Workforce Wednesday: The Culture We Carry The longer I study organizations, the less I believe culture is something we build. I think it’s something we inherit from one another every day. For a long time, I thought culture was primarily the result of vision, values, and leadership. Those things matter. They establish direction, define expectations, […]
Workforce Wednesday: Who Taught Us What Opportunity Looks Like? The longer I work in workforce development, the less I believe workforce development is actually about work. At first, that sounds like a contradiction. Our conversations are filled with discussions about jobs, hiring, credentials, wages, career pathways, and labor markets. Those conversations matter because they influence […]
Workforce Wednesday: Are We Asking Every Workforce Program to Do the Same Thing? Looking back, I can point to a handful of conversations that quietly changed the way I think about workforce development. None of them happened on a conference stage or during a keynote. Most happened after meetings had ended, when the formal agenda […]
Workforce Wednesday: What Actually Changed? Not long ago, I walked out of a meeting feeling genuinely encouraged. The conversation had been productive, the energy in the room was good, and by most measures it had been a successful discussion. We talked about enrollment numbers, credentials earned, employer engagement, participant milestones, and the next steps for […]
Workforce Wednesday: Workforce Development Cannot Be Built from the Sidelines There is a part of this work that rarely receives the same level of attention as funding announcements, labor market reports, credentials, or hiring projections, yet in many cases it determines whether opportunity actually connects with people in a meaningful way. It is the work of translation. Not translation […]
Workforce Wednesday: You Cannot Pursue a Career You Do Not Understand As June brings renewed attention to National Youth Employment Month, I have found myself thinking less about whether young people are working and more about whether they truly understand the industries we keep encouraging them to pursue. That distinction has stayed with me because, over the […]
Walker-Miller Energy Services Named to Inc.’s 2026 Best Workplaces List Annual list recognizes the businesses that set the standard for workplace success and awards excellence in company culture [Detroit, MI] June 2, 2026, Walker-Miller Energy Services (Walker-Miller) is proud to announce it has been named to Inc.’s 2026 Best Workplaces list and recognized in […]
Workforce Wednesday Workforce Development Is Built Through Systems, Not Programs In the first article of this series, I wrote about why workforce development has moved to the center of the conversation across industries. The next question is just as important: how do we actually build the workforce those industries need? Too often, the […]
Workforce Wednesday The Moment We’re In Demands More I recently returned from the National Home Performance Conference in Columbus, Ohio, with a renewed sense of urgency about the role workforce development has to play in this moment. The conference brought together leaders from across the country focused on home performance, energy efficiency, healthy homes, contracting, […]
