In our season finale, JFF Senior Program Manager, Dr. Mara Lockowandt, steps in as our host, interviewing three guests from the housing and urban development space. First, Lauren Kennedy of the North Valley Housing Trust shares some of the unique and complex recovery stories of her Northern CA community in Chico, still rebuilding after a devasting wildfire and navigating historically unjust housing practices. Then Tyrone Williams and Julius Austin share about their critical work at the Sacramento Promise Zone and Sacramento Housing and Redevelopment Agency (SHRA), exploring among other things, how deeply connected we all are and what it takes for all Californians to thrive and succeed. As we wrap up our “Communities in Recovery” series, all three guests remind us of what we have overcome in this last year, and how we need to continue to work towards solutions to achieve an inclusive recovery for all.

Learn more about the Sacramento Promise Zone here: www.sacramentopromisezone.org

The Sacramento Housing and Redevelopment Agency here: www.shra.org

And the North Valley Housing Trust here: https://www.nvht.org

While most everyone faced challenges and hardships due to COVID-19, younger generations, like generation Z, were uniquely affected — having to grow up quickly and give up quintessential moments in a high schooler’s experience like prom and graduation walks. On our fifth episode, Renée Faulkner speaks with two California high school students, Cameron Butler and Ellyette Morales. We hear how the pandemic knocked their plans off course, where they found the support to keep pursuing their dreams, and what they’ve taken away from their experiences. Cameron and Ellyette bring valuable insight and clarity to what students endured this last year and what inclusive recovery looks like for them.

Organizations and schools mentioned in this episode:

Congregations Organized for Prophetic Engagement (COPE) in San Bernardino

Design Science Middle College High School in Fresno

Cameron Butler’s Youtube Channel

In this episode, JFF explores the generational impacts of the pandemic through one family’s experience. We are joined by Galyna and Yuliya Monastyrska, a mother and daughter duo based in Woodland and Santa Cruz, CA, respectively. Like many of us, they leaned on family, friends, and in their case, their Ukranian diaspora community in new and important ways during this last year. Through reflection on their unique professional and educational pivots, Galyna and Yuliya share how they found connection, support, and opportunity for themselves and others during this challenging era of COVID-19.

Learn more about Get Virtual, the business Yuliya helped launch in order to help other small businesses affected by COVID-19: https://www.getvirtual.org/

In this episode, JFF is joined by Sandra Celedon, President and CEO of Fresno Building Healthy Communities. Sandra walks us through the importance of community-based organizations (CBO) and how they’ve become critical during the pandemic. Her story illustrates how helping your community can start in one place, like advocating for public parks, and then broaden to championing healthcare access for those who need it most.

Building Healthy Communities - https://www.fresnobhc.org/

Our host, JFF Associate Director Renee Faulkner, will explore how the lives of two California Community College students changed when campuses closed in March 2020. From experiencing food insecurity and managing family dynamics to mastering online learning...and TikTok, Josh Elizondo and Jamie Vasquez reflect on how the pandemic has impacted their educational and career trajectories, and what it will take to get back on track.

It's not uncommon for adults to change careers at midlife. Michael Carvalho was one of those career-changers. In this episode, he shares his complex experience working to navigate his job search through American Job Centers. And Josh Copus, director at the JFFLabs AWAKE Initiative, shares four core challenges and opportunities and corresponding behaviors that workforce systems can use to prepare to help workers like Michael in the future.

*Please note: this episode contains depictions of violence that some people may find disturbing.*

Assessments can also play a critical role in helping workers get connected with relevant, in-demand jobs and skills. Each year millions of workers engage with career services through the Workforce System. In 2020, due to the COVID-19 Crisis, the Workforce System has been inundated with demand for people looking for career services and support.

PAIRIN’s My Journey platform matches individuals to optimal careers, professional development, and jobs with their behavioral science-based SaaS (software-as-a-service) products. PAIRIN’s My Journey platform uses their behavioral assessment and a needs and desires survey to personalize career, education, and development recommendations for each individual based on their unique abilities, situation, and life stage. My Journey also facilitates direct connections to resources, tools, and support services available through state agencies for seamless navigation and task management.

PAIRIN works with the Workforce System to reach and engage jobseekers by providing them with tools and technologies that are more intuitive, useful and effective.

Technology and globalization are rapidly shifting the skills required, and incumbent workers are at risk of being left behind. At the same time, there is a critical demand, in particular, for workers with contemporary, relevant skills in Technology, IT and related fields. The COVID-19 Crisis has further accelerated these trends. It is now more critical than ever that employers deploy more efficient assessment tools to quickly and confidently identify the talent they need to meet both new and pent-up demand for products and services.

They can do that with career fit assessment tools, which are designed to identify people’s innate skills, abilities, and personality traits and match them with careers they will love. By aligning career advice and training recommendations with the actual job opportunities that companies have available, they provide workers with meaningful, actionable insights that help them jump-start new careers.

GreatBizTools offers a career fit assessment tool called MyInnerGenius that helps employers find the best people and helps people discover what they do best. GreatBizTools is currently working with IBM on an initiative whose goal is to help people get started in new IT careers even if they don’t have technology backgrounds.

Every day, wonderful, capable, and passionate people are unfairly excluded from the hiring process for reasons other than whether they can actually do the job. Every candidate should have an opportunity to showcase their talent. Companies can drive this by assessing candidates with job-related tasks so they can make hiring decisions based on performance, without bias.

Making hiring about merit, not background, and informed decisions from data, not bad signals around human capability across both hard and soft skills helps companies identify the talent that matches their business needs. Similarly, quality assessment technology helps learners make more informed career navigation choices among employment opportunities, identifying skills while exploring what’s possible in a particular sector and role.

Vervoe is an AI-powered skill-testing platform that helps companies hire the best candidate by focusing on who can do the job, not who looks good on paper. Vervoe uses machine learning to create tailored skills assessments that allow companies to test candidates for any skill and automatically grade their responses at any scale. TriNet is a global leader providing businesses with HR solutions and works with JFFLabs partner Vervoe to help evaluate candidates for sales and other roles.

During a time when arguably more workers than ever navigate a labor market in flux, they deserve an equitable experience. Yet, pedigree based hiring, and making recruiting decisions based primarily on the schools candidates attended, the subjects they studied, and the grades they earned is a bias tradition that continues in our post-COVID economy.

Replacing traditional hiring approaches with a blended strengths-based assessments model helps companies to level the playing field for all candidates. In this podcast, JFFLabs features Cappfinity, a global leader in strengths-based hiring. The company designs and builds bias-free assessments for a variety of roles, functions, and seniority levels using real-life scenarios and a mix of mediums to create an authentic and unique experience for candidates. Among other things, bias-free, algorithmic assessments can help employers meet their diversity and inclusion goals by enabling them to look past candidates’ backgrounds and instead focus on their ability, fit, and potential.