As the Opportunity Now Regional Talent Summit convened in Arvada Tuesday, Joe Rice acknowledged that if he could accomplish only one thing from the event, he’d want to seed a course teaching students how to get security clearance for aerospace and defense jobs.
By the time the event ended, sector leaders like Rice, director of state and government relations for Lockheed Martin Space, had sketched a two-year plan to partner with the state on curriculum and get the class into everything from K-12 to job-retraining centers. And that was just one of many specific recommendations coming from that industry group that officials are poised to enact to boost the pipeline of workers into a growing sector creating jobs for people ranging from those with GEDs to those with PhDs.
Tuesday’s summit — the second of seven regional events organized by the Colorado Office of Economic Development and International Trade through mid-June to boost the state’s workforce-development system, drew roughly 100 people to the Arvada Center. The Denver-area gathering brought together leaders from advanced manufacturing, aerospace and clean energy with schools and worker-training groups to pinpoint talent gaps in priority industries and get employers and educators partnering on solutions.
“Private-sector-led” talent development
It also drew Gov. Jared Polis, who created the summits via a six-bill workforce package he signed into law last year following a recommendation from the Education to Employment Alliance that included the Colorado Chamber of Commerce, Colorado Succeeds and other business groups. Polis told the crowd that the gatherings will create actions plans that are “industry-led, private-sector-led and locally executed” to transform talent development.
Gov. Jared Polis speaks at Tuesday’s Opportunity Now Regional Talent Summit in Arvada.
“With these seven regional summits, we want to better align all the things you’re doing with talent development,” the Democratic governor said to attendees at the event hosted by the Greater Arvada Chamber of Commerce. “We want to make sure we hear from you about your hiring plans and the skills you need.”
Over the course of five-and-a-half hours, attendees offered a wide range of ideas, both specific and broad-based, to get more students into pipelines into the three sectors, whether looking for employment after high school, college or a change in professions.
Industry leaders share common concerns
A common theme between the three industries was the need to tell their stories better to students and their families to explain the sustainable careers they could have by making everything from solar panels to biomedical devices to national-defense systems. To do this, industry and education leaders agreed, they need to grow their presence in schools via job fairs and apprenticeships, to reach out to populations that haven’t typically worked in the industries and to partner on more career and technical education.
A second commonality was the need to highlight existing programs that employers can take advantage of, from receiving tax credits for new in-house training facilities to designing curricula with school innovation centers to teach students the skills they need. Nola Krajewski, president of the Golden Chamber of Commerce, said that with so many employers unaware of where to even look for partnership opportunities, officials should consider compiling a one-stop guide to financial and occupational help.
“We don’t see today as an opportunity to start over,” heralded Kami Welch, president/CEO of the Greater Arvada Chamber. “We see today as an opportunity to dig deeper.”
Kami Welch, president/CEO of the Greater Arvada Chamber of Commerce, speaks at Tuesday’s Opportunity Now Regional Talent Summit.
And each sector offered pathway ideas that are unique to it.
Proposals from cybersecurity centers to savings accounts
Aerospace and defense leaders, in addition to rallying behind the security-clearance class, suggested creating a turnkey apprenticeship guide to promote work-based learning in smaller companies and launching a marketing campaign on the breadth of sector careers. And for a five-year goal, they proposed creation, via public-private partnership, of a cybersecurity center where interns and apprentices could work with cities to strengthen their online defenses while building experience to move into careers in the industry.
Clean-energy leaders proposed creation of a small-business incubator that would help startup businesses in the sector to grow and hire, as well as the expansion of 529 savings accounts to be used for industry training as well as for college expenses. And in combination with a marketing campaign laying out career possibilities for students, this could spur a strong and reliable pipeline of workers with sector training, they said.
Manufacturing leaders, much like they did in the first summit last month in Greeley, said they need to affect cultural change to get kids and their families to see jobs like machinists and engineers as the well-paying and sustainable careers that they are. They need too to partner with K-12 schools and other institutions to expand mechanical training courses but also to boost durable skills from problem-solving to teamwork and to validate both sets of skills so that hiring professionals can know what a job applicant brings.
Joe Rice, director of state and local government relations at Lockheed Martin Space, discusses ideas with fellow participants at Tuesday’s Opportunity Now Regional Talent Summit.
“Our vision for five years from now looks like being able to fill our industry needs with Colorado talent and being able to maintain our status as the top aerospace employer in the nation,” facilitator Lauren Victor said after working with the aerospace sector.
What comes next with talent plans
State leaders will develop specific two- and five-year goals for each of the priority sectors attending the summits and publish those in the annual Colorado Talent Pipeline report. To ensure ideas become reality, they also will form action teams involving regional hosts and workforce boards and the employers who attend the summits to guide the next steps, said Lee Wheeler-Berliner, Colorado Workforce Development Council managing director.
Summit attendees spoke of the palpable energy and momentum coming out of the event to hone existing programs and create new partnerships where they would be most beneficial for both employers and students.
“There are these amazing pockets of things happening,” said Alexa Schlechter, director of career and technical education for the College Board, which is working with industry and education to develop cybersecurity training courses in Colorado high schools. “How do we streamline it so that people can get access to it?”
The next summit is slated for April 2 at the Pueblo Convention Center. Regional summits will follow that one in Grand Junction, Durango, the Vail area and Colorado Springs.