 Good morning, let me give folks a couple seconds here to find your seats It's a full house. So you may be making some friends feel free to find chairs up front here There's lots of room for everybody, but you're gonna have to fill in so good morning to all of you And there are a lot of you. I'm Andy van clunen and I'm CEO of national skills coalition based here in Washington, DC And on behalf of our partner organization for this event in New America and all the national Organizations and foundations who invested so much time and resource in bringing us all together I want to welcome all of you to Apprenticeship forward So this national gathering was conceived as a way to recognize the work of many of the people in this room today People have done so much to ramp up the profile and development of apprenticeship in the United States over the past several years And to help us all begin to chart a way forward so that we can be working together as Business leaders labor leaders community organizations community colleges and high schools workforce boards State and local policymakers and national leaders both in Congress and in the Trump administration To continue to build out apprenticeship as a means not only to meet our economy's skilled workforce needs But to create pathways to a better life for millions of students and workers here in the United States So why are we all here? What is the source of this growing interest in apprenticeship? Obviously, it's been around for decades this idea of Investing in somebody hiring them while they are still learning giving them a chance to earn and learn Being able to acquire experience on the job while earning a paycheck Getting new skills in the classroom and moving towards some kind of industry certification in higher wages We've had these practices around for years in some of our industries here in the United States Why the surge of interest now? Well, there's a lot of different explanations Some that came out of the concerns about long-term unemployment coming out of the recession and how it is We could more quickly get people back to work even as they were skilling up for a new job Concerns about rising college costs and the income returns to students Industry complaints about not being able to find enough people to fill middle skilled positions that they were that they were They desperately needed to fill in order to kind of grow their companies The influence of foreign-owned companies here in the United States We're bringing some of their apprenticeship lessons that they had developed over years in other parts of the world to bring them here as Part of their workforce strategies here in the US All of these are contributing reasons But a lot of the momentum a lot of the increased interest in this field is Largely because of many of the people in the room today folks are developing effective practices expanding your efforts developing apprenticeship opportunities in new industries and These are the kinds of things that we could not have done without the work that you all have done back at home in your communities And so we want to thank you for taking time away from that work to be joining us all here together in Washington To share what you're doing with each other and help those of us here in Washington who are trying to figure some of these Things out to understand what we can do to make it easier for you to continue expand your efforts And so that we can bring apprenticeship to a range of industries throughout this country And the good news is that policy makers are listening as you know state and state governments have been on the front lines of this apprenticeship Renaissance many of them are represented here today and the federal government has noticed as well in fact through both executive action and bipartisan congressional support the federal government has invested over $260 million in apprenticeship expansion over the past couple years and just yesterday Republicans and Democrats came together in the house to approve an additional $95 million in funding a five million dollar increase in that work for the balance of this year That just does not happen in Washington DC So we should be very happy about that we should celebrate that moment and recognize that we're at a momentum point here on behalf of this field But how are we going to be able to most effectively use those resources and even more importantly? How are you going to leverage the additional resources from other state and federal programs and from the private sector? So that we're not just counting apprentices in this country by the hundreds of thousands, but by the millions That's the real trot project before all of us over the next two days So in just a few moments, I'm going to introduce my colleague Sarah Steinberg from JP Morgan Chase One of the five philanthropic leaders who originally conceived of this national event They saw the need for a gathering like this to answer three big questions related to how it is that we're going to take apprenticeship to scale In the United States and you'll see that we've structured these next two days together around these three themes So question one How do we engage more industries and a greater number and diversity of companies within those industries? Including smaller firms to help them adopt apprenticeship as a source of their current and future skilled workforces In just a few moments We're going to hear both from our opening keynote speaker and from a panel of industry leaders Why their industries have begun to look at apprenticeship as a workforce strategy? Or how they've begun to take a different look of an apprenticeship and changing some of their apprenticeship practices to respond to the changing needs of their industry and a diversifying workforce and After this morning's plenary and that's going to be after this morning's plenary Then you all are going to be breaking into industry discussion groups where you'll have a chance to share with each other The work you're doing on these issues within particular industries to hear from other Experts in the field and to think about how it is that we could grow apprenticeship opportunities within that sector Second question, how do we diversify and grow the pipeline of young people and adults who should have the opportunity to become a working apprentice? This afternoon at lunch my colleague Mary Alice McCarthy from New America is going to introduce a great set of lunch panels With both apprentices and program officer of operators about how they're effectively helping different groups of people become apprentices And how we're overcoming a range of different barriers that have in historically help some Stop some of those folks from being able to get into apprenticeship whether that's around skill levels or work experience or Overly rigid expectations around seat time within seat curricula or even discrimination And that lunch will be followed by another series of discussions broken out by population group again We're all of you will get a chance to share with each other the work that you are doing And how it is that we can be working together to overcome some of those barriers collectively And then finally our third theme How can government be a more effective partner in dealing with these first two challenges of industry engagement and apprentice diversity? Tomorrow we're going to be hearing from some exciting leaders in state government from a governor to state legislators to state Administrators who have been pushing the envelopes on these issues in their states And we're going to talk to representatives from the key federal agencies who have already been working on these issues here at the national level Including the departments of labor education commerce health and human services agriculture and transportation and If that weren't enough We have over a dozen of other panel presentations are going to be interspersed over the next couple days on specific issues that we felt Warned some additional attention So it's going to be a packed couple of days and it's going to be a packed room as you can see we are at Capacities a matter of fact This has been quite a hot ticket to get to this event. So congratulations for getting in the door There's a lot of folks who wanted to be here who couldn't be here with you So we're glad that you were able to join us and we just asked for you your patience as we are going to be moving around Within this area over the next two days doing a lot of discussion with each other And please take advantage of the fact that you're in a room of such great people who are doing such incredible work in this field Why so many folks are here certainly is the power of the issue itself But I think it's also owes to the networks and the reputation and expertise of the national organizations who have been these Conference sponsors along with National Skills Coalition in New America who have worked together to make this conference possible And so I want to recognize them now. They're in your program, but let me call them out. They include advanced CTE the AFL CIO is working for America Institute jobs for the future the National Association of Workforce Boards the National Fund for Workforce Solutions National Governors Association and the Urban Institute Let's give all of those organizations a big hand for the work they've done here And I also want to acknowledge the two federal agencies with whom we've been coordinating a lot of the content for this conference They've been incredible partners as well first the US Department of Labor's Employment and Training Administration and particularly the US DOL Office of Apprenticeship And for them absolutely and the US Department of Education's Office of Career Technical and Adult Education Let's give them some acknowledgement as well And finally a tremendous debt of gratitude is owed to the five national foundations Who not only conceived of this event last year, but who have invested their resources to make it possible for all of us to be here Over the next two days and to give formal recognition of those funding partners and to introduce our conferences opening keynote speaker I like to turn the podium over to Sarah Steinberg whose vice president of global philanthropy at JP Morgan Chase and Company Great. Thank you Andy. Good morning everyone So starting about four years ago JP Morgan Chase launched the first of what has become a $325 million investment in strengthening workforce systems and career-focused education and the reason that we as a big bank decided to Invest in skills was really because of two things that we were seeing in the communities that we serve and The first was that while the economy was improving We were still seeing among certain populations high levels of disconnection from the labor market and unemployment especially among young people and particularly among young people of color and Then at the same time We were also hearing from many of the businesses that we serve that they were struggling to hire workers with Often the specific technical skills that they needed in order to grow their businesses and compete And so when we made this investment it was really with the aim of building an education and training system that is more closely aligned with labor market demand and And the idea being that if you can do that you can create economic opportunity for Individuals by connecting them to good jobs and you can also strengthen the economy as a whole by ensuring that our workforce Is really prepared for jobs in our modern economy And we believe that apprenticeship is a really crucial part of that alignment So an apprentice is able to get paid training in what is sort of by definition an in-demand field Well, an employer is able to build a pipeline of skilled workers Fortunately as you can see from the packed room today JP Morgan Chase is not alone in believing in the promise of apprenticeship and in particular I want to thank the other four funders that are co-sponsoring this conference today the Siemens foundation the Annie Casey Foundation the Joyce Foundation and the JPB Foundation Thank you for your support of this conference and for all that you're doing to advance apprenticeship The beauty and also the challenge of apprenticeship is that it really is the quintessential public-private Partnership and that means that its success depends on cooperation between educators training providers the public workforce system and crucially employers and Employers have a role to play not just in Offering apprenticeship slots. That's part of it but employers also have a role to play in defining in-demand occupations and skill sets in Informing credentials and curricula that are aligned with what they need in their workforce And also building strong apprenticeship systems that serve the dual purpose of serving the public good but also benefiting their bottom line and That's why I'm so thrilled to be able to introduce today our keynote speaker an industry leader who has really done Tremendous work in all of those areas, but in particular that last one which is developing an apprenticeship ecosystem Noel Ginsburg founded Intertech plastics in 1980 Well, he was still a student at the University of Denver and in the years since then it has grown into the largest custom injection molding manufacturer in the state with more than 200 employees But no is not just a business entrepreneur and last year he founded career-wise Colorado An innovative new statewide apprenticeship system that connects high school students to employers Putting young people on the path to good jobs and strengthening Colorado's economy So I want to ask you to please join me in welcoming Noel Ginsburg