals and also get an opportunity to create or recreate an oreo advertisement using Unreal Engine. Um to prepare them with the skills they need to participate in the advertisement competition for Earth Day awesome. Um So, you know, steve tell us a little bit about The future jobs using three D. Interactive. I mean, I know there’s there’s you know, great research that we publish and and our will include that again for the community, but but its jobs across every single industry, right. Absolutely. You know, kind of tell me what what the big plan is. You all roll this out. So, you know, one of our goals is to prepare students with the skills they’ll need for the jobs that, you know, oftentimes aren’t even invented yet, but many that are emerging right now. Um, and they do cross many fields. So Real Time Technology and Interactive three D. Is being used widely in the film industry, in aerospace, automotive games of course. And uh, gosh, so many, I mean it’s really across all verticals. And just about every industry you can imagine is finding ways to incorporate Interactive three D. Or already has been, is now finding ways to become much more efficient through the use. And, you know, our feeling is getting kids, you know, up to speed on using industry standard tools and building their portfolio is the best way to prepare them. You know, for these jobs. once they get out of school. That’s awesome. And so Gerald with Mesa, you you all are working grilling with clubs and teens across the globe. Right. Um kind of talk about the work nice that’s doing how you’re expanding that. Um you know, thinking about the workforce and the skills and the importance of those as early as middle school. Sure. So you know, we all know that students learn best through immersive experiential learning or what educators call PBL or project based learning. Um What we do at Nasaf is we engage in project based learning through gaming and esports all in the virtual world. Which is as we know in Covid post, Covid and we even knew before that that the virtual world and the virtual reality in what unreal is all about is really the future. Not only of jobs and job opportunities where technology is going in so many different facets. So part of what we do and why were involved in all of this is we have thousands and thousands of clubs all over the world and we provide curriculum around stem and steam education to really give kids an opportunity to expose themselves to careers that they otherwise would never think of. So when you go and you’re going to create this P. S. A. You’re gonna see an opportunity to get engaged in and learn a little bit about advertising. But there’s an entire world besides that that uses three D. Animation, whether it’s around production design, whether it’s around invent management, whether it’s around the fandom art piece or a myriad of other types of things. That’s part of what we do it in a cf is we allow kids to play just like you’ll do here because really creativity is play whether it’s through gaming or esports or whether it’s through robotics or whether it’s through maker or Tinker or Hackathon and the like, it’s all that hands on immersive learning and this will be the opportunity to be exposed to that and that’s part of what we’re trying to do is take kids, especially those that, you know, are really not that engaged, but a really creative and are looking for something to do and a pathway for themselves and this is a great way to do it. So it’s a real pleasure and honor to be working with Epic with innovate, to educate, close it in Tallow in order to bring this out to students all over the country. Yes, so I mean it’s really awareness. Um, I think because I, you know, as much as I believe that I’m, I’m really keen on the future of working these skills, I did not know all of this. So steve when you all are trying to educate the classroom, you were one of those educators. Do you do you find that, you know, the educators have time to integrate this or, you know, is just another uh, you know, big hurdle for an educator. How do you, how do you both you and Gerald feel like you get a response from the education field when it comes to bringing these new tools and in the future of work into this class? Well, that’s that’s an excellent question. And a lot of what we’re at least on our education team are looking at is trying to help both educators and students on board um, you know, onto using these tools. But one of the really neat things about a project like Unreal Futures is it’s essentially a self paced um of course that has videos and then has an actual host walking students through the actual project. Um so that we met for it to be a light touch on part of the teacher, you know, almost like a turnkey program. Um I’m a big fan as an educator of going through the content myself, I mean I love to learn anyway, so just knowing enough to be able to support the kids, but the idea and that’s actually another neat thing about this project is Unreal Engine is huge and powerful, right? But we’re not trying to teach kids all of Unreal Engine right now, what we’re trying to teach them is some very specific skills that would be used in like advertising using Unreal Engine. So the primary skills that kids are going to learn in Unreal Engine through this project are going to be as simple as, you know, animating the camera using the sequence, er um, working with some objects, some of which are already provided and such. And then basically creating a very short re creating a very short ad through what they’re learning from the host Sonali sing in the, in the segments. And then the idea for the competition is just take those few little things that you learned and now apply them with messaging. That actually is a call to action. So, you know, it’s kind of one of these things, like we’re really trying to embed the idea of curriculum and interdisciplinary work, but um, by teaching just, you know, the skills that get them started and get them excited about continuing kids are amazing when we give them the resources and empower them to learn, um, they’ll go beyond when it becomes relevant and important to them. But we’re giving both teachers and students everything they need to go through this activity. And these are just questions that I hope are, quote about audiences. Is it more, is it more normally done in a language arts class or is it at a school time? I mean, where do you kind of try to go for that educator? You know, that that’s another great question. So I think it goes with so with a lot of these tools, right? Like we want to teach kids these tools, but I think we want to teach them in context. So the more authentic the experience is the better in a case, like, and when the activity is an Earth day advertisement that could be very easily integrated in a science class, a language arts class, a communication technology class, you know, so we’re a tech class, but again, you know, we’re giving them, we’re trying to make it like that for, for a number and, and the idea that we’re talking about all of these different industries and how this, you know, it’s, it’s like, let’s give kids a, you know, a very meaningful tool and authentic industry standard tool to work with what they create with, it can align with your content, however, that might be great, um, sterling, so we’ve got different levels, surprises and I mean I don’t have it in front of me but I think you can register as a group, as a teacher, with a student etcetera. You would just talk a little bit about, we’ll do well, being is doing a lot to, you know, maybe you can show the registration side or something, but why don’t you just give us a few of the high, high level details on the process if you don’t mind? Yeah, sure. I don’t mind at all. So, steve actually dropped the link to our informational landing page for the competition in the chat, but I’ll also just quickly share my screen to walk you through at a very high level. So this is kind of meant to be your one stop hub for all things related to the competition. So any of the questions that you may have will hopefully be answered here, Um, this is just kind of a general overview of what the competition is about. Here’s where I’m sure a lot of you actually really care here is the money. So these are the competition prizes that we’re offering. There are two different age groups that are going to be eligible. So you just have to be anywhere from 13 to 25. When you actually sign up to submit your project, you will be able to indicate which age group that you’re in and if you worked as a group or whether you did this as an individual, essentially the main things that we want you to remember are the timeline here. So the deadline for submitting your final projects is going to be Monday April 12th. We want to make sure that you have plenty of time to actually take the course to. So um it’s good that you’re here tonight. It’s not too late, but definitely get started on the course. On the second page of the landing page, there’s some additional details here about the competition itself. So guidelines here for you submission components and how to go about submitting it again april 12th. Don’t forget that deadline. Um this is also really awesome. So I don’t know if you had a chance to take a look at the judge information, but there’s some pretty important people that are going to be a part of the judging process. So um to think that you could get your work in front of people that are, you know, the head of content creation for buck or the ceo of rube Goldberg is pretty cool. Um Once you, did you have a question jimmy? Sorry? Yeah, Okay, so once you kind of go through the details, if you’re interested in participating, you want to apply on Tallow. So this is essentially a talent profile here and all of the applications are found in the opportunities tab. So you can search for Epic and it will pop up, you can search for Unreal Engine’s, you can search nace F um and the opportunity will pop up for you. You want to search it and then you can go about applying right here. So, any questions at all about that jimmy was that helpful? And it’s super quick but wanted to make sure everybody could kind of see those steps. I think. I think that’s super helpful. Um We’ll have time for questions. So if anybody does have a question, you know, we will also be sharing this recording. Um So so I think it’s just um pretty self explanatory. I wanted to say thank you to Gerald who got the amazing judges. Um Gerald. Do you want to just touch on, you know, the judges and their expertise? Um Yeah, so these are people that you may or may not know by name or company. Um Some of them for example like uh the producer of the lego movie is was mentioned. The head of Rube Goldberg, the head of marketing for Qualcomm globally. Um The creative director um around all things E. Sports for C. A. Um and then the head of marketing and outreach for the immortals, one of the largest, most prolific professional sports teams in the world. So these are all people who know and understand the field, the content and as sterling mentioned, just having an opportunity to get your work product in front of people at this level is pretty significant besides the gaming prizing that’s available here. Um So I would encourage you to spread the word. It’s not often that you get a chance to be in front of people like what we’re talking about and also play and learn at the same time. And I think one of the things that this will allow you to do is build your portfolio, what a great opportunity for a student to use this as an opportunity to create something that they will showcase forever as they look for work, as they look for opportunities in the future. And they can say, look at the caliber of judges who assessed my peace and my work in what I created. What a great piece for their own portfolio. Yeah, I mean it’s great for a resume, great job search for summer jobs, search anything and, and we’re really excited to see the submissions. Um do we have any questions from the people watching now that they’d like to ask of, of these three experts here? Um Any questions Kathy, I’m glad you’re excited. It looks like you’re in an educator and glad you’re here with us while while we’re waiting for questions, I’m going to answer a question that we’ve already gotten a number of times. So occasionally we’ve had somebody who has found the competition and didn’t feel like they had the direction in terms of using Unreal Engine. So they felt like it was this overwhelming task, the um and I can actually share my screen or maybe, yeah, let’s see here. Um so I’m just gonna show real quick, but this is the unreal Futures careers and advertising page that you’ll go to to take the course the course, like I said, it’s about a three hour course. All video driven, it’s both a matter of learning about the industry, but also hands on with Unreal Engine. Um and like I said, the skills that you’re learning are pretty reasonable. So it’s a matter of taking those skills and applying them for the competition, so I just don’t want people to be overwhelmed thinking, oh gosh, look at this huge competition that I don’t know how to participate in. If you go through this Unreal Futures course, you are 100% prepared to participate in the, in the competition, which is very, very cool. And this is just the beginning of the courses and I know when fashion design is going to be one of the courses, um do you know what other courses are in your pipeline or? Yeah, we’re looking at um we’re definitely looking at one in the area of uh, of fashion, one in the area of aerospace, and then there are other, we’re still looking at ideas for the other industries that we’re gonna explore because there’s so many exciting industries in the space. Um, so, yeah, so there will be, there will be more, well, that’s what I love is that the students can be doing this on their own time, you know, as part of an assignment or just on their own getting these skills so they want to get Yeah, yeah, thanks for showing that. It is a little daunting when you hear and real engines and competition. You know, you’re like, oh boy. Um, but I hope that I hope that everybody can help share the word, Share the link. Um, about this again, it’s 13-25 year old. So it’s, it’s really starting as early as eight grade. I’ve shared it with a lot of into Mexico districts, um, as well as linked in facebook, et cetera. And I know that may sip and Tello had shared it broadly. So hopefully we’ll have some fun by final videos too. But it is to watch, it’s gonna be printers, see what they do. Um, any other questions from the folks watching, um, that are on with us. They thank everybody for being here and I hope you’re all here because you want to share it with others. I would just encourage everyone to please spread the word. This is really going to be fun for kids and they’re going to learn something and play at the same time. And I would encourage you just to spread it far and wide. Yeah, and we will definitely um keep everybody informed. We will share the finalists on Earth Day, in fact on Earth Day, so that’s gonna be fun, you know, most everybody globally is glad that it’s spring of 2021 um so I don’t see any other questions um but we hide from New Jersey tim and um Kathy’s excited and so um I see our bring violent brian alexander here who wrote a whole book on the future of higher education. So hopefully brian, we’ll get this plug the entire education and then the teacher work is here for sure. Great, well thank you everyone for joining us. Thank you, Jamie for putting all this together. Yeah brian said what’s the upper a plummet? It’s 25 brian. So anybody That’s not 26 can a fly I think will be posted to promote the competition definitely. Um sterling where earth is? We’ve got several social media. I have that. Yeah Marvin. I I will definitely post that and tag you. Okay good thank you. Okay, thanks to everybody for it’s fun to have this kind of collaboration. Um I will send break bread in. Will you chat me your email right here in the chat. There is a question that it says, when was the deadline for registration? Um You’re still, we’re still within time to register. You can still totally register. So don’t worry about that. Yeah. Brandon. Thank you. I got it. I’ll be I’ll be sending this link out by the end of the day so I won’t make sure that you are C. C. It’ll go to out all the attendees of today’s session and then be posted as well on linkedin and other exciting spots. And there’ll be a press release. It goes out tomorrow so looking forward to it and um thank all of you for the time that you um provided us today and especially thank you to the panelists. Thanks thanks for having me have a good evening. Take care everyone, everybody, everybody. Bye.
?25Mar2021: Bill Hughes/JobReady.me
Integrated Workforce Development: A Data-Driven Approach to Connecting the Ecosystem
30Mar2021: Hub#10
The Future of Coming Together
? 13Apr2021: Teach for America
The Future of New Mexico Schools, Teach for America NM
Transcription:
Welcome. My name is Jimmy Levin with innovative, educate, a non profit out of santa fe That has been working the last 12 plus years on the future of working and learning based on skills and obviously teacher education always been critical to our stage into our state’s future. So we’re real to include this session as part of the next, does it summit close? It um is um a national summit communities all across the country and this event compared with the closer community and um honored and thrilled to have you all today. Um welcome missy and you’re to today’s session and I’m going to just turn it over to you to kick it off. Thanks, Jimmy. Uh thank you so much for allowing us to do this recruitment roundtable event in collaboration with you and to get us going, I love if you would all take a minute to chat in your name, where you’re zooming in from right now, your role and which new Mexico image most represents, how you’re feeling entering this session today. Yeah. Mhm. Mhm. Mhm Yeah as you do that. I want to thank you so much for being here today. We know you all have lots of things competing for your attention and were hurt and that you chose to be here with us. My name is mrs veronica and I work with teach for America New Mexico. I started my career in education with teach for America New Mexico in 2005. In Peru on the Navajo nation. I taught for nine years. Got national board certified, Became a school leader at the Native American Community Academy Charter School for four years before joining teach for America New Mexico’s staff at teach for America New Mexico. We start events with an acknowledgement of the land and tribes that reside here. Land Acknowledgments can help raise awareness and combat the eraser of native representation in the media in statistics or in conversations about things like teacher recruitment. Most of today’s guests are zooming in from different parts of New Mexico. So we wanted to take a few moments to name the 23 sovereign nations with the new Mexico’s borders. I also want to encourage you as a call to action to follow the amazing organizations listed below on social media, some of whom are on this call with us today. Here’s our agenda for today. We’re going to hear next from the Los Alamos National Laboratory Foundation about their teacher recruitment and retention report. Move into our moderated discussion then future bright spots in New Mexico teacher recruitment. This event came together based on the truth. The new Mexico has had a teacher shortage for a long time and growing data showing that young people aren’t planning to pursue careers in education. He’s in this trend is concerning. But this event was also born from the hope that we are in a moment when innovation is happening at every level of the education system, including resources for things like recruiting, diverse groups of teachers, micro certifications, innovative mentorship opportunities, et cetera. We hope you all feel inspired and that you learn something you can use in your own settings. He had a new idea, new connection or resource. I also want to name that this event focuses specifically on teacher recruitment, but we know that recruitment is just one piece of a complex system of preparing and retaining educators. We believe recruitment is an area that specifically can use attention and collaboration, but not at the expense of the other pieces. We hope to have future conversations that hone in on other areas of the continuum. Before we get into it, we want to take a moment to recognize that new Mexico recently lost someone who had a big impact on teacher recruitment and education, lifetime educator and education leader, Dr Karen Trujillo. Let’s take a moment of silence to acknowledge her legacy. Thanks. We’re thankful to our guests and our partners in this work innovate, educate the walmart low foundation and ups financial services, as well as the Los Alamos National Laboratory Foundation leno foundations, research on teacher recruitment and retention in Northern New Mexico was the Foundation upon which this event was built with that. I’m pleased to hand it over to Mike Gabriel and dr Kirsty Tyson from Lionel Foundation to share some of their findings. Good morning, everybody! Happy Tuesday. I hope you’re all doing great, It’s so good to be here. Um I feel very excited about this as a former T. F. A core member of former naka inspired Schools Network Leadership fellow and the current Education Enrichment Director at the landfill Foundation. I feel a certain connectivity to everyone that’s presenting and talking today also, they all probably have a lot of embarrassing stories about me, but hopefully they won’t share any of those. Um Spring, it’s spring in New Mexico Spring is has a particular time of new beginnings and what I think this year, new beginnings has a whole different feeling from coming out of our houses, which we’ve literally been trapped in for the past year. Um It also is a time for planting and and thinking about the future and how we’re going to, how we’re going to prepare for the upcoming summer months and Plantar, plant our crops and fields and what better time to think about how we plant the seeds of our future teachers. Um and this work that we’re talking about today is really focused on that and thinking about how do we connect with those teachers that are going to be there in 10, 20 years from now at the label Foundation. Our our focus um is driven by the to inspire excellence in education and learning in Northern New Mexico. You can go to the next slide, missy or Rebecca. Um for 25 years we have worked towards this mission and vision and our commitment is grounded in the communities that we serve. You can go to the next one. For those 25 years, we focus on the seven counties surrounding Los Alamos um and including 18 native american tribal nations and the counties listed there. Um Over 400,000 people live in, live in this region and we have a special dedication to the teachers and educators and students that reside there Today, I have the proud opportunity to introduce Dr Kirsty Tyson, who is my friend and colleague, um who’s our Director of Evaluation and Learning and as our director of evaluation learning, Dr Tyson focuses on how we as a foundation can better serve our communities and how effective is our is our work in in reaching those milestones formerly of the at the public Education Department in Teacher Quality and at the University of New Mexico as an associated professor, teaching math methods to students and supporting graduate students. Uh Kirsty has been planting the seeds of future teachers for for many years and I appreciate the work that that she’s done and excited to hear and have her share about our work. So, dr Kirsty Tyson thank you Michael and greetings. It’s good to see so many faces that are connected to this work and this talk is going to be pretty quick. And what I invite you to do if you can go to the next slide is to come to the Landel Foundation’s website and read the research report and the policy brief if you haven’t, if you want to dig into further ideas. Um in the this research report started in the fall of 2019 when the Learning Alliance of New Mexico uh bravely went out and collected surveys from students and did focus groups with teachers and students. We collected surveys from teachers and students to All told we had 742 teachers participate in this study 565 students, all from the 32 districts in our region. And also, if you include charter schools and tribally controlled schools and B iii schools, next slide please. So what did we learn from students? And again, this is just really high level information. But I think the statistic that really stood out to a lot of people is that Of those 565 students, 3% of those students were interested in majoring in education. Meanwhile, almost all of the students who participated in the surveys in the focus group had plans for what they wanted to do after high school. And interestingly enough, I think another highlight to point out is that about half for about 45 of the student, 45% of the students we’re interested in stem fields or health fields. And so I think that that’s an important thing to think about, especially since that’s a high need area in teaching next slide please. So what did we learn from teachers? And I think one of the most important findings from this is that local community teachers. So teachers who are teaching in the area where they grew up are the teachers who are most likely to attend New Mexico’s institutions of higher education and they are most likely to live work and stay in the communities where they teach. In addition, local community teachers are also more likely to earn bilingual and T cell certification rather than the non local teachers. And I don’t think this is about saying that we need only local teachers versus non local teachers, but I think it’s also important to attend to the fact that local teachers are real resource for our community. So how can we increase and tap into that? The other piece that really stood out is that strong teacher preparation matters Teachers from traditional programs were more satisfied and committed to the profession, whereas alternatively prepared teachers felt woefully underprepared. And again, I don’t think this is about saying that traditional programs are better than alternative programs. I think what we’ve learned in the last 25 years in new Mexico is that both pathways have a place and different kinds of teacher preparation programs in our state have a place, but how do we make sure those programs are really preparing the teachers for the work that we need to do? Um The other thing that I think is really important to notice is that almost all the teachers who participated in this survey and in the focus groups indicated the importance of collaboration for their ongoing professional learning. So that takes me to the next slide. Okay, the point of this slide is that basically we have recommendations in three areas. So one how do we prioritize support for local community teachers? How do we reimagine and focus teacher preparation programs and how do we strengthen school leadership and professional learning for our teachers also attending to pay. And I think the point of this slide is that this is collaborative work. It’s not one entity who is going to address any of these issues, but it’s all of us together doing that. Which takes me to the next slide, please. Okay. And if you can just click all the way through, please. Thank you. So the key here, I think, is to ask this question, which is working together. How can we make new Mexico the best place for educators to work? Maybe New Mexico will never be the most high paying state. But what if it is the best state for teachers to work in? Uh, the way that we, the ways that we need to attend to that is we need to make sure that our teachers feel valued and supported in their communities. We need higher education and districts to partner together to recruit and prepare teachers so that they are ready culturally and language to teach our culturally and linguistically diverse students and that their work is grounded in the science of learning and development. We need to make sure that our principals and superintendents have what they need and the support they need to support the teachers and the Children and the families in their schools. And next, I think Covid has really helped us to think through this, which is how can we design structures that really support teachers, collaboration and ongoing professional learning as part of their regular work? So together, if you can hit one more point, um, our goal needs to be that new Mexico needs an education ecosystem that supports Childs, Childrens, whole child development and with that I invite you next slide please to continue the conversation. I know this was very fast um but I think that the panel, what I want to do is get to the panel because I think we’ll be able to engage in these questions more right now. What I hope you can do is just add your questions and your comments in the chat and I encourage you to come to the Landel Foundation’s website to learn more about the work that we’re doing in terms of trying to understand what’s happening in our region in education. Thank you very much. Thank you Mike Dr Tyson and the lentil Foundation for your ongoing work, the teacher recruitment or attention as we transition into our discussion like dr Tyson decide, please feel free to put your thoughts and questions into the chat as you do. I’m excited to introduce our moderator and discussion guests and potato clangers. Today’s moderator is the executive director of the native american Community Academy Charter School and of the naka inspired schools network, a network of schools that combines academic preparation, culture and identity and holistic wellness for community transformation through young people. Due to grew up, the youngest of three siblings on standing rock reservation in south and north Dakota. He’s Lakota, Dakota Ojibway and Atmel atom. He’s a third generation college graduate and earned a B. A. From Cornell and an MBA from um He’s also a hara fellow, Woodrow, Wilson fellow and Kellogg fellow due to fines grounding in his identity and upbringing on Standing rock responsibility to his community and expression of culture and language. His mother and grandmother raised him not to see his life as either culture or academic success but both and much more Polonia Trujillo gallegos grew up in the Sangre de Cristo mountains of rural northern New Mexico. First in her family to attend college, she received a bachelor’s from U. N. M, then taught 3rd and 4th grade in phoenix. She joined TFS recruitment team in 2011 where she increased recruitment in Arizona by 57% triple the diversity of recruits and lead, ask you to be the number one school in the nation for latin X applicants. She earned a master’s at ASU, then served as a faculty associate and was recognized in the National Ashoka You Education Awards. She sits on the alumni board of directors for um founded Nikita dot co accompanied to support and honor the female journey and co created eight months collective. A company comprised of thought leaders in pursuit of disrupting linear ways of living. Apollonia currently lives in san Diego and finds every excuse she can to visit her family in Northern New Mexico. DR. Gwen parry away. Ornament is the current deputy secretary for teaching and learning for the new Mexico Public Education Department, Overseeing three divisions educator quality, curriculum and instruction and assessment. With a little over two decades of experience supporting public education. DR Ornament has taught across the elementary to post secondary landscape, chiefly focused on bilingual stem education before joining an M. P. D. When was program director for the National Foundation with a portfolio that included direct programming, advocacy and grant making in support of public education. In this role, she supported teacher retention and rural districts, socio emotional support systems and professional learning for educators including an inquiry science consortium. One is passionate about student voice culturally and linguistically sustaining instruction and supporting educators in their reflective practice. She holds a doctorate in curriculum and instruction from New Mexico State University. Thank you for being here today to share your perspectives with our audience. We’re going to start with some predetermined questions, then solicit questions from the audience, keep chatting him in and we may not get to everything, but we’ll do our best to pull out themes and with that I will hand it over to do to thank you so much, missy. So happy to be in um in community with relatives and friends. Um and good to see everyone this morning on the first start out with an embarrassing story about mike. No, I’m just getting like I won’t, I’ll spare you the stories. Um but um I want to start off with Glenn and Apollonia. I’m hoping you can share a little bit about your own stories and what brought you into the field of education. Going to stay with you. Thank you do then. Um just want to honor you for being our facilitator and thank you so much. It’s always wonderful to be on any call with you and I can add to the stories about mike. Um well, it’s hard to tell your story and not be emotional. I’m very emotional um uh which sometimes to my detriment, but I think also I think is a strength in a lot of ways, so I try to be open about it. Um My dad was an engineer and my mom was a teacher and I was really influenced by both of them equally. Um He, you know, my dad is very wise and grounded and um and was a teacher in his own right, I think um you know, our parents are and um and so I there’s a lot that I, I am who I am because of him, but my mom um was a really interesting particular teacher growing up. She, she started a program in santa fe called the Teen parents Center is the first program of its kind. Um, it was not part of what was called grads now in Mexico where we have actually state funded program, It was a stand alone program that just really help team parents. And it started as a night school at the vocational tech school there in here in santa fe. I grew up here and it was really interesting as a young girl to watch her um sort of on this like almost boundary of social justice education that we didn’t really have a name for. But it was like she would reach out and she would support these young mothers and young fathers even at night and you know, at all times of the day and take them what they needed for school. And she wrote these grants like just trying to figure out the state system and connect with wick and different programs and raised funding to build a nursery for the students there at the biotech. And so, um, When I got to be in high school, she was still, she was still doing this work. I mean she started when I was probably about five, I think she went back to work maybe younger, 5, 4 or five. And um, and I had one of my, one of a close friend of mine who, who got pregnant in high school. And I remember walking her down to my mom’s office down in the south south campus of santa fe high school. And and seeing my mom in a whole different way that I had never seen before. And so, um, I think that that’s really stuck with me and impacted me. I think around why I entered the profession without really the intention to do so, because I didn’t get my initial degree is not in education, I’m all licensed teacher, that was my entry, My initial degree was actually in english and spanish and and went into become a lawyer um had applied as a girl that um law school and uh um but fell into the profession. My very first year teaching actually was at Memorial Hospital in Albuquerque is a psychiatric facility for kids, um which was intense, amazing and beautiful in its own way, but make a long story short, that’s what, that was very impactful from who I am and where I am. Thank you so much, going always an inspiration to be with you as well, Abalone um handed over to you too. Yeah. Tell us a little bit more about your own story and what what about you into the field of education? Thank you Glenn for sharing your story. Um Yeah, and I feel like I need to travel to New Mexico to learn some stories about Michael Sam. So that would be my, my summer plans I guess. Um So I grew up in a burrito, Soto’s County. I went from Penasco Independent School district for elementary school uh and just had a really beautiful childhood. My family uh has lived on that land for a long time. Um And um just my grandparents lived right by us. My aunts lived right by us, There’s a lot of walking fields, crossing rivers, riding horses planting just before organic was cool. I mean it was just an amazing childhood. Um And my dad got a job when I was in the fourth grade that moved us to santa fe. And I, I was looking last night and trying to remember the name of X. I remember I had to cross Alameda Street. Um We lived off of Funyuns uh kind of biography, I think it’s Gonzalez Elementary, but I’m not I’m not 100% sure. Um But I went to school there for until october and I remember um just like very very quickly, like not fitting in into the school in terms of uh my class had been much smaller in in um fiasco and um I was like academically had been doing really well and unesco and then this that I was like struggling in this school. My eye academics are not meeting my needs, so I don’t know how my dad managed to do it, but we finagle the system. My aunt was a teacher at de vargas middle school and somehow we got me into E. J. Martinez and I don’t know how how a. J. Martinez elementary as these days, but it was like a good school um when I was in fourth grade. Um and I had this teacher, Mr padilla who I think like changed my life. He was phenomenal. We had this dark room where we did photography, developed photos. We had a class garden. He would roll out this butcher paper on our tables and we sat um in socratic circles. I didn’t know obviously what that meant, you know, in fourth grade, but we had this feature table, we would draw paintings and we went The Hobbit. We went through all of the fourth grade math book and we’re in fifth grade math book. I mean this guy invited him to my wedding, I’ve nominated him for every possible like teacher award thing ever. Mr pdf with his ponytail and his Birkenstocks. Like he was just the guy, he was awesome. Um And he made me love school. Uh He just like I believed in myself and I believed in like my creativity and like who I was and I just felt really at home at home there. And so he stayed another year um in santa fe. And I had this coming for 1/5 grade and E. J. And we still have a question for mr padilla is like you know so still great. And then my dad’s job moved us to um moriarty. And so we would still go home often to Penasco. That’s why I really identify with living, inviting those. We have our family home there when we moved to Moriarty. And that was a completely different experience for me too. So I finished sixth grade through 12th grade um in moriarty. And yeah it was very rural and I did really well academically. And I graduated koval victorian and was pumped to go to college. And I had a 21 of my E. C. T. And thought that I was like rocking out and I went to you and them and I was placing remedial math. I like I really had hit a glass ceiling that I didn’t even know existed. I thought like that I had had done well in life. Um And so that like that was really a wake up call for me refreshment around you and I was super hard. Um And I just was like my even going to be able to hack it like this whole time. I thought I was awesome. Like I’m really struggling. Um And I’m so tutoring and wonderful programs and getting involved with public life. I wrote for the Daily Lobo, did a bunch of fun stuff with you and them um and ended up graduating cum laude, which I felt really honored about. I had to work my butt off scot to study abroad, did really cool stuff. But what I really realized my senior year of college was that education equated opportunities. I had done all this amazing stuff at you and m but slowly started seeing my peers drop off. We all started together freshman year so that people started to drop off off, luckily had the lottery scholarship. But I I also started to see like people that I went to elementary with like dropping off you. And so that’s just like when I discovered teach for America and similar to when I had applied to you and unlock because somehow for me that was like how you make a difference. Um But anyways long story short I found teach for America and applied and um got it and then I taught third grade. Um And it was just really um revolutionary was 3rd and 4th grade, common split in third grade um uh in phoenix and then I somehow made it onto the cricket team and I’ve been here ever since. That’s all that that means me. That’s awesome. Thinking of Polonia. Um I love this story about Mr padilla. Um I think we all have like mr padilla’s in our in our stories. Um I’m gonna stay with you at Polonia. I wonder if you can tell us a little bit about the work you do with T. S. A. Recruitment team. Yeah so I’ve done a bunch of stuff, this is my 10th year on the recruitment team. I teach for America. Um I started off as a as a campus recruiter and then I started managing campus recruiters and I oversaw Southwest recruitment and pacific northwest recruitment, but five years ago I kicked off our work on um experiential recruitment, so um really focusing in on early engagement, like finding people early on in their college careers and getting them interested in um the prospect of going into education um and really like feeling convicted about making a difference in education. Um And so currently I serve as the senior managing director of experiences and I put on a really cool programming to get some students just attracted to the mission teach for America, the mission of social impact work um and the mission of eliminating educational inequity in our country. Um Some next week kind of really cool wellness event that I’m putting on all can come to it. We have like so we have a wellness resource guy that we just created in our downloading and put on fellowships and internships and volunteer programs and all kinds of cool ways for college students to get involved with us. It’s awesome. Yeah. Keep us posted for that event. That sounds cool. Um, Gwen, part of the reason for this event is to really think about the long view on teacher recruitment. Can you share with us a little bit about the importance of this and what the state is currently doing to support more young people choosing teaching as a profession? Sure. Did that. Um, and if you, you know, as I’m talking, if you have any questions or at bologna, if you have anything that you want to add in in this discussion or, or you know, please interrupt me. Don’t hesitate to interrupt me. Um, I think that the um, the most important reason that we need to support our own students, our own um, community is, um, um, people in the to go into the profession is because that’s how we’re going to actually transform the system. Um, is when we have our own students who become educators and helped to lead and build out new structures and new systems and break down the systemic racism and uh, the uh, oh, historical oppression that education has has been for generations. So that’s probably the most important reason that we need to do this work. Um, 2nd is, um, you know, because we need educators clearly, we need educators, we need all adults who serve students. We need counselors, we need social workers, we need school nurses, we need any ancillary staff, We need educational leaders. We need people who helped to build out, create systems of support for students. Um, but I think superseding that is really this notion of transformation and helping us move forward in a way that is incredibly yeah, just uh helps us own our own systems of education in the state of New Mexico and rebuild them or transform them or re envision them or um make them our own, which I think is part of the process um in terms of what we’re doing is a state, I would say that um it’s sort of a slow process or slower rollout um around initiatives and so I want to just be upfront about that and honest about that right away. It’s embedded in the strategic plan and that’s one of our four pillars of the strategic plan is building out the educator ecosystem. But what’s interesting about my position now in sort of reflecting over the past couple of years in this place is that a lot of the programming that we run at the state. So the public education departments are functions in a couple of different ways. First is o