Lumina and Joyce Foundations Support Business Champions Role with Presidential Advisory Board
Business Champions Coordinates Seven Listening Sessions focused on Public/Private Partnerships
WASHINGTON, D.C., March 17, 2010 –Supported by Lumina Foundation for Education and The Joyce Foundation, Business Champions, Inc. recently facilitated a series of seven high level meetings for the education and training subcommittee of the President’s Economic Recovery Advisory Board (PERAB) in Washington, D.C. The meetings addressed the critical need to improve the quality and delivery of workforce training and preparation throughout the nation.
Chaired by Penny Pritzker, Chairman of TransUnion and chair of the PERAB subcommittee on education and training, meeting participants included business leaders from a variety of industries, representatives of the Obama Administration, labor unions, and philanthropy. Business Champions, Inc. facilitated the meetings and provided strategic analysis and support.
Participant Stephen Wing, Director of Workforce Initiatives at CVS Caremark, commented on the urgency of the challenge, “The proportion of the population that has completed some postsecondary education is rising in most countries, but actually declining in the United States. This portends a serious erosion of our standard of living if we don’t act decisively to reverse this trend.”
Mary Gershwin, President and Co-Founder of Business Champions, said the subcommittee focused on four key questions:
- What do employers need from publicly-supported programs, including community colleges, designed to increase skills and facilitate creation/retention of jobs?
- What do employers bring to public/private partnerships focused on meeting the job preparedness needs of the 21st century?
- What changes need to happen?
- What are employers willing to commit to help make those changes happen?
“The initial findings reinforce our conviction that our workforce development challenges can be overcome,” Gershwin said. “We can build upon what we have learned to make changes on a scale large enough to make a difference.”
Gershwin said employers see promise in innovative programs that meet the needs of working adults, such as expansion of apprenticeships, career pathways models, integration of academic and basic skills, and improved career navigation systems. “But the pace of change is too slow,” she added. “Many business leaders have been successful making changes on the local level that benefited a limited number of people, but ask what must be done to replicate that success on a much larger scale. That is the critical question. If we are serious about reform, we need committed business leadership that will back innovative change and policy reforms, so thousands of people have more opportunity.” Gershwin said the PERAB workforce and education subcommittee has provided the Obama Administration with a solid base of information from which it can launch a comprehensive reform effort.
“Everyone agrees upon the need to act aggressively on this challenge, and all of the major players are engaged,” said Phyllis Eisen, Business Champions Senior Advisor and Co-Founder. .
Business Champions, Inc., a nonprofit organization, is committed to workforce development, mobilizing the influence of business leaders to stimulate new thinking, strengthen political will, shape new policies, and strengthen systems with clear incentives so that more Americans have the opportunity to earn postsecondary degrees and credentials with genuine economic value.