 So we have now come to the point where we have our wonderful keynote speaker. Our keynote speaker is Dr. Michelle Wilson. She's director of, she's going to get very right. She's director of evaluation and learning at the National Fund for Workforce Solution. She's a trusted social scientist and nonprofit executive and she has demonstrated a commitment to community level research, identifying the key drivers of inequity and prioritizing actionable strategies to advance equity through policy efforts, programs and investments in health and educational settings. Since Jerry 2019, Michelle has served as director of evaluation and learning at the National Fund for Workforce Solutions and she leads and directs the National Fund's partnership with PolicyLink, which is the National Research and Action Institute Advancing Racial and Economic Equity and the Advancing Workforce Equity Project, which is a multi-year collaboration between the National Fund, the National Equity Atlas and Burning Glass Technologies with the support of JP Morgan Chase. Under Michelle's guidance and expertise, a theoretical and practical framework for data-driven equitable workforce strategies has been developed and implemented for targeted populations in Boston, Chicago, Dallas, San Francisco and Seattle. With over 18 years of experience, Michelle has sought after workforce equity subject matter expert and a regular speaker at industry conferences, workshops and podcasts. She's an active member of the American Evaluation Association, the National Association for Practicing Anthropologists, Society for Applied Anthropology and the Council for the Study of Community Colleges. Michelle earned a doctorate in adult and community college education from North Carolina State University, a master's degree in applied anthropology from the University of Maryland and a bachelor's degree in sociology and anthropology from North Carolina University. Please all welcome Dr. Michelle Wilson. Hello, everyone. So I wanna say thank you to the panelists. That was a great discussion and it's a pleasure to be here with you today. I wanna start by also thanking the ex-prides folks for the honor of speaking with you all today. And just I wanna say what a fantastic time it is to come together as workforce practitioners where we have the opportunity to reshape the future of work in ways that make it accessible for all who seek it. I think we can agree that we're living through a time that in many ways has facilitated a hard stop on a multitude of practices that have forced us to rethink and innovate our ways of doing in every facet of our lives. But what's also true and not lost on anyone here, I'm sure is that we're also living through a time that has exacerbated inequities that contribute to the ills of an unjust society. It's why being here, speaking with you all today is so exciting, mainly because your work is part of the resistance. And now more than ever, we have to resist the old norms and use the opportunities before us to create equitable norms because we understand what's at stake. As an applied anthropologist, I like to drone stories from the field to make real the work that can often get lost in the politics and policies and the minutia and everything in between that we all get pulled into no matter how hard we try not to. So to that end, I'd like to share with you Esther's story. It's a compilation of true stories of young women that represent a life course for so many across the globe. I met Esther when she was 12. She was spiky, quick with it and full of life. I was her case manager at a mental health treatment facility for girls removed from their homes for many reasons related to child welfare issues. As part of the intake process, we asked everyone to tell us about their family. When I asked Esther, she replied, my mom was a jailbird and my daddy's a bum. I wanna note that Esther was admitted into a good program but it was not a good fit for Esther. It wasn't a good fit because when placing Esther, the interest was in finding a place to put her and a reasonable fit was a matter of how long she could remain in the program before finding a new placement. The reality is that her lived experience were not a primary consideration. Esther didn't last long with the program and her subsequent placement was in jail. Esther's ecosystem failed her. The lesson in Esther's experience highlights the importance of understanding your who. And although this story starts years before Esther is a candidate for the workforce, I share it because her experience will shape the challenges we face in the workforce today. I met Esther again some years later. This time she was interviewing for a spot and a research study on low income women with postpartum depression. Esther is now a 24 year old mom of two babies under two. During the interview, Esther talked about suicidal thoughts and visions of tossing her baby out of a window. Unfortunately, she didn't make the research study. It was determined that she was not a fit as her symptoms were beyond the scope of treatment for the proposed study. She was given a folder, finding, with resources and was encouraged to seek help from the sources provided. I saw her months later at the same clinic while I was still recruiting. I asked her if she had followed through on getting help. She said no. She was still grappling with her depression, but now she saw the assistance in getting her kids out of foster care. Esther's ecosystem failed her yet again. This time, appropriateness for the program was considered, but less consideration was given to help those who didn't make the cut. The third time I met Esther, she was a 35 year old mom of three and she had just completed the accelerating opportunity program at the community college. This is a program that combines GED prep exam with a technical certificate of credit. Her certificate was in healthcare. Esther was excited to be back in school. She was eager to learn and was clear on what she wanted to do. She was pursuing a two year nursing degree program and she received a full two year academic scholarship. She started strong, but began to fade during her second semester. Transportation and childcare became barriers to her attending class regularly as her main support person re-entered the workforce. Esther had options for completing some of her course requirements online, but she struggled with the technology and she struggled with finding time to commit to her studies while tending to her family. Unfortunately, Esther didn't return for the summer session and subsequently stopped out. Once again, her ecosystem failed her. These days, I see and talk to Esther's all the time and my role was a workforce development practitioner. It's clear they wanna work and earn a living wage. And even though she may have the ability to do the job, she lacks the experience that is often required. So I think about what I can say to Esther to let her know whether she trusted or not, that there are people, teams, organizations, foundations, employers that are trying to get it right. I want her to know that we see her and the myriad of structural barriers that stand between her and the living wage and ways that we never did before. We see it because we've done the work to understand. I want her to know that equitable solutions start in job design and that job quality is just as important as a living wage. I want her to know that we learned a lesson on the inherent challenges of trying to fit a square peg into a round hole. I want her to know that we've learned that it takes more than a folder with referrals to support individuals struggling with mental health. I want her to know that we know that oftentimes it takes more than having your tuition covered to help a struggling student through school. We understand the importance of wraparound supports. We know and acknowledge that we must go beyond that myopic view of workforce development as a job and focus on the social determinants of work like childcare, like healthcare, like transportation, commute times and the like if we are to truly make a difference. And the reason I know we've learned that lesson is because we all showed up here today to root on eight teams understand the assignment and what it means to improve a piece of the system. We have the honor of watching eight teams step up to the challenge, daring and to be and do differently than before. We understand the challenge and the urgency behind rapidly scaling, we do. And we all know it's at stake, but we also know that rapid rescaling is but one part of it. We understand and accept that we must also have that same energy for designing and implementing programs that focus on building worker support and engagement to truly equipped workers for success. Because we know it's not just a matter of rescaling but designing jobs that invite people to belong. But just in case we aren't all there, I wanna share what I believe to be critical elements that can put you on your path to getting there. And it's the why, the who, the how, the you and what difference will it make? Starting with the why, I think we can all agree that we do what we do because we know that to reach our fullest potential as a just and fair society, we must ensure that everyone has access to opportunities that help us build toward that reality. What are the conditions we seek to change? I can tell you without hesitation that the esters of the world are but one of my why's. So who do you bring into the room with you? I can tell you that as a black woman born and raised in the Southern US, I must bring the esters of the world into the room with me. It's important because, but for grace, go I. And I seek to change the conditions in which women who look like me are told to conform to standards that are not inherently part of their cultural norms. One in which access to possible solutions to the challenges we face are conveniently outside the realm of white centeredness and placed in a space that renders us as an ill that needs to be fixed or silenced rather than an asset that has been and is capable of contributing to the wellbeing of society. And I can go on, but I'm gonna pose that question back to you all. What is your why? What are their story informs the decisions you make? And why does it matter? Are you clear on the conditions you seek to change through your work? Let's talk about the who. Who's your who? Understanding who means going beyond surface level data and getting specific with deeply disaggregated data that will allow you to understand the full scale of the challenge and who's most impacted by the barriers to accessing good jobs. For example, developing access opportunities for women who wish to work in areas that suffer from occupational segregation is one thing. But do we know why? Do we understand the inequities at play that allow such a system to thrive and exist? And it's essential that we do, as that as we do our sleuthing to understand the who, we don't move into this one size fits all model. Occupational segregation is going to look much different in Dublin than it will in Sydney. It just will. And allow me, again, to just take a few seconds longer to underscore the importance of intelligent data like disaggregated data. Disaggregated data is a beautiful thing. It really is, I love it, but it's not the whole thing. This work requires that we understand the lived experience of the folks that we serve. My friends, stories matter. And unfortunately, we don't all think about stories as data and the ways that we should. There are ways to gather stories, data, and a way that fully illuminates our understanding of how to move forward to craft solutions that work, like for real, for real work. Numbers matter, but numbers can't speak to the human condition. And when we discount or underestimate the impact of an inequitable system by overestimating our solutions and not checking our assumptions, we miss out on understanding the real who, much like we did with Esther at 12. Simply identifying your target as people without a college degree will not cut it. Because we know that white workers with a high school diploma earn on average a dollar more than black workers with an associate's degree. Why is that? Simply seeking fundraising to complete a prototype will not cut it. You have to go deep and wide into the structural barriers that exists and unearth the drivers of inequities to guide you to your how if your aim is truly seeking to change the system. Let's talk about the how. AI is a great tool to bridge the gap. I love looking at the overviews of all of the contestants. But how might we, how might you identify the drivers of inequity that provide a fuller picture of the challenge? How does your work, how does your work design to reach those who dropped out of the pipeline and into an abyss of a system that keeps people straddled to the bottom because our solutions are not within their reach like Esther when she sought help for postpartum depression. Rabbit reskilling is a necessary part of the overall equity agenda. And here's what I want to say about that. Equity work is messy work. Equity work is messy. Think about it. You're creating a solution to combat. You're creating solutions to combat the structural design of inequity. It's not polite work. It just isn't. We have to go through it to get to it. And so to that end, how might you make racial equity a priority? How might you ensure people who dropped out of the pipeline are brought back in? And once they are, once they are in, how do you prepare them to succeed in the labor market? How might you dismantle barriers in your work and respective positions and develop targeted strategies to connect people to the fantastic work you're doing on their behalf? In other words, how might you fund programs and partnerships that address the inherent inequities in the social determinants of work? How might we engage employers to commit to true systems change and employment practices and culture? How might it ensure high standards of job quality for all? How might funding resources be reallocated to strategically invest in programs that offer direct links to high wage jobs? How might we engage employers that demonstrate a shared commitment to job quality, safety, equity, and career advancement and lift them up as models to emulate? These are all things worth considering if you were to maximize the work that you're doing, if you were to fully maximize the work that you're doing. I wanna talk now about the you of it all, right? It's critical that we accept, know, and believe that we all have something to contribute. At this moment, you have the power to make a difference in your role as philanthropists, job designers, educators, workforce intermediaries, and the like. You understand the importance of leveraging your considerable and collective resources to create space for equitable solutions that make thriving individuals, communities, and employers possible. You understand that you have the capacity to not only disrupt, but reconstruct a racist system that, by design, is not for all of us. You can do that, and we can do that. There's no choice. The alternative is too scary to consider. As the story is not the beginning, remember how she described her parents, a jailbird, and a bone. Equal systems have been failing our brothers and sisters across the globe for far too long. And what an incredible privilege and opportunity it is for us to serve in a manner that can have a lasting impact beyond our lifetime and that of our children's lifetime. And lastly, after you've considered all of the above, ask yourselves, what difference will it make in the lives of others? And how will you know? How will this qualitatively make a difference in the conditions you seek to change? And along with that, how will you develop systems to track and measure your progress? What will success look like? These are questions we must continuously and iteratively ask ourselves along the way. And I'll say it again, workforce development is incredibly complex, and there are levels and layers that we must actively engage in reaching our maximum, if we were to reach our maximal potential. So the challenge goes beyond the X Prize. The work that you all have started is so important and your work must continue ever you land in this contest. The prize is but one piece of the journey. And for those of us cheerleading you on from the sidelines, there's a role for us to play in supporting these teams beyond the finish line of the prize. And so as I wrap up, I'll ask you again, what's your why? Who's your who? What's your how? And what difference will it make in the lives of others? Congratulations to my finalists. I am rooting for you all. Thank you so much, Dr. Wilson, for those wonderful, inspiring words. Thank you so much, Crayonka, the virtual hand clap, wherever you are, and thank you so much for bringing that knowledge, that passion and that story. We also talk about qualitative and quantitative, but sometimes that story is so important. I see some amazing clauses. I see some hand emojis, someone saying spot on in the comments. So thank you so much for being here and gracing us with your presence. And if you wanna get in touch with Dr. Wilson, is there a way that they can find you? Is there a website, LinkedIn, or anything like that? Yes, I will post in the chat the National Fund for Workforce Solutions, and I will post my contact information in the chat. Thank you, thank you. So be on the lookout for that. And we'd love to thank every one of you for attending, for coming today, for getting your time to learn, to connect, and to be.