In this episode of the Work in Progress podcast, STRIVE president & CEO Philip Weinberg and STRIVE board co-chair Roy Castro join me to discuss how the nonprofit has been connecting historically-excluded populations to life-changing careers and skills for the past 40 years.

"We believe in the principles of equity and justice and opportunity for all. There's too many individuals, as we know, in our communities who are talented and looking for access to build a career, but often don't know where to go. We believe at STRIVE in giving them a fair shot," explains Weinberg.

The nonprofit was born in 1984 in the basement of an East Harlem New York public housing apartment building. Today, STRIVE is in about a dozen cities, including Baltimore, New Orleans, and San Diego, and has helped nearly 90,000 graduates gain access to the training and support needed to build a career.

Weinberg adds, "We show up in communities through partners that license with STRIVE to deliver our evidence-based workforce programming within their broader portfolio of services. STRIVE always shows up in concert with community, with public officials and mayors' offices, and anchor institutions like community colleges, other nonprofit providers, and local philanthropy."

Weinberg says most of their students come to STRIVE unemployed or in low-wage, low-quality jobs.

"Our average age is about 30. Most of our students come to us on public assistance looking to create a sense of financial independence and empowerment for themselves and their families. Over 40% of our students are parents to minors. 40% of our students do have experience with the criminal justice system.

"We've built a model that is comprehensive to support people who are often encountering significant hurdles in life through no fault of their own – injustices, racial injustices, injustices in systems," he adds.

STRIVE offers 10 weeks of no-cost training that is customized to credentials local employers are looking for that can give the students access to high-quality, high-growth occupations. The program includes three to four weeks of intensive coaching and mentorship on team-building, managing conflict, and professional communications. After the training, the nonprofit's employment team works with the students to connect them with employers.

Roy Castro is the co-chair of the STRIVE board and the founder and CEO of Castro Ventures, a multimillion dollar firm. He is also a STRIVE alum.

"22 years ago, I actually graduated from STRIVE. They took a Roy who was 28 years old, never had a job in his life, only knew the street life. After the street life, he only knew prison life. No job experience, no corporate America experience, never had a manager, didn't like command and chain of command, didn't understand that. And STRIVE was able to show this kid that there's more out there," Castro shares.

"I was one of the lucky ones that was able to go to STRIVE. STRIVE took me in and guided me at when I was literally at my most darkest moment in my life when I was most lost, and I needed more than just a job at that time, and STRIVE was there to pick me up," he explains. "This is why I'm so passionate and why 22 years later I'm equally – if not more – as passionate and I give my time to STRIVE."

Weinberg and Castro go into more detail on how the program connects students to those jobs and how the STRIVE program doesn't end at graduation. STRIVE offers them lifetime support.

You can listen to the entire conversation here, or wherever you get your podcasts. You can also find it on our Work in Progress YouTube channel.

Episode 331: STRIVE president & CEO Philip Weinberg and STRIVE board co-chair Roy CastroHost & Executive Producer: Ramona Schindelheim, Editor-in-Chief, WorkingNationProducer: Larry BuhlTheme Music: Composed by Lee Rosevere and licensed under CC by 4Transcript: Download the transcript for this episode hereWork in Progress Podcast: Catch up on previous ep...

Skilled trade workers are in big demand and short supply and it just might be a career pathway you should consider. WorkingNation and Scripps News have partnered on a new series, Fire Up Your Career, to explore the types of jobs available, what employers are doing to attract talent, and how you can get the skills needed for these good-paying jobs popping up all across the country. Read the article and listen to the podcast, then watch the video below of WorkingNation on Scripps News discussing what's driving the demand and creating new job opportunities in the skilled trades.

In this episode of Work in Progress, we're talking about the shortage of skilled trade workers and what employers can do about it. I am joined by Brooke Weddle, McKinsey & Company senior partner and co-author of the McKinsey report Tradespeople Wanted: The Need for Critical Trade Skills in the U.S.

The country is facing a hiring crunch for skilled workers such as carpenters, electricians, welders, and plumbers. What’s behind the critical demand for talent in the trades? Weddle says the shortage is not new, but the demand has skyrocketed over the past few years.

"That comes from things like the bipartisan infrastructure law. It comes from the energy transition. It comes from infrastructure investments beyond the Biden bipartisan infrastructure law. We see things like the CHIPS Act," she explains.

“Two important supply-side trends are decreasing the number of skilled laborers in the U.S. workforce: the aging U.S. population and too few younger people entering the trades.” according to the report.

Weddle adds, "We are not seeing enough new entrants into those skilled trade roles, so thus the gap that we observe. It's troubling because it's getting in the way of productivity and performance of a lot of organizations."

The report estimates that cost of the worker shortage to U.S. companies is over $5 billion. "We're not talking about small numbers here. And having worked with many industrial manufacturing companies that are employing these skilled trades, I can tell you that this is not a HR topic. This is a CEO topic," Weddle tells me in the podcast.

"If you listen to any earnings call of a large industrial company in the past 12, 24 months, I would be hard-pressed to find one that is not talking about workforce issues, whether it's acquiring that talent or retaining that talent or making that talent more productive," she says.

The report finds that the demand for workers in the skilled trades is only going to increase based on McKinsey's analysis on the data from the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics and talking with employers.

Weddle and I discuss some ideas of how employers can attract and retain new workers to fill current and future roles, including working locally with a variety of partners.

"So involving others in the community, whether those are economic development organizations, workforce councils. There is obviously the big role to play on the educational provider side. As we know, that is certainly not just higher ed, but it is community colleges. It is vocational schools.

"One of the things that we've seen is that when you're orchestrating and integrating at this regional level, then you're able to much more quickly match what are the skills and goals we need to how do we build the workforce that is required?

"I would say failure is not an option. We must be optimistic, but we must be smart optimists. We need to find new innovative ways to work together," Weddle tells me.

We go deeper into specific examples of how this regional partner approach is getting results. We also talk about some of the reasons younger adults might not want to join the skilled trades and how employers can address those issues to attract a new generation of workers.

You can listen to the entire conversation here, or wherever you get your podcasts.

You can read the McKinsey & Company Tradespeople Wanted report here.

In this episode of Work in Progress, Josh Elder, vice president and head of grantmaking for Siegel Family Endowment, joins me to discuss the importance of tech connectivity in creating access and opportunity to jobs in rural America. We also talk about the overall impact technology is having on society, education, and the way we do our jobs.

For more than 10 years, the Siegel Family Endowment, a private family foundation, has supported a wide range of grantees that are focused on understanding and shaping the impact of emerging technology on society. Of late that conversation has be more and more about artificial intelligence.

"The way that we've been thinking about it is understanding how AI is impacting work today, both in terms of the impact it is having on employers, but – and this is where we want to elevate this conversation – the impact of AI on workers," Elder explains.

He says the big questions they are examining with their grantees are whether AI is being done to workers or is AI being done with workers. "Oftentimes when you hear about AI in the workforce, everyone immediately jumps to thinking about is AI going to replace people? Is AI going to displace people and reduce jobs? And we know we've seen some of the early stats and some of that is happening."

He adds that as AI tools and products continuing to evolve, it is important to make certain the workers' voice is being listened to and integrated into those tools "to really mitigate some of the harms and the bias that we unfortunately are seeing day-to-day with more and more emerging technology taking place and impacting workers, especially marginalized workers in the workforce."

Early on, our conversation in the podcast turns to jobs in rural America and the importance of access to a solid tech infrastructure, connectivity, and broadband.

"If you don't even have the fundamental elements of connectivity, you're already facing obstacles and challenges that are putting you behind. That's something that we've really been looking at – especially in places like rural America – to really create the connectivity and digital infrastructure that's needed to then connect to both the physical and social infrastructure that you're going to (need) in the workforce," says Elder.

As rural America faces a "brain drain" of younger adults moving out of their communities to find jobs, that digital infrastructure takes on more importance.

"I speak as someone who grew up in rural America. I felt like I had to move out in order to be able to find the opportunities or pursue opportunities for things that I was interested in. I know some of that, unfortunately, is still the case.

"What we are trying to do, especially with CORI (Center on Rural Innovation) and others, is look at how can you create a rural innovation ecosystem and hubs that can provide more opportunities, either for entrepreneurship or for other companies to be developed, that can actually support and provide opportunities for citizens there and also grow talent pipelines.

"There's amazing talent that exists in these rural communities. They often just don't have connection to the opportunities to be able to build out for success. We're really interested in looking at the connection between education, workforce, and infrastructure needed to be able to scale these opportunities at a rapid rate," says Elder.

Josh Elder goes into much more details on how Siegel Family Endowment is working with grantees to address these issues, the importance of building equitable access to jobs and education, and how we all should have a voice in tech's impact on society.

You can listen to the entire conversation here, or wherever you get your podcasts. Or you can catch the interview on my Work in Progress YouTube channel.

Episode 329: Josh Elder, vice president & head of grantmaking, Siegel Family EndowmentHost & Executive Producer: Ramona Schindelheim, Editor-in-Chief,

In this episode of the Work in Progress podcast, Brian Peckrill, executive director of the William G. McGowan Charitable Fund, and Johnny C. Taylor, Jr., president and CEO of SHRM, join me in a discussion on how an ethical leader can foster a strong culture of integrity and inclusion from the top of the organization to the bottom.

For the past three years, the McGowan Charitable Fund and SHRM have partnered to present the Ethical Leader of the Year Award to a CEO they believe embodies the belief that principles and profits are not incompatible.

"There are great leaders out there in the world who are making business decisions that have both great financial impacts, but are also mindful of their stakeholders, their customers, as well as their workforces," says Peckrill.

Peckrill says there are six core competencies that make up an ethical leader – character, integrity, accountability, empathy, self-awareness, resilience, and courage. "Leaders need all of these. Sometimes they need different qualities at different moments, but to really put forth a leadership practice that doesn't just benefit the financial performance of the organization but pushes the organization forward and serves its people, (leaders) need all of these values."

He adds that CEOs that embrace these values are transforming both their organizations and society.

SHRM's Taylor agrees and says without strong ethical leadership at the top organizations can struggle. "It's because the culture is not one that makes clear that ethics is the way we do business. When you think about ethical cultures, it is both a treetop and a sort of ground-up grassroots effort to get this right. We need every employee, and we need all leaders. And we do this right, then we have business cultures that are successful and ethical."

He says there's a right and a wrong way to do business and the ethical decision is one that we've got to make sure that we teach our colleagues how to recognize.

This year, McGowan and SHRM presented the Ethical Leader of the Year Award to Marvin Ellison, president and CEO of Lowe's. Peckrill says Ellison was an easy choice based on how, under his leadership, the company has invested in its workers and the communities it serves both during and after the COVID pandemic.

Listen to the podcast here or wherever you get your podcasts to learn more about Ellison's leadership and also more about the benefits to a company when the CEO makes a clear choice to set ethical standards and insist they are followed from the top to the bottom of the organization.

Or you can catch the interview on my Work in Progress YouTube channel.

Episode 328: Brian Peckrill, executive director, William G. McGowan Charitable Fund and Johnny C. Taylor, Jr., president & CEO, SHRMHost & Executive Producer: Ramona Schindelheim, Editor-in-Chief, WorkingNationProducer: Larry BuhlTheme Music: Composed by Lee Rosevere and licensed under CC by 4Transcript: Download the transcript for this episode hereWork in Progress Podcast: Catch up on previous episodes here

In this episode of Work in Progress, I am joined by Scott Pulsipher, president of Western Governors University to talk about how the online university flips the standard postsecondary education model to create individualized learning plans for each student. We also discuss the latest WGU offering: a new fund designed to help prepare students for jobs in nursing, which is now facing a critical shortage nationwide.

Since its founding in 1997. Western Governors University (WGU) has prided itself in innovating the way higher education prepares students to enter the workforce.

Pulsipher says at the heart of that continuing innovation is the idea that every person is unique, with unique needs and circumstances, as they enter into the workforce or seek a career that will provide them with economic mobility.

"It starts with a very simple truth: there is inherent worth in every individual and that we believe – and know, in fact – if given the opportunity, each one has something big to contribute. Everyone has the innate capacity for learning. It doesn't mean that we learn the same way or that we go at the same pace," he explains.

"We apply that by just simply recognizing everyone can learn and everyone has the opportunity to contribute, so how do we make these pathways as accessible and affordable and traversable for every individual?"

Pulsipher says that translates into offering individualized and personalized plans for each student, along with a mentor to help them navigate the pathway to their career goals.

"The program mentor is someone who's with you from the day you start your program until the day you graduate. Their job isn't to just augment your instruction and your learning, but to also help you deal with all the challenges, disruptions, offsets that you may have. It's like a bit of a secret sauce into helping our students complete at much higher rate than they might otherwise."

Another key to helping the students, according to Pulsipher, is working with employers across the country, accessing what skills they are looking for right now and in the near future.

"We always adapting and advancing the curriculum to be relevant to the world of work. Certainly, technology's increasing the pace of that change. We know the shelf life of skills is declining or the knowledge is declining, meaning you're going to have to make sure that what you're learning. Our curriculum is directly relevant to the opportunities you see within the next three- to five year horizon, two- to three-year horizon, one- to two-year horizon.

"We're always leveraging our engagements with our employer networks – we have over 250 employers – so that we're always ingesting that workforce data back into the design and development of our curriculum. I think one of the key things that our students rely upon us is for the relevancy of what they've learned to the jobs they want to pursue," he tells me.

One field that is in big demand right now is health care. For example, there's as many as 40,000 unfilled jobs for nurses across the country right now.

"We know that number is going to keep growing because of the aging population and the higher demand for the health care services that are needed. (WGU) is a nationally-scaled provider of nursing programs. We're an institution that operates in the most states for pre-licensure nursing programs, we're now in over 20 different states.

"This allows us to leverage that scale to solve a strategic workforce gap that exists in health care. The hospitals, health systems, community health centers that need those qualified individuals, here is a talent provider now that can do that with a high degree of relevancy and really high pass rates," says Pulsipher.

That combination has led WGU to partner with Social Finance to create the Reinvesting in Nursing Education and Workforce (ReNEW) Fund, which "aims to address these challenges by helping to cover the cost of the final two years of WGU’s...

In this episode of the Work in Progress podcast, I'm joined by Brittany Greer, the executive director of Rosie Riveters, a nonprofit that is working to close the gender gap in the STEM workforce.

There are an estimated 2.8 million unfilled STEM (science, technology, engineering, and math) jobs in this country. Meanwhile, women make up just 28% of the STEM workforce. Since 2016, Brittany Greer has been working to change that.

The nonprofit she founded aims to inspire girls aged 8 to 14 from diverse backgrounds to explore careers in the field through hands-on learning kits.

"It's all of the materials needed to complete the project operationally. We do everything from explore hydraulics – making a hydraulic desk lamp where the arm goes up and down – to exploring the science of sound. To build a harmonica, we have popsicle sticks and rubber bands and straws and if you put those together in the right way, you can make a harmonica that vibrates and make sounds," explains Greer.

She says that part of the lesson of each Rosie Riveters learning kit is to understand how that science project connects to a career in STEM. For example, the connection between the science of sound to a career in the audio-visual industry.

She adds, "The whole goal of our programs is not only excitement and awareness of the opportunities that are available in STEM, that's one part of it. The real core of what we do is providing girls in our programs with an opportunity for productive struggle, a space to get things wrong before they get them rights."

As a result, the young girls not only build critical thinking and problem-solving skills, they build their confidence. "It's watching a kid go from, 'I can't,' to, 'Look what I did.' Because once you get through the struggle and you have completed the task and you did something that you didn't think was possible or you didn't think was fair, there is a radiance that comes off of a participant after that moment and they're excited to show you and talk about it," explains Greer.

Greer believes that building those skills and building confidence is what drives more young girls to consider STEM as a career.

"If you can invest in them early, they will know that they can come and find you at the end. You're going to have a far greater participation rate of of people who have not gone to participate in your space before because you're welcoming them and you're inviting them, and you're showing them the opportunities that are available to them.

"I think the more that we can do that, the more that we can open up opportunities that haven't previously been available to a lot of the population," Greer adds.

Listen to the podcast here, or wherever you get your podcasts, to learn more about how Rosie Riveters gets the kits into the hands of the girls they are hoping to inspire.

You can also find it on my Work in Progress YouTube channel.

Episode 326: Brittany Greer, executive director and founder, Rosie RivetersHost & Executive Producer: Ramona Schindelheim, Editor-in-Chief, WorkingNationProducer: Larry BuhlTheme Music: Composed by Lee Rosevere and licensed under CC by 4Transcript: Download the transcript for this episode hereWork in Progress Podcast: Catch up on previous episodes here

In this episode of the Work in Progress podcast, I'm joined by Sarah Keh, the vice president of corporate social responsibility at Prudential Financial to discuss the company's $180 million committment to helping opportunity youth find a pathway to good jobs and wealth building. Keh sat down with me to discuss the philanthropy in June at the Aspen Ideas Festival.

Opportunity youth are young people between the ages of 16 and 24 who currently are not in formal education or training and are unemployed. There are almost 6 million people who fall into that designation, a number that has grown since the COVID pandemic.

Even before the pandemic, in 2019, Prudential decided to invest $180 million by 2025 in programs that will help young people across the globe gain the right skills to compete for and succeed in quality jobs. 

"The reason why they have come into the situation that there are in...is not because they don't have the will or the desire. It's oftentimes they are born into a situation that doesn't provide them the access to the opportunities that you and I may have had in our upbringing," says Keh.

She says the Prudential believes it is important to look at opportunity youth for their potential and act on it. "We're really focused on this population because we believe these are our future leaders of nonprofits, of businesses, of government, and they just need access to the right resources and tools to provide them the good skill."

Keh says the company has already achieved in five years what it had set out to achieve in six – the $180 million in nonprofit programs that are providing that training and opportunity.

"We've invested in over 20 different organizations globally that have impacted hundreds and thousands of young people. We know even just last year through our impact data that over 500,000 opportunity youth were connected to training opportunities and employment opportunities."

Here is the U.S., those workforce development programs include Year Up, YouthBuild, and Per Scholas.

Keh and I go into details on how these programs are helping and how the can help young people build wealth. We also discuss Prudential's work of a local level in Newark, New Jersey, the headquarters of the company which turns 150 years old next year.

You can listen to the podcast here, or wherever you get your podcasts.

You can also find it on my Work in Progress YouTube channel.

This podcast was recorded at the Aspen Ideas Festival, in collaboration with the Aspen Institute.

Episode 325: Sarah Keh, VP Corporate Social Responsibility, Prudential FinancialHost & Executive Producer: Ramona Schindelheim, Editor-in-Chief, WorkingNationProducer: Larry BuhlTheme Music: Composed by Lee Rosevere and licensed under CC by 4Transcript: Download the transcript for this episode hereWork in Progress Podcast: Catch up on previous episodes here

In this episode of the Work in Progress podcast, I am joined by Vilas Dhar, president, Patrick J. McGovern Foundation and a global expert on AI, equity, and how artificial intelligence is shaping our society. We sat down at the Aspen Ideas Festival in June to discuss whether AI is having a positive or negative impact on the workforce.

Vilas Dhar calls the release of ChatGPT an important social moment, not a technological one.

"AI didn't start in November of 2022. Researchers, scholars, people like me, have been building AI products for decades," says Dhar.

"AI moved out of the background, out of the shadows, and became something that every person on the planet could touch, feel, interact with, see how it might influence their lives. And because of that, we entered into this new phase of a discussion that moved from 'What does the technology do?' to 'What do humans have to do to be ready for the technology? and "What kind of society do we want to build and how will AI help us get there?"

He emphasizes the need for a diverse range of stakeholders, including technologists, policymakers, civil society, communities, employers, and workers, to be involved in shaping the future of AI and how any changes it brings are equitable ones.

Dhar challenges the notion that AI will necessarily lead to job displacement, highlighting the potential for AI to enhance human capabilities and create new opportunities by automating mundane or dangerous tasks, freeing up time for creativity and innovation, and improving health care and community services.

He calls for a shift in the narrative around AI from fear and risk to one of public investment and public ownership.

"It's a moment in time where we can actually use it to force a bigger conversation about equality and equity, about how we distribute economic benefits, about the fact that if we think somebody is going to be displaced, what's the responsibility of the person who displaced them?

"Note that I didn't say the machine that displaced them, but the person who made a choice to bring in a machine that displaced that worker. How do we think about creating a new social compact so that every person feels dignified and participatory in the decisions we're making about our AI future? If we were to start having those conversations, I'd be so hopeful about our future," he adds.

Dhar has a lot more to say about why we need to change our thinking around artificial intelligence and how it can be a benefit to workers. You can listen in our conversation here, or get it wherever you get your podcasts.

You can also find it on my Work in Progress YouTube channel.

This podcast was recorded at the Aspen Ideas Festival, in collaboration with the Aspen Institute.

Episode 324: Vilas Dhar, president, Patrick J. McGovern FoundationHost & Executive Producer: Ramona Schindelheim, Editor-in-Chief, WorkingNationProducer: Larry BuhlTheme Music: Composed by Lee Rosevere and licensed under CC by 4Transcript: Download the transcript for this episode hereWork in Progress Podcast: Catch up on previous episodes here

In this episode of Work in Progress, I am joined by Gov. Wes Moore of Maryland. We sat down together at the Aspen Ideas Festival last week to talk about what his administration is doing to create economic mobility and opportunity for all its citizens.

When it comes to putting people to work in Maryland, Gov. Wes Moore says he embraces the ethos he first learned when he joined the U.S. Army as a teenager: Leave No One Behind.

"It's a great lens on how we should view our work. It's not just because it's important psychologically, it's important for mission accomplishment. It's a core criteria for mission accomplishment," he tells me in the interview.

Moore says that "A growing economy is a participatory one. A stagnant and stalled economy is one where you have a huge swath of society that is not participating. Forget a moral sense, it doesn't make economic sense for us to do that.

"If you continue to have areas and communities where you essentially have these deserts of economic activity, that's not benefiting anybody. It's not benefiting that local jurisdiction. It is not benefiting the state that local jurisdiction exists in."

In our conversation around employment and jobs, Gov. Moore and I discuss the ways Maryland is building workforce development partnerships with nonprofits and employers to ensure that everyone in the state has a chance for economic mobility. He shares how the money from the bipartisan federal infrastructure bill is already creating thousands of jobs in Maryland alone, including good-paying union jobs in construction.

Gov. Moore also addresses the economic reason he pardoned 175,000 people with misdemeanor cannabis convictions.

And he tells me about the state's first-in-the nation public service year program for high school graduates that is designed to put teens and young adults on a pathway to a good-paying career. "Our high school graduates now have a chance to have a year of service to the State of Maryland. They can work in the environment. They can work in education. They can serve veterans. They can serve returning citizens. It's completely their choice.

"But it's a year to have a paid opportunity making $15 and getting a $6,000 stipend at the end of it and to be able to go out and define that thing that makes your heartbeat a little bit faster and go after it.

"We did it because we believe in experiential learning. We did it because we believe in paid financial cushions. We did it because we believe in this time of political divisiveness and vitriol that service will save us.

"But also this has become a remarkable workforce development tool, where some of the first people that signed up have actually been the private sector who said, 'We'll take three of them.' When you think about that, the ability to democratize these opportunities by making sure that they are paid opportunities, really is crucial for any type of thing we're trying to get done," adds Gov. Moore.

You can learn more about the work being done in Maryland to create and fill jobs in the podcast. Listen here, or get it wherever you get your podcasts.

You can also find it on my Work in Progress YouTube channel.

This podcast was recorded at the Aspen Ideas Festival, in collaboration with the Aspen Institute.

Episode 323: Gov. Wes Moore, MarylandHost & Executive Producer: Ramona Schindelheim, Editor-in-Chief, WorkingNationProducer: Larry BuhlTheme Music: Composed by Lee Rosevere and licensed under CC by 4Transcript: Download the transcript for this episode hereWork in Progress Podcast: Catch up on previous episodes here

In this episode of Work in Progress, I am joined by John Mitchell, president & CEO, IPC International to discuss the increased demand for workers in the semiconductor manufacturing industry and how the group is developing the workforce of the present and the future.

Semiconductors are the backbone of the digital economy, powering our cars, planes, medical tech, cybersecurity, our dishwashers and TVs, and they are at the heart of AI. Nearly everything we touch needs a chip, and commercial construction is surging in the U.S., driven in part by federal government investments designed to bring more chip manufacturing to the country.

We've asked this question many times – and have heard the same answer – do we have enough workers in the wings ready to fill the tens of thousands of jobs that are expected as a result of this boom in manufacturing construction? The answer is "not yet."

When we think of semiconductions, we simply think of the processor in our computer, says Mitchell. But, he explains, that small chip couldn't exist without the electronics manufacturers that IPC represents.

"Let's use the analogy of a car. It's the engine of your car. And it's a fairly complex thing just like an engine is.

"There are companies like Intel and TSMC and Samsung that really design and create the silicon. But the silicon, as itself, is not really good for much. But you add all the connections and 'wheels and doors' and electronics that tie through all of the systems. And when you put all of that together, then you end up with a 'car.'

"So, we cover from the semiconductors to the assemblers, people that design the products, the board manufacturers, materials, and equipment manufacturers that help make all of that possible."

That's a lot of moving parts and a lot of potential workers.

"I've sat in a couple of workforce meetings on the CHIPS Act, and in the White House, and it seems to be about 50-50 technicians versus engineers that'll be directly working in the industry," Mitchell tells me.

He says that while the engineers and researchers are highly-degreed roles, you don't need a degree for many of the technician roles and IPC can help you get the skills in electronics that you need to work in the chip industry.

"IPC has credential programs where you can literally get a certification or a credential and develop those skills very quickly in a matter of hours. And you could be starting helping out in an electronics factory and then you continue to add from there. They are stackable credentials and there's pathways.

"As of last November, we're the first federally-recognized electronics apprenticeship programs. We originally had two that were approved in November, and since then we've added another one. We expect to continue to add as time goes forward," says Mitchell.

Want to know more about these workforce development training programs? Check out the podcast. You can listen here, or get it wherever you get your podcasts.

You can also find it on my Work in Progress YouTube channel.

Episode 322: John Mitchell, president & CEO, IPC InternationalHost & Executive Producer: Ramona Schindelheim, Editor-in-Chief, WorkingNationProducer: Larry BuhlTheme Music: Composed by Lee Rosevere and licensed under CC by 4Transcript: Download the transcript for this episode hereWork in Progress Podcast: Catch up on previous episodes here