Hi, I'm Jeff Rea, your host for Economic Outlook We hope you'll join us each week as we discuss the region's most important economic development initiatives with a panel of experts.

In 2012, community leaders launched enFocus, a talent attraction and retention effort aimed at transforming the communities it serves and driving economic growth in the region.

12 years later, we're checking in on the effort and getting an update on the success of the program that now serves Indiana and Michigan.

Coming up on economic outlook.

Communities across the country are in a race to attract and retain top talent, especially young talent.

The Midwest in general has had a difficult time with that effort, with young people often leaving to explore bigger cities or the Southeast or southwest portions of the United States.

In 2012, leaders in our region decided to do something to stem the outmigration of that young talent and launched enFocus.

The organization has been a critical problem solver and a driver for innovation in this region since its inception.

Today, we're sitting down with members of the enFocus team to reflect on the successes of this effort and a look forward on what's on the horizon for the organization.

Joining me for that discussion are the Senior fellow at enFocus, Andrew Wiand, the executive director of enFocus, and Jody Surayatna, the engineering project manager.

enfocus guys.

Welcome.

Thank you for being here today.

So we've had enFocus on a little bit before, but we think this is really valuable as as we teased in the opening, communities across the country trying to figure out this talent attraction piece, and we feel like you've done a phenomenal job not only attracting talent, but solving problems in the community.

So, Andrew, for somebody unfamiliar with enFocus and what it does.

Talk to us a little about kind of the model and how you work.

Sure, sure.

And thank you for having us.

We're excited to talk about this big fan of the show as well.

And so, if you think about enFocus, it is a nonprofit organization founded in 2012, as you mentioned, five and one C3 nonprofit.

And our mission is to try to empower talent to build a stronger community.

And we do that through three things.

As we talk about talent attraction, we hire recent graduates as two year innovation fellows.

They sign on as an employee of enFocus.

Second thing that we do is we try to place fellows, and build and coordinate business and technology projects across organizations in the community.

And the third thing that we would do to try to build, pipelines to bring the best and brightest here is give a percentage of time of those fellows, to work on innovative things.

Maybe that's to work on a startup idea, or to come up with an idea for a new social program that supports our existing, organizations as we develop this model, how do you compete as a city like, South Bend or a region like ours to out compete, as you mentioned, draw to bigger cities, bigger corporations?

And really, the thought is you can make a real world impact here with a community on the move, solving real organizational problems and getting that, professional development project management experience to hopefully make a big impact, but advance your career really further here.

And we've been proud that since 2012 and we've brought in about 1500 individuals.

We do have our fellowship program, about 300 individuals, but we also have supported that with fall, spring and summer internships to try to build a talent feeder system, if you will, with colleges across all across the Midwest to try to get people thinking and dreaming about their career here.

And in doing so, we think that we've kind of been an asset for the community to, as you think, a creative problem solver.

So if we can approach an organization, a school system, a manufacturing company, a municipal government and say, you know, how might we help you think about some of your biggest challenges?

And we can maybe expose our recent graduates to thinking and to make a real world impact.

Not only are we bringing talent here, but there might be real impact that's created that can get reinvested in change and to hire individuals.

So success for enFocus is a good job on the project.

But really seeing folks like folks around me, build leadership potential and future roles in the community, which is really that long term impact that we really want to create as an focus.

So we've been really, pleased with the support from the community and how much progress we've made.

You know, it's been great.

I've had a chance to work with your team, and it feels like dozens of projects over the years and seen firsthand the real difference.

And so thanks for coming to talk about it today.

I'm going to stay with you for one second before I loop Anna and Jody into this.

So, Andrew, you're you're part of that young talent that we were glad to retain.

Give us a little bit about sort of your history and background in kind of your path to where you are today.

Sure, sure.

And thank you for that.

And, I was a Notre Dame grad and master's grad thinking about, communities and jobs all across the country.

You know, having grown up in South Bend, actually, from South Bend native, to local high school here, you know, your first thing is and I want to stay where I grew up, necessarily for long term.

Right.

But, you know.

Absolutely.

And seeing the opportunity to work with local leaders and to be a founding member of, of this company, it's been really great to have grown up here, but really see the transformation that we've had and really be a part of that.

So I thank you for for bringing that up.

But now my job is to try to convince others, to have that kind of similar experience.

But, I think it is just really meaningful, to have that purpose, to be able to say that I grew up here, I want to make an impact, and I'll have a vehicle to try to expand that impact, which is really, really exciting.

Great.

Annna let me come your way a little bit.

So you're a senior fellow at enFocus and so talk to us.

So we'll talk a little bit later about projects.

But talk to us about your journey and what brought you here to our region.

Yeah, absolutely Jeff.

So I'm not from the South Bend area originally.

I grew up in the Quad Cities, which is right on the border of Iowa and Illinois.

And I came here in 2018 for college.

And so, as you said, I had lots of friends that wanted to go to big schools, big universities, larger cities, places outside of the Midwest.

But I really value the sense of community that I have here.

And so I came to Goshen College.

It was a small school, but a place where I found a really deep sense of community, and also a place that had a lot of really interesting programs as part of their liberal arts education.

And so one of those programs is their sustainability program, which is what I graduated from.

And that program is a mix of business courses, science courses, and then public policy courses.

And so it's a really interesting combination of coursework.

And then also opportunities to go out and work with partners in the community.

And so through that program, I got a really a sense of appreciation for all of the work that's already happening here.

Indiana and the Michiana region is a place where there's already a lot of people who are doing really interesting things related to environmental action, but also related to driving community change.

And so that set me up really well to take a position here at enFocus, an organization that is already working with so many different, types of partners, whether it's municipal partners, manufacturing partners, partners in all sorts of non-profits and different spheres, health care, schools, all sorts of things.

And so I really appreciate the opportunity to be able to work on projects with those different partners to impact community change and to have a more cohesive picture of sustainability, something that's not just focused on environmental change or some of maybe the, you know, green action or policies that we think of today when we talk about sustainability, but something that is really more focused on community impact and local solutions.

Right.

All right.

We're gonna come back to talk projects for a second.

Jody, let me come your way a little bit.

So similar to what I asked you.

I talk to us about your journey, how you got to here, to our region.

Yeah.

For sure.

So I grew up actually in Jakarta, Indonesia.

But to put it in context, about a 24 hour flight away from South Bend, so long ways away.

But I knew ever since I was a kid that I wanted to do engineering, I was.

I love the sciences, I love tinkering with things.

I knew that coming here to the United States was my best opportunity to learn about engineering and a program, and what it takes to be a really good engineer.

So into Purdue University to get my degree in mechanical engineering and, post-graduation, I had kind of that moment of, I think could do a lot more with my engineering degree.

And I want to explore opportunities where I could touch all areas of engineering and manufacturing very early on in my career, and I saw enFocus was a great fit for that.

And with our model of working with multiple different partners in multiple different projects, I knew that I had the chance to really touch everything that has to do with manufacturing and engineering, and knew that I would learn a lot from that position.

So getting started as a fellow for the first two years did a lot of the project work and slowly fell in love with the project management and the team aspect of it.

And I got a very gracious opportunity from Andrew to become an engineer project manager at the end of my second year, where I stayed on and focused to this day.

Okay, let's talk for a second about just the the skill sets.

Just just for example, on our panel here, we have, you know, two very different, courses of study.

But, but talk to us about just kind of the, the, the talent, the range of talent you're looking for is you're out recruiting, peoplet hat can be part of to be a fellow Right.

Typical, characteristics of a fellow.

And it's kind of based upon the fact that if you promote an increased amount of college educated a community, that there is correlations and studies that show a lot of improvements in gross domestic product.

So we're looking at four year degrees and above usually, I would say about 50 to 70% master's degree that we would normally recruit from.

What's interesting about the diversity of backgrounds is as you think about talent attraction, that's for all organizations to try to, rising tide lifts all boats, as opposed to narrowing it to simply a municipal or simply health care.

And we thought that with the size of the community that if we were to find projects across that that would increase opportunities for talent, find different career pathways.

So as a result of that, we recruit, at about 125 different, career events a year all across Midwestern colleges, with a fairly wide reach.

And we were looking for those that really have a passion for the community, but we kind of hire based on the amount of projects across sectors that we would look at as we've grown, we have created portfolios of those projects.

We really have a civic portfolio that is focused on cities, county schools, health care, nonprofits, if you will.

Those organizations that help the community succeed.

But we know to grow private employment and grow the whole population.

You want to focus on your private business.

And we're very densely clustered in manufacturing.

So as we think about hiring each year, we try to tell that story but really hire engineers, industrial engineers, maybe some computer science, some business for manufacturing sector.

And really across the civic, we look for those that are passionate about those different sectors, but we want to have everybody to have critical thinking skills, to be able to think on their feet, operate with ambiguity.

As we all know, these these problems are somewhat open ended.

So we have a fairly rigorous recruitment process that tests, potential recruits at critical problem solving, the ability to present material.

And so we try to get the best of the best, in terms of those that want to be here, but can really do a good job here as we get them going.

Good.

We're going to take a break here from the studio.

We're gonna go out into the field.

We're gonna go visit one of those projects that you're working on.

My co-host George Lepiniotis is out there.

George, let me toss it to you.

Welcome back to the field of economic outlook.

I'm your co-host George Lepiniotis I'm joined today here in downtown South Bend by Bradley Kauffman of enFocus.

You are a project manager.

Bradley, thanks for being with us.

Great to be with you, George.

So for our viewers that maybe don't know what enFocus does and what that means, and focus is a place that is putting people together, right?

It's bringing sponsors and fellows together with people like you, the project managers, offering mentorship and helping guide the fellows.

Yes.

Right.

That's well, that's Well-put.

So we are a we're a nonprofit organization that we're focused on talent development.

And fellows come to us.

They apply for our competitive fellowship for a two year, program in which we provide, career support and help launch their careers in an innovative space.

It's in sort of an innovative think tank kind of environment.

And we have lots of partners across the community in different sectors of, of the, of the workforce.

And those partners come to us seeking innovation and additional capacity to do the good work that they're already doing.

And we are honored to come along and support them.

Well that's awesome.

So it sounds a bit like, continuation of their education in a more practical manner.

Very much so.

All right.

Okay.

All right.

So when we think about enFocus and the fellows, what are they focused on?

What what types of projects are you guys working on?

So we have we have two main pillars in our organization.

We have the industry side where manufacturing support happens and we're active and in different manufacturing, organizations across the region.

So there are engineers and analysts and people doing high level, analysis in those spaces and, and driving process improvement.

I work on the, on the, on the civic side of our organization.

And so I've had the good fortune to work with South Bend Community School Corporation, with social service organizations, with health care clinics, the city of South Bend, a project to drive urban tree canopy development in the city of South Bend, and doing some long term sustainability planning and helping your fellows gain that experience and maybe hone their skill sets so that they can take that next step in their career.

Right.

And the fellows, like I said, it's a competitive environment to to enter the program.

But once they're in, there's there's this enormous amount of support and collaboration that happens.

And, and so people come to us from different fields of study, different academic backgrounds, but with a common desire to to make their communities better and to, build value into, into the good work that happens across the South Bend region.

Well that's awesome, Well, thank you for being with us today.

Thank you for the information.

I'm actually going to take our viewers out to meet a fellow, and we'll get their perspective on what InFocus is helping them do to advance their careers, experiences and skills.

I've been at enFocus for about 14 months, and in that time, I've had the chance to work on two projects.

I once called a civic innovation fellow.

And each fellow will work on two projects concurrently throughout their two year fellowship.

One of my projects is called Next Path.

Next path is a collaboration between enFocus, South Bend Code School, and Track ten, which are two local tech companies in the region.

And our mission is to bring free beginner level coding courses to adults in our region.

We are a ready, grant funded program, and part of the ready grant is to drive, engagement to the region and to drive smart people, to move to the region and to keep our smart folks in the region.

So we saw a lot of prevailing data about if folks know how to code or have computer science ability.

It actually enhances our region's GDP, local to the area.

So we thought, what better way to grow our GDP than to directly give people the opportunities to code, which opens up different career pathways to them or enhances existing career pathways?

So we offer two courses.

One is called Intro to Careers and Coding and the other one is called track ten Launch Solutions.

Architect associate.

Intro to Careers and Coding is meant for those who have never had an opportunity to take a coding course and have always been interested.

Whereas track ten is meant for those who want to learn Amazon Web Services, and they can get a certification through our track ten course.

After taking Intro to Careers and Coding, you'll have an opportunity to know if you have an aptitude for coding or not.

You'll review a bunch of different coding languages and different career opportunities available.

If you were to go for those coding languages, and it takes away that scary barrier of having to go into an intro class and not knowing anything, whereas track tends course will give you an official Amazon license certification to use and interviews and to use in tech jobs in the future.

If you want to work with the Amazon Web Services Cloud.

Both of our courses are free and will remain free throughout the remainder of our grant period.

Our Intro to Careers and Coding course is a four session course.

Each session is about an hour and a half long.

Our track ten course is a ten week session.

One session per week.

And those sessions lasts about an hour long, and they are both fully virtual We've heard overwhelmingly from students that our Intro to Careers and Coding course has been super helpful for them to one learn if coding is a direction that they want to go.

And upon learning that know which route in coding they want to go.

It can be very overwhelming for them.

There's many different languages that do many different things.

So our intro course helps to simplify that and sets you on a pathway based upon your skill set and your interest.

We've heard from students who take our Amazon Web Services course through track ten that they've been able to get internships, job interviews, and grow their skill sets while in college.

While taking that course.

So one of the main insights that we've pulled from offering these courses is not just offering them to people who may be already in positions or already in careers looking to enhance.

But right now, we're really targeting folks who may not have access to adult education or never had access to going to college or having the opportunity for education with computer science in high school.

And we've seen a lot of overwhelming success and interest from folks in their area who have that lust for knowledge and lust for learning, but might not have ever had a free opportunity to learn specifically computer science skills that we're offering.

through my experience.

I was able to learn how to create relationships.

At the end of the day, my main role is to make connections and then lead those connections to success.

So I talk to people everywhere from Notre Dame College, Computer science office to ministerial services in downtown South Bend, to professional tech companies in the area, to RV manufacturers in Elkhart, and what I've learned is how to adapt and showcase the benefits of our program.

No matter where you come from in the area, professionally or personally.

So something that I think I'll be able to take with me after my program is over from next path, is being able to cultivate those professional relationship and being able to meet people where they need to be met in order to find success with our courses.

We're back.

Where?

We're continuing our conversation with enfocus.

Anna let me come back your way a little bit.

So you share a little bit about, you know, kind of your background, your experience.

But but so now you're now you're a fellow and and so walk us into a little bit of sort of the the life of a fellow, the projects you work on just give us some insight into how that is working with organizations or civic groups or businesses and communities.

Yeah, absolutely.

We all have, a variety of different projects anywhere from two or more, depending on if you're a full time fellow or if you're starting to do some project management and taking on other projects.

So I've worked with different nonprofits.

I've worked a lot with our municipal partners.

One of the projects that I'm most excited about is related to supporting our urban tree canopy.

In the past several years, enFocus has helped apply for and received several different, donations from local, state and federal sources.

So we have two federal grants right now that equaled over $2 million.

And those are for planting trees and municipal nurseries in our area, and then also strategic planting of trees directly into the areas that need it most.

So areas that are already affected by, urban heat, flooding, other issues, park spaces, places that can be community gathering spaces.

And so that's a really exciting project for me.

It's excellent to be able to do and put together an application for this level of funding, and then to receive it and to be able to actually implement it in our community.

So that's a multi-year project.

And I spend my days going from some of my other projects and then working on this one, lots of meetings, going out to the field, sometimes visiting these tree nurseries or even planting trees.

And so I think that that's a really great intersection of all the things I love, because I'm working on projects that are meaningful to me.

I'm engaging with community members to make sure that we're planting trees and doing this in a way that is equitable and engaged with the community, not for the community.

And so I think that's really representative of the work that InFocus does.

Yeah.

And, Jody, let's start because you talked about putting your engineering degree to work and kind of influencing communities.

So similar question and talk a little bit about maybe your experience, working as a first as a fellow.

Yeah.

And then also now as the engineering project manager.

Yeah.

So I think a lot of my day to day, actually, I collaborate very closely with the University of Notre Dame on a platform called Industry Labs.

So that's a really, really good team of engineers, people with background experience where I myself as a pretty fresh graduate, might not have.

I have a lot of that reinforcement of support from them.

And day to day we go out in the field as a team to to local manufacturers to understand really kind of their business, understand kind of their challenges and really be there to to support them in whatever avenues they want to explore.

So and one current project that I'm working on right now is helping a very small local manufacturer really grow their business.

They're looking into developing new products, and as a part of that, we're supporting them and looking into new production lines, intellectual property.

Patterns, things like that, and really supporting them and all that in their entire journey.

And again, for my benefit, just seeing that entire process is something that, as a very fresh faced engineer, I would not have an experience do it so early on in my career.

Maybe both of you talk a little bit about just your reception from folks who, you know, like, I mean, there are some people think you've not worked in the real world.

And so how are you going to help me versus, oh my gosh, that you bring some fresh ideas and perspective.

You know, talk to us about how receptive the enFocus clients have been to to your advice.

I think it's been a mixture of both.

I think there is a, I would say, a very healthy level of skepticism as we're coming in, as we are very fresh faced and very new, but I think we don't hide away from that.

I think a lot of the services and values we offer for a company is very much that we are a fresh set of eyes for this new challenge or this new problem.

And with our industry, sometimes people get so laser focused on the things that are doing day to day that they need someone to look at a macro level or business to provide some of those insights.

So it might be a challenge.

Earlier on, but as we develop relationships with them, it tends to get smoother and better.

And I think they eventually trust us kind of by the middle of the project.

Yeah.

You know, and let's, let's sort of follow up on this because you for 12 years have had to convince those entities to then in focus, provide some value.

I've seen this.

I've been blown away a little bit by the the brainpower that you bring to the table to help solve problems, but but talk about that sales pitch and how you do that.

Sure.

Thank thank you Jeff.

And having done about 700 different projects, I think that there's all different starting points for how you approach different leaders within the community.

But the general model is not to sell expertise, but to sell creative problem solving and an investment in and developing talent.

So, you know, as, as we talk about the talent team here, our organization struggled to maybe find competitive, top world renowned talent, which is a vehicle to do that.

So we're saying if you invest in a project, you're also investing in taking a look, see at a team of individuals that you might be able to hire, hopefully at the end of the project and sometimes throughout, as an example.

So you know that that is something that might kind of de-risk the day, one that I'm able to provide value and recommendation.

But at the same time, if you lean into, your discovery activities, designing a solution and then working towards being a internal project manager to do that, it builds up the knowledge of the team in such a way that those creative ideas can now get implemented.

And the last thing you want to do is hand a report to a client.

You want to, you know, get in there and make that change so that sometimes there's a transition in the work from this is a fellow road leading a project.

So this is a part time internal project manager now leading a transition that is now, providing returns for that business.

And so as a result of those that can invest in new positions.

So if you position it, in the right way and you scope well that you're not going to, necessarily overlap over, over promise there.

I think things have worked well as you develop relationships with, with our clients.

And as you place talent, sometimes those clients are now folks that have been with them enFocus.

So the dream is to have really an ecosystem and a thriving, environment for young professionals to see the college educated numbers grow.

And in doing so, kind of saturate those new ideas within the organization.

So hopefully it gets easier over time with repeat business.

But you really should do a good job on that first project, right?

You know, we're getting our last couple minutes, but an Anna come your way So, you know, this is my guessing.

It helped validate, you know, kind of what you wanted to do for a living.

But let us into your head for a second as you're thinking about the the future for Anna and and where and how she works in this world.

Yeah, absolutely.

That's pretty pressure on that.

Yeah, of course not.

Yeah.

Graduating college, I wasn't sure exactly what sector I wanted to work in.

As I mentioned, my degree program is is pretty general.

It's broad.

You could do a lot of things with it.

You could go into, consulting with companies to help them do green audits and reduce their energy efficiency.

You could work with municipal governments.

You could get a job with a nonprofit.

And I'm still not sure exactly which one of those I'd like best, but I have realized through this work how important it is to me to be working in a community where I know people, where I can, talk to people to see the work actually getting done.

And so I think that, for me, a position like enFocus or a position in a city government or local nonprofit that's addressing a lot of these issues all at once, that would be my ideal.

Yeah.

Jody, you come to you in an our last minute or so, talk to us about, advice you'd give to maybe a young person who was like, you were undecided, wasn't sure what they wanted to do.

What advice to young people who were watching?

That's again, a very great question.

But really, I think my one advice, if I could go back in time to tell kind of a younger version of myself, is to really explore what you can do with your degree, because I think, you know, through opportunities, enFocus.

I've been able to see the whole breadth of what an engineering degree could provide for you.

And I had none of that exposure when I was coming into college, and I knew that I should have taken a lot more initiative to seek out that opportunity with clubs in internships and co-op opportunities that provided that really high level vision of what an engineering degree could do.

Good guys, thank you so much for being here today.

The chance to highlight in folks as they keep up your good work, Jeff.

That's it for our show today.

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