 Good afternoon, everyone. My name is Kathleen Mathers. I'm a principal at Education Strategy Group, or ESG, and I lead the Career Readiness portfolio. It's my pleasure to welcome you this afternoon to this session on youth apprenticeship intermediaries. And those of you who are new to the idea of intermediaries at its core, we're talking about organizations that bring sort of traditionally disconnected stakeholders together in a way that makes youth apprenticeship happen in a high quality way. So they connect employers, they connect education institutions, and they connect students. At ESG, we've had the pleasure of doing some research through PIA and our partnership with the various organizations over the last year on what makes for high quality intermediary organizations. And we find that they fall into a lot of different camps. They take a lot of different forms in terms of their model. They offer a range of services depending upon what best serves the needs of their communities. And those services generally fall across sort of three lines. They serve employers in a wide variety of ways, everything from helping them to develop a recruiting pipeline to connecting those employers to students for youth apprenticeship opportunities, walking through an application and selection process. There's a range of services that they can provide to employers. They also provide services to education institutions. So oftentimes, whether we're talking about schools or we're talking about higher education institutions, there are a lot of different people who have to be a part of that work in order for it to be effective. And an intermediary can kind of streamline that effort and really consolidate and organize what it takes to identify students who might be strong candidates for youth apprenticeship to help organize them within an application process and a preparation process, and connect them to those actual opportunities. And similarly, they provide services to students directly. So how can they support students in an interview process, for example, how can they support them throughout the youth apprenticeship work that happens to make sure that those experiences are high quality for all students who are involved. So while they can take a lot of different forms and offer a range of services, it's all dependent upon what works best for their communities. And today we're joined by folks who are deep in the work themselves. We have four experts, I think I can call you all experts from all different parts of the country representing intermediaries that have different forms. We have those that are focused on state level work, those focused on local work, even those that are focused on sector based work. I'll give each of them a chance to introduce themselves in just a moment, but quickly just want to preview the session agenda today and what we hope to accomplish together in the next hour. First of all, we're going to learn from our experts. Many of you who are joining us today by video are interested yourself in designing, building, launching and supporting a youth apprenticeship intermediary. And so we have an opportunity to learn from folks who have already gone deep in that work. How did they select the service lines that they are offering to their constituents? What's worked really well? What were their pain points along the way? What advice perhaps can they offer to you all? So we'll spend the first part of our conversation today in sort of a moderated Q&A where I'll ask them some questions and they'll give some answers. And we'd like to reserve a bit of time towards the end of the session for you all to be able to weigh in. So give a little bit of thought right now to those questions that are top of mind for you. What are the things that if you were face to face with an expert and you were thinking about your own design challenges or implementation challenges, what are the things that you would like to ask? When we get to that audience Q&A portion, you'll have a couple of different ways that you can respond. I'm sure all of you have done Zoom many, many times now over the last several months. But if you happen to be new to it, you can use your cursor towards the bottom of your screen and you'll see a navigation bar appear. And there is a button called Q&A. That's a great label, right? If you click on that, you'll be able to enter your own questions. If you're more comfortable using the chat bar because that's what you often do, that's fine too. We're going to try to moderate both of those opportunities there for the questions that come in so that we can pose those to our experts and get you all answers to some of those things that are top of mind for you. We've got a little bit of time to think about those questions, but please feel free to begin inserting questions at any point along the way in the conversation. So, let me pause. I'm simply a moderator here. I'm pleased to be joined by experts here. And depending upon where you all are in your Brady Bunch screen at home, they may appear in different orders. I think we've got everyone's names up here so you can see them. We have Kelly Cresswell who comes from Montana and represents an intermediary that's both statewide and locally focused. We have Rachel Harmon who comes from Birmingham, Alabama, focused on local work within the Birmingham community. We have Maude Dodden from Washington Career Connect, another statewide organization, and Randy Wolfe from California who represents a sector-based intermediary. So we'll dig into each of those a little bit, but welcome to each of you and thank you for joining us today. I would just remind everyone, I think we've got everyone muted, so as it's your turn to talk, just remember to take yourself off the mute button. And then we'll mute ourselves back so that we can eliminate any background noise that we have in our wonderful home offices these days. But just to kick things off here, I wonder if each of you could take just two minutes to tell us a bit about the organizations you represent. What role do you play within your youth apprenticeship organization, your community, and what services do you offer? And Kelly, I wonder if we might start with you. Sure, thanks Kathleen. So I am the Executive Director of Reach Higher Montana, which is best defined as a college access organization. That is the origins of our work at Reach Higher. We are partners with the Montana Youth Apprenticeship Partnership when it first formed. Over the course of time, there was some shifting of our partners, and we eventually became the grant lead for our PIA grant. Our organization provides backbone support for the Montana Youth Apprenticeship Partnership, and as our model developed over the course of the last 18 months or so, our partnership determined that our organization was also best suited to serve in the intermediary capacity. We are headquartered in Helena, which is where our main program staff are housed, but we have outreach staff throughout the state. So Montana as a very rural state is best defined as a small town with really long streets, and we like to think that we have neighbors all along that street that we work with all the time. So that that's why I think that we are well suited to be the intermediary as well as the backbone support for my app. Great. Thank you very much. Rachel, can we go to you next? Tell us a little bit about Birmingham Promise. I think you still have one button muted. If you're like me, you have two audios and perhaps you have to unmute both of them. No. Okay. Why don't we pause on Rachel for just a moment and we'll see if our technical gurus can help us out there. And while we're doing that, Mod, perhaps we can move to you. Hello everybody. Nice to be here today and thank you so much. I lead an organization called Career Connect Washington. And actually I should say we're not even an organization where a collective action effort across the state of Washington. What we discovered a couple of years ago was that we had brilliant programs, but they were isolated from one another. And to scale to meet the needs of students and students are really eager to have these experiences of being in a live workplace but getting academic education alongside of it to become both a candidate for a real job and get paid but also get onto their college journey. So we had a demand for exceeded supply so we wanted to scale and connect and build a system out of these incredible programs already existing. So at the state level we created a framework for that system. It's a three step continuum of career connected learning. And we have funding to actually launch regional networks across the state who are aligning their region around certain goals and destinations. And we also fund intermediaries who actually build the programs that we need to connect and scale into building a system. It's a 10 year vision. Goal is that 60% of our students will participate in those kinds of experiences to get on to college and career in a decade. Great. And I know we have some of our audience members who really queued in on the state funding and the structure that's being built and are especially interested so we'll try to dig in a little bit more there as we move through the session. Randy, I wonder if you could tell us a bit about your organization, please. Sure. So good morning. I'm Randy Wolf on the executive director of the sex, which is early care and education pathways to success. We are a statewide sector intermediary. And I laughed when Kathleen called us experts only because I can't speak for the rest of the panelists but I know we never set out to become an expert, nor did we set out to become an intermediary. I think that's not unusual. And that part of what's happening is we're talk about being on an earn and learn pathway. We're all sort of earning and learning as we go and figuring out what this so we are becoming experts but we're doing from being in the trenches. Being a sector intermediary means we're all about mission. So in other words, everything that drives us, whether we're working with our youth apprenticeships or our adult apprenticeships, everything that drives us is about trying to think about the workforce for people who work with young children and families. And so whether that's in early care and education like Head Start and preschool programs, whether it's in family child care providers who are working from homes, whether it's home visitors or whether it's people working sort of at entry level social services positions, but the focus is on children and young families. And so when we think about employers when we think about institutions of higher education, it's all about how to drive this mission and we are completely supportive of the young people that are in the youth apprenticeship which will get into, but but it's not purely about getting them jobs it's getting them jobs in these sectors and strengthening these sectors and the potential of these workforces. The other thing I should just say is because we work in California and it's statewide, unlike Montana, it is not one road. However you put that we have 116 community colleges. So when we talk about statewide, you know, it's enormous. And so it changes everything because we're working in a big, in a big setting. So as we'll talk about in a minute we also focus on urban and low income areas which sort of impacts, which of those settings we focus on. Great. Thank you Randy and I agree I think no one feels experts in this space, but it's great to have this network to connect with and be able to share and learn from one another. I'm positive. That's the bottom line. Absolutely. Rachel, I'm going to see if we've had any luck with the audio. Can you hear me? Yes. Well, it would not be a zoom meeting if we didn't have one technical challenge at the front of the conversation. Please jump in. Tell us about your work. Thank you all for your patience. My name is Rachel. I serve as the executive director of the Birmingham promise, which is a newly formed nonprofit that serves as the intermediary for our local youth apprenticeship program. We started out initially. I think as Randy said, we, none of us intended to be in this role. We started out as a strategic initiative with local government here. So we're really a hyper local program. We work in one city with one school district and with local employers there. And so we have the ability, I think to go deep in our partnerships, both with employers, our local educational institutions. And with our broader sort of workforce development community because of the sort of specificity of our geographic focus. We do a lot in our intermediary role. And I think we've adjusted really within the last year and probably will continue to adjust over the next couple of years. In terms of the, the functions that we prioritize employer recruitment is a very important part of what we do. And perhaps one of the most important. Our school district has a infrastructure around work based learning and career development, but there was not very meaningful participation from our employer community, certainly in the industry that we saw growing and in the industries where we felt that young people had the opportunity to really develop sort of sustainable careers. And so that's one of the highest value ads that that we, we have as an intermediate or intermediate organization. But we also do partner very closely with the school district on studio recruitment. And we have partnered with with the school district and I think play a leading role in terms of determining what the line learning looks like. That is one of the areas of our partnership that I think we will change the most in the next couple of years, or we have not really fully utilize our community college system yet and that's an area where we're hoping to grow. But those are a couple of the major sort of functions that that we cover as an intermediary. Very excited to be here and excited for the conversation. Thanks Rachel appreciate that I think in each of your responses you highlighted that it's not just you doing this work it takes a lot of different partners, all working together in a coordinated way in order to get to those intended outcomes that you're working towards whether you're a statewide organization or a local organization or a sector based organization, lots of partners with their hands in the mess. So just a little bit about how you set the division for equity and collaboration across those partners so that everyone's operating with a shared understanding of the priorities and frankly sort of a shared accountability for results as well. Sure, I mean, the beauty of the framework that we set up in the state of Washington which was passed through legislation was that it enabled us to create a common language across the whole state and also to set some common goals and that equity is a centerpiece of this work. It is about making sure that we offer this experience consistently across the state so that every demographic of our state is participating equitably and that we make sure that those farthest from opportunity get an additional set of benefits and helping hand so that we actually can meet that goal. So the beauty of this was that that conversation happened largely in 2018 when we developed the strategy by going all over the state and talking to literally thousands of people. And when we actually passed the legislation we had no opposition to it. We had a person testified against it. We had business labor, you know, educators and students, the whole gamut nonprofit leaders, because they saw themselves in the work. It was their role at the grassroots level is to really take this framework, take the funding opportunities and make it happen. As far as accountability goes. There's a lot of accountability through our grant structure that we use so that each part each recipient of a grant has specific outcomes and metrics they're trying to achieve in terms of participation, but also in terms of equity who's participating. And we track that very closely. We have a great data scheme that I know is a subject of a different sessions. I won't dive into it. But that's essential because without accountability. You can't, you can't get there. So we've just finished our first year of implementation full scale and are really pleased to see that that people are stepping up and this work is getting done. According to the goals that we originally envisioned, which is exciting, not that we don't have work to do, we always do. I want to echo Randy's comment about expert kind of also cracked me up when I heard that I feel like we are constantly in a process of recreation and reinvention, but so far so good. We're getting huge enthusiasm, something that seems to be uniting for people. It's not Republican. It's not Democrat. It's not east side of the state west side of the state. Everybody sort of sees the common sense of this and wants to see young people have opportunity particularly now with as students have been put into a really tough spot and I think people are stepping forward to say let's do more of this. Thank you. I think there's tremendous advantage there when you when you start with the momentum that you all have had in Washington and it really sets you up well. Unfortunately, not everyone gets to start with that level of momentum but still has a lot of different partners they have to corral in the work and get on the same page and keep in a coordinated way. Kelly, you're a little bit similar and that you operate kind of both statewide and local. Tell us a little bit about how you've approached the partnership piece and really coordinating the various roles and building accountability for those results. Sure. So we have a core working group that has invested the most time I would say even though we have many, many partners that core working group has been instrumental in figuring out how we want to design our program. How we will operationalize that how we will reach out. And most importantly how we will build capacity in communities throughout Montana to be able to support this work. Right now we have youth apprentices placed in Billings, Montana, which is our largest city in our state. We have lots and lots of smaller communities that would love to do this. They don't all have the business community to support the youth apprenticeship opportunities that that we want to put in place we want to put in place youth apprenticeships that lead to high demand high skill careers for students. We're not looking to create youth apprenticeships for obtaining the entry level we want students to start at the entry level and grow. Some of our schools also don't have the same capacity to support that work. So as we've we've call us this core working group. I said we started in Billings because they have all of the pieces in place they had a business community that was ready to start. They have a very forward thinking public education system. They have fantastic career and technical education opportunities available for high school students throughout their community so it was an easy place to start to get this launched and off the ground and that's going very well. We have the communities where we hope to expand. We see that we need to help build their capacity within their schools to offer some of those same career and technical education opportunities. There are some programs that are available online, which is fantastic. And we, we definitely see opportunity there to grow the industries that we're serving with youth apprenticeship by leveraging that educational opportunity through online delivery. So we'd like to have more in person delivery of that curriculum as well. So we are pulling together a number of different resources from a number of different partners to hope, hopefully support those communities and building their readiness to be able to do youth apprenticeship, just like Billings does. Thank you. Rachel, you're, you're based in Birmingham you focus on the city. And yet you still have a lot of different partners and in fact, where your organization is housed has even shifted a little bit as you figured out what's worked best for your community. So tell us a little bit about how you're organizing and managing those different partnerships and getting everyone on the same page as you lift the work off. Yeah, there has been a lot of transition certainly from the time that we started and, you know, we had a, I think a couple of things that we wanted to do. We talk about momentum. We wanted to really capitalize on some of the momentum that was happening both locally and regionally like prioritizing talent development and prioritizing sort of local talent development strategies that would really help ensure that, you know, Birmingham and there are folks that are in the central Alabama region were really able to participate fully in some of these growing industries that are shifts from, you know, our industrial sort of history as a city so it some of the more advanced healthcare positions. And so that was something that really starting in 2018, there was a report that was commissioned in partnership with burning glass out of Boston and then kale, which I believe is based in DC that may bear a lot of the realities of our economy. And a lot of the realities of our talent development system and really showed that, you know, we had two economies, and there were folks that were again participating in the economy of the future that were able to access quality jobs that were on a career pathway that was navigable and beginning and the resources and the support that they needed. And then there were a lot of folks that that were not on that pathway. And so because you wanted to capitalize on that momentum. We focus on moving very, very quickly in the beginning and so initially that looks like operating out of City Hall, operating as a strategic initiative of the mayor, which, which helped it in a lot of ways, you know, having that public leadership and that commitment is undeniably very valuable. But it is also very difficult to serve in the intermediary out of local government, very difficult to do that well. And so we knew from the beginning that we wanted to transition to an independent organization, but we really sped up the timeline and doing that in part because it enabled us to work with our partners in a way that's a little more difficult in the context of politics and in the in the context of government. So now I think one of the things that we are able to do is take a lot of the very fast work that we did in the beginning and really kind of creating an adult in the system and use that to kind of take a step back with our core partners again our educators, our education system, particularly our K-12 education system, our community college system, and help really design forward in a way that's going to lead to the sort of sustainable outcomes that we want to see. But it has been a transition and I think the, I would just sort of, you know, looking at the evolution of our partnership with the school district, for example, you know, I think in the beginning, a lot of our work was like, hey, this is what we're going through, what we need in order to make that happen. And it worked to some extent, but it's not sustainable. So I think now our partnership looks much more like, hey, these are our shared values. These are our shared goals. How do we get there together? And so that's it. That's a transition that, you know, I think is going to be really valuable and positions our work to create the sort of outcomes that we want to see the community. I think that's a really powerful shift in developing a partnership to really focused on shared values and shared priorities. And Randy, I can imagine in a state as large as California with over 100 community colleges, that you've got a lot of different partners and you've had similar conversations. How have, how have you developed those partnerships in a way that's really advanced the priorities that you have for early education? So I want to answer this question from the specific perspective of ensuring an equity lens, because I think that's critical to how we think about our partnerships. And to start what I say in terms of the shift that Rachel was talking about, we actually do come at it from a point of ESEPS as the intermediary comes at it from the point of view of, this is what we want. This is what we're looking for. But then as, and so that guides us in who we approach to be our partners, or who we sort of accept the partnership with. Once we have the right people around the table, then we go to the second thing Rachel talked about, which is, okay, what are our shared values? How do we, how do we, you know, what's that word, operationalize those shared values? And so we think of it as a four, we, when we talk about our equity lens, we think of it as a four pronged approach. The first is, which communities are we choosing? So, you know, like Rachel's bound to Birmingham, that's who she is. We're not, we don't have that. We can go anywhere in the state that we want. And we look for communities that are, what we think of as overlooked. They're under resourced. Everybody, with the money you apply for a grant or anything, everyone goes, oh yeah. But they're not the communities that are the most hard pressed with maybe the worst crime statistics or the worst violence. That's why they're overlooked because they're poor and they're resource depleted, but they're not the first in everyone's mind. So that's number one. And of course, within that we look for communities that are incredibly, I would say incredibly diverse, but in California that's almost like redundant. We're looking for poor communities. Let's call it what it is. And the diversity that comes from that within that framework. The second is the apprentices. Years ago I heard Brent Parton from New America give a presentation on youth apprenticeship and he's going to, he'll correct me if I misquote him or maybe he won't. But what he said was, we're not setting up youth apprentices, youth apprenticeships for those young people for whom college was a guarantee the minute they were born, because those young people don't need the kind of support and the backing that we're looking for. So we're looking for communities with young people who have the desire and the capacity with given the correct, you know, the sufficient supports, but who may not be the first in line and people think about programs like this. And then we make sure that we put into the program the support services that they need to make sure that they're going to be successful. And that's a, we can talk about that later. Then in terms of the community colleges again, we don't just look at the community college, every community college on paper looks like they're the perfect partner. But you got to have the right dean, or the right department share or the right president, it really depends on the community college, because that person has to share your vision and your commitment to equity. Otherwise, nothing fall follows from that. We also insist on playing a role in onboarding the faculty and staff they're going to work with our youth apprentices, which means, for instance, and when one of our programs where we have an all Spanish speaking cohort. This is adults not young people, we have to insist that the instructors be bilingual, and that it's not good enough for someone to sort of be sensitive to those issues and will adapt this particular program we've made a promise. We actually have input into the selection of faculty and staff. And then lastly of course we choose the employers who are equally committed to equity in our world that's not as difficult because this is all nonprofit public sector social services. It's not I don't think the same lift as it would be if we were in high tech or something like that. I think somewhere in there and answered your question. You gave some great insight there and I really appreciate the differentiation between your sector based work and other intermediaries that work in the for profit sector where frankly employers may have a different attitude or predisposition towards this work. So I think those are really important lines to draw. I wanted to shift just a little bit because whether you are sector based or locally based or state based. In the early stages of this work like many of the members of our audience today, you had to make some decisions about what services are you going to offer what are those functions that you're going to serve. And there are a lot of different ways that you can go with that. I think a number of our audience members are wrestling with that right now is it just going to be employers are they going to serve employers education institutions and students in what ways are they going to do those things. So perhaps you can I know it's difficult to boil this down to just a quick answer, but give a little bit of insight into your thinking and how you were able to make some decisions there on behalf of your community and I'm not going to assign anyone I'm seeing, you know, eyes look up a little bit like oh I got to think about that anyone is able to jump in and we'll kind of take it from there anyone brave to start. I'll jump in I hope I understood the question. But so if I understood the question, here's the response. We started out thinking that the K 12 system would be or really the high school would be the driver because we're talking youth apprenticeship. And it turned out that wasn't the case and our sort of our, our driver now is the Community College. We start with the Community College, because that's what makes the whole thing work. And frankly, the high school systems tend to be so rigid and as much as the Community Colleges aren't ready for youth apprenticeship, the high schools are really not at least in California. So the idea of these, these young people need to be able to go to work two days a week will happen that either got blocked scheduling so if you put the Community College in charge. And it opens up other we still have the high schools and the partnership is employers colleges, you know, and high schools, but the putting the Community College at the center has worked better for us. So, I think that's answers your question. And I can I gotta. Sorry, go ahead yes month. I would say I agree that the Community College is super important. The Community College at least in Washington State is a more willing and ready partner than other participants are. And so what we actually focused on, especially in the formation of this but continue to focus on is the employer side of the equation, because you know our fundamental mission when the governor asked me to lead this work on on his behalf was, can you get employers engaged. You know we have an amazing registered apprenticeship system in the state of Washington, it's been, it's been a bedrock for the building trades in particular. It is, it has been limited in terms of its scope and focus and also and who it's attracting to its participation. So I think there was an eagerness to say well how can we build that out and the way to build that out. From the governor standpoint and I completely echoed that I had a background running our Chamber of Commerce in Seattle and saw that industry was struggling for talent particularly tech industry in in in many ways, and healthcare and very vibrant areas. But they hadn't really crossed the bridge to wow we could actually be a close in partner to education to make this work they had a desire, but they didn't have an easy way to partner. So a lot of what our design is all about is creating these hubs and these connecting people to take the load off industry who has this need knows what they need. But doesn't want to sit at a million meetings designed at a million times, you know be asked the same question over and over again. And then you have other ready partners like the Community College system and and to some degree K12 that are really ready to step up. So we've just tried to kind of make the connection but start with the needs the employer we spent a ton of time listening to what they're willing to pay for what they're not willing to pay for. But you know what they're willing to do and participate in, you know, we'll pay wages training supervision but we will not pay for academic curriculum building. It was so clear, and the whole thing is structured to satisfy that need, but to bring educators to do what they do best in terms of curriculum bill. So, that was kind of our thinking and model. We also are employer engagement in our program design, and they have to be at the table and they have to want this and we can, we can pull together all the partners in the world on the other side of things. And we do have a lot of those partners at the table with us. But if we do not have employers who are willing and ready and able to have a youth apprentice it's all for not. So if yesterday, David Trost from St. John's United was on one of the panels and he's, he's like the ideal we couldn't have asked for a better champion employer for our healthcare sector than David, because he gets it. And David has invested so much in this program and really wants to see it succeed. We have struggled to find an IT employer to be our champion for that sector. We think that, you know, that will come COVID kind of gotten our way a little bit. But David is just such a shining example of what it takes for this to succeed. And as a leader in his sector and a leader in Montana's business community. We are hopeful that hearing his experience will help other employers see that this, this is very doable. And that we are there to support them to support the apprentice and to support the larger community where they are housed and where their apprentice lives. Thanks Kelly. Rachel, how about Birmingham? I couldn't help it notice as Randy was speaking and talking about the readiness of community college versus K12 and K12 with their, we have this schedule and we can't deviate and, and you, you, I can tell your expression changed a little bit. So perhaps you've had some similar experience there. Yeah. Well, you know, it's interesting, we, we, there are different levels of because we work with one school district, I think we have a little bit more specificity at the district level we, we got a lot of willingness to change. We changed high school schedules in the middle of the year last year in order to make our first cohort work. And they were willing to do that, I don't know how, but baby. I'm really grateful for that partnership. But you know, as everyone was talking, I was trying to think, we say certainly that we have sort of a dual mission between employers and students and we certainly think about and I think, you know, prioritize both of those stakeholders in our program design and then in our execution. But I think we really did start with students at the center and disclaimer that I don't, I don't, I'm not advising this as an approach. I think there are some ways in which that focus has impacted our employer recruitment or the way in which we have moved our community towards a talent investment sort of paired on. So, so not endorsing this, but just my honest answer I think when we put together our first cohort of students, the, of apprentices, the thing that we were prioritizing were the students and what we felt, the elements of the program we felt were necessary for them to be successful. So, whether that was success coaching, whether that was transportation, which we spent a significant amount of resources on last year time back to equity because there are a ton of students that wanted to participate in opportunities like this but did not have the ability to because they did not have a car in order to get them back and forth. And so I think that's been sort of our guiding principle in terms of how we organize our partnership and the pieces of our programming that we've developed more quickly and some of the things that we've neglected more to be honest. And I think it has helped us. I think our underlying sort of bet, especially with the momentum in our employer community around making sure that we had a sustainable talent pipeline was that if we did what we need to do to prepare these students to show up in those places in their in the best possible version of themselves, that that would put us in a better position to bring more employers into the fold to shift to this talent investment perspective, and ultimately to be able to sustain this work. So, you know, we'll see we're in our first year, you know, we'll see how this develops over time and how those things will shift but I think that's sort of where we started. Kathleen, can I add one more thing real quick. You may might be useful to the people listening which so they don't think they're crazy when they go out and try and do some of this stuff and hit certain very predictable obstacles. You can have a conversation with a community college person or a high school person or employer for that matter, where you think you do have all these shared values, and what you don't realize is the conversation is going like this. And so, for example, there is not a community college, I don't think in this country who wouldn't tell you that that they're who would they would all say they're trying to be responsive to student needs. They really believe that. Okay, but when you ask some questions, you find out they don't really know. It's like they don't know the gap between what they think of as responsive and what students think of as responsive. Let me give you one quick example. Community colleges will say to us we have will say well we want students to have access to this and to this and to this, whatever it is mental health services, transportation, you know, tutoring. They'll say, Oh, we have our campus has so much to offer. We have the student center and they're welcome to participate on and on and we say, Okay, great. What are the hours of operation. They say Monday through Friday from nine to five. And we say well our people are either out in school in high school or they're working full time or because we also work with adults. Those hours make no sense if you're not open in the evening, and you're not open on Saturday. What good I don't say it this way or I wouldn't be successful but what I'm well what good are you to us if you're that region. So I say all this so that people know when they start to try and build these partnerships, not to be surprised that what you think of as equity or what you think of as partnership or what you think of as even some of the goals. People may use the same language and it takes real getting to know each other and relationship building, and one of the roles the intermediary can play is to say that thing nobody else can say, because I can hold that challenge out and not alienate people if I was an employer, or if I was the high school, you know the relationships are tricky. One of the roles of the intermediary is to make is to sort of bridge that's why it's called the intermediary to make these conversations make sense from all these different angles while holding on to your vision and your goals. The great point that's a really important role within the intermediary is to be able to say those things that others can't or won't say, and to really connect them in ways that they aren't able to connect on their own. So we're going to have a conversation just a little bit because we're kind of turning in the hour a little bit, and some of the questions that have come in are clearly people focused on very tactical kinds of, you know, how did you do this. As they think about their own intermediaries that they'd like to build. Visa thank you for your question I love this question and I'm going to read it exactly as it's typed. What is something that is crucial for an intermediary to do or provide that you didn't realize mattered when you started this youth apprenticeship journey. Something that's crucial for your organization to do or to provide that you didn't realize mattered when you started. If you could go back in your journey. What comes to mind. I think one of the things that we did not anticipate is how critical it is to break whatever journey you're trying to take your community on to sort of manageable steps and so it was very easy for us when we started because of sort of how we were born to articulate our vision to talk about the connections that we wanted to see between our education and our workforce system and how the disconnection of those systems was sort of making economic mobility something that was difficult for our students to experience and it was easy for us to talk about, you know, what quality partnerships look like in theory, but depending on where your community is, you're not going to get there in one step, and you're certainly not going to get there in one year. And depending on the nature of the partnerships for the stakeholders you have at the table if you articulate that final vision, and that's it, it can either be alienating or overwhelming or a combination of the two. And so, for, I think what we've learned over the last year is how to really prioritize very specific pieces of this larger overall vision that we can reasonably get done in a certain period of time. For the last year, that was being able to shift student schedules in order to make working during the school day possible without it being what happened before which was students leaving basically at the end of the school day and having a couple hours as in the day to work right. That is something that we just did not anticipate and it's interesting because I think the larger vision pieces very compelling in a funding environment very compelling. I think when you're having external conversations outside of your community. But it's not necessarily that useful when you're sitting down and having conversation with your K12 system or having a conversation with your community colleges. It also is helpful for you as an intermediary and not be overwhelmed and to not feel like there's this great distance between where you are and where you want to go. So that's been something that I think we've learned. We learned in a hard way, really, but but something that will continue to do moving forward is really trying to say, these are the three things we can do this year. And this is what we need our partnerships to do to get there. Thank you. Other thoughts on something crucial that you didn't realize mattered when you started this. I would say, I'm not sure it's exactly what you're looking for here but I would say the most surprising thing to me has been the eagerness of all the participants to jump in and do something about this and I think the reason for that is that we've come to a point in time where there's so many things that have happened that have made this a logical extension of what education should be in our country. That all of a sudden it's just like it's it to me this is one of those areas that has the wind behind its back in terms of change. You know, you've got the cost of college being so extraordinarily high in many places for many people. You've got the fact that the patients level of young people to sit in a classroom for four years of college without knowing what their destination might be both financially but also just kind of in terms of their pace of life and the way that they're learning with these darn devices, you know, it's changed up how how that's all sort of ticking for young people. Parents have had this experience of the last recession of having students come back and be in their basements even if they're college educated and feeling like how did that happen and we are now in debt and we don't have our young person doesn't have a path. So I think that this idea of braiding a pathway to free young people to get that real life exposure. While they're still in a safe environment of academia in some ways or sort of in that zone of their life just really resonates with people I mean in our polling and our so on and our student focus groups and everything else and I love the comments that Rachel made about student focus because it's absolutely essential as student employer to me. You know, driving towards what they they want to need I feel like we're catching up with what the customers already want. I really do. I feel like we are just trying to surge that direction and I feel like a lot of our partners in the education space. Recognize this and see it and and and value the thing an intermediary can uniquely bring which is that connection to real employers that have meaningful meaningful pathways, which is hard for an educator to figure out so that's the most surprising thing it's just like the breeze is there that you just have to kind of listen and try to satisfy the competing ideas and bring people unite people make those connections. I really liked but Rachel had to say I think those are great answers. And a little bit different from from our perspective I think one of the things that was surprising for me was how often we had to reinforce some of our shared understanding of what it is that we're working on so kind of to Randy's earlier point about thinking that you're all on the same page but maybe you aren't. And one of the other areas where that came up was under the you know the big umbrella of work based learning there's all kinds of awesome things that are already happening. So we have pre apprenticeships in Montana we have lots of employers who do internships and we love that that's awesome. That's not what we're doing we're doing youth apprenticeship. And so sometimes we have had some instances where some of our partners will say well we already do that but they don't they do pre apprenticeship which again I love that I think they're doing awesome work. I want to take it one step further and that's what our partnership is about. And so reinforcing that and continuing to bring bring our partners back to that reinforcing to our partners that this is absolutely a collaborative effort we're not competing with each other here. We're working together we're braiding together the pieces of things that support this work that already exist and hoping to help more and more Montana students and and employers be able to have brighter futures together. So revisiting those conversations a lot is one of the things that I didn't think we would do to the degree that we have but that's part of the work of networking I guess. And what I would add when you first asked the question my first thought was the thing I forget how you worded it but the thing that I wasn't prepared for something like that was, you have to really know the apprenticeship world. Like, some of us come to this from some other angle, and then you have you know you're, what is it trial by fire, whatever the expression is, you have to understand the differences you pre read a pre apprenticeship and apprenticeship and what does it mean to be registered in all this. And there's nowhere to learn that. So you sort of have to find mentors and find people. But then I realized, the other thing is you also have to understand the sector you're working in. So, like when I talked to employers, I worked in early childhood 40 years, I know the challenges they face. I understand that the way they think. But I know that there are other people I've talked to who serve as intermediaries so let's say they're working with advanced manufacturing which they came out of, but now they're starting one in medical technology, and they don't understand that world. So it's kind of an, and then of course you have to understand something about the community college system, and the youth and the high school the K 12 system, in a way that's an impossible ask, but nonetheless it's necessary, because otherwise you have to be able as an intermediary to talk the talk of these various partners, and to help them understand each other. You have to be able to say to community college, no employer is going to agree to that you don't understand what you're asking of them, or vice versa to say to the K 12 system. Okay, that just can't work in the real world. And it requires that you actually have some level of insight and if you as an individual don't, you need a team of it within your intermediary structure. Somebody has to know the kind of be able to really know that world, the workforce development world the sector you're working in, and then the educational world. I think that's a great point. We so often talk about the language barriers between education and employers, and how crucial it is for the intermediary to be able to fill that gap, and be able to talk to the employers and their language to the educators and their language to the students and their language. So you're tri-lingual here, and you have to go into this with that recognition and expectation. I think we have time for one more question here and Ellen posed this question and I think this is very relevant and timely. Now, if a community has a bunch of partners and wants to start a youth apprenticeship program, how do you decide which organization is best suited to be the intermediary? And she'd also like to know how do you get it funded, but let's start with, how do you decide which organization gets to be the intermediary? The only one thing in Washington State that's been fun is to have a competitive RFP process to do that. So, and a really savvy team who's reviewing them that's really experienced looking at these issues, making those decisions. So we do a jump ball basically, it's what are you trying to do, you know, how equipped are you to take that on? Do you have partners and player partners in place that's so essential? You know, do you have the educator partners in place, etc. So it's really about sussing out relative merits for us and making it a very, you know, consistent so the rules of game are clear and people have a chance to really shine in that process. But, and sometimes really hard decisions, really, really hard decisions. And we have the benefit of course of having the next round of funding. So oftentimes if we're saying no, one time we're saying come back. We use it as a coaching opportunity as well to say with a few tweaks, you know, this could have been a really, really great proposal or we think that if you strengthen it here, you know, if you these partnerships, you do best next time. So we're all about building more and more and more and more capacity over time. I will add that I think the point that you need to be trilingual is probably characteristic number one that you need to be successful as an intermediary. I would also add that it helps if you have some capacity to do this. So I mentioned when I first did my introduction that when we started this work, our organization was a partner. And another partner organization was the lead, they're very, very small they had 1.5 FTE, maybe total and they're a statewide organization. So they're fabulous partners they're brilliant and we love working with them. But I think they realized that this was a bigger lift than they had the capacity to do as, as did all of us around the table. I think one of the advantages that we have within the system in which we work is that we are a nonprofit organization so we're not state funded, we're not fully entrenched in the higher ed system nor fully entrenched in the K 12 system. We're, we're Switzerland, I mean, we, we're right there in the middle, we can work both sides of that. That's been helpful for us but I think it really depends on the capacity of the people around the table, the willingness to do the work, the ability to, to speak in all of those circles and to be able to translate that, and the ability to make sure that things get done. That's what I would say. What I would add is when you said, when you said who gets to be the, the intermediary. It's like saying who gets to wash the dishes after dinner. I'm not sure it's such a great, you know, privilege. So, it's a funny way to think of it. I mean it's a necessity and some people just sort of fall into it because that's the work they do and one thing leads to another. I don't know anywhere where people are competing to be the intermediary, but maybe it's different elsewhere. And again, it's sort of partly also reflects the whole world we're in. There are industries that are quite well developed in the apprenticeship space, so they have intermediaries, then there are industries that are brand new and so someone like us steps up. I don't know that it's as organized as all that and it would be nice the day that people compete to be intermediaries. Right now I think people are just glad when there is one. I think those are great points and I'll take Kelly your points sort of summarizing if you were kind of calling out from these different conversations. The trilingual piece right that you have relationships with the current stakeholders that you intend to serve you have some sort of standing within their communities. That you have capacity as an organization that you can look within the organization that you're considering to be the intermediary and say, are they, are they big enough, are they financially sound do they have the right staff do they have strong project management background. Like you can kind of break that down into different organizational capacity pieces. And then the third piece there being neutrality, I think Kelly use the term Switzerland. That you have to be objective you have to be perceived as an objective third party that you're not sort of in the camp, so to speak, of one sector or the other. But that you bring neutrality to the conversations and that enables you to really focus and drive conversations among multiple stakeholders and get them all to kind of move in the direction that you're hopeful that they will move in. We have just two minutes left so I'm going to give each of you 30 seconds to give sort of a parting piece of advice to members of our audience. If there is something that you would offer up as reflecting on the work that you've done the progress that you've made what's one piece of advice that you would offer to someone who's very new in your shoes, who's trying to do the same thing. Just 30 seconds. I'll start I'd be really brief, reach out to people like the four of us, because like I said there is no system in place where you can really get trained, but I think people that are engaged in this work are very eager to connect and network and help each other and to help someone you also learn. So it's not like it's a pure act of altruism so feel free to be in touch with us and anyone else you bump into along the way, who can help you learn, answer your questions, commiserate, create your sort of community of learners. Great. Kelly Mod Rachel, any parting advice Kelly. I think Randy took the words right out of my mouth if you're part of the pie network. Even if you're not officially in the network there are so many resources that have been pulled together. And I have not met anybody in the circle of work that isn't more than willing to help and to share their models and to bounce ideas with you to share what has worked for them so absolutely reach out to anybody in the pie network they've been fantastic. Great. I just want to say I echo that sentiment I mean Brent and Brent pardon who was mentioned previously Taylor white were instrumental in Washington state and helping us design this system I've been describing so what are great resource and I often will try to touch base with them periodically just to hear their thinking and kind of see here what what the latest and greatest is across the whole system. One piece of advice beyond that would be to be bold. I mean this is a time where this is really important. I mean, and when you think about equity, this is the most important thing we can do for young people to say, you can be anything you want to be. Access to this doesn't mean you know you have to have a family that has connection to get you an internship all of a sudden you have the capacity to do this with the support of great adults around you that care and want to make this happen for you. And I just think you know both an incredibly powerful time. And we can no longer let kids just sort of, you know, the classrooms are sitting there not serving them and not really getting them to where they need to be and they don't even realize what capability they have in many cases, and I think this is a place where kids, the, the, the most rewarding thing for me is the kids in these programs just get their agency together, and I think that is. Thank you. Yeah. Awesome. Rachel parting advice just 10 seconds. Build a learning community and don't forget why you're doing the work you do. Awesome. Love it. Thank you to each of you experts. I feel very, very confident now I'm calling you experts appreciate all of your time I think people have asked for contact information if you haven't already entered it into the chat bar. We appreciate all of you joining the conversation with us today.