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(upbeat music) (bell ringing) - Good afternoon.

And welcome to the City Club of Cleveland.

I'm Dan Moulthrop.

I'm the chief executive here also a proud member.

And we're in person and fully vaccinated or recently tested for today's forum.

in partnership with the Deaconess foundation.

Our forum title is preparing for the jobs of tomorrow.

Our forum today is a special one.

They all are really, but this one is especially special.

We're excited to be here in celebration with our friends at the Deaconess foundation, as they presented their inaugural Deborah Vesy systems change champion award earlier this morning here at the City Club.

And for those of you who haven't had the privilege of working with her, Deb Vesy was the longtime president and CEO of the Deaconess foundation, and she retired in September of 2020.

She worked tirelessly to positively transform the workforce development system.

Making sure job seekers could be successful in filling the needs of our local businesses and filling their own aspirations for reaching economic opportunity.

In honor, of her many years of leadership, the Deborah Vesy systems change champion award will be given annually to systems change initiatives in workforce development to a certain one each year, which has the potential for significant impact, also addresses racial equity and creates learning opportunities for community members.

Earlier today Deaconess announced their inaugural 2021 award winner, put your hands together for the manufacturing sector, partnership leadership team and its access to manufacturing program.

(audience applauds) It's nice to be able to not only convene a conversation, but recognize some great work while we're at it.

Congratulations to the finalist and big thanks to Deb Vesy and her important contributions in workforce development over many years here in Cleveland and greater Cleveland across the region.

In celebration of today's milestone award our conversation today at the City Club will naturally cover workforce development.

Businesses in sectors like hospitality and retail are experiencing some of the toughest labor challenges in decades.

And while traditional workforce systems help individuals learn new skills for in demand jobs, experts are saying that skills alone really don't address the challenges before us or equip our communities for the challenges that by ahead, and the opportunities that lie ahead.

So how can employers partner with workforce systems to ensure better alignment between skills and business needs between worker skills and business needs and where can public policy be better aligned to support those in the field.

Joining us today Tameshia Bridges Mansfield.

She's vice president for workforce innovation at Jobs For the Future, also known as JFF.

She oversees workforce development and future of work initiatives with an eye toward innovation systems transformation and equity.

Before joining JFF, Ms Mansfield was a program officer at the W.K.

Kellogg Foundation where she led the workforce development and job access portfolio, addressing barriers that workers face in securing meaningful employment.

Friends and members of the City Club of Cleveland please join me in welcoming Tameshia Bridges Mansfield.

(audience applauds) - Hello, everyone.

It's been a minute since I've done any type of public address because of the pandemic and other reasons, but I'm really, really happy to be here.

And I want to thank the City Club so much and Cathy Belk and the Deaconess foundation for the invitation to speak with you all today about the systems that we need to support where we are and to support and respond to community's needs at this moment in this ever changing and really unpredictable economy.

And I also wanna say congratulations to the manufacturing sector partnership and the access manufacturing program on being awarded today's award.

And it really demonstrates a lot of what I'm gonna talk about today, about the fact that people need not just skills, but systems and supports to really help them maximize the skills that they have access to and really live and breathe into the full potential that they have.

So with that, I want us to really take an initial moment to really reflect a little bit about how we got here.

Like literally, how we got to the seats that we sit in today and the positions that we have, the spaces that we have access to, and that we sit in.

And I want us to think about the networks, the systems, the supports that enable us to be here today.

And I'm not gonna ask people to raise their hand or share anything, but I can share a little bit of my story just to demonstrate a little bit of that.

So I grew up in Denver, Colorado in the 1980s during a time of significant change and opportunity.

And with that, what that means is that I am a product of a intentional complicated jigsaw puzzle of a deseg program.

And what that meant is that students and people in the neighborhood that I grew up in that was largely working class, predominantly African-American were bused in this really intricate way, all over the city of Denver to suburban schools and predominantly white neighborhoods.

What that meant is that by the end of my elementary and middle school years, all of us somehow ended up back in a high school together about 15 miles away from all of our neighborhoods across the city in a fairly performing mixed income, mixed race high school, where we were able to live into our potential there.

The other piece of where I came from is that I came from a really interesting family, both extended and immediate family that poured everything they could into us, both supporting our achievements, supporting us when we fell and when we stumbled, but really helping us stay laser focused on the things that we said we wanted to be in this world, both as children and now as we all live into our adulthood.

And I also came from a really interesting community and crew of friends and peers in my old neighborhood where we worked and held each other up, held each other accountable, competed with each other and pushed each other to our potential, despite the violence and the gang activity that many of us were witness to and victims of in that neighborhood.

And I had the privilege of going to a women's college, a really small women's college in the middle of Missouri, not a seven sister school, but one that I'm still a very proud alumni of.

And more than the degree that I earned there, what that place gave me and what I found there was a voice and it gave me mentorship and it gave me space to lean into leadership and it helped me learn the value of networks.

So I say all of that to say that while my skills and my degrees and all of that stuff were critically important to me standing here and being in this space today, that it isn't the only thing that got me here.

And I bet that as you all took stock and reflected on the things that held you up and pushed you forward, that your skills or your intelligence was not the primary thing that led you to this space today.

And it is that understanding and that appreciation of systems that guides my analysis, my practice, my work that I've done throughout my career, as it relates to job access and workforce development specifically for communities of color and women and in my current work at Jobs for the Future.

So for those that don't know, and this is not gonna be a large speech on Jobs for the Future, but just to give you a sense of who we are.

We're coming into our 40th year as a catalyst of really transforming our educational workforce systems.

And we do that by designing and scaling, influencing, and investing in new and proven models that help prepare learners and workers for the demands of today, and the the jobs of tomorrow.

And we do this because we know and we've seen, and I think other folks in this room know that the current approaches to learning and work toward the goal of economic advancement and mobility for all really are not working for everybody.

And so we try to have a laser focus on figuring out what can work.

So, despite the month that today's the first Friday of the month and it's jobs day, and I could geek out and give you all the data of, of what, the moment that we're in from that perspective, what I'm not gonna do is I'm not gonna do a deep dive on data or the insights of the Cleveland economy and how this pandemic has impacted communities and businesses and really exposed the deep and longstanding racial inequities that exist in this community.

You guys live here, you work here, you invest here, you build here, you lead here, right?

So you know a little bit of what I'm gonna say just to ground us again, but that the employment rate, unemployment rate in Cleveland is right around 5%.

I don't know what it is today, cause I didn't look it up but it's probably around the same.

And that the rate for Ohio, for black folks here in Ohio across the state is about 12%.

And it always stays no matter where you are in this country, about two to three times higher than the overall rate.

You also know that child poverty rates in east Cleveland, Cleveland and Ashtabula are well over 50%.

And you also know there's a lot of job growth right, in key industries.

And that in less than four years, it's projected that about 65% of the jobs in this area are gonna require a two to four year degree but only about a third of folks in this community have that.

And all of this is happening in a city that is 48% black, right?

And in a county that is about 30% black.

And it's really easy when we're faced with those numbers, when we look at our neighbors, when we look at our communities, when we listen to our business, our business community, it's really easy that as we're trying to dig out of this pandemic and respond to employer frustrations, that they can't find workers and address the poverty that is both concentrated and spread out throughout this community, it's really easy to focus on individual solutions, right?

And it's really easy to really focus on addressing skills gaps and mismatches and maintain our workforce focus that is largely focused on demand driven solutions.

And while those are very easy and familiar directions to go down and you can do that, right, and you can nibble at the edges and you can make the incremental change to a huge mountain that is facing you, you can also aim your focus in a different direction, right?

And you can really focus on figuring out what is a re-imagined or rebuilt system look like.

And what I'll share a little bit today is like, what are some pillars to think about as you re-imagine what this new system can and should look like?

And I would say there's four pieces to it.

I would say first that a new and re-imagined system has to be equity focused and it has to drive towards equity.

I would also say that a new system has to be data informed, and really use that data to ensure quality and outcomes.

I would say that that new system has to be worker and learner centered and have workers at the center of your system and then design what they need and in response to the concerns that they have.

And that, that is gonna, what is gonna be, what helps promote agency of people to move, and advance on the pathways that they want.

And I would also say that it has to also be demand driven, and you have to look at the totality of all of those things in the system that you're building.

And as civic and governmental and philanthropic and nonprofit leaders, I truly believe that you all do have the power, and I would say the responsibility to move in that direction.

The question is, is that, do you have the boldness and the will to do so?

And I'm not asking people to answer the question today, but that is part of the conversation and the charge going forward.

And I really do think that you do from what sort of what Cathy has shared to, with me in preparation for this.

So as you all think about what it takes to design a system that is based on those four pillars, I wanna leave some thoughts and some examples to think about and chew on and consider.

As it relates to being equity center, I think over the last year and a half there's been a lot of talk and focus on racial equity.

I think we all know that we've all seen the commitments and the statements and the letters and the black boxes all over the place, all over social media.

And with organizations doing that, they're doing that because they want it they, I do believe that folks, legitimately do want to advance opportunities for black workers and learners and other folks that have marginalized identities.

But I also want to urge you to really go beyond commitments and intentions.

And I wanna urge you to really do the work.

And part of that has to start with looking at and just aggregating your data.

And being okay and vulnerable with what the data tells you and what it shows.

And what I know and what I've seen both from looking at some of your data and trying to dig it up and be like, where's the desegregated data.

I'm not sure where it is, but I found some, what it shows is that where BIPOC are showing up in terms of job training and completion and retention across your system.

The joint center for political and economic studies released a report yesterday on what is necessary for black workers and learners within the WIOA system.

And I wasn't expecting to find this, but they pulled some data and they have some Ohio specific data in that report.

And it showed that about 65% of workers who receive core WIOA services are black folks, which I was like, wow, that's like a really big number.

And it's actually good to see that data, to know that.

And I'm going to bet that as you look closer at that data where people land, what you're gonna find are patterns of occupational segregation.

And that is a word that is largely been in academic spaces, but it's a word that is very, very real in terms of the lived reality of folks who utilize the system that we all work in.

And what you're gonna see in that is you're going to see patterns of where black people and particularly women of color are clustered into low paying jobs.

And that doesn't happen on accident.

And that doesn't happen solely because of skills.

One of the things that the joint center report shows is that for workers overall across the country, that black workers had the lowest earning levels of all groups who lead federally funded workforce programs.

This is despite having the highest employment rates of all participants.

So people are getting jobs, right, but where are they going?

And where are they landing?

And I wanna ask you to really look at why and look at your practices and go beyond skills, and invest in the interest and potential of everyone who walks through your doors, and ask yourself some questions.

Are those workers being shown the wide range of opportunities across your growth sectors available in a region?

Are you being curious about their interests and needs that the or people in your organization are serving?

Are you removing barriers to entry into non traditional or predominantly white and male occupations, for women and people of color?

And if you answer no to any of those questions, it is imperative that we all do the work to dig deeper and move towards disrupting those patterns and practices that contribute to occupational segregation.

We have to look at how we are actually serving people and make sure that the system is serving people well.

It's interesting.

I spent a lot of my career about 10 years of my career at an organization called Paraprofessional Healthcare Institute, working with, direct care workers, the majority of whom were women and immigrants and women of color.

And it was amazing to me, how much we talk about how low skilled those workers and people are when in reality, they're not.

They just haven't been fully given access to the full range of opportunities that allow them to maximize the skills that they actually have and transform and retool their lives into new opportunities that stand before them.

And so, when we're talking about healthcare pathways, for example, that start out at very necessary and valuable CNA jobs, We have to also think about everything that it takes to get someone to move up a pathway.

And a lot of that is a lot of support, right?

And a lot of, of maneuvering of the way our system operates to actually make it possible for them to move beyond those entry level jobs.

So that's, what it takes to be equity centered.

It's not just numbers, it's not just who walks through your doors.

It's how people move in the spaces that you work in and how people move beyond the places that they said.

So the second element of, this transformed system that we all can create is around being data informed.

And it starts on the equity side with dis-aggregating your data.

But there's also, I think, a really important conversation to be had about how well workforce programs in your system are doing at both collecting and reporting their outcomes data on completion, job placement and retention over time, beyond what WIOA requires, right?

And the question is, is, are your key partners resourced for collecting and reporting that data over time and resourced to fill the gaps that that data shows, right?

And otherwise, you're not gonna get to what you actually want to see, which is economic opportunity.

Opportunity doesn't happen in 30, 60, and 90 day chunks, right?

Opportunity happens over a lifetime.

And if we don't have a system that has that level of accountability to outcomes, that isn't just about standing up the next newest, fancy, shiny training program.

And doesn't ask where people land after they finished training, you're not fulfilling the mission of the system and you're not serving your clients well.

So we have to look at the data and get beyond the anecdotal stories and see what the, cause the data is gonna tell you what you need to do.

And the data is gonna tell you where the resources need to go, but you have to be willing to look at it you have to be vulnerable and saying where you're falling short, right?

And the system has to be willing to invest in a different way to get to a different end.

So that's the data and the outcomes piece.

The third piece, which is close to my heart, which is being worker and learner centered.

Part of the reason why I came to JFF is, and part of the reason when I was also at Kellogg is that I am unapologetically worker centered.

I believe in demand driven solutions are very important, but you really, really can't do anything if you don't have workers who are valued.

And so I, my focus is always on what do workers need to live and thrive and move in this place.

And in my experience over my career, there are two things that have stood out to me, that workers and learners, particularly those who are most challenged in our economy and our labor market need, is they need quality jobs and they need supports to maximize on their skills and potential.

And job quality conversations are happening everywhere, they've been happening, I've probably been in them for the last 15 to 20 years in different ways and spaces.

And the conversation often begins on wages.

And then they end there cause they're like, oh, we can't, I can't, I don't know.

I can't, I can't raise a wage.

How do I raise the wage?

That's gonna hit my bottom line.

And wages are very, very important and are foundational to job quality, but there are other pieces and components that are also important in determining whether or not a worker can, or frankly should stay in a job and feel valued in the place that they're working.

So I would say it starts with compensation, which is wages, benefits, pay time off.

All of those things that we know are important parts of a, of HR structure.

But agency and culture are also incredibly important.

One of the things I realized when I was at PHI and that we said often was that workers don't leave their jobs they leave their supervisors and they leave their place of employment.

They don't leave, they didn't leave the industry, the wages were bad, they were not great, but how they were treated on the floor, how their time was valued, how they were treated by clients, all of that made a difference in whether or not their job was a good job.

And I think we have to pay more attention to building good places for people to work particularly people who are diverse.

We spend a lot of time talking about building pipelines for people who are from diverse communities to go on traditionally white occupations and we train them up, but we don't do anything on the culture side.

And then we wonder why there's attrition and why people leave.

And so you have to pay attention to agency and culture as a critical component of job quality.

The other thing I would say that's important to job quality that you have to pay attention to is how a job is structured.

Is it stable?

Are hours predictable?

Is it a gig job or not a gig job?

Like how people can balance their work and their lives it's important for me, right?

It's important for most of us in this room.

That's why remote work is so awesome, right?

Right.

Cause we can balance our lives.

And why should we be the only ones who have that ability to have a stable job structure?

It should be something that should be standard and basic for anybody who walks into a space of employment, gives their time and talent and treasure on the other end.

So structure and how it's arranged and how people are safe and value and respect is important.

And the third space, and this is a space that's close to JFFs heart, is advancement.

And what are the ways that a job allows people to move ahead, how are incumbent workers invested in as valuable parts of the growth of the business, right.

Over the last 30 years, we've seen employer investment in job training and incumbent skill training plummet.

And we're at a space where you cannot afford to do that.

You have to see the value of the workers in your spaces, as people who know your business, who have a level of commitment to your business and see them as part of your future.

They want to see themselves as that too and businesses have to start putting skin in the game as folks like to say, right, to make that happen as another critical component.

And while I'll say that taking action on these elements largely falls on employer practices, right, and for employers to change how they move, I would also say that the workforce system and the community college system are critical levers to job quality and we don't utilize the power that we have.

We provide the supply for businesses to work.

And yet the system largely doesn't ask employers that it engages with about job quality.

An employer says, oh, I need business and need workers.

Can you help me?

Can you skill them up?

And we as a system, don't on the other side ask, what kind of job are you providing?

What are your wages?

What's your retention?

What's your turnover?

What are your paying points?

We don't do that.

And, one of the things I really, one of the things I'm excited about as I think about the work at JFF and the work that a lot of us have to do is how do we change our employer engagement strategies to be much more focused on job quality and equity?

Like, what would it look like right, if it as a job as a job provider, as a job developer, you could ask an employer what do you pay?

And not worry that they're not gonna come back to you and provide a space for your workers to work.

One of the things that I've come to know is that, and that I firmly believe is that if I would not send my cousin to go work at a company that I know has not a great reputation in my community, why would I send the clients who come to my door to that same company?

And yet we aren't incented as a system to ask those questions, when really I think we should be.

Yeah, I think that's something I gotta say right there.

I think I really do think that folks could be, that could be a game changer in how the system moves and operates.

And then finally, I think in addition to quality jobs, I think workers needs the support to be able to move forward.

I think that's what the winner of the award demonstrates that you have to provide, right, wraparound supports.

And it, part of my research for coming here, I listened to a lot of the different talks that the City Club has hosted over the year, with Bishara speaking on childcare, which is hugely, hugely, hugely critical.

Yes you.

I heard about the conversation around housing, around transportation, and we know that all of that is important as is criminal justice reform.

As our income supports, as our trauma informed practices and mental health supports.

And yet we look to programs to fix those problems, right?

We go to funders to help us give us some grants to build these programs and make them work.

But gaps persist, and waiting lists continue and we don't have the ability to serve people with the supports that they need at scale.

And I firmly believe that that is because the way you get to supports at scale is through policy change.

That's how you do it.

You can't rely on a public, on a philanthropic system right?

To only hold up all of the supports that people need to be successful 'cause then the system is not gonna fully work and meet the needs that people have.

And so I would say that as system leaders, that we all I think have a urgency to really prioritize policy agendas that put people in communities first, if you actually want to see economic opportunity happen.

Otherwise people aren't gonna be able to fully navigate everything that they have before them to be able to get to the training they need to be able to get to the jobs that they need and to be able to fully advance.

You have to look at policy.

So the question now is what will we do?

Thank you Tameshia for this like laundry list of things that we need to do, but what do we do to get there?

And in talking with Cathy for the prep of this, I actually had a lot of hope, right?

Yes, you did.

You gave me a lot of hope because this is, what she told me is that this is a time of tremendous change in Cleveland.

There's new leadership, right.

There's new folks at the table.

It's not just about rearranging deck chairs, you can start throwing stuff aside, if you can, and want to, right, and commit to a system that operates and works differently.

So I would say the first thing to do to get to action is to commit to collaboration.

You cannot continue, no none of us can right, continue operating in silos to be able to be able to advance anything.

You can advance your own mission and your own agenda, but to move a community and to move a system everybody has to be on the same page.

Everybody has to be committed to the same north star and has to define the problem that you are trying to solve in a similar way.

And so I really believe that you have an opportunity in Cleveland to go all in.

I know that's like a big Cleveland thing to say but, (audience laughs) but I also know that can't get anywhere without that happening.

Movements demonstrate that movements don't move alone because of a singular leader.

Movements move because of leadership, because of a shared vision and for an unending commitment to progress.

And in many ways, the workforce system needs to be about movement and progress, to be able to make sure that the folks that we say we serve and the folks that we say we care about move well.

So it's, time for really hard and honest conversations, right?

It's time for trust-building across the different spaces that we set to be able to get clear on what that collaboration will look like.

And then the second thing I would say is a willingness to take risks and try new things.

Re-imagining isn't like what is in my toolkit that I can pull back out again?

That's not, what re-imagination is, right?

It's about taking risks, 'cause we know that the systems that we sit in are not working for people who are most marginalized and impacted.

This last year has shown us that in ways that we cannot forget, and we cannot go back to businesses usual, we have to be willing to take risks.

And we have to be willing particularly to listen to the people who are most impacted and who have felt the most pain over the last years.

And not in tokenized ways, not in listening tours, but in sharing space table and power in designing what those solutions actually look like.

Because I bet they often have the best and most creative solutions that we haven't really fully tapped into or heard or tried to date.

And I'ma say a little something for philanthropy on risk, as someone who just came from philanthropy, I truly believe that philanthropy has to be the risk and flexible capital for nonprofit organizations.

And that's what workforce programs need to be able to try new things.

There's about $15 million in philanthropic dollars coming into the workforce community here in the greater Cleveland area.

And I would say that philanthropy needs to be in a space to really ask your partners what they need to advance their mission and their vision, and not to be solely wedded to your agenda and your mission alone.

It has to be a shared partnership in the way that philanthropy moves and operates.

And I say this as someone who just came from philanthropy.

And I know that it is hard to do, but I think there's power in it, and I know that it works.

And I know that's how you actually get to action.

And it is an urgency to do so at this time, we know the constrictions that exist in federal funding.

And if you have $15 million on the table to do something different, do something different with those dollars.

So I don't know if I've gotten the 30 minutes cause I've lost track of time cause I've been up here talking.

And I wanna leave room and time and space for conversation.

But I wanna kind of close things back to take us back to the initial thing that I talked about, about what it takes, right?

What it take to, what it took to get you here, what it takes to get, took to get me here, what it will take to get the clients that you serve in a room like this as well, and on a podium like this, right?

And it is going to take a completely transformed system.

It's gonna take supporting and holding people up.

And it's going to take looking at people and asking them, what do you wanna do, what do you wanna be, and how can I support you in getting there?

That's what it ultimately is going to take cause I know that's what it took to get me here.

And I bet that's what it took to get a lot of you here.

And I know that there's an ability to do that here.

So I know that we're going to turn it over to Q&A, and I know there'll be other questions, but I look forward to checking in with Cathy about a year from now and seeing what's happened in the space.

So thank you.

(audience applauds) - Today at the City Club, we're listening to a forum in partnership with the Deaconess foundation about how we can prepare for the jobs of tomorrow.

That little summary there doesn't really do what we just heard justice, but it's Tameshia Bridges Mansfield who's been speaking and Dan Moulthrop for the City Club.

We're about to begin the audience Q&A.

And we welcome questions from everyone, City Club members, guests, students, and those of you joining us via our live stream or the radio broadcast on 90.3 Ideastream Public Media.

If you have a question here in the audience, we ask you to find your way to, to one of these microphone stands, just raise your hand and our staff will manage everything.

If you're unable to make it to the mic stand, just, sort of we'll figure that out and we'll bring a microphone to you.

As usual if you'd like to tweet a question, you can tweet it @TheCityClub and we'll work it into the program.

You can also text your question to 330-541-5794.

That's 330-541-5794, and we'll work those into the program.

Let's go to our first question.

(indistinct conversation) - Hey, you're in good sweaty company.

I think we've all been warm over the last luncheon period.

So thanks so much for being here today.

I'm Grace Heffernan and I, I loved your comments about working against occupational segregation and making sure that folks have access to historically high quality and often white industries.

I think when we think about demand driven industries here in Northeast Ohio, we know that some of our most growing industries are places where black and brown workers and women are often clustered.

And those aren't those high quality, predominantly white industries, their home healthcare, their retail, their service.

And so I would just love to hear you talk a little bit about what you think as workforce professionals, our responsibility is for those workers in those industries.

- Yeah so I, I'll speak on a couple of things.

I'll speak specifically on the health care jobs piece, that's, since that's a lot of my background.

I think part of it is about asking the questions around, like, what are the wages?

What are the jobs look like?

What are the opportunities?

But I also know from, from the time that I was at PHI is particularly for the home health care jobs and the CNA jobs and those jobs that are huge, those are publicly funded jobs by and large, that rely on Medicaid reimbursement, right?

And so if you wanna figure out how do you make those jobs better, I think you link arms with some of the providers in the space who are pushing for higher Medicaid rate reimbursement with the requirement that if the rate goes up for those providers, right that that rate increase goes on and gets passed onto workers.

So it's about kind of figuring out, particularly on that end is figuring out like, what are the opportunities.

I remember when I worked at PHI and I was living in another state and I would go to the workforce, people would be like, can you invest in training for these workers?

No the wages are too low.

Oh, okay.

Will you join me at the Capitol for the rate increase bill that we're pushing?

Oh no, can't do that.

Can't do that.

So then you're perpetuating the problem by continuing to put people in jobs that you're not willing to get at the root cause of why the pay is bad.

Right.

So it's about challenging some of those assumptions.

And some of the reasons why.

I think within like manufacturing and labor, I think the piece around that for getting more access into those jobs, right, I think it's about having really hard conversations with trusted brokers around how do you make those cultures better places and create better entry points into those jobs.

And that's not work that you can flip a switch on, but it's about long-term sustained pressure and collaboration to make the change different.

So I would say those are two things.

It's about policy relationships, having hard conversations to be committed, to moving towards change.

- All right, good afternoon.

And thank you so much for coming all the way here, to speak with us and also celebrate Deb Vesy for the systems change award.

My question for you.

I know that Jobs For the Future is known for building centers of excellence and hubs of innovation.

And I'm curious from your point of view, has anyone in the JFF network, particularly a community really got worker centric system design right.

And what were the kinds of levers that they pulled to be able to enable that for their workers?

- Yeah, no, I think.

So I'm five months in, sorry to say that.

But I, no, but I think that's a really good question.

And I think we are trying to figure out how to do that better.

I think when I, when I'm speaking to you all, I'm also speaking to myself, right?

I would say one of the things I'm actually most excited about, about worker center is we did a project in California with an organization called Turning Basin Labs.

Where we worked with them and built worker led research project to kind of find out about what is job quality from a worker perspective.

And they talked about autonomy and ownership as to the main pieces of that.

And I would say that type of work in research is something that we're really interested in doing and digging more into and then taking to the next level to then kind of figure out, okay so what do we do with this?

Do we take this to employers to have them kind of talk with their workers and do similar types of research studies inside of places?

So I would say that's an example that I'm actually really, really excited about.

I would say also on our community college side with our student success network and some of our work with opportunity youth that work, we rely a lot on community based organizations.

They are a lot of times our key partners in that, and we really rely on them to be the space where we learn right, from what the worker or the learner or the youth perspective is, and then use that to infuse that in our work.

And so I know we have some tables that we've created in that space to make that happen, but I would say we, were still figuring that out.

And it's something, one of the things that energize me about coming there is trying to figure out how do we do that and how do we do that well and differently.

But I think we have some opportunities to figure that out.

- Hi, how are you?

- Good.

How are you?

- Good, thank you.

My name is Brianna Schultz, and I work with manufacturing works.

And I just want to first say thank you for all of the work that you do, it enriches our work that we do here locally.

We love you.

And I just have a really quick question.

You mentioned a study at the beginning, from the joint center of... - For political and economic studies.

- Okay.

- It's based in DC.

They did a study.

I think it came, I saw it yesterday on Twitter, its like the source of a lot of my workforce knowledge, but I saw it yesterday and I dove into it.

But it was released yesterday so if you go to that website, you'll be able to find that study and be able to pull it up.

And there's some solutions that he outlines in there, things to look at and consider.

- Thank you so much.

- Your welcome.

- We have a question from Twitter next.

What opportunities are there in green jobs, especially with the decline in auto and other manufacturing careers in the Midwest.

This seems to be a great investment, especially in rural regions.

- Yeah.

So, I mean, I think part of what the green job conversation part of it is we're waiting on the infrastructure bill, right?

To see like what comes from that and what are the opportunities there.

One of the things that we've seen is and it's gonna really, I think, vary by state.

I think in the coastal areas, there's different green jobs opportunities there around coastal remediation.

What we see here in the Midwest is around a lot of the work around cars and automation, which then also creates other risks for job displacement.

But that's a, that's an interesting space for green jobs with electric vehicles, the stands for charging stations and things like that.

There's some interesting work that we've seen there.

We have an investment through our employment training fund with the organization called ChargerHelp that actually provides training to people for servicing the electric charger stands.

And those are jobs that are like 20, $30 an hour that people can come into with, with no high school degree and be able to move into training and advancement there.

So I think they're really going to vary.

But what I would also say is that we don't do what we did before with green jobs, where there was like certificates everywhere and job, job training opportunities everywhere, but then the jobs didn't follow on the other end.

So I would, I would say it's about looking at what is happening in your given local economy about what are the opportunities for green jobs and then to cultivate the right ecosystems and to right size the training opportunities for them to make sure that people can actually land in jobs on the other end, not just to stand up training programs because the jobs are coming, if you don't really have a sense of what's happening.

So that I think if anything, there's a lot of lessons to be learned around green jobs from what happened before.

And we do not wanna recreate that.

And I think there's some hesitancy around them as well because of the experience of what happened before.

- Hello.

- Hi.

- Thanks so much for your comments, I thought that they were very, very, very interesting and good.

And please tell Maria Flynn that Grace Kilbane says hello, she's head of JFF.

Anyway, my name is Grace Kilbane.

And I had an opportunity to spend about 35 years in my career in workforce development at the local federal and state levels actually of government.

And I was most interested in your, in your point about being worker focused.

And I know that that's something that I think is really important on one hand.

On the other hand I think that we need to make sure that that is within the context of, sort of the demand driven nature of making sure that we're preparing people for jobs that are in demand.

Because as you probably know, in the beginning of federally funded job training programs, which were exclusively worker funded, we would basically train people for whatever they wanted to pick, and it didn't always lead to a successful result for them.

So I think that that's really fascinating and that that should be explored more.

And one of the questions that I have within that context is we were talking about this a little bit at my table before your presentation is that, you hear a lot of people say, we need more training programs, we need more job training programs.

but the reality is we can't fill up the job training programs that we have.

And this is not a pan, just a pandemic problem, this started before the pandemic.

I had the opportunity to serve as national director of Job Corps a couple of times, and trying to keep these free publicly funded, job training programs filled that provide high school diplomas and credentials, industry recognized credentials has been a challenge for some time.

And it is harder now because these things are just reopening.

I mean, so many of these programs have been closed or only available remotely, which made it as we know way worse for particularly the populations that we serve.

So I guess my question is given JFFs prominence nationally, as well as some of the other big research institutions in this space, is there any good research either being done from the worker side about how do we make these training programs more full, I think?

How do we get people like into them?

They are funded, they are available.

And it is like pulling teeth, especially for some of the more complicated occupations, the, which pay more, which have higher skills.

And we know that there's issues like, are they, well, do they have the maths and reading to take that?

I mean, all of those have been documented.

But there's something else going on that we need to do as a system to attract more people and fill up the training programs, that we have that are funded, that are in cooperation with businesses.

So I just, if you have any thoughts about that.

- Yeah.

- Thank you.

- Yeah, so...

I think like, what immediately comes to mind when I think of the programs that I've seen that are successful, where, there you are, its like where'd you go, I closed my eyes and couldn't find you.

When I think of like, what are the programs that have, that are successful in getting people in those seats?

And I think there's something about the structure of those programs that make them work, right.

And I think it's about the case that they make to students and community.

And they have the demonstrated outcomes to show a job on the other sides.

I think that's part of it.

I think the other part of it is, is word of mouth and trusted messengers in the community, right, that say this was a place that I went to.

They valued me, they trained me, they provided me with what I needed.

And then the, the spaces fill up because people hear that it's a good place that there'll be valued and respected and as people, right.

So I think a lot of it has to do with, with how those programs are actually designed beyond the curriculum, right?

There's an element in human centered design that becomes really, really important in terms of how are people treated when they walk in the door, what do our assessments look like.

I go back to some of my social worky side of me around how, how the program, how programs treat people.

And how programs like fully understand the needs that people have beyond the skills that they're coming to present with.

So it has to be particularly now a holistic approach and also thinking through, well, what are the barriers that may be in place within how I've set up my program that keep people from walking into my door, right?

So, so I, it's all of that, that goes, that goes into the mix, that from research, from talking with people, from seeing successful programs and being like, what works, why are people coming in your door?

And it's, that sauce of things that go into play?

So that's, that's what I would say becomes really important.

(audience applauds) - Good afternoon.

Again, Ronnie Cannon community engagement manager with Towards Employment.

If you could just briefly speak about investments in terms of employers.

Because I know a lot of times the work that we do is driven by getting qualified employees, but often, sometimes there's an issue with employers from their standpoint of being able to ask them to change their culture or their way of doing things.

So if you can speak towards how much investment should be done when it comes to that.

Cause classic example, several years ago here in Cleveland, there was an initiative to put out what's called a CQE certificate for qualified employment, right?

And it was basically something that was handed down from the judicial system that was given to those that had some type of involvement with the criminal justice system that they can take to an employer to say, hey, I have been signed off for them by my judge.

But an employer who's uneducated about this CQE just looks at it, another piece of paper.

So that's just an example of how the employers are not being educated in terms of things that can actually bolster our economy so if you could speak towards that, be greatly appreciated, thank you.

- Yes.

(audience applauds) I feel like you, I feel like you could probably go to other field folks who have thoughts and opinions.

No, I think that, I think employer, like working with employers to change their practices is critically important, right.

And, and I'll speak a little bit from the JFF perspective on what we're learning through some of our corporate leadership work is we have a, what we call it impact employer framework, where we work with large corporations around their practice change.

But I would say to the same thing as I answered, is it Grace's question around like what it takes to get people through the door.

There's a trust piece.

It's about having like trusted people, that businesses trust to challenge them on what they're doing and how they need to be different.

Some of that pressure does come from the ground up, but it's also around like who in your community has like a similar mindset, who's like these employers need to do some things differently to open up doors and access.

And how do you kind of leverage the power and access that each of you have to push those conversations and provide what does also have to be, I think for employers a safe space for them to feel safe and challenged.

One of the things that I've found that helps with employers are as much as we use this term, communities of practice do matter for employers.

They need spaces to be safe, to be vulnerable as well, to fail, to try some different things.

But I think creating those spaces and having input and guidance into what those practice changes need to be are incredibly important.

I think it's both pressure from the ground up to be different, and also like pressure and support from the top down and among their peers to do it differently too.

And if you have champions in your community who are doing different, it's about getting together with them and be like, can you, can you tell so-and-so to be different?

Like what are the conversations you're having in those spaces?

It's funny, my aunt was my aunt listened Detroit.

She was in, at the Mackinac conference and had, was, was on this panel.

And she talked about the power that people in power have to talk to each other, right.

And that stood with me because we all know in the circles and spaces that we sit in who's right and who's not.

And it's those in power that have the ability to like challenge, push, move, and sense, inspire folks to be different.

And so I would say look for that.

And then, and then, I can also share and find some information to share with you on the other side, around some of the work that we're learning through our impact employer work and how we're setting up action labs around different topics around community safety, not community safety, but psychological safety, employer wellbeing, those types of talents, practices, that create good environments for workers.

So I'm happy to share that with you as well.

(audience applauds) Time.

(indistinct conversation) - Thank you, that's wonderful.

Today at the City Club we have been enjoying a conversation with Tameshia Bridges Mansfield, vice president for workforce innovation at Jobs For the Future JFF.

We are celebrating as well with our friends with at Deaconess foundation, as they presented their inaugural Deborah Vesy Systems Change Champion Award.

In honor of Deb Vesy, longtime president and CEO of Deaconess, who recently retired.

We welcome guests at tables hosted by the foundation also by the Fund for Economic Future, R4Workforce and Towards Employment, we're so happy to have you with us today.

Please join us next Friday, October 15th, as we present our forming, presented in collaboration with Velocity about diversity, equity and inclusion in the WNBA and the NBA, still a few tickets available for that.

And also Monday night, October 11th, we are presenting in partnership with our friends at Ideastream Public Media, the general election debate with Cleveland mayoral candidates, Justin Bibb and Kevin Kelley.

It's a 90 minute debate.

It's broadcast live on our website also on WVIZ PBS 90.3 Ideastream Public Media, and probably a few other places around town.

After the debate be sure to catch our one-on-one conversations with the candidates in the coming days.

Thank you so much for being with us.

Ladies and gentlemen, friends of the City Club, members of the City Club, our forum is now adjourned.

(audience applauds) (upbeat music) - [Announcer] For information on upcoming speakers or for podcasts of the City Club, go to cityclub.org.

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