Retail America: Pathways To Opportunity

Shemia Williams, Director of Programs from Charlotte Works, takes listeners beyond the retail sector to explore career pathways in healthcare and hospitality, the power of partnerships between employers and workforce intermediaries, and how these partnerships change the lives of frontline workers in this progressive community. 

In episode eight of the Retail America Podcast series, Lex Dennis, Director of Lifelong Learning at the Drucker Institute and Fred Teague, consultant for the High Potential Employee/Preferred Employer Program within the Lifelong Learning Initiative in South Bend, Indiana share insights about community engagement models, hallmarks and theories of change for the Lifelong Learning Initiative as well as ways the Drucker Institute and key community partners are connecting organizations and individuals ready to enter the South Bend workforce.

Holly Kurtz, Director of the Retail Sector Initiative at the Center for the Future of Arizona (CFA), shares insights about the retail sector inArizona and explores topics related to upward mobility, best practices for training frontline workers, employer engagement and future retail trends. 

Amanda Willard, Senior Talent Acquisition Leader at T-Mobile and Nicole Trimble, Executive Director for the Talent Rewire initiative at FSG, discuss supporting frontline retail workers, developing ROI metrics for new frontline training systems and forming partnerships to recruit future frontline workers.

Alita Bezanis, of Pete's Fresh Market, Yesenia Cervantes, from Instituto del Progreso Latino and Jenny Weissbourd, from Reimagine Retail at the Aspen Institute, share insights into worker mobility, job quality and economic stability within the retail sector.

Demetra Brown, Program Manager at Generation, explores new approaches to training, the training's impact on frontline workers and employers' perceptions on ROI from building frontline training programs. 

Jaime Fall, Director of Upskill America, shares how upskilling programs benefit frontline workers and their employers, and provides insights from the latest upskilling programs across America in the third episode of the Retail America: Pathways to Opportunity podcast series.

Pat Steele, Project Director at Central Iowa Works, shares insights into how employers are overcoming low numbers of job applicants and providing wrap around services that overcome employment barriers as well as general insights into the Des Moines retail sector in the second episode of the Retail America: Pathways to Opportunity podcast series.

Julie Gehrki, Vice President of Programs at the Walmart Foundation, shares insights into retail as a sector of opportunity by highlighting Walmart's best practices and strategies for advancing frontline retail workers during the first episode of the Retail America: Pathways to Opportunity podcast series.