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Recent Publications
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Detroit GreenWorks Solutions: Creating Triple Bottom Line Impact
Using seed capital from a US Department of Labor(DOL) grant, the Detroit GreenWorks Solutions is a community effort to invest in Detroit's workforce and economic revitalization through the green economy. This report goes far beyond standard performance measures to both tell the story and quantify how the investment from DOL had impacts that go far beyond standard performance measures. In addition to looking at things like participant outcomes, the methodology also measured and quantified environmental, economic, and social impacts. It was written by Kysha Frazier and Tammy Coxen.
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New Staff
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Kendra Howard, Community Engagement Director for the Detroit Jobs Alliance
Kendra joined CSW to play a critical role in building a Detroit Jobs Alliance by unifying a wide-ranging network of organizations, growing community capacity to meet the region's complex workforce development needs, creating a strong advocacy agenda, and developing a coalition of forward-thinking community leaders. Read more...
Mike King, Policy Associate
Mike joined CSW to support two of our signature projects: the Detroit Jobs Alliance (DJA) and the Advanced Energy Storage Systems Initiative (AESSI) through research and partner engagement. Read more...
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Career Navigation for the 21st Century
| Click the image to view the presentation on our website. |
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Only a small number of people actually follow a straight path to finding a job. For most, educational choices and career paths are complicated, fragmented, and circuitous. In many communities, information about local career opportunities and the education required to qualify for them is not well organized or readily available.
We're developing a new approach to identifying quality career options and planning for the required education. We envision a strong, integrated set of high tech and high touch tools that enable individuals to access and use real-time, tailored information. These tools would allow individuals to make more informed decisions about career and learning opportunities.
This approach is not a single, coordinated national career navigation system. Nor is it an isolated initiative that merely touches individuals entering training, or an effort to simply match individuals to potential employment opportunities. Rather, this approach is a diverse collection of robust, integrated tools that support career navigators and counselors in working in close partnership with individuals to help them make highly informed choices.
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Building a Detroit Jobs Alliance
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Panelists at the Detroit Jobs Alliance Academy.
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We recently marked an important milestone in our efforts to build a Detroit jobs alliance, an alliance of stakeholders who collectively have a measurable impact on Detroit's ability to connect the skill and employment needs of its residents with employers' workforce needs. The alliance is incubated by the Detroit Regional Workforce fund and managed by CSW. It relies on the participation and resources of the greater Detroit community to bring to life the vision of the Detroit jobs alliance:
"A Detroit in which all residents have the skills and resources available to have sustainable career pathways and livelihoods and can participate in the current, growing, and future economy of the Detroit region."
Over the past year, we've been working with a diverse group of community members and stakeholders who have participated in work groups to share their ideas and resources for getting Detroiters into good jobs. We also guided the formation and work of a steering committee to help build consensus for aligning and coordinating efforts and identifying the highest-impact opportunities for action. This steering committee includes residents and faith-based groups, economic and workforce development agencies, community development organizations, human service agencies, and education and training providers. In November, participants in the alliance met and agreed on a charter document which contains the mission and goals for their collective work.
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A participant in the Detroit Jobs Alliance Academy helps prioritize opportunities.
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In December, we kicked off a Detroit Jobs Alliance Academy to provide participants with a deeper understanding of the workforce development ecosystem, best practices and tools to help stakeholders collaborate and complement each other's work, and improve their ability to achieve better outcomes for residents and employers.
In 2013, we will continue to engage stakeholders in taking coordinated action in service of the goals and objectives. We're also building a long-term framework and governance structure for the alliance.
We are impressed to see the level of engagement and feel a strong sense of commitment from the participants who have been involved from the beginning and from those who were new to the work. We'll continue to work with service providers, residents, and businesses in the region towards the solutions that we have collectively identified through the coordinated action plans. We look forward to helping create good, family sustaining jobs in Detroit and to supporting Detroit residents in getting the skills they'll need to fill those jobs.
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Where We've Been
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Association for Public Policy & Management Conference
Larry Good moderated a session at the Association for Public Policy & Management Conference in combination with our partners Chris King from the Ray Marshall Center for the Study of Human Resources at the University of Texas-Austin and Carl Van Horn from the John J. Heldrich Center for Workforce Development at Rutgers University. The topic was "Reimagining America's Skills Investments." The session resulted in a great discussion with attendees about how the issues and need for workforce development policy have changed dramatically in recent years and the opportunity for reimagining the frameworks used. The conference brings together researchers and policy developers to examine policy choices across a range of subject matter domains.
 Cornell University
In November, Kysha Frazier spoke with master level human resources students at Cornell University about progressive employer strategies that support worker advancement, particularly for low skill workers. The students wanted to learn more about how their role as HR professionals can go beyond maximizing shareholder value and negotiating benefits and salaries to really allow them to support the development of people and thus the organization. Kysha was invited to speak by Pam Tolbert, a Professor of Industrial and Labor Relations and the Social Sciences. Kysha and Dr. Tolbert plan to explore this topic further and develop a paper over the next several months.
The Battery Show
We are currently working with a partnership of organizations in Southeast Michigan through the Advanced Energy Storage Systems Initiative (AESSI), a federally-funded partnership of regional organizations, to grow the advanced energy storage value chain in the region through the development of technology and talent. Sandy Marshall and Mike King recently attended The Battery Show with over 200 companies from energy storage system industry leaders from around the world, including regional companies such as Johnson Controls, Exide Technologies, Dow Chemical, and Ford Motor Company. The conference provided key takeaways for AESSI's work, including the local industry's need for more electrical engineers and electrochemists with applied experience, and projections for industry growth areas over the next 15 years. We also heard evaluations on the latest market trends and advancements in technology across automotive, portable, and industrial sectors, which are driving development, growth and demand of advanced batteries worldwide.
A Greenforce Initiative Virtual Summit - Advancing Greener Careers and Campuses
In cooperation with the National Wildlife Federation, Jobs for the Future recently hosted a Greenforce Initiative Virtual Summit. Mike King attended the virtual summit which showcased the work of community college partners across the country in developing green career pathways and connecting campus sustainability to hands-on teaching and learning. The video-conferencing platform was supplemented with additional technologies, including a Virtual Showcase where attendees could highlight their own work through project videos and posters, a discussion forum through LinkedIn, and live Tweets using the hashtag #GFVS12. Content from the virtual summit is available.
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About CSW
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Corporation for a Skilled Workforce is a national nonprofit that partners with government, business, and community leaders to develop good jobs and the skilled workers to fill them. For more than 20 years, we have been an effective catalyst for change by articulating opportunities and models for innovation in work and learning and provoking transformative change in policy and practice.
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