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Nearly 400 National Fund for Workforce Solutions (NFWS) partners from throughout the country—representing workforce intermediaries, educators, employers, funders, workforce boards, and others—attended the NFWS Annual Meeting: Better Skills, Better Jobs, in Chicago on June 17-19. The meeting provided an opportunity to share best practices and hear from top innovators in workforce policy and practice.
On June 19, Secretary of Labor Tom Perez addressed and commended the group for their great work and highlighted the Administration’s focus on workforce, including enhanced support of sector strategies and apprenticeship (his full speech is available here).
NSC Executive Director Andy Van Kleunen joined Bob Giloth (Annie E Casey Foundation), Loh-Sze Leung (SkillWorks) and Marlene Seltzer (Jobs for the Future) on a panel facilitated by Marlene Conway (Aspen Institute) to talk through their essays on workforce intermediaries and sector partnerships included in the book Connecting People to Work: Workforce Intermediaries and Sector Strategies.
NSC Leadership Council members Susan Crane and Earl Buford each accepted the Chairman’s Award for Exemplary Collaborative on behalf of their partnerships, and NSC partner Central Iowa Works received an Investor Committee Award for Exemplary Effort to Accomplish Systems Change on behalf of their leadership of the Iowa Skills2Compete Coalition. Scott Ellsworth, Director of Business Leaders United (BLU) and NSC Senior Federal Policy Analyst Angela Hanks spoke on a panel about federal workforce policy and BLU’s work to engage employers in shaping those policies.
NSC is grateful for the opportunity to gather with so many partners and workforce stakeholders to discuss the work being done to advance the skills agenda, and we look forward to working with everyone going forward.
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