Topic: Economic opportunity

Atlanta Showcases Homeownership Solutions that Help Close the Racial Wealth Gap 

Posted on by Syd Goin

Innovative homeownership partnerships led by local governments can empower communities to overcome systemic barriers to generational wealth.

Home is not just where the heart is: homeownership is proven to build wealth for you and your family. Typically, individuals and families who own their homes accumulate more assets over time, and according to the Federal Reserve (2022), the median net worth of homeowners is nearly 40 times greater than that of renters. 

Unfortunately, rates of homeownership in the US are in lockstep with deep-rooted racial and economic disparities, creating a generation-over-generation racial wealth gap that negatively impacts BIPOC families. Rates of homeownership for white Americans are over 30% higher than for Black Americans, and rates among those in the highest income bracket are nearly double those in the lowest income bracket. 

Affordable housing and homeownership can support every community member’s quest for financial security, but producing more housing units is only part of the solution. Local leaders must tackle interconnected issues simultaneously, offer holistic support, and involve cross-sector partnerships and collaboration to ensure homeownership is equitable. 

Mayor Dickens of Atlanta understands this complexity and has set an ambitious goal to build or preserve 20,000 units of affordable housing in eight years. “We know that increasing the amount of safe, stable, and affordable housing will provide significant benefits throughout our community: increased economic mobility, a reduction in crime, better health outcomes, higher educational achievement. Our city cannot meet its fullest potential if our people do not have stable places to live and to lay their heads at night,” said the Mayor recently. In response to the challenge, the Mayor has established a new office dedicated to realizing the necessary affordable housing and addressing the root causes of the socioeconomic gap.

To shed more light on this solution, we spoke with Wesley Myrick, a former Fuse Executive Fellow, who serves on the Mayor’s Office Policy Team, Special Projects Division. We asked Myrick about the work involved in building safe and secure affordable housing, as well as the strategies his team is using to prioritize homeownership solutions that uplift diversity and legacy communities, rather than allowing gentrification and disenfranchisement.

NationSwell: Wesley, it is great to speak with you today and learn more about innovative approaches to homeownership. Let’s start with your role on the Mayor’s Office Policy Team, Special Projects Division.  What does it involve?

Wesley Myrick: I serve on the housing team which has three divisions: Special Projects, Innovation Lab, and General Housing Policy. I joined the Director of Special Projects, who manages large-scale displacement initiatives like Forest Cove. That property was condemned due to the state of disrepair it was in, so the city stepped up to relocate families, acting as a champion for them and the larger community. 

We also work on the Rapid Housing Initiative, which is focused on the quick delivery of highly dignified, comfortable homes for those experiencing chronic homelessness. One example of this is an apartment project called, The Melody, which opened in January of this year and consists of 40 units of permanent, supportive housing.

NS: Obviously safety and shelter are essential for everybody. But tell us more about why affordable housing is a key component when thinking about supporting thriving communities? 

WM: First and foremost, what are thriving communities composed of? It’s people. It’s families. It’s diversity. Affordable housing enables the creation of diverse communities, where residents include not just high-income or low-income earners, but a genuinely mixed and inclusive population. That’s significant because corporations, supportive services, and other general services need the full gambit of individuals in a community. 

Affordability at every income stream allows people to live wherever they want to live within the city. This matters because it means every community has people who are invested in being there and not just relegated to that neighborhood because it’s all they can afford. This leads to higher instances of pride and of people building community because they want to be there, which attracts businesses and developments of other things people want in a community. In Georgia, the roughly 40,000 stable, high-quality affordable housing units produced through the Low Income Housing Tax Credit (LIHTC) program between 2001 and 2019 boosted the state’s economy by $12 billion and created 4,284 new jobs annually, and led to increased property tax revenue for local governments. 

This all starts with housing. When communities have affordable housing that is accessible to a mix of people who want to live and invest there , industry is attracted, amenities arrive,  and people stay. Then, fifteen years go by and families have raised kids in a home, in a place they feel connected to that just 20 years ago may not have been a great place to be.

NS: Feeling pride and invested in a place is so important! Plus, affordable housing can be a path towards home ownership which encourages equitable economic mobility.  Does this factor into the strategies that you all are putting in place when it comes to housing?

WM: This is a perfect example of why our department is structured the way it is. The Office of the Chief Policy Officer has five different divisions working in tandem. We have a housing team, strategic partnerships and strategic initiatives, a youth and education team, a neighborhood economic development team, and an ombuds team. Each team is tasked with ensuring Atlanta is the best place in the nation to raise a family. 

The housing team works on housing unit production and preservation. We have a safe and secure housing program that examines why legacy residents are housing insecure and aligns city processes so that more people remain housed in their family homes without it being overly burdensome to do so. This ensures that regardless of your zip code, you can stay in the city and helps households of more modest means retain control of generational assets.

For the neighborhoods team, this means making significant financial and infrastructure investments into historically diverse communities to attract industry and jobs. For the strategic partnership and initiatives teams, this means convening our corporate and philanthropic communities to make investments into programs and communities that help stabilize and propel communities across the city. For our youth team, this means ensuring that youth have the best possible programs to help support their educational goals and workforce readiness through the summer jobs program and Year of the Youth. Lastly, our Umbuds team helps to catalog recurring shortfalls of government policy or practice as delivered directly from the electorate so that we can better produce what communities need to thrive.

NS: I’m glad you mentioned the different sectors. What do you see as the role of the private or philanthropic sectors when it comes to this work? Can you give an example of  a successful partnership?

WM: There are limits on what public funds can be used for and how we can disperse them, whereas private money is much more flexible. We launched a $200 million fund last year in partnership with the Community Foundation of Greater Atlanta, supporting the production of affordable housing units. While that amount of money is a significant investment it’s, unfortunately, still not enough. We need the philanthropic community to make those investments in housing where the government can’t. 

NS: Atlanta is growing as an economic and cultural hub. What are some of your key policy recommendations for establishing a secure future for Atlanta residents, especially legacy communities who are at risk of displacement?  

WM: A cornerstone of our work has been building trust with communities, which is why we not only work across departments but also have dedicated personnel who work on these things. We currently have an anti-displacement grant that partially helps support Owner-Occupied Rehab Programs, which we are able to connect residents with and has been valuable for our senior community members who need our support to ensure ordinances are not violated. Oftentimes, properties fall into disrepair, not because there are bad actors, but because there’s simply a lack of resources. Mitigating these barriers when we can is something we’re very proud of and want to keep doing more of.

NS: You wrote an excellent piece on the City of Atlanta’s  Faith-Based Development Initiative, which encourages faith-based communities to grant use of their underutilized land to affordable housing developments. What were some of your biggest takeaways from this initiative?

WM: I’ve learned that there are opportunities to create various housing types across the city at every level. For example, one house of worship has been rehabbing and renting single-family units using community development block grants and home funds, with the objective of providing them at affordable rents for those who need them. Simultaneously, they are working on a vision for a small multi-family community. 

We’ve been fortunate that in addition to houses of worship, other city, state, and private-sector organizations have answered our call. We launched the Faith-Based Development Initiative in partnership with Enterprise Community Partners, a national leader in faith-based development, and a CDFI, so they fund affordable housing across the country. The other lesson is that community building doesn’t mean building buildings – it’s really about building hearts and minds around what’s possible and helping execute that. 

NS: Land acquisition is one of the most costly elements of development, so efficient use of vacant publicly-owned land for housing development is key in increasing the availability of affordable housing. How have you tackled that in Atlanta?

WM: We chartered an organization called The Atlanta Urban Development Corporation (AUD), specifically tasked with managing the redevelopment of public land through the issuance of Request for Proposals (RFPs) to solicit, review, and select a development partner. They issue the RFPs, review them, figure out how to finance and fund them, and co-develop them with the organizations that respond to the RFPs. Thomasville Heights is their most recent RFP, focusing on mixed-income housing developments. Since they’re new and small, they’re also more nimble to move on projects. An important policy consideration is how you can expedite some of this public plan work. Create a mechanism by which you can successfully develop your project, and the developers will respond because the process is laborious – we found a way to make it less laborious with the AUD. 

We have some good examples of how the government is doing all it can in collaboration  with private partners to fill gaps while ensuring the work is community-owned and community-driven. For instance, the Midtown Fire Station, a vacant two-story firehouse that sits in Midtown Atlanta, is considered one of the most valuable plots of land in the country. The plan is to rehab the station and develop 20 to 30 housing units above it, which will be majority affordable in a part of town that’s not easy to afford. Adding one more unit makes a difference because that’s one more family that’s housed. For policymakers we have to remember that the units are important not because they are units but because they house people. 

Pathways to affordable housing are key to unlocking equitable homeownership, and social mobility, and a step toward combating the historic causes of the ever-present and widening socioeconomic divide across the country. Bringing affordable housing projects and initiatives to fruition, as evidenced by leaders in Atlanta, Georgia, will require a blend of innovative, strategic cross-sector partnerships and a revamping of local government offices and functions. FUSE offers a unique model for cross-sector collaboration to address a wide range of issues affecting growing towns and cities across the US. Learn more about their past and current initiatives by visiting https://fuse.org/.

Fresh Perspectives Unlock Creative Wealth-Building Solutions in Cities Across America

Posted on by Syd Goin

Most Americans live in cities; in fact, almost 90% of us will be city residents by 2050. Yet, every community is different and requires locally relevant solutions to the challenges and opportunities they face due to geography, history, industry, and many other place-based factors. City leaders with a local focus and lived experience in the communities they serve have never been more vital and influential in helping communities thrive across the U.S. 

Mayor Quinton Lucas of Kansas City, for example, has led the way on free public transportation and the creation of a Housing Trust Fund that has so far allocated about $19 million to support affordable housing projects and create nearly 1,000 affordable units, in a city where he grew up and experienced homelessness. But, resources in these public sector teams are stretched, capacity is limited, and space for creativity to solve systemic issues is hard to come by. 

The danger of never making space for creative thinking in local government or empowering city leaders to try new approaches is that inertia is inevitable. If neighborhoods in cities across America are to break out of cycles of inequality and build resiliency and generational wealth, we must embrace new ideas that challenge the status quo. 

In that vein, innovative impact leaders are creating ways to overcome capacity hurdles and support the important role that city government plays as a change agent. FUSE is a national nonprofit with a mission to increase the effectiveness of local governments in building more equitable communities. They have a unique method of empowering public sector teams to be the source of creative, community-led solutions for wealth-building among underserved populations. 

The FUSE Executive Fellowship Program hires diverse private-sector professionals and embeds them in government agencies on a full-time basis. These fellows bring new ideas, research, and action, all in service of advancing racial equity and addressing pressing challenges facing city communities. This allows FUSE to pursue creative approaches and public-private partnerships. Many fellows continue working in the public sector after their projects are complete, creating a unique pathway for private-sector professionals to make career moves and fulfill their desire to achieve greater impact in the communities where they work and live. 

The interventions by the FUSE Executive Fellows always begin with deep community listening, which is the genesis of fresh ideas: from the community, for the community. They integrate insights with data and human-centered design to help address seemingly intractable problems. For example: How can you preserve affordable housing and promote climate resilience in Durham, NC? How can you ensure everyone has access to fresh food in Birmingham, AL? How can local government use data and analytics to reduce reliance on incarceration and drive criminal justice reforms throughout LA County? How can county leadership help bridge the digital equity divide in Central Texas? And — in many places — how do you shift a workforce into a new era of needs and opportunities, post-pandemic?

Washington, D.C., witnessed a tremendous loss of jobs during the pandemic, particularly within the hospitality and leisure industries. The District’s Workforce Investment Council partnered with Karla Yoder, FUSE Executive Fellow to create a strategic plan to create a more resilient local ecosystem, for workers and employers. Yoder’s work not only highlighted how workers earning low wages were bearing the brunt of job losses but also noted accelerated shifts in the workforce landscape, with demand surging for workers in healthcare and technology. These factors underscored the need for employers to embrace skills-based hiring in order to service new and growing needs. In response, Yoder designed recovery initiatives tailored to D.C.’s workforce, including career coaching for unemployed residents and fostering partnerships between employers and skill-training providers.

FUSE Executive Fellow Daniel Han’s work with the City of Long Beach is another great example of innovative solutions supporting those at the highest risk of economic disruption. He helped the City connect nontraditional, community-based lenders to small business owners of color who were struggling to access capital. “The one thing that remains consistent is the critical leadership role that local government has in being a social innovator, change agent, and advocate for creating an inclusive platform for small businesses to thrive in the community,” said Han.

Just recently, FUSE Executive Fellow Kay West embedded with the City of Fort Worth to help revitalize their Economic Development Department’s “Business Assistance Center” to better support small businesses and entrepreneurs. West’s engagement with the community led to changes that made the Center more accessible, responsive, and fortified — including streamlined processes, more flexible opening hours, a more user-friendly “one-stop shop” web experience; and community convenings to foster inclusivity. “It brings me much joy to serve as a community quarterback to propel impact and bring national resources to my city,” said West, who continues to help communities and economic development organizations advance small enterprise initiatives and build capacity for equitable entrepreneurship programs.

The FUSE Executive Fellowship is one of a variety of exciting new localized wealth-building and social innovation models that are emerging. These programs show how fresh perspectives and an injection of creative capacity can make significant changes in large systems. Other models include building strength through networks that share insights and support between cities, like the Strong Cities Network that exists to help leaders address all forms of hate and polarization; or lifting up the voices of the unheard across a state in order to drive policy change, as demonstrated by End Poverty In California, which was founded by the Michael Tubbs, former Mayor of Stockton, California. 

We need this variety of solutions and an upswell of energy behind local government action to address a holistic issue like wealth building in underserved communities. Housing, education, workforce development, financial inclusion, small business support, digital equity, social cohesion, place-making, culture building — all of these elements and more are part of empowering a community to define its own future and build economic and social resilience. Funders and impact partners often struggle with how to help drive this type of cohesive community impact, when they are focused on one or two issues. 

The FUSE Executive Fellow model offers inspiration for one way forward: harnessing the power of creative individuals to integrate local knowledge, skills from the private sector, and collaborative coalition-building to turn the vision of community wealth-building into concrete policies and initiatives. From helping the City of Houston to create a comprehensive digital inclusion strategy that prioritizes those marginalized households that lack broadband access, to partnering with Cincinnati to help create 4,000 quality green jobs as part of a just transition to the green economy, to empowering Mayor Dickens in Atlanta to launch the Faith Based Development Initiative to create thousands of affordable housing units, the FUSE approach is effectively fast-tracking local government innovation across America. 

In a year when national elections will be held in at least 64 countries around the world, it is vital to remember that change starts at home—and local leaders are the ones whose decisions will have the greatest impact on daily lives. In this context, it’s energizing to see impact leaders like FUSE rally behind local government teams and innovate to allow creative, community-driven approaches to wealth building to flourish in cities across the U.S.

Visit fuse.org to learn more about their Executive Fellowship program.

Impact Next: An interview with Indeed’s Abbey Carlton and Maggie Hulce

Posted on by Brianna Provenzano

At a moment of growing inequality and division, who is advancing the vanguard of economic and social progress to bolster our most vulnerable communities? Whose work is fostering the inclusive growth that ensures every individual thrives? Who will set the ambitious standards that mobilize whole industries, challenging their peers to reach new altitudes of social impact? 

In 2024, Impact Next — a new editorial flagship series from NationSwell — will spotlight the standard-bearing corporate social responsibility and impact leaders, entrepreneurs, experts, and philanthropists whose catalytic work has the potential to shape the landscape of progress amid urgent need for social and economic action.

For this installment, NationSwell interviewed Indeed’s Abbey Carlton, Vice President of Social Impact and Sustainability, and Maggie Hulce, Chief Revenue Officer.

Greg Behrman, CEO and Founder, NationSwell: How was it that you arrived in social impact work — could you each tell us a little bit about your journey to get to where you are now? 

Maggie Hulce, Chief Revenue Officer, Indeed: I spent most of my early career struggling with the question of where I could do the most good in the world — “Is it better to be part of a corporation, or to be in government? Where can you actually drive the most change?” 

I found myself gravitating to drivers of economic opportunity: workforce development, access to education, and the challenge of finding meaningful work that also pays well. Indeed is unique in how deeply the mission to help people get jobs is embedded in the culture.  At the same time, Indeed is a tech company, with the ambition to disrupt a huge industry and the potential to improve the lives of billions of people. That combination has been pretty magical, honestly. 

Abbey Carlton, Vice President of Social Impact and Sustainability, Indeed: Growing up in the rural Midwest at a time when a lot of factory jobs were going away and seeing the impact that had on people, families, and communities made an early impact on me — I saw firsthand all of the ripple effects that come when people don’t have jobs and opportunities. 

Economic opportunity has really been the animating theme of my whole career, and I couldn’t pass up the opportunity to come to Indeed, where hundreds of millions of people go to find jobs every month; I believe we are changing how hiring happens. 

It’s been really exciting to get to work alongside business leaders like Maggie, who see that social impact doesn’t have to be this niche thing to do off to the side — it really is core to our mission and our business.

Behrman, NationSwell: You’ve mentioned how embedded and connected to the core of the business social impact is; what else is different, special, or exemplary about the work you’re doing at Indeed? 

Hulce, Indeed: In our space, there is a very natural synergy between what is good for both sides of our ecosystem — job seekers and employers — and the social value that comes from making hiring faster, more effective, and more fair. 

To make hiring more effective, you first have to understanding skills and occupations deeply. You have to collect a lot of data about job seekers and jobs, and then you have to use that data to make recommendations that are nuanced, because people are nuanced in what they solve for when choosing where to work.  

We can also use all the information we collect to make data-driven arguments to employers about how to optimize their jobs or hiring processes.  This coalesces with what we’re trying to do to make hiring more fair and to help people connect with opportunities that they might be overlooked for. 

Carlton, Indeed: We’ve set four really ambitious ESG commitments for 2030, two of which Maggie and I work together very closely on: First, to help 30 million job seekers facing barriers get hired by 2030, and second, to shorten the duration of job search by half. Those are goals that will have a huge impact on people who struggle to find work, and, if we do it right, will really improve economic opportunity for lots of people. They will make our business better, they will make hiring better, they will make it easier for our clients to connect with a broader and more diverse talent pool. 

Behrman, NationSwell: Could you give an example of what that work might look like in practice?

Carlton, Indeed: Let’s say I’m someone who has gone through a cybersecurity boot camp at Year Up, and now it’s time for me to go out and look for a job: What is it like for me to look for a job on Indeed? If we can put a spotlight on where that on-ramp works really well, and where there are opportunities to help somebody who’s gone through a non-traditional educational program to explain what that is and what they learned and what skills they’ve built, we can build that into how we think about our job seeker profiles going forward.

Hulce, Indeed: Abbey’s team has played a big role in helping our product and engineering teams understand the challenges that people face when they don’t have a bachelor’s degree.  Our teams are asking: How do we help job seekers represent their skills in our ecosystem?  How do we help them present their skills in a way that’s compelling to employers?  And how do we influence employers to remove college degree requirements? 

At a certain level, inertia is the biggest barrier we face.  But, we’ve seen data-driven conversations with employers can actually change things.  For example, we can help employers realize that for certain roles, removing college degree requirements is a good business decision, as it helps them reach a much broader pool of talent.  It’s a unique role we can play, as we see both sides of the market. 

Behrman, NationSwell: What would your advice be to other leaders in the space who are similarly hoping to drive impact outcomes while making the business case for this work internally? 

Carlton, Indeed: I’ve learned that if you see your role as a social impact leader as being the counterbalance to the business strategy or being off to the side, then you might not invest in understanding the problems other teams are trying to solve across different areas of the business. Opportunities arise when you can connect those dots, whatever they may be. 

Hulce, Indeed: Our mentality internally is always, “We should be customer #1.” We care a lot about equity in our practices, so it makes sense that we should be practicing on ourselves first. If we have an idea, we want to know how well it will work.  So we try it out, and see what we learn.  This approach also helps us build more empathy for our customers.

Carlton, Indeed: What Maggie and I have done together recently is think about whether there is a single galvanizing focus that we could bring to the company so that all of these good things don’t get diluted, and we really think about skills-first hiring as being that focus. 

If we think about promoting economic mobility, that is a way that Indeed is uniquely positioned to drive change. So we’re going to pull that lever and focus on centering skills in the hiring process, because that’s how we believe we can make hiring more equitable for all job seekers.

Behrman, NationSwell: What is it about your personal leadership that you think has helped you to be effective?

Hulce, Indeed: I think a lot about the importance of optimism – believing that change is possible — and the idea that you need to triangulate with different types of brains to actually solve some of your hardest problems. 

As a leader, I also reflect on how to get people excited about what we’re trying to do. How do you get them to believe in what is possible? And how do you get them to work together to challenge and change the status quo? 

The last part of leadership I think about a lot is the importance of time spent developing and investing in people, in giving them opportunities to grow.  

Carlton, Indeed: When I was leaving the Rockefeller Foundation, my then-boss gave a toast where he described me as firm in my principles and flexible in my methods — that is the way that I try to work.

When you are in this work, you come to realize how deep, entrenched, systemic, and long-term it is. I have tried to navigate the space of doing work on jobs and economic opportunity with some pretty firm principles and beliefs, but with a lot of flexibility on how we get there, trying new things in the process. 

Behrman, NationSwell: Who are some of the peer leaders you really admire that you want to shine a spotlight on?

Carlton, Indeed: Hamdi Ulukaya, who founded Chobani and then the Tent Partnership for Refugees, is a leader whose work I have been following and admiring for some time now — I am in awe of some of the ripple effects his work has had. Last year, Indeed had the opportunity to be a part of the coalition that Tent has brought together and to sponsor a number of large-scale hiring events focused on refugees in Europe. I think his leadership is such an inspiring example of the role that business can play in galvanizing real deep change around social issues.

Hulce, Indeed: I’ll call out our CEO, Chris Hyams, as someone who has been so incredibly thoughtful about how he weaves together what we’re trying to do as a company and the importance that it can have on society. From his advocacy for responsible AI to our ambitious goals with ESG, he is definitely leading from the front.

Behrman, NationSwell: Are there any resources — books, essays, poems, quotes — that have informed your leadership that you might recommend to other leaders?

Hulce, Indeed: I am halfway through Big Bets by Rajiv Shah, which discusses how to bring people together to drive bold change. I’d also recommend a book by Deanna Mulligan called Hire Purpose.  She was the CEO of an insurance company, and her book discusses reskilling, upskilling, and long term talent strategy. 

Pathways to Economic Opportunity: Barclays and COOP Careers

Posted on by Brianna Provenzano

As wealth and income inequality continue to climb in the United States, some employers are developing innovative models and catalytic partnerships designed to bring new skills, job access, and ultimately economic opportunity to financially vulnerable and historically marginalized individuals.

In a new interview series, Pathways to Economic Opportunity, NationSwell is taking a closer look at some of the solutions companies are pursuing in service of leveling the playing field and expanding their talent pipelines. In spotlighting these partnerships, this series hopes to uncover the “secret sauce” that makes these solutions successful for the benefit of other employers and their leaders.

The first installment featured the Dow Last Mile Fund for Manufacturing & Skilled Trades. Here, in the second installment, NationSwell sat down with members of the teams at Barclays and COOP Careers (COOP) — a nonprofit that aims to provide training, job skills, and peer connections in order to help vulnerable populations overcome underemployment — about their partnership and newly-launched Financial Services track.

Here’s what they had to say:

Bird’s Eye View: Through its partnership with COOP, Barclays aims to equip the next generation of finance professionals with the abilities and networks they need to overcome underemployment while developing a robust network of diverse talent in the financial sector.

In 2023, the partners announced a new Financial Services track designed specifically to help participants find careers in data analytics and finance. The partnership’s pilot semester, which kicked off in August 2023, welcomed 35 students through two separate cohorts, and a spring semester began in mid-February.

Fast Stats: 

  • Every spring and fall, COOP convenes peer cohorts of 16-18 diverse, low-income college grads in New York, California, Illinois, and Florida, focused on three distinct areas: data analytics, digital marketing, and financial services. 
  • In addition to virtual training and skill-building, the program matches motivated first-generation college graduates with alumni coaches to support them in building the professional tools and networks they need for the careers they deserve. 
  • Within 12 months of program completion, four-in-five COOP alumni are fully employed, earning a median of $52,000 per year (median pre-program earnings are $12k (inclusive of both folks that enter the program under or unemployed).
  • COOP’s “head-heart-hustle” approach to curriculum design is 200-hours long and focuses on providing a mix of hard and soft skills, as well as near-peer guidance, social capital, and industry connections.

The Secret Sauce: 

“That’s what it’s all about for us: building social capital. We believe it’s the connections that make a difference in finding that first — or next — great job.” – Patricia Malizia, Senior Director of Marketing and Communications, COOP Careers

1. NationSwell: What’s the origin story of the relationship between Barclays and COOP?

Sarah Wessel, Managing Director of Partnerships at COOP Careers:

The relationship started as a partnership brokered through Robin Hood. The first couple of years were mostly focused on philanthropic support from Barclays, with some volunteer engagements mixed in.

As we got to know each other better, the Barclays Citizenship team approached us to discuss a more formalized partnership between our two organizations, which began maybe three or four years ago. 

Over time, given Barclays’ role in the sector, we realized it was a great opportunity for Barclays to become the lead partner for a new financial services track just as they were thinking deeply about how to diversify their talent pipeline and help more individuals launch careers in financial services.

The partnership has just grown immensely over the last 18 months.

John Kenny, VP, Citizenship team at Barclays:

At Barclays, our Citizenship strategy is focused on employability. Through our LifeSkills program  we’re really focused on how we can help upskill individuals who have historically faced barriers to work and help create pathways into meaningful employment. 

So we look to work with the most impactful partners in this space, and we’ve been so impressed by COOP’s completion  rates, placement rates, and with what COOP participants have gone on to do post-program. 

2. NationSwell: It sounds like the Financial Services track was born out of a trusting partnership and an unmet need. Who were the key stakeholders involved in the early formation of the new curriculum, and what was the critical piece of information that signaled that this was the right time in both programs’ relationship together to launch something new? 

Sarah Wessel, COOP Careers:

It was less about one moment and more about how all of these things converged: strong early partners in the finance sector like Barclays, and a lot of knowledge from our alumni due diligence across the industry. We told ourselves that if we want to scale 10x in New York, we must find a way to access the financial services industry because it is the largest upwardly mobile employer market here. 

And the COOP theory of change is all around social capital and alumni peer mobilization. So everything we do is focused on what our alumni can come back and teach students, and how they can help provide them an entry point into upwardly mobile careers. We view trends in our alumni community as a barometer for how we should be approaching program evolution.

The impetus for this belief that we could help others with entry into the field was when our existing alumni were finding some success in finance jobs. There is a real need, and the talent we were already training was obviously a good fit for the roles that financial institutions are looking to fill. 

If we give our participants more context on the cultural environment in finance and the types of roles they would be applying for, that would really help them feel more confident about  applying for these roles at a larger volume.

3. NationSwell: Sarah, you described a particular need you discovered through all the learning you just walked us through. How is that now reflected in the experience that a participant has in the program? What are the key elements of that journey for them? 

Sarah Wessel, COOP Careers:

Our 200-hour curriculum is oriented around three pillars: head, heart, and hustle.

Head covers the technical skills, and we were able to add quite a number of modules specific to the analytics skill set that they will need going into roles very specific to banking and finance — hard skills such as Excel, SQL, and Tableau 

Heart helps to strengthen soft skills, such as communication, conflict resolution, and time management.

Hustle is about growing job-hunting skills like resume and cover letter writing, email etiquette, and collective networking to start their job search with a plan, a portfolio, and support from peers — and connections.

4. NationSwell: What sort of fingerprint does Barclays have on the curriculum or on the experience program participants are having in the financial services track? 

John Kenny, Barclays:

We’ve brought together leaders from different businesses and functions across Barclays to share their view on what types of skills are important to learn and refine, and then we’ve collaborated with the COOP team to inform the curriculum. That level of collaboration speaks volumes to how COOP is hyper-focused on equipping grads in the program.

We’ve also created guest lecture opportunities, where we have members of our team give seminar-style talks to COOPers, others have taken part in career chats, and dozens have help the COOPers prepare through in-person mock interview sessions held at our office. 

5. NationSwell: How do you select participants? What are the criteria that you’re using? 

Sarah Wessel, COOP Careers:

Any participant interested in applying for COOP fills out a form on our website. From there, they sign up for an info session, which is held in a group format and typically virtual. During that info session, all interested applicants learn about COOP and different career tracks, and they hear alumni that speak about their experience in the program and what they’re doing now so folks can start to understand what they might be interested in pursuing.

The eligibility requirements are that candidates have to make less than $50,000 a year; they have to be able to commit to our program, which is four months long, Monday through Thursday, at night; and then they have to meet two out of the three other requirements to be considered: identify as a first-generation college graduate; have been Pell Grant eligible while they were going through college; or identify as a person of color. 

Over 95% of our participants identify as people of color, and around 85-90% identify as first-generation college graduates. 

If everything looks good and it seems like they’re still motivated to apply, they go forward to a group interview. In this interview, they are given an assignment they have to complete ahead of time and then talk through their process live.

We have a long waitlist, but if you get through the process, we have a pretty high acceptance rate.

There isn’t a second layer of screening that we’re looking for, but there are some personality traits that we’re interested in, because our model is built upon paying it forward. So when looking at who’s really interested in being a part of our program for the long haul, we strongly consider whether they are ready to make the time commitment. 

What I think is really special about COOP is the relationship between the alumni near-peer coach and a cohort member and how they pull them into their industry and help them build their career for the first few years. 

6. NationSwell: What happens after someone completes the program — what sort of support are they receiving on a go-forward basis to take that big step into a career path? 

Sarah Wessel, COOP Careers:

Our program is designed to follow people forever. Folks end up feeling like they can lean on each other throughout their career, which I think is really special.

But in terms of official support from the organization, every single one of our alumni is assigned an alumni manager who is responsible for supporting them with getting their first good job. They meet one-on-one with their alumni manager as many times as they want to do mock interviews, resume reviews, job searching, and talk through any challenges they might be facing. The alumni manager also helps them with negotiating their first offer if they need help with that.

Our alumni managers recently hosted a workshop on overcoming rejection and keeping your motivation high in the job search, which is something that, especially this past year, has been really pertinent to a lot of our participants.

Patricia Malizia, Senior Director of Marketing and Communications at COOP Careers:

We also send an alumni email newsletter every month, which we recently restructured to better serve our alumni. We created a job resources page to ensure all alumni know about the jobs that are open and available. 

We also have a whole section on our website dedicated to supporting our alumni, which we just relaunched to serve our alumni even better. And we have blogs on our website about some of the things that Sarah mentioned, like developing your  resume and cover letters.

Matthew Snitkey, Director, Barclays

We have had the opportunity to hire 11 COOP alumni into Barclays across several teams, including Global Markets Operations. The support and preparation COOP provides is evident and tangible. We’ve been so impressed with how COOP alumni have hit the ground running and have brought diversity of thought and positive results in our process, workflows and controls.

7. NationSwell: What do you think is most helpful for other leaders to know about the DNA of this partnership?

John Kenny, Barclays:

We so often hear people on the Barclays side — including senior leaders and hiring managers — saying how impressed they are with the drive of COOPers. These are folks who have gotten their degrees, many of whom are working full-time, and then dedicate several hours each night to additional intensive learning for extended periods of time. And I think that, in and of itself, exemplifies a level of commitment and a level of interest in the sector that they’re building on at COOP. 

Sarah Wessel, COOP Careers:

The relationship-driven way we’ve built this partnership is a missing link for first-generation college students. Yeah, there’s a need for some skills and aptitude, but as John said, many participants have the drive and the ability to do any number of things — what they need is access. And what Barclays has really done is find a way to provide that access.

Barclays has been open to believing talent can come from anywhere, and that it’s part of their responsibility as corporate citizens to find ways to get all of their staff involved in different communities and provide that access. These students have the ability already — they just need somebody to vouch for them and give them that first good opportunity to succeed. Finding meaningful work is hard. Why should it be lonely?

Investing in employee well-being: innovative policies and benefits

Investing in employee well-being: innovative policies and benefits

CURATED COLLECTION
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The COVID-19 pandemic served as catalyst for employers to invest more deeply and creatively in employee wellbeing, driven by fundamental changes to workplaces (e.g. remote work), implications for healthcare, family and childcare support, financial outlook, and more. Simultaneously, increased focus on racial justice and equity has heightened private sector commitments to inclusive workplace policies for marginalized communities. More recently, policy changes in the U.S. –  including the overturn of Roe v. Wade and the “childcare cliff” – have escalated the need for employers to increase benefits that supplement lack of government supports. 

Employees and companies alike are placing workplace wellbeing higher on their priority lists. 91% of employees find that their job plays a role in determining their wellbeing, and 57% report seriously considering quitting for a more supportive workplace. 76% of U.S. executives feel that expectations about workforce wellbeing are higher than in previous years, and 87% say that workforce wellbeing gives their company a competitive advantage. In addition to productivity and retention advantages, companies with higher employee wellbeing scores fare better financially, showing a superior return on assets, higher profits, and higher valuations.

When balanced with other core aspects of employee experience (including leadership behaviors and job design), inclusive employee policies and benefits can play a significant role in supporting holistic wellbeing. This Curated Collection provides the business rationale for and innovative examples of private sector wellbeing policies and benefits across five key areas: reproductive health, family care, paid leave, financial wellbeing, and mental health.

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Employee Impact

Pathways to Economic Opportunity: Dow Last Mile Fund for Manufacturing & Skilled Trades

Posted on by Brianna Provenzano

As wealth and income inequality continue to climb in the United States, some employers are developing innovative models and catalytic partnerships designed to bring new skills, job access, and ultimately economic opportunity to financially vulnerable and historically marginalized individuals.

In a new interview series, Pathways to Economic Opportunity, NationSwell is taking a closer look at some of the solutions companies are pursuing in service of leveling the playing field and expanding their talent pipelines. In spotlighting some of these partnerships, this series hopes to uncover the “secret sauce” that makes these solutions successful for the benefit of other employers and their leaders.

For the first installment of the series, NationSwell spoke to Ruthe Farmer — founder & CEO of the Last Mile Education Fund — and Fabio Mendes, Global Citizenship Manager at Dow — about their talent pipeline partnership, the Dow Last Mile Fund for Manufacturing & Skilled Trades. 

Here’s what they had to say:

Bird’s Eye View:

The Last Mile Education Fund works to identify students in the “last mile” of their education journeys and provide them with no-strings-attached, grants to help them overcome any financial hurdles standing in the way of the finish line. Through its partnership with Dow, Last Mile recently expanded its scope to include grants of up to $5,000 for low-income students specifically nearing completion in manufacturing and skilled trades programs at institutions in Dow communities.

Fast Stats: 

  • Launched in 2023, the Dow Last Mile Fund for Manufacturing & Skilled Trades currently services talent populations in ten key markets: California, Illinois, Indiana, Kentucky, Louisiana, Michigan, Pennsylvania, Tennessee, Texas, and West Virginia.
  • On average, the grants Last Mile awards are less than $4,200. Unlike traditional education grants, Last Mile’s investment model specifically incentivizes the use of the money in any area a student needs it, including groceries, gas, childcare, or anything else serving as a roadblock to completing their education.
  • Founded in 2019, Last Mile has awarded more than 5,132 grants to date. Grantees are 42% Black, 19% Hispanic or Latinx, 12% Asian, 16% White, and 1% Indigenous.
  • Last Mile awards three types of core grants, all of which manufacturing and skilled trades students are eligible for: rapid-response emergency financial assistance (mini-grants); bridge grants; and larger Last Mile grants.

1) NationSwell: What helps to differentiate Last Mile’s approach from some of the existing investment models designed to support educational attainment? 

Ruthe Farmer, Last Mile: 

I sometimes refer to our model as universal basic income for students. Scholarships are typically for tuition, housing, maybe some books, but there are other parts of life that require financial resources, too. I just approved a Dow grantee who has been on a long journey of trying to cross the finish line in her education, but the cost of living — medical bills, insurance, all the things that are not part of the scholarship landscape — had just become too much.

She also shared that she had an old laptop from 2017 that was barely functioning and needed a better device. Those are the kinds of gaps that Last Mile fills — the same gaps that are sometimes filled by a student’s parents. 

The other thing we do differently is that there are no deadlines; the application is rolling, and students can apply any day, all year. We’re not comparing the students against each other, we’re looking at them as individuals. 

We’re also very fast. If a student is facing a housing or a food crisis, they cannot wait months to hear back from a scholarship. Many scholarships can be really wonderful, but it takes months of process to get selected — they’re not designed to address immediate, pressing, basic human needs, which is what we’re doing. 

2) NationSwell: Adaptability, open communication — are there any other key lessons that you’d like to impart on other nonprofits or companies hoping to form a similar type of synergy? 

Ruthe Farmer, Last Mile: 

There’s been tremendous participation and engagement by the local Dow team members. We’re not physically on the ground in all of those communities, but they are, and they have relationships with, you know, the local colleges and institutions. They have relationships with the local chamber of commerce and the local media, and they also have relationships with the folks that are already in their apprentice pathways.

Fabio Mendes, Dow:

Like Ruthe said, we took an existing model that was initially for computer science graduates and we said, “Hey, maybe this could be a fit for skilled trade students, which are completely different.” 

When working with four-year graduates, Last Mile usually works with them on the last two years of their educational journey. So initially we were working with that same mindset for skilled trades, but along the way we realized those audiences had very different needs, so we switched to supporting students from the very beginning. That openness to adapting the program to a different set of needs in real-time — that has been one of the great successes of this partnership so far. 

3) NationSwell: What are some of the biggest roadblocks you’ve encountered?

Fabio Mendes, Dow:

I think one of the things we realized early on is that a lot of times the students don’t necessarily think this program is for real.

Ruthe Farmer, Last Mile: 

We’re so different from what students understand scholarships to be that they can sometimes be very skeptical. I remember one grantee told me that she had let that application sit on her desktop for three weeks because she was ashamed to ask for help, she didn’t think we would say yes. And then when she finally did, we were like, oh, absolutely, yes, here’s the money. Four months later, she’s graduated and she’s in a full-time job.

We don’t have any kind of GPA gatekeeping, your grades are not a factor in whether or not we say yes to you. The only thing we’re interested in is, are you enrolled and are you on track to get this program finished? 

We’ve had to re-train the educators, too, because they’ve been taught to only send their select best students for these opportunities. We want every student who is striving to have the resources they need to finish; we see value in every striving student. Getting over that hump has been a really big challenge. 

4) NationSwell: What have been some of your most significant learnings or unlocks in the course of doing this work?

Fabio Mendes, Dow:

I think one of our biggest learnings from Last Mile has been the perspective that a life-changing investment in a student doesn’t need to be gigantic — it can be a $200 grant that you promote to someone because they don’t have food for the day, and that alone could lead to them completing the course that they are on, completing the major that they’re in, and potentially securing a life-sustaining job in the future. 

Ruthe Farmer, Last Mile:

I would say the thesis that we’re trying to prove is that there is better ROI when we invest in what we call “striving students” versus the historically dominant model of rewarding outliers for prior success. If you only pick the students who have the best grades, the best GPA, have never missed a class, then you’re picking the ones who can afford that, and you’re not recognizing the immense value and problem-solving skills of a person who has struggled and persisted. 

I think a company that figures out how to bring that talent into their workforce is going to be building an incredibly strong, resilient workforce, which is what all innovation-based companies need.  

5) NationSwell: What are some of the ways this partnership is mutually beneficial — how do each of your organizations work together to advance a shared goal? 

Ruthe Farmer, Last Mile:

Our partnership with Dow is unique in that we’re specifically targeting students that physically go to school and live in Dow communities, where Dow is one of the biggest employers in the field in which they are studying. This is very specific: Dow is helping you graduate in a Dow community, hopefully into a Dow job. 

It’s not a direct ask for the students, but we do have that expectation that they become at least an available pipeline for the company. That’s one of the reasons we’re geographically focused with this funding. 

It’s a great example of the spirit of our work: It’s local investment to solve local workforce issues, and you’re really investing in your own local economy. It’s really kind of working hand-in-hand to solve this gap in tech and skills, but then simultaneously investing in communities. 

6) NationSwell: What’s one call to action that you’d like other leaders or organizations like yours to heed as they consider their own opportunities to improve educational attainment and economic mobility? 

Fabio Mendes, Dow:

I’d say to be more creative around some of these things. One of the crucial things Last Mile did was immediately ask how they could make the student support process more accessible. They could have just thought, let’s do a scholarship program for low-income students that have struggled throughout their journey. At Dow, we were creative in thinking that if this was designed for one specific audience, maybe we could apply the same mindset to a different audience. 

I also want to say you don’t have to start big, you can just start with a pilot. We started with a small fund in select communities with very different perspectives and contexts, and we said, let’s see if this works out, then we expanded it. 

Ruthe Farmer, Last Mile:

I think my call to action is simply for everyone to please take an abundance viewpoint as to who has the potential to be successful in your organization, and in the field broadly, whatever your field is.

•

Place-Based Impact in Practice: 36 hours in Tulsa with NationSwell and George Kaiser Family Foundation

Posted on by Brianna Provenzano

On the evening of October 18th, black clouds of starlings wheeled overhead as the NationSwell team made its way to meet a group of partners and leaders in downtown Tulsa. The group had gathered as part of our Place-Based Impact Collaborative for an immersive, 1.5-day experience designed to explore how community-centered investment and strategic partnerships are working in concert to give new strength to Tulsa. 

The insights and best practices we gathered from GKFF’s approach — and from the experts in attendance — were many, and can better enable communities nationwide to thrive. Although it’s impossible to accurately capture and convey the profound experience of being on the ground in Tulsa, our hope is that this piece can shed some light on what it was like to come together and learn with an incredible group of leaders and inspire you as you strengthen your own community-centered, place-based work.

Day One

The day began with a tour at Greenwood Rising to hear the vital stories at the core of Tulsa’s history and identity: the impact the Trail of Tears, the systems of anti-Blackness that fomented the Race Massacre of 1921, and the cultural reverberations of both eras that are still being felt throughout the city. Despite the violence dotting its past, Tulsa and its residents have persisted — deepening their sense of community and establishing a rich sense of place and culture that makes the city vibrant and unique.

That night, we joined our hosts from George Kaiser Family Foundation for a welcome reception at a speakeasy in the city’s Deco District. After an evening of warm conversation, introductions, and getting to know one another better as we prepared for the next day, Aaron Miller — head of partnerships at inTulsa — announced that he would lead a group by bus to celebrate the city’s popular Oktoberfest, currently in its 44th year. Jonathan Pride, executive director at NPower, announced that he planned to lead a competing group to the same location via the city’s widely-available Lime scooters.

Day Two

East Tulsa


After a quick pit stop for breakfast on Thursday morning, our group set out by bus for East Tulsa, where white flight and the attendant infrastructural divestment have created unlikely opportunities for the city’s growing immigrant population. 

Cynthia Jasso — a program officer on the Vibrant and Inclusive Tulsa team — explained that East Tulsa has become a community hub, learning center, and worker community for newly-arrived immigrants, more than 1,100 of whom arrive at the Plaza Santa Cecilia from Mexico by bus each week. While organizations like Growing Together have done grassroots outreach to meet residents where they are — helping to expand access to vaccines and make PPP loan applications easier for local businesses owners — they ultimately found that there was an overwhelming need for a centralized community hub where people could get the help that they needed. Plaza Santa Cecilia has become that epicenter — a place for the community to gather, relax, take classes, shop, or even acquire permits.


The plaza features beautiful murals, restaurants, and a nightclub, and has become a major source of community pride and belonging — a critical metric of success for place-based investment. 

North Tulsa


Our next stop was in North Tulsa, where attendees heard from Pastor Philip Abode of Crossover Community Impact and Crossover Bible Church. A former University of Tulsa football player and current high school football coach, Abode’s passion for coaching youth eventually catalyzed an even deeper relationship to mentorship in the city: he now serves as executive director of Crossover Preparatory Academy, which oversees several private middle schools throughout the city.

A majority-Black neighborhood, Tulsa’s north corridor is currently the site of major community development efforts, including a planned 500-unit, mixed-income housing project and new contracts with high-quality, high-paying manufacturing jobs at companies that agree to recruit from within the neighborhood (and nearby Tulsa Technology Center). 

Kendall Whittier


As the bright sun continued to warm up the day, we visited Kendall Whittier Park — located in Tulsa’s historic Kendall Whittier neighborhood — where we learned more about how a mixed-income neighborhood trust has helped  provide stable, affordable housing, and how partners like Growing Together and Tulsa Educare have created educational opportunities and green spaces where children and families can grow and thrive. 

We also had the opportunity to tour The Gathering Place, which words alone don’t really do justice. A sprawling 66.5-acre green space nestled against the Arkansas River, The Gathering Place’s pathways were dotted with pumpkins and its playgrounds had names like “Land of the River Giants,” “Fairyland Forest,” and “Volcanoville.” All park activities are free, and guests can help themselves to kayaks and paddle boats, attend concerts on the lawn, and engage with the park’s many educational programs. 


After lunch, we reconvened at Greenwood Cultural Center for a series of panel discussions — first on how to leverage the power of storytelling, and then on how new models of collaboration across the public, private, and philanthropic sectors can help to foster opportunity from the ground up.

During the first panel, Jasmine Dellafosse — Director of Organizing and Community Engagement at EPIC — spoke about the value of telling the stories that run counter to our assumptions. 

“What are the stories we don’t know, and in whose interest is it that we don’t know them?” she asked. 

Panelist Vanessa Garrison — Co-founder and COO of GirlTrek — further emphasized the power storytelling holds in developing a community: deconstructing myths, challenging assumptions and enabling community members to lead change. 

In the second panel, a key insight that surfaced was the recognition that change doesn’t just take a longer grant cycle but can take generations to actualize. The question that emerges, then, is how do we integrate intergenerational change as a metric when measuring impact? 

At the intersection of both of these panels is the emerging understanding that how we measure impact in place-based philanthropy needs to evolve to incorporate more qualitative data, compelling us to reimagine what a thriving community really means.


After a visit to Archer Studios to learn about the Tulsa Artist Fellowship — and a ceramics activity with fellow Raphael Corzo — participants had a few minutes to rest and recharge before coming together for a NationSwell Signature Dinner to reflect on the events and learnings of the day. 

Hosting us for the evening was the team at et al., a collective of chefs working collaboratively to “build a more delicious and equitable future for the food and beverage industry in Tulsa.” Aptly named to reflect the important but often overlooked or unknown people who help to make an ambitious vision into a reality, the symbolism behind et al.’s name and mission had a beautiful symmetry with the focus of our visit to Tulsa — and the patchwork of organizations and solutions we’d witnessed firsthand on the ground there. 


Attendees dove deep into what had inspired and moved them during the course of the meal, which was themed around the idea of breaking bread (as chef Colin Sato explained, “You have now broken bread with Tulsa, and now it’s a part of you”). There was a discussion of some of the central challenges to their own place-based work, with members laying out the approaches, tools, and new opportunities for partnership they were excited to bring back to their own communities. 

Like the chefs in et al.’s culinary collective, our time in Tulsa was distinguished by the patchwork of seemingly disparate, often undersung voices we heard from joining together to create a beautiful and undeniable chorus of solutions. While partners on the ground maintain different focuses in the work that they do and the neighborhoods they serve, everything in Tulsa has a certain harmony to it; the work comes together to hum like a well-oiled machine. As we packed up to leave on Friday, we couldn’t help but think about how this model of community impact — where every voice, program, and initiative happening on the ground is truly greater than the sum of its parts — has the potential to transform not only communities, but the world.

We’re so excited to have plans for more in-person, immersive experiences in the works for the near future. This incredible experience was part of our Place-Based Impact Collaborative. Our Collaborative model is based on the idea that the challenges we face call for collaboration and shared action to achieve the impact we seek on a variety of issue areas. Together, with cross-sector leaders, we illuminate challenges and opportunities in the space and align on action to advance each other’s work, and the field as a whole.

We encourage you to read more about our different Collaboratives and to contact us to get involved if you see one that resonates with you and your work. 

NationSwell Collaboratives are a new initiative convening cross-sector leaders to work in new ways on major issues affecting our lives, our nation, and our world. Learn more about our current offerings here.

Mapping the LER Ecosystem to Drive Equity

Mapping the LER Ecosystem to Drive Equity

CASE STUDIES
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Learning and employment records (LERs) are a vital solution to accelerating the uptake of skills-based hiring while empowering learners and earners to be recognized for their full set of skills from work, education, credentialing, service and life experiences. However, widespread use of LERs is often hindered by a lack of clarity and collaboration amongst the many necessary stakeholders, including employers, credential providers, learners and earners, and policy makers.

Therefore, Walmart brought NationSwell on to work with a Steering Committee of experts in the education, credentialing, equity and hiring space, to create an LER Ecosystem Map that would help people connect the dots across the ecosystem and more easily see how they can take action to drive equity through LERs.

Organizations in the LER Ecosystem Map Steering Committee:

  • AACRAO
  • Competency-Based Education Network
  • Digital Credentials Consortium
  • Digital Promise
  • JFFLabs
  • National Association of Workforce Boards
  • National Governors Association
  • SHRM Foundation
  • T3 Innovation Network
  • U.S. Chamber of Commerce Foundation

NationSwell worked closely with the Steering Committee to undertake thorough research to establish the goals and needs for the LER Ecosystem Map.

Through desk research, in-depth interviews, a diverse focus group, workshops, and months of cross-team collaboration, content drafting, design work and data visualization, our teams engaged 50+ individuals to help develop an interactive digital experience, accessible to stakeholders across the ecosystem, that clearly demonstrates opportunities for engagement, collaboration and action.

Through our three workstreams — establishing a hypothesis, research and development — the team discovered learnings, opportunities to drive adoption, and insights gaps that informed how the LER Ecosystem Map should come to life. The map launched at a pivotal point in LER development, providing many large and small players in the space with vital clarity on how to take action.

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Skilling the future workforce: 8 recs for corporate leaders

Skilling the future workforce: 8 recs for corporate leaders

EXECUTIVE BRIEFING
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Private sector engagement with skills-based hiring is increasing in response to employment gaps and escalating economic precarity. Between 2017 and 2019, 46% of middle-skill and 31% of high-skill occupations experienced material degree resets. And in 2022, 79% of HR professionals reported that scores on skills assessments are just as or more important than traditional criteria in hiring decisions.

These are positive trends from an economic and a social perspective. Skills-based hiring is critical to increasing equity and diversity in the workplace, as traditional credential-based hiring tends to screen out, disqualify, or exclude applicants without a four year degree.

While increased commitment to skills-based hiring is an important step toward a more prepared and more inclusive workforce, many companies are learning that in-demand skills do not exist in adequate supply. Some of those businesses are taking it upon themselves to develop the skill-based talent pipeline that will be necessary to power their organizations, industries, and broader market into the future.

To better understand how companies are investing in the skills-based training ecosystem, before hiring even comes into frame, we dug deep with nine organizations on the cutting edge of workforce development.

Through our conversations with leaders and practitioners, we uncovered a depth of contributions to changing and scaling the learning systems that are preparing workers for quality jobs. Our report compiles eight recommendations to provide guidance for private sector employers who are committed to skilling the future workforce and ultimately contributing meaningfully to a more just and equitable workplace. 

The eight recommendations:

 

  • Decide if you aim to be influential at a systems, sector, or company level
  • Position your strategy correctly within your company’s infrastructure
  • Lean into (and use) your company’s strengths
  • Build a well-balanced partner portfolio
  • Design for replicability and scalability
  • Mind the non-skills gap between learner and earner
  • Engage in pre-competitive transparency and collaboration
  • Bring rigor and patience to impact measurement
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ESG Next: An Interview With Citi’s Brandee McHale

Posted on by Greg Behrman

At a moment of unprecedented attention, investment, and opportunity for the emerging field of Environmental, Social, and Governance (ESG), leaders are asking: Who is best preparing their organization for the society of the future? Who is innovating today to meet decades-long environmental and social goals? Who is setting standards that catalyze their industry’s change for the better? Who is defining what bold and aspirational look like — and how best to advance that work in practice?

Enter NationSwell’s ESG Next, an exemplary group of investors, executives, authors, philanthropists, social sector leaders, academics, and field builders who are helping to shape business as a force for social and environmental progress, advancing — and even pioneering — the most forward-thinking and effective programs, initiatives, technologies, methodologies, practices, and approaches.

For this installment, NationSwell interviewed Brandee McHale, Head of Community Investing and Development at Citi and President of Citi Foundation, about the unexpected challenges of headwinds becoming tailwinds, the necessity for leaders to break out of their echo chamber for inspiration, and why economic mobility is the foundation of her unlikely journey to the field of ESG.

Greg Behrman, CEO + Founder, NationSwell: Tell us how your professional and personal journey led to this work.

Brandee McHale, Head of Community Investing and Development at Citi and President of Citi Foundation: My work is at the intersection of traditional ESG, business, society, and philanthropy; I can’t believe I’m going to actually say these words, but I’ve been here for 30 years. 

I never thought that this was where I would land. When people hear that I’ve worked 30 years in the global financial services company, they naturally assume I came from Wharton or Harvard Business School — and while those are fantastic places, I actually don’t have a business background. In fact, I don’t even have a high school diploma.

I wasn’t on the path to economic success, and what really got me back on track was volunteering in my local community. Through volunteerism, I built a professional network — and I didn’t even know I was building one at the time. I just got very engaged with volunteering alongside the former mayor of the city where I’d grown up. And it was through giving back and being involved in volunteer service that actually built up my own confidence, and I began to see myself the way others saw me. I went back to school, I got my GED, and I answered some bulletin board ad for a summer internship at Citi in their corporate charitable giving department. 

Beyond that sense of service, what’s motivated me through the years is the knowledge that it should not have been as hard as it was for me to get from where I was to where I am today. We all have an interest in helping others, but my interest is in leveling the playing field to make it easier. There are far too many exit ramps on the path to economic opportunity — and there are far too few on-ramps. And that’s really how I’ve thought about my career. How do we build more on-ramps and shut down those off-ramps?

Behrman, NationSwell: How do you define this moment in ESG? Where are we, and where are we going? What’s the potential, and where are the pitfalls?

McHale, Citi: I tell my team all the time, this is our moment; let’s not blow it. We’ve lost the luxury of saying nobody’s focused on our issues, that we’re the lone voice here in the company. This is now front and center, and there’s a spotlight on us: we have a whole range of stakeholders, investors, employees, clients, and the public looking at ESG now. I think it’s okay for ESG practitioners to feel unnerved by the eyes that are suddenly on us. It can make you skeptical of everything you’re doing; it can even drive paralysis.

And especially in this moment of so much divisiveness, that paralysis is very real. If you try to please everybody, you’re going to please nobody. So you have to identify your North Star and fly consistently towards it. And I think if you stick with your values, while you’re not going to make everybody happy, you’ll have the ability to withstand any potential criticism. 

In the face of divisiveness, you have to be bold. And I’m excited to be bold. But I’m also clear-eyed about the fact that we are in the very early years of thinking differently about the purpose of the private sector — and its role in driving societal impact. For 20 years, the wind has been against me and my fellow practitioners. We all got really strong from flying against the headwind. But it’s a funny thing when all of a sudden the winds change, and suddenly it’s a tailwind and you should be flying farther and faster, but you actually feel more likely to fall because you don’t have the right kind of skills for this velocity.

Behrman, NationSwell: What’s different about how you lead? To which leadership practices do you attribute your effectiveness?

McHale, Citi: Our most important tool is our people — and that’s especially true when you’re an ESG practitioner. When you’re working in large companies, if you have a role that has something related to ESG in it, you probably had a job description that led you to believe that you would be spending your time externally focused.

But if we really want to have an impact, we are internal change agents. So while it may seem as though we are funding external change agents, what’s different and what I hope is the model that I’ve helped to develop, is that we see ourselves as change agents working across the company to influence, again, business practices, to influence strategies, to influence a focus on communities that have oftentimes been left behind, while also understanding how to partner with others externally so we can maximize impact. And to do that, you really need to build a team that feels empowered to use their voice. And in turn then we empower our company, many times not just to engage in actions, but to also use our voice and to ask, what is our commitment to an issue? 

And a great example of this, I think, is our work on racial equity. Like many companies, after the murder of George Floyd, we were searching for what we could do to make a difference. We did do some immediate philanthropic funding to civil rights organizations, but we knew that that was completely necessary, and insufficient. We realized that the real opportunity we have is to step back and ask, what is the specific role that financial institutions can play in racial equity? And for us, it was to look back and say part of what fuels racial injustice in the United States is the long-term perpetual racial wealth gap.

And while we’re very proud of the role that Citi Foundation has played on this issue philanthropically, philanthropy is insufficient to really address this issue. We’re working across the company in a comprehensive way to clarify what our role is in helping people get into the financial mainstream and accumulate financial wealth and assets.

In terms of leadership practice, I’m a big believer in purposefully making space that exists outside of your echo chamber. It’s something you have to practice actively; we tend to not realize we’re on autopilot, going to the same meetings, the same events, and the same conferences. This action can be something simple, like auditing who it is you tend to take your meetings with. But it can also mean getting out of the big cities. I’ve probably spent way too much time in my career thinking that the United States is New York, D.C., and California. It turns out, there’s a country in between these cities. And seeing how these communities approach economic mobility in ways that perhaps weren’t on your radar can give you that spark of inspiration that leaders are so often chasing. 

Behrman, NationSwell: What are some unique programs or initiatives you’re leading that other leaders may benefit from knowing?

McHale, Citi: I’m really proud of our work to help students get to and through college. We identified two primary barriers for students: the first is financial, and the second is navigating an increasingly complex system, especially if these students are the first in their family to attend college. 

To counter these barriers, we started a platform that supports initiatives opening up college savings accounts for young people. It’s an effort we’ve already begun scaling in San Francisco, San Jose, Los Angeles, and Atlanta, with more locations to be announced soon. We initiated this approach a decade ago, and the first group of students from the San Francisco public school system is graduating this year. 

It’s an initiative that did more than just give kids accounts — it also changed the narrative around college for these communities from “if” to “when.” We’ve witnessed parents, kids, and family members depositing even small amounts into these accounts, and schools building a culture that focuses on college admissions — not just high school graduation.

The program in San Francisco, which is called Kindergarten to College, has become the framework for these initiatives. Some places even have similar Baby Bonds programs. They all aim to level the playing field by providing the same opportunities that a child born in a high-income family might have, such as a 529 account opened for them at birth.

It’s clear that schools aren’t bankers, and that’s why we’ve helped them by developing an online platform that allows school systems, or large youth-serving nonprofits, to manage the program. They can sign up kids, track deposits, and support families through the program. At the back end, we ensure the system works with various banking partners — whether it’s Citibank or a local community development credit union. This approach eliminates the need for everyone to reinvent the wheel, essentially creating a scalable “franchise” opportunity.
This solution was informed by our philanthropic work. We discovered that, while there is funding available for matched funds, unless programs can run efficiently, they will not be able to operate at scale. 

Another area is our Citi Impact Fund, which invests in double-bottom line companies. It’s important to remember that it’s not just about injecting capital — it’s about support. Providing post-investment support and assisting our portfolio companies to thrive, extend their networks, and boost their revenue-generating opportunities are of the utmost importance.

Though the Citi Foundation’s Community Progress Makers initiative, we offer core operating support grants of $500,000 each and say to grantees, “Go forth. We are not the experts here, you are. We trust you.” We’re not in the business of what I like to call “torturing” our grantees. 

Funding shouldn’t be onerous. Removing that red tape is part of our commitment to ensuring philanthropic capital is the most catalytic resource it can be. It should be the most flexible research and development money that’s out there. 

I’m also excited about the Foundation’s Global Innovation Challenge – Food Security, which is our first global open source effort, designed to improve food security and strengthening the financial health of low-income families and communities. 

The world is moving so quickly; and when it comes to food security, so many issues are interconnected — economic empowerment, financial health, supply chain. It excites me that we are now embracing the ways these issues are interconnected instead of focusing on just one component of them.  

Behrman, NationSwell: Who are some fellow leaders that are inspiring your leadership right now?

McHale, Citi: I’m inspired by the leadership of Kathleen Enright, CEO of the Council on Foundations. She’s tackling some of the hardest conversations in philanthropy today. Janice Bowdler went from the nonprofit sector at Unidos US  to the private sector with JPMC, and now she’s in public service as the Counselor to the Secretary at the U.S. Treasury on matters of racial equity. I absolutely love this multi-sector transition.In the impact investing space, the biggest rockstar is Melissa Bradley. When we were building our Impact Fund, she challenged us to be different – to stop talking and just do it differently. 

All of these women are fearless about giving the counterpoint to what someone may be saying.

Behrman, NationSwell: What are some books you’re reading, shows you’re watching, or podcasts you’re listening to that inspire and inform you?
McHale, Citi: For me, it’s really important to listen and learn from nonprofit leaders and change agents. I follow Financial Health Network’s Financial Pulse survey to keep up-to-date on the financial lives of everyday people around the country. I also really enjoy listening to Jennifer Tescher’s EMERGE Everywhere podcast, which focuses on financial health and breaking siloes between sectors.

To learn more about how our ESG Next honorees are shaping business as a force for social and environmental good, visit the series hub.