 And welcome to Hawaii Reimagine, streaming live on Think Tech Hawaii. As we face massive disruptions to our labor markets due to automation and now the pandemic, we need to create solutions to address the future of work and how to upscale our workforce to meet the demands of a new labor market. On Hawaii Reimagine, I feature innovators and entrepreneurs who are addressing these economic and workforce development issues with innovative solutions that will make a positive social impact for people in our communities. I'm Ruby Menon, your host. And as we're trying to find our way in the world of work, I help mid-career professionals navigate their career transition in my career, get it done, mastermind community. You can learn more at brainsmartdesign.com. My guest today is Vanessa Porter. She is the Associate Director of Academics at Year Up. That is an innovative nonprofit, and they're based in New York City. They work with young adults from underserved communities to address the opportunity divide by providing these young adults with the professional and technical skills that companies need. Year Up helps their students launch successful professional careers while providing the business community with an untapped source of bright, motivated young talent. And we're going to learn more about Year Up and the important work that they're doing to make a social impact in the workforce innovation space. And a quick story about how I got to know Year Up is that I was contacted to provide a class on habits for self-care, since a lot of their students were going through some stressful times, especially with having to go from a live classroom to having to learn at home, and having to make those transitions, and self-care was a really big issue for them. And because I'm a tiny habits certified coach, I put together a class just for them on creating the habits of self-care, and I did two classes for them. And in that period, I got to know their students, and I got to know Vanessa and Year Up, and I just fell in love, not only with the students, but also Year Up's mission. And so I felt that they were story worth telling. So with no further ado, Vanessa, I am so happy that you're here to tell us more about Year Up. And so let's dive right in. Thank you, Ruby. I'm excited to be here with you. That's awesome. Well, I know that normally you're in New York City, but now you're actually on the big island, and you said that you just moved to Volcano. So welcome in Aloha to our beautiful Hawaiian islands. And I wanted to start with asking you some questions about your career path, what led you to Year Up, and what you are doing with Year Up, what your role is. Sure, sounds like a great place to start. And thank you for the warm welcome. I've loved being able to spend a little bit of time on the islands here. So I have been with Year Up for about six years, and I am currently the Associate Director of Academic. And I've had a bit of, you know, a different kind of journey getting to Year Up and a sort of unique journey at Year Up as well. So happy to share that with everyone today. I started my career actually thinking that I was going to become a social worker. I got my degree in psychology, and I always loved working with people, but thought that it would be wise to just spend some time in the professional environment before going back to school to get a master's degree. And I start, so when I graduated, I actually landed a job as an event planner. And I found there were a lot of things that I liked about doing that kind of work, but ultimately, it was really kind of individual work. And I got to build some relationships with my clients, but wasn't spending as much time with them as I wanted. So I decided to make a big change, and I went and taught English abroad for a few years. So I had the opportunity to live in the Czech Republic and in Japan, and it was amazing. I loved it. And then I came and ended up living in New York City with my sister, and it was meant to just be a short time period. But during the time that I was in New York, I was doing some temporary work and worked at a financial firm where I met one of our Year Up alumni. And she just amazed me with her story, and she told me more about Year Up and what the organization did. And like you, I quickly fell in love with it and started volunteering and really was just waiting for the right opportunity to become available for me. And so when they had a role available as a business communications instructor, I immediately applied and got the job. So I've spent most of my time at Year Up in the academic department. So I've been a business communications instructor. I did I have had the opportunity to work with other teams. I spent a small period of time, about a year working as the associate director of admissions where I was able to learn more about how we recruit talent and bring them into our organization. And then ultimately found that I missed being in the training rooms and getting to build strong relationships with our participants. So moved back into academics and now I'm the associate director of academics while still having the opportunity to teach classes. And I continue to teach business communications to our participants. Yeah, and actually we have a graphic that we can show of all of the different types of classes and I guess kind of like their training roadmap. If you wouldn't mind bringing up that graphic number one so we can show our audience some of the cool things that they're they're they're doing. So tell us a little bit about Year Up mission and the work that you're doing at the impact on the community and the types of students that you serve because I think that's something that's very impactful as well. Sure. So Year Up's mission is to close the opportunity divide. And the best way to describe the opportunity divide is that we know there are five million young people that are disconnected from the economic mainstream, which means that they have they're they're they're not connected to employment opportunities or educational opportunities that will allow them to move into these kind of professional careers. However, they are bright and talented and motivated and want to be connected to those kinds of opportunities. We also know that there are anywhere upwards of 12 million jobs available that are looking for talented people to fill them. So what Year Up does is we're looking to bridge that divide. So we want to train those young motivated adults and get them into those careers that they are longing to be in and that the employers are searching for the new talent. So as you can see from the graphic, we have a number of different training programs that we offer. So each one is specific to the market that we're that we're working in. So I work for our New York, New Jersey market. But Year Up has over we are all across the country. We have 19 different cities that we work in and over 35 different sites in those cities. So we look at the city and what what is their employment market? Where's the need? And we fill the need accordingly. So for example, in New York, we really focus on financial operations, IT and software development, whereas other cities may be it may be more appropriate for them to work on sales and customer support, quality assurance, just depending on the market that they are serving. Year Up started in in 2000. Our founder, Gerald Tertavian, had a really impactful relationship as a big brother, as part of the Big Brother program in New York. And he longed to start an organization that helped to to really lift up talented young adults and give them the opportunities that they deserve. So when we when you ask, like, what kind of community are we serving? We are working with mostly in urban areas. We're working with people age 18 to 24, generally. They are students who have may have a high school diploma or a GED, but they do not have a bachelor's degree. Some of our students may have some college experience, but what we find is a lot of them may may have gone to college for a short period of time and then for reasons outside of their control, could be financial reasons, could be outside of challenges. They were not able to continue. So they apply for our program. It is a intense application process because generally for New York, we have over a thousand applicants and we have anywhere from 90 to 120 spots for a first six month cycle. So it is it is competitive to get into. However, the requirements are only that you are between 18 and 24 and you have a high school diploma or a GED. And beyond that, as long as you're a motivated young adult and you want to be in one of the career tracks that we offer, we'd love to have you in our program. Is there a specific career track that is more prominent than others that the students pursue? Or is it, like you said, more based around the labor market and what's needed? So it is based around the labor market and what's needed. But generally, like I can speak for in New York, our IT track is generally the most popular among applicants. And it's also the one that we have the most number of students in. So in New York, we have right now we have nine. Well, in the New York and New Jersey market, we have 120 participants. And of that, 120, 65 are in under the IT umbrella. So they're either being trained to be in help desk, IT support or in software development. The other the rest of our students are in business operations or in investment operations, so going into mostly like the finance sector. And you do have locations spread out throughout the United States. Do you want to talk a little bit about some of the other locations that you're in and what made you select those markets? Like, I would love to have a year up here in Hawaii. I think that would be like so awesome. I know. And as we've discussed, I know staff members would also love to have a year up in Hawaii. I'm certainly one of them. And you know, Europe has so census inception. We have been rapidly expanding. So we started in the year 2000. We started with what we call core site. So a core site is one where everything is done in-house. So all of our instructors are hired by the year up. We have the whole program team, the internship services. Part of the second half of our program is around placing students into internships at Fortune 500 companies. So we have a lot of staff that do that kind of wraparound support. And what we found is while our core sites were very successful in terms of our outcomes for our participants, they are really expensive to run. And the price per student was quite high. We also weren't able to serve as many young adults as we want to, right? So I mentioned that we have, we know that there are five million young adults that are disconnected from this economic mainstream. And at year up, I mean, we're really proud to say that as an organization, we have served over 30,000 young adults since the year 2000. And now we are serving 4,000 plus students every year. But that's not enough, right? Like there are five million people that are disconnected. So we want to continue to expand and grow. So the other way that we have books grow is we've partnered with community colleges so that we can implement our year up program within their structure. So what we would do there is we find, we kind of map out their courses and we say, OK, so we have this market has a need for accounting. So we'll look at the college courses that you're taking that will be able to put you on that track. You will still engage in year up programming. What I would say is one of the secret sauces of Europe is our ability to build relationships and help our participants build out their professional network. So we have all cohorts of students where there's 35 to 40 students in a cohort, a number of staff, usually 10 to 15 per cohort that are there to really support the young adults. So the community college model, they still get that same cohort feeling. They still get the internship experience. They still work with our employment placement team to make sure that they're hired into career careers related to the track that they were in. But it has allowed us to support and serve more young adults at a lower cost to the organization. We also are looking to to offer our program in different ways. So one example of that is in California, Facebook has been one of our corporate partners for many years and they have loved taking interns and they said, hey, we will give you some space at Facebook for you to run your program here and in training participants to come be interns at Facebook. So everyone who goes to Facebook, the Facebook employer based model that we have ends up interning at Facebook. So we have that as another way that we are serving young adults. And when we think about new cities that we want to go to, we have to look at a couple of things. So one is there a population there that we that meets our mission that we want to serve, right? So are there disconnected young people that we know we can support? And the second part is are there companies that are going to be able to hire them because we are a nonprofit. And so a lot of our funding does actually come from our corporate partners who pay for our interns. So if they're if the city has meets both of those requirements where there is a need for the young adults and there's a need for the companies and there's enough corporations that will buy into our program and say, hey, we can take 10 young adults each intern cycle, then it sounds like it would be a match. And that's that's how Europe makes its decisions on where we expand. Oh, wow. So I was kind of curious, I mean, that whole relationship with Facebook is really fascinating because that's one of the things that I've always seen as an X HR person. I would often see students coming out of the education system and many times it just weren't prepared. I mean, maybe they had the academic chops, but that was not very practical for the workplace. And I think one of the things that's always been lacking, at least the gap that I've seen is that partnership between education and the employer so that they can both be informed instead of being in silos. You know, they really need to work collaboratively. So it's really fascinating that you're working with Facebook, that they've actually made some space for you. I was curious as to what these partnerships with the companies that, you know, that bring your students and his interns. Do they actually get hired at some point? Like, what what are your statistics on them being able to transition from the internship into actual employment? Yeah, that's a great question and one that we are often asked particularly by students, because they're coming to our program and wanting to get a job, right? So that's really important for them. And what I'll say is it changes each cycle, but generally speaking, we have the conversions from internship to hire in the same role that they were interning in is around 40 to 50 percent. So that means that immediately and by the end of the internship, they are hired on and they just move right into a full-time position. So for the remaining 60 to 50 percent of our participants who do finish the program, but do not get hired by their internship site, we have an employment placement team that also has partnerships with other companies that may not be corporate partners of Europe, but that know that know about us and that, you know, trust people that we're going to send. So we have other metrics that we utilize to see to kind of measure the success of our program. And so what we aim for is that by four months, by four months of completing the Europe program, participants will either be employed in a professional job, ideally related to the tracks that they studied at Europe, or they are pursuing higher education. And we're really happy to say that 90 percent of our students meet that metric and what's even better than that is that if they are going into a professional organization, our average starting salary for young adults is $42,000 a year, which is significantly more than what the majority of them were making before they came to our program. So while the conversion rate can kind of hover between the 40 and 50 percent, we do have a very successful rate of outcomes at that four months mark after graduation. And do you follow them for any length of time to see over time, like what the longevity is in those positions? Or does it just, your, like at what point is your relationship, I don't want to say end, but you know, where you're actually hands-on involved with the student and their employment? Yeah, so that's a great question too. And I think, you know, that's something that Europe is still working on getting better at. We do follow our, follow our graduates for at least a year after they've graduated from the program to ensure, you know, just for us to get statistics on how are they doing, were they moving up, are they still at the company, that kind of thing. The other thing that is more of anecdotal evidence, I would say, is that Europe students do become very close to staff members. Each participant is assigned a professional coach throughout their journey at Europe. So as a staff member, regardless of your role, you take on four to five students every six months that you will serve as their coach throughout their Europe journey and beyond. So, you know, I started at Europe six years ago and I'm still in contact with some of the students that were in my coaching group for my very first class. So some of that, you know, it depends on the relationship that you'd build, it depends on the students, did they want to continue to come back, but we also have a very strong alumni association. So they're there to support each other and to help, I mean, a lot of our participants have found jobs after the program through other Europe alums. So it does help you build that network. I think as an organization, Europe is still striving to figure out the best way to remain in contact and make sure that we're remaining in contact with all of our participants after that year, Mark. But, you know, we do what we can and the Alumni Association has really helped that. When you're trying to integrate, especially with diversity and inclusion, you're trying to integrate different ethnicities, people from different cultures, languages, backgrounds, into a dominant structure that oftentimes it's a very difficult transition. And you had spoken about something that you've done, that you've partnered with these companies to create a better transition path. And I'd love for you to speak a little bit more about that. Sure. Yeah. So, yeah, you're exactly right. I mean, it can, even with the best training, it's challenging to go into these environments. I mean, the majority of our participants and certainly in New York are people of color. And so they're going into these big corporations where not only might they be the youngest person on their team, but they may be the only person of color in their team. And it can be really hard to acclimate to that kind of environment. So, what we have found is that having a wraparound support. So, at Year Up, we have a tremendous amount of support for each student. But when they go to their internship, it's a little bit more challenging. They're no longer at the Year Up site. And while, of course, they're in contact with us, they're not with them every day. So, one of our partners, one of our largest partners, actually, JP Morgan Chase, saw that there was a need to continue to support our participants once they moved into the internship phase and when they, you know, hopefully were getting hired into roles at JP Morgan. So, what they did is they actually created a internal department that only focused on Year Up interns and alums. And they have had some great success with that because through that program, they offered ongoing trainings. So, things that were really specific to JP Morgan. So, you know, Year Up, we do our best to train them, but our participants are going to 50-plus corporate partners. So, we can't train them on the exact environment that they're going to go into. So, when they get to JP Morgan, they then have the opportunity to still have, like a mini cohort of Year Up interns and alums that are doing these ongoing trainings together. They get matched to a mentor at JP Morgan that is able to kind of help them acclimate to the culture, answer any specific questions they have about what's going on in their roles or how to kind of professionally navigate those nuanced situations that we all have been in before. So, that's been really successful and something that we are pushing our, some of our other corporate partners to do as well. On our side, we also look to partner with corporations around doing like manager training. So, how to manage a Year Up intern can be, it might be different than managing other interns. So, there's that relationship that we want to build with our corporate partners as well to help us meet our mission of ultimately closing the opportunity to divide and really like making the kinds of societal changes that we as an organization believe should be happening. Yeah, I think that's something that's very unique about your program because I've worked with interns and I know how difficult coming from an academic background into a corporate culture, especially with large companies like JP Morgan or it's not like you're going into a young startup or something where it kind of feels collegiate. When you go into those types of corporate environments it's etiquette, there's dress, there's manners, there's language and lingo and there's so many different things that you have to wrap your head around and I think for number one, a student of any color is probably going to have a major problem with that or at least a transition but then you've got this whole other layer of diversity inclusion that kind of comes along with that package. So, I think it's tremendous that you guys are really trying to change that mind shift through the education process because I honestly don't believe that there's any ill intention on the part of the company. I just think that there needs to be better education. People just need to know, I think the will is there, I think that the intent is there, it's just the how piece is kind of missing and it seems like that's what you folks are helping to bridge that how gap for them and that's really tremendous. Now, I know that you guys had to make some pivots obviously with COVID. So, how's that been going for you? Yeah, so we've had to make some tremendous pivots because of COVID as all companies have, right? But it's been, you know, it was really rocky in the start. Like, there were a lot of things that we didn't feel like would kind of convert to the virtual environment. So, you know, in addition to students taking their professional, technical, and communications classes, they also are part of these programmatic events that are really key to our program where we would meet every Monday, we meet every Friday as a whole cohort to really build community. And so a lot of what we would do in person just wasn't realistic in the virtual space. So that part has been really tricky to navigate and then even just bringing some of our classes online. And so, for example, you know, I shared that IT Help Desk was one of our main tracks in New York. And, you know, if you were to come into our Year Up office on any given day and you saw our students in their tech classes, they're in there breaking apart computers, putting them back together, naming the parts of the motherboard. And that wasn't, we didn't have the opportunity to do that in the virtual environment. So, what has come out of this though is a lot of innovation. So, we've thought of different ways to deliver our program. And some that I think have actually been better and our students have been able to more organically develop some of their skill sets than they would have in person. There are still times where we're like, oh man, I wish that we were on site so that we could do XYZ. But we have been able to really like find new ways to deliver the program and to still reach our students. The other thing as an organization that's happened is it's escalated some of the kind of thought processes that were already happening. So, in thinking about like, how can we expand? How can we serve more students? We had thought about organizationally, we had thought about doing more online programming and that got shifted to a top priority because of COVID and we actually have just piloted two new programs in Philadelphia and South Florida that are completely virtual, all asynchronous classes, minimal staff, 40 students per site. And I think they're in their third week now and it seems to be going really well. So, while there have been a lot of challenges, there's also been a lot of learnings and some of the things that we have innovated on I think will probably stay even, it's hard to say, post COVID but whenever we get back to some kind of reality. So, there's hope for Hawaii then. Maybe we could be one of your online partners. I think that would be great, yeah. That's awesome. So, unfortunately, I could probably talk to you for another three hours but we're out of time and we do have to wrap it up. I'm Ruby Menon and this is Hawaii Reimagined on Think Tech, Hawaii. Vanessa, tell our audience how they can learn more about Year Up. Is there, tell us your website? Yeah, absolutely. So, you can go to yearup.org and you can find out all about Year Up's mission, about our sites. You can apply to be part of our organization. You can refer a student who might want to be part of our program and we'd love to hear from you in any capacity that makes sense for you. Awesome. So, we've been talking with Vanessa Porter from Year Up about how they launch careers for young adults and I want to thank all of you for being here and please check back for our next show on Wednesday, November 18th at 3 p.m. I'll be talking to Ethan West who is the co-founder of Punahelei Provisions and he's an innovator in the agriculture and food system space. We're going to be talking to him about how he's integrating regenerative agriculture with workforce developments. You don't want to miss this. Until next time, be safe, be kind to one another and thank you again, Vanessa, for being on the show. Thank you, Ruby.