 We're going to hear, in our second discussion of lunch, we're going to hear from a group of pioneers and leaders who are doing the work on the ground of trying to figure out how to make our apprenticeship system reach a whole lot more people than it currently is. This discussion is going to be led by Angela Hanks of the Center on American Progress. And I have my notes here on it. And I am, hold on, failing miserably here. One second. OK. Angela is the associate director of the Economic and Workforce Development Division at the Center on American Progress, where she writes and researches and engages in policy development exercises in relation to workforce development and apprenticeship. Angela has been published in Newsweek, USA Today, and on MarketWatch. For those of you who have not read her stuff, I would encourage you to do so. A lot of it's available on the CAP website. She writes very clearly and eloquently about apprenticeship and makes a great case for it, as well as coming up with great policy recommendations to move it forward. And before Angela was at the Center on American Progress, of course, she was at the National Skills Coalition. So we can see how things, you know, we're all part of a larger community here at Apprenticeship Forward. So with that, I'm going to hand it over to Angela and to all the panelists. Thanks so much. All right, great. Thank you so much, Mary Alice. So admittedly, we have a tough act to follow, but we will do our best. Some really incredible, impressive apprentices that we heard from there. So I'm going to go ahead and introduce the panelists with some abbreviated bios. If you'd like to learn more about them, the bios are in your notebook. Or you can come talk to them after the panel. So first up is Bridget Gainer. Bridget is the vice president of Global Public Affairs for Aeon and a commissioner on the Cook County board. Her career at Aeon has spanned finance and strategy and most recently, Bridget has led the effort to bring apprenticeships into the financial services sector. This January, Aeon hired 26 young men and women from neighborhoods across Chicago in a partnership with the Chicago City Colleges. And we'll hear more about that today. Next is Edison Freer. Edison is the director of the Gateway Initiatives at Jev's Human Services in Philadelphia where he was working to expand apprenticeship opportunities for underserved populations by developing sector-based career pathways programs. As part of this work, Edison is also engaged in developing technical assistance strategies and support for employers seeking to start apprenticeship programs. Prior to joining Jev's, Edison was director of Educational Technology at the School District of Philadelphia where he founded the Urban Technology Project, the longest-running continuous information technology registered apprenticeship program. We'll get into more detail on that as well. And then finally, we have Arianne Hesiewic who is program director for Employment and Earnings at the Institute for Women's Policy Research and Independent Research Institute in Washington, D.C. She is responsible for IWPR's research on earnings, occupations, and workplace discrimination. And she directs IPWR's work for the U.S. Department of Labor's Gender Equity and Apprenticeship Grant. She's a specialist in comparative resource management with a focus on policies and legislative approaches to facilitate greater work-life reconciliation and gender equality both in the U.S. and internationally. So before I turn to the panel, Mary Alice did some table setting at the beginning. But I think we're talking about today, we're talking about expanding apprenticeship in different ways. So we're talking about entering to new industries and we're also talking about diversity and inclusion. And this diversity piece is really essential. If we're talking about, the president has said that he would like to see five million new apprenticeships. That is a tremendous amount of growth from where we are now. And really, given the demographics of our country, given the goals that we want to accomplish through apprenticeship, you can't just leave diversity to the end. It can't be like, oh, well, now we need to do diversity. This is really about addressing structural barriers that people of color, that women face, that underserved communities face, to getting these good jobs that we know can work. So given that, I think we, I would like to have a discussion today talking about how we can make sure that more people have access to these programs. And we have some wonderful experts who can actually talk about the important work of actually doing that in practice. So first, I would like to go to Bridget. So Bridget, you, as I mentioned in January, recently launched an apprenticeship program in the insurance industry and we just got to hear from one of your apprentices. So I think, as Allison mentioned, for many of us, we don't think of insurance when we think of apprenticeship. We have a very kind of clear idea of what an apprentice is that I think many of us in this room are working to expand on. So why did you choose to do an apprenticeship? How did this come about? And what, why, why do it? Thank you, Angela, I appreciate it. And thanks everyone for being here. This is a great opportunity. So when you think about the reason that skilled trades do so well with apprenticeships is because the employer and the training stay so closely knit together. And so the employee is always offering what the market is looking for. And so that's a kind of a constant feedback loop. I think one of the interesting things we got to in this country, if you look at, you know, the pendulum really shifted to a high degree of college attendance after World War II. And a lot of large corporates kind of defaulted into hiring from a four year college pipeline. It no longer meant that the employers were actually demanding what the colleges were teaching for certain roles. It just became a habit. And so several years ago, you know, Aeon is in Chicago, we're two blocks away from Harold Washington College, which is one of the city colleges. And there was a desire to kind of reconnect them with employers. And we realized, you know, we'd never hired anyone from Harold Washington and didn't have a relationship there. So we gathered a bunch of employers together and we helped them redo their curriculum to make it more kind of connected to what employers were actually looking for in financial services. Next, we hired some interns and then we really kind of looked at apprentices in financial services and then, you know, in business are pretty common outside of this country in Germany and the UK. We have a large operation in the UK. And so the thought was, well, if they can do it there, then why can't we do it here? And so for me, it was both professional. We had a huge opportunity to get talent that was really blocked from coming to our company because you put up this barrier of a four year college at 18. But it was also very personal. You know, I grew up in Chicago and I went to our state university at a time where it was a couple thousand dollars a year and I was able to pay for that as a waitress and not engage debt. But now, you know, that same college is $30,000 a year. And so we looked at and said, there's a huge opportunity for us to get a hold of some great talent. And to Angela's point, just because you went to an Ivy League school or a top tier school, you know, there's a danger of a kind of a uniformity of thinking and diversity means diversity of thought. It's not the usual suspects. It's race, it's gender, but it's also perspective and economic background. And that makes us much richer. And so we decided to approach this apprenticeship and we looked at all of our entry level jobs and really examined which ones actually required four years of college and where had we just defaulted? And we found a whole range that did not really require four year degree. And so then we looked at what the attrition was and some of these jobs had really high attrition. And so we went to the manager and said, what if you had the opportunity to get someone who was maybe a little younger, a little less experienced, but you were probably gonna hang on to them a lot longer because that has been our experience outside of the US that the engagement and retention for apprentices is much higher and much longer. So we made this business case because this is not a social program and it's not something that people are gonna do because they feel good about it. It's absolutely meeting a business need. And so we're very bullish on the future and we launched in January and we plan to continue to launch a cohort. We have 26 apprentices of which 20 are African-American or Latino. And that is not a typical entry level class for us or for many large financial services companies in Chicago. So we think that this can both give us access to great talent. It can reduce the barriers to a young person who just doesn't have the financial wherewithal to go to university at this stage, but it also creates an opportunity to address some of the barriers that Angela mentioned. Thanks. So Edison, along similar lines in the non-traditional industry, so you founded the Urban Technology Project in Philadelphia. So you've already been working to promote access to apprenticeship among underrepresented groups. Not only that, you're doing it in the tech sector, which particularly with the larger tech firms in the country have almost become notorious for their lack of diversity. So this morning in our breakouts we talked about expanding into new industries. Can you talk about how to do that while ensuring equitable access? Good afternoon. Thank you. You know, as we look at that question, I think we need to approach it at two levels. From the business perspective, you need to think about that diversity is good for business. But people in those decision-making positions really have to become engaged in ensuring that that becomes a reality. So part of it is proof-and-the-putting. So there is research that shows that companies that are strong with inherent and acquired diversity, as Bridget said mentioned, out-innovate and outperform other companies. So there's your business case, right? And then you turn that around and say at the second sort of place where we need to work is that the talent that you're gonna find is not just near, it has to be wider and deeper. So the work needs to be done on early awareness and approaching populations that you wouldn't think are ready for the IT sector. And then when you talk about the IT sector, it's not specifically just the IT sector. IT, as other folks have said, cuts across different industries. So that affords multiple opportunities for entry-level positions, multiple opportunities of a pipeline that has different paths of entry and different paths of exit and opening lots of doors in terms of scaffolding and developing career pathways. So from the perspective of a business, if you are consistent about your mission and you're really bought into this notion that diversity breeds innovation, then you have to do something about addressing the need to be introspective, to consider what are the inherent biases that impact your sort of talk and not ability to walk it? And that might involve looking at your HR department. Is that the gatekeeper? Looking at your onboarding, what is it about your onboarding that might impact the success of retainment? The inclusivity of the workforce, the work environment, and also your credential barriers, as Brigid mentioned. I listened to Jennifer earlier in the IT discussion and she was dead on. IT sector is so addicted to four-year degrees. So we need to help them get the medicine, if you will, and think about what can they do to think about what are the entry points? And as Brigid mentioned, we did an analysis of the IT sector. You look at that perhaps 40%, as Jennifer has pointed out, require an advanced degree and then 60% of those jobs can be something else. So I think of the apprenticeship system as an opportunity, as a gateway, if you will, to different populations. And again, now we look at companies saying, well, I need the talent now. Well, we can do that. And Apprentice seems to be a very promising model. And there are other companies, excuse me, entities doing that kind of work, which is what can we do now to meet your needs for upskilling, and possibly the backfill. And then there's the long, so that's sort of that now. But if we look at the tech sector, it has such growth potential, we need to think about the long haul. And in thinking about the long haul, that affords the opportunity to engage, what Mary noted, the opportunity youth, the 5.5 million young people who are not engaged in work or in schooling, who, I believe, and I think are experimented in Philadelphia, show there's deep talent and it's unrealized. So that's a longer haul and a longer sort of game plan. And when you look at that sort of model, you really are looking at sort of what are the systems we need to put in place to ensure that they're successful in an apprenticeship system. So the urban technology was sort of developed from an organic process, what did the employer need, but also listening to what the young people needed. So it's a very holistic approach, which is it's not just about a widget that can do a job, but about realizing the full potential of the person. And in doing that, I have to say, it's about rolling up your sleeves and it's hard work. And you just have to acknowledge that, okay? And in that process, it's sort of also an idea of discovering what the needs are because it's not the same, it evolves. And in that process of discovery is understanding some fundamental principles. And what I've learned from the youth is that they are indeed interested in tech careers, especially the disconnected youth, but they just don't know how to access it. And if they do have access to that, often it's through sort of programs that don't represent themselves and at a gut sort of response, it doesn't resonate. So being politically incorrect right now, it's like the gates of the world, the sucker birds of the world, don't necessarily reflect and make those dreams realizable for a lot of people that look like me or others. And so this comes to what companies need to do. They need to invest in diversity and they need to understand that it's important to begin to develop talent that's diverse from the get-go. The other thing about young people that teach you is that they want to serve their communities. And they truly just want a good career that affords them dignity. But then they also love their families. And often there's a dissonance between what the families want and what the young people seek. So you also have to engage the families and think about how do they sort of help transform and because it's about a transformation, sort of that dream of where they want their children to go and respecting where young people sort of want to do and how they're going to get there. So we developed a pre-apprenticeship program model using the AmeriCorps model. So part of it is being strategic. Pre-apprenticeship programs are really difficult to sort of invest in and they're not really formalized. So the AmeriCorps program, it's a federal subsidized program that allows any young person, any person to give service for a year to our country. So we took that and said, well, isn't that a great opportunity to build case management, to ensure there's an stipend, to be the first job before the apprenticeship program and also to look at it as the opportunity to dabble in different areas of technology. And then last but not least is the opportunity, especially for this population, to address the insecurities that impact the success in an apprenticeship. I'm talking about transportation insecurity, childcare insecurity, housing insecurity, food insecurity, because you need to understand that those things get in the way of success in an apprenticeship. So that's important in terms of the holistic approach is addressing those issues. And also knowing that it takes different times, to that length for young people to achieve a position where they can take advantage of an apprenticeship program. And what we did to with our model is that then we built the entry-level position, computer support specialists, as the entry point for our graduates of our pre-apprenticeship program. Knowing with our employer, which was the school district, that that was the short-term goal, but thinking about the long-term investment and saying this is the entry pathway, but we're going to paint this picture for these young people about the different doors that they can scaffold and move on in the organization. So the register apprenticeship program, being the first job, is also the opportunity for young people from this background to really excel because they bring a lot of skills to the table. The skills are resiliency, persistence, having to deal with failure, and it all sounds, and I was looking at checking off those sort of characteristics, I realized that in the tech sector, that's what we want. We want people who are adaptable, we want people who are trainable, and we want people who are committed to lifelong learning. So I want to go to Ariane next. So Mary Alice highlighted this in her opening remarks that women are severely underrepresented in apprenticeship programs at large, they only make up 7% of apprentices. If you dig down deeper to construction apprentices, it's just 2%. So not only are they underrepresented overall, they're most underrepresented in the highest wage jobs. So can you talk a little bit about what participation in apprenticeship means for women's economic security, and how do we know if we're achieving that, how do we measure it? Thank you, you're absolutely right. Basically what we have at the moment, I think are a lot of apprenticeship programs for men and a few lower paid ones for women. So even the 7% kind of overstates the integration that there is, although I want to say at the outset, specifically on construction, there are more women who work in construction trades than there are dental hygienists, right? And I think that's really important because nobody thinks that dental hygienist is kind of strange for women, but everybody thinks that construction work is. So what do apprenticeships mean for women? I think it's pretty much the same as they mean for men. It means a clear and affordable pathway to a good job with a certification that is recognized hopefully nationally, or at least that's what it should mean. And I'm German, so that's apprenticeship is like what I grew up with. And this matters in a way, it matters even though it matters more for women than for men because we probably all know and we get this told to us. We know women are more likely young women at school and afterwards to be good at school, to get educational attainment, to go to college, to end up with college debt, to end up with larger college debt and to end up in jobs that pay less, so make it even harder to pay off the college debt. I just visited the iron workers, the union and the contractor together, are the only union at the moment who run their own pre-apprenticeship program for women. And they do this because they realize that they need to attract a more diverse workforce, they get more women to come into it. And iron work is like, it was under 2%. And at that program, it's the third cohort in just 18 months and they're always well kind of filled. Out of 24, there were four women there who had college debt, around $80,000, right? So you just, ouch, exactly. But there were also two young women there which was really encouraging, who had been sent, learned, had taken welding credit at high school. And they came in through lots of different avenues and they came because, A, they liked the physical work, B, because they knew it was going to put them into a good job. And if you look at the kind of middle-skill jobs that we are looking at, high level of skill shortages, future job opportunities, partly because the economy is growing again, partly because of demographic change. They typically don't need a four-year college degree. They are incredibly gender-segregated. You know, if you think about it, airline mechanics, 2% women. I mean, you don't even have to live that much, you don't have to travel around that much, you don't have to work outside all the time. All construction, 3% women, it's kind of mind-boggling, but I think we all have gotten used to it in some way. So we kind of feel that at this point in time, given the demographic change, given the interest in apprenticeship and given the support from the Department of Labor to kind of re-kick gender, that we may have an opportunity to move the kind of post towards higher levels. And the programs that we work with as part of the consortium, like that the ironwork is very quickly, they went up from, okay, it's not very high yet, but from about 2% apprenticeship in California to 7% women apprentices in California. In Boston, a program we work with, they have more than tripled the number of apprenticeships and it's now 500 in the building trades. You know, it's still not masses, but it's really great success, so. Thanks, so I think we have time for one, maybe two questions if we're quick. So make it a really good one. Oh, oh, okay. Oh, 10 more minutes, oh. Oh no, no, no, let's go for it. Just kidding, we're gonna talk a little bit more. So I might take your question. So Bridget, one thing that we talked about when we did the prep call is women and people of color face myriad barriers to the labor market, whether it's employment discrimination from the start or challenges advancing once you get into employment. So how is Ann working to address that through its apprenticeship program and what do you think other companies should be doing to diversify their workplaces? So I think to some degree it's two questions because when you look at diversity over the span of a company, there's entry level and then there's mid-career and then there's senior executive. So at entry level, women actually come in at even ranks to men. People of color are different African-Americans and Latinos, less so Asians and Indians, pretty equal proportion. But then what you see is you see a lack of advancing. You see an advancing for the first couple of years and then there's this drop off. Whether it correlates to childbearing or it's people look around and they think, well, I'm not gonna really make it up so I'm gonna move out from there. So as I mentioned, the apprentice program, it's split between men and women. It's intentionally and very, we went out of our way to ensure that we're getting a diverse class because part of the ability to retain people over the course of time is to create a cohort and a network and this idea that you're not so isolated and only and so you kind of create some critical mass. So that's our goal in that regard. When it comes to that, one of our goals is to increase and I see that Al Crook is here from Zurich and Zurich also has an apprenticeship in the insurance industry and our goals jointly are to bring a whole range of other companies involved. So we've 50 apprentices between the two of us a year, we wanna make that be 500 in Chicago and so there are several large banks and other insurance companies and others who are on the cusp, I believe, of making the decision and so the thing that I would say is that our view is we were willing, we wanna be the proof of concept. It works, you've seen some apprentices, this is, you can talk to the managers, we've been really bullish about kind of lobbying our colleagues in the industry to adopt more because it's when you get to critical mass that you actually start to see some success. As a firm, we went to address diversity over the mid-career and senior, we're, you know, it's kind of the typical way, you have to create goals, so our goals are diversity in 30% for women and people of color throughout the ranks, we have different levels of how people are ranked and then it's set the goal, it's make the goal a part of people's evaluation because if you don't make it a part of the manager's evaluation then obviously it becomes more of a talking point and less of a reality and then it's to how do we measure ourselves year after year and what are we doing and we have a lot of explicit conversations, how do you ensure that a woman goes off on a maternity leave, she knows that there's a long-term plan, how do you increase flexibility, there's a myriad of options but none of it happens without being highly intentional. So there's a strategy at the entry level, there's a strategy at the mid-career and then there's a strategy at the senior executive and it has to be intentional and diversity has to be something that people stop seeing as like something I should do because it's the right thing, which it is but you should also look at it as embedded in the future success of your business because now when we, and I'm sure a lot of other companies respond to an RFP, go in to see a client, they wanna see a diverse group of people there because especially that's who their buyers are, that's who their own executives are and to think that that's not relevant to your business is really to put your head in the sand. Thank you. So in the interest of time, I would like to move on to the policy. So we've talked a lot about kind of like what you can do from a programmatic perspective but ultimately the way you get systems changes through policy change. So I'll go to Ari on first and then I'll pose the same question to Edison and Bridget but what are the policies they're missing and what do you think is encouraging? So we've got a new regulation from DOL and Equal Opportunity Employment, there's been a lot of work to put out these contracts for equity intermediaries but so where have we come and where do you think we need to be headed if we're really thinking about making these programs inclusive for women, for people of color, for people with disabilities, for individuals with criminal records, people who really face challenges and might go overlook by employers who really do need skilled workers. So to my mind a lot of the elements are there but probably need more funding and need to be lifted up. In the field that I mainly work on non-traditional, occupations where women are underrepresented in construction, transportation, manufacturing, pre-apprenticeship programs are very important and particularly they're important for women because women often haven't had the same chance at home to learn about trades, tools, build up the confidence and they also face an enormous amount of skepticism when they step into the workplace. So pre-apprenticeship programs kind of have a dual function, they help the apprentice or the pre-apprentices feel confident but they also are like a stamp of approval to say this person is good, she can do it. So I think and then what you need, the second issue and the Institute for Women's Policy Research just completed a big study on support service and job training programs in career and technical education which included some apprenticeship programs and really lifted up the issues of transportation, case management and childcare and for women particularly childcare unfortunately is, you know it's a big barrier, it's a big issue and even more at almost the programs that are community college or technical colleges because not everybody has 10 of money and sometimes the programs are short and you go beyond it and when you look at this, you know, you talk to programs that manage to get through a lot of women or help a lot of women get through and you can see that one year they have childcare then the other year they don't and then one year it covers this population and maybe that could, you know childcare is expensive. We work with one wonderful program, Moore House in Mississippi and Biloxi who have a construction training program for women, place a lot of them into chip building. They now through the Department of Labor have a case worker who works specifically on helping people find childcare and that childcare follows them until the end of the year, the financial year, it's not very logical but that's funding but it really has increased and varied the number, the type of people that they get through the program. So pre-apprenticeship program and more secure funding streams for support services. Okay. And do you have anything to add in the next one or two minutes or should we go to questions? Yeah, so I affirm that and the thing about, it's not just about pre-apprenticeship programs is really making the systems work better. So, you know, in this arena you're looking at, you know, frankly, the ability to build public-private partnerships because you need to break funding, you need to break services and supports and they have to be holistic and they have to move from one phase to another. So you can see that it's not just a matter of, you know, the policy informing but the policy informing collaboration and the other piece about this is that, you know, when you look at all this investment it needs to be sustainable and when you talk about sustainability you're really talking about ecosystems infrastructure being developed and that has to involve conversations at a local level that brings in sort of the policies that municipalities or counties can address through the use, well, the good investment of the workforce systems, the policies of themselves as a municipal employee and then also impacting or enforcing sort of some of the, you know, using the regulations as a means to start these conversations and these conversations also with, you know, that extend to anchor institutions that may have a civic engagement with their communities and then we have to help them think about that civic engagement become a reality in terms of investments in enhancing underrepresented communities finding jobs through apprenticeships. I'll just make one comment. So I know that we were talking earlier about Senators Booker and Scott as well as Representatives Lepinsky and Roddy Davis both of whom are from Illinois. They are introducing an apprenticeship tax credit and so part of this is awareness, you know, just getting it out to the larger economic system around, hey, this is something to think about. You might not have thought about it before and so they're gonna have this incentive program. It's going through and I just think, you know, for all the downsides of the volatile moment that we're in right now politically, there's also taxes around the table, infrastructures on the table, so is financial services reform and opening those three areas up seems to me ripe for opportunities to start to insert really, as I said before, intentional changes and incentives around apprentices because, you know, the pendulum as I said before, it swings over one way. It's probably gonna come back to the center where training and education are more closely linked. So I would keep my eye on that bill that's going gonna go through Congress, but as we debate infrastructure taxes and financial services reform, let's not lose sight of the opportunities to integrate apprentices into those changes. Yes, that is a great place to start on questions, a good advocacy charge for everyone in the room. So let's go to questions, over here. Oh, we'll go here first. Hi, I'm Marie Croce from Seattle. We've seen great progress in kind of moving the needle on the construction site. So a lot of great programs on pre-apprenticeship, access, but, you know, if you think, in 1970, there were 10 black construction workers in Seattle, and it wasn't until court orders, the policies started taking place. Great programs, but we get, in 2017, there are huge disparities in completion rates and journeying out rates of people of color and women. So as we're moving forward in developing more programs about access, it's not always about getting that person in the door or fixing that person's skills, but it's how do you create an environment that is inclusive? And that is, you know, so people aren't being hazed on the job. So as the apprentice said, being thick-skinned, we've talked to joint apprenticeship coordinators that said folks of color have come with a chip on their shoulder. Because they don't accept racist remarks. And so I would just say the call-out is not just about access and opportunity, but really about how do we change practices so that we address those disparities and we create inclusive workplaces. Absolutely. I'll make one really quick comment on that. So when we set up the apprentice program, there's three parts of it. There's the employer, there's the school, which is Harold Washington is City College, but we put an organization called One Million Degrees, which is based in Chicago, and its whole focus is, you know, getting people from non-traditional backgrounds, race, gender, sexual identity, and background into career-track jobs. And they're that middle ground that can really act as an advisor, a advocate, a protector, any of one of these roles, because you have someone who's new to any kind of environment. You might be young, you might be, it might be the first time you're exposed to, whether it's corporate or construction trades or anything else. And building in that buffer between, you know, just not assuming that the person's gonna be able to negotiate all of the things they may be confronted with on the job site, and instead of creating an environment where they either have to suck it up or leave, that you've got to build in this middle piece that says we know that someone's gonna confront obstacles of any sorts, we're gonna make sure that there's someone in the middle who can kind of help negotiate some of that stuff and mean that their likelihood of success is much greater. And I think if you don't do that, it's both naive, but it undermines the people who are kind of least likely to be successful to actually complete the program. All right, next question over here. Hi, I'm Deb Seymour from Entangled Solutions. My question is actually about boot camps. So in some of the trades, or I should say some of the industries that we've been talking about, boot camps have become very popular ways of training those who either already have a college degree or are not in a position to acquire a college degree or really don't want to acquire a college degree. So I'm just wondering what your perspectives are on how boot camp training fits in with pre-apprenticeship and apprenticeship training, and what are the advantages and disadvantages to somebody who comes to you from already been trained in a boot camp. Thank you. Boot camps is one part of the solution, but it also, as you said, is fraught with some challenges. It's a way to fast track the opportunity into the tech sector. But you also have to be conscious that might there be inherent biases there that leave other underrepresented populations to engage with that. So it's about looking at how does it fit appropriately, meeting the needs of that sector, and is the employer, as Bridget had put, ready to address those needs. So intermediaries play a key role in ensuring that it's successful at transition. And so when we look at boot camps, we also have to think about what work, and my colleague here alluded to this, what work needs to be done, and pre-apprenticeship has become very critical for that. Sort of creating early awareness, early exposure, and the resiliency to succeed in a boot camp, and then how does the boot camp itself become in mesh or included in a apprenticeship system that becomes holistic in its approach of support for the person, but also for the employer's ROI. All right, we've got time for one or two more. Oh, yes, one in the back over here. Good afternoon. I'm Lauren Sugarman from Chicago Women in Trades, and I started my career in the trades as a direct result of affirmative action. And I think that's exactly what you're talking about, Bridget, when you say intentionality, but it was intentionality with measurement and with pressure and some incentives to continue to get federal contracts. We've moved away from that, and I'm wondering if you all have recommendations about how we can link intentionality to more concrete measurement and performance and link it to economic development so that we can get back to real paths being created like I had. I think it's a great question, and what you're seeing now and what you're responding to is the government is kind of backed away from the requirements, and so this is our attempt to fill in some of that gap. It's not gonna fill the whole gap, and this gets back to the advocacy question that Angela brought up before. What needs to change on policy? It isn't just to incentivize people around apprenticeships. It's also to incentivize the behavior we'd like to see on our own, but don't always. And so how do you codify that and make sure that it's not a, whether or not you have somebody at a company who feels strongly about it and wants to do the right thing or wants to make it happen, but everybody has to step up to the plate? And how do you do that in a way that, it aligns itself with what the business needs, and part of that is strengthening things like city colleges in Chicago and other places because you have to have that training pipeline to feed in, and I know that the trades have done a lot on apprentice programs, pre-apprentice, but we're still at least us locally. I don't think we've totally cracked that nut about how to keep that pipeline wide and open, but your question is a good one, and I think it's, we're in Washington and this is kind of where people think about those broader issues. So I don't know if someone else has a policy answer. Actually, I had written down to button at the end, accountability as the issue that I'd forgotten on policy. And if we look at the areas where real progress has been made with shifting these really old patterns of girls aren't wanted here. If we take Boston, in Boston you have a conference of a city commitment to employ local residents, you have the unions who pick up on this, you have the policy group for trades women's initiative, a group from union and it's luck in a way. You have women who are committed in unions in the universities together with people from business contractors coming together saying we need to do something and having the time to analyze thousands of contractor hours on looking at do they actually employ as many women? Do they employ any women? What is the, you know, to say what's women, people of color, we want women who are people of color, you know, and the Boston pathway program we heard from Sylvia actually is the only pre-apprenticeship program I know of that gets to 50% female participation and then 90% people of color. And that comes from accountability in the rules but also having the resources to help people accountable and then provide technical assistance to turn things around. So, you know, accountability and intentionality but it comes down to the bottom dollar. So at the local level it's about your procurement processes, you know, what makes you competitive and, you know, aspirational needs to turn into concrete results and as you said, you know, it's about bringing these sort of things together and what, you know, in Philadelphia what we're trying to do is get the city which they've done terrifically, put together a strategic plan that informs the work that the workforce system does, the community colleges as well as the CVOs that do a lot of the work around workforce investments. But most importantly, it's making a case that diversity is good for business and it's quantifiable. So at the end, that's what's going to drive, you know, the self-interest and it's important to not forget that. Okay, last question. Seeing no others, I will wrap this up. Thank you so much panelists for a great discussion. I really appreciate your expertise on these issues. Great, thank you so much and that was an absolutely great discussion.