Marlena Sessions on Employment Gaps in a Tech Economy

Work Forces

In the opening episode of Season 2, we speak with Marlena Sessions, the director of NOVAWorks, the renowned non-profit employment and training agency in Silicon Valley. Marlena shares her extensive experience in workforce development, and emphasizes the importance of strategic partnerships, innovative approaches, and customer-focused services to address the needs of job seekers and employers in a rapidly evolving, tech-driven job market. The episode provides insights into the complexities of workforce preparation and career pathways, offering practical solutions for scaling and sustaining workforce development efforts.

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Transcript:

Julian Alssid: Welcome to Work Forces. I'm Julian Alssid.

Kaitlin LeMoine: And I'm Kaitlin LeMoine And we speak with the innovators who shape the future of work and learning.

Julian: Together, we unpack the complex elements of workforce and career preparation and offer practical solutions that can be scaled and sustained.

Kaitlin:

Let's dive in. Welcome to Season 2 of Work Forces. We're so grateful to our audience for tuning in to our episodes throughout Season 1, and we're looking forward to a new exciting set of discussions in Season 2. These podcasts have prompted new thoughts and discussions in our work and online through social media, and we hope they have sparked new ideas for you, our listeners, as well. To kick off this season, we're excited to be joined by Marlena Sessions, a nationally recognized leader in workforce development. Marlena is the director of NOVAWorks, a nonprofit employment and training agency that provides customer-focused workforce development services. NOVAWorks serves a consortium of eight jurisdictions composed of the county of San Mateo, and cities in Santa Clara County. Marlena also currently serves on the California Workforce Association's Executive Committee and is on the National Advisory Committee for the John J. Heldrich Center of Workforce Development at Rutgers University. Previously, Marlena served as Senior Vice President for Grant Associates and as Chief Executive Officer for the Workforce Development Council of Seattle, King County, from 2009 to 2017. She's a strong advocate for career pathways and self-sufficiency for all and strategic talent pipeline development for all industries. Welcome to our podcast, Marlena.

Marlena Sessions: Thank you so much, Kaitlin. Great to be with you.

Julian: Welcome, Marlena. And I am proud to say, hearing your incredibly impressive bio there (thank you, Kaitlin, for the intro), that I know you, Marlena, I think back to those early days in Seattle King County.

Marlena: That's right, Julian. We've both been doing this a while, haven't we? That's right.

Julian: One of the best leaders in the workforce world and, in fact, the first that we've asked to come and speak on the podcast. So, with that said, how about if we kick this off by asking you to tell us a little bit about your story and background?

Marlena: Thank you both. Thank you, Julian and Kaitlin. Boy, I'm humbled by that intro. See if I can live up to it. I consider myself a what I would call a deep practitioner in workforce development, and always at the local and regional level. I got into it as, you know, maybe I'm a little sad to say, the workforce development field isn't something that people are ironically directed into. I got into it like most of my colleagues probably, a little bit by happenstance. But I did find myself in my 20s helping people who had been laid off. And they were, in many cases, much older than me. In some cases they were of my vintage, of my ilk, but had dropped out of high school. And I remember sitting across the table from some of these youth in particular at that very impressionable time of my career and saying, wow, these people are really smart, but they had to leave school for some reason. Maybe it was to help their family? To help support their family or life circumstances? And if not for my own great support in my life, I could be one of them. I didn't know I even had biases back then, but a lot of my biases…Why would someone drop out of high school? Why would someone get laid off from a job?...really dissipated very quickly when I started working one-on-one. And I think I was a direct service provider for about five years and then ascended into various roles in the field in terms of leadership and management, supervision, leading organizations. So I've had a very privileged career in that I find... If you know someone or you yourself have ever been laid off or close to someone, you know what a trauma that can be. You know what a journey that can be. You know how much time it can take to get to the next piece. So I have the privilege in my everyday world, whether it's at a policy level, a leadership level, or even, as I said, my early days at a very practitioner level, to help people get back on track with their career pathway one by one by one. I always say that it's probably some of the best work there is because you really can help people. And then by the one by one by one becomes tens and tens and hundreds and thousands hopefully and help communities get stronger, help economies get stronger in the world of the dignity of work. So I've had many decades of work in various fields. We talked about Seattle. Seattle was a 20 year gig at many different levels. And then I've had the privilege of just by being a bit geeky, nerdy about workforce development, and really traveling the country and looking at workforce development projects, programs, systems, cities, counties, and seeing the best of the best and some that need help. So I feel like I’ve really deeply studied this field and love to practice it every day.

Kaitlin: Thanks so much for that background. It's really helpful to hear just the range of experience and where it stems from and that practical one-on-one experience. You know, I can see how that would really drive a lifelong interest in this work. Can you speak a little bit to your current efforts at NOVAWorks?

Marlena: Absolutely, I would just add a little PS on that last piece there too, Kaitlin. I have always had amazing staff that I've gotten to work with, no matter where I've been in the field. It's been just a privilege. It's smart, smart people. I do, however, have a bias there as well, and I like to tease some of my policy wonkier. staff and colleagues who have very high level degrees in public policy and administration: Have you ever sat across from a job seeker who's lost their job? And if you haven't, let's make sure you do and get into that world because I think that perspective, which you just referenced that I had for the first five years of my career, really does impact meeting people where they are and seeing them where they are, and then knowing that any decisions we're making at all those higher levels can really impact people just on the ground. So to my current role, I've been at NOVAWorks for two years. We are in the heart of the Silicon Valley in California. Beautiful area. I'm happy to be here. I'm newly transplanted to the Bay Area. And the interesting work we do here, we do very great direct service. We get, believe it or not, five-star Yelp. yelp reviews. You know, who in government can ever say they actually get a Yelp review much what customers write in and give us these five stars in? So our customer service with what we call our job seeking customers and with our employers making that match, always thinking about that match, is really of the highest level. It's an interesting mix because I'm also the executive director for the Workforce Board. And as you both well know, and I'm sure our listeners do, there are about 550 workforce boards around the country, every local area, every region has one, really to set the stage and set the policy and vision for that local region of what they need for their talent pipeline, going into meeting employer needs, talent needs. So I have a dual role in terms of, we do our own direct service. I love that because we can try things, we can pilot things, we can test things. And being in innovation central here in the heart of the Silicon Valley, we better be in our own field of workforce on the innovation cutting edge. And then we can also do things that are, you know, the leadership, me staffing the board and the board themselves looking at, well, where's the field going? Where are various industries going? The other thing I'd say about the NOVA region, that's again great for me because it's challenging, but not great in some ways, is it's got vast, vast inequities. the wealthiest of the wealthy. And because my region includes the beautiful San Mateo County, the entire San Mateo County, just north of Santa Clara County, all the way up to the San Francisco Airport, SFO, there is a lot of inequity, a lot of folks who have historically been left behind, which, again, in the Silicon Valley, doesn't get necessarily enough press or talked about. And how are we, when I got here two years ago, my first aha moment was we need to get out and find people who may not know about NOVA and the great work we do, may not be in the tech field and the tech churn, maybe in lots of other industries, and have some housing issues, have some transportation issues, certainly some wage issues. So, challenging, but very, very vibrant area in terms of getting very high level tech and other industry folks who are in between jobs and right now, especially some layoffs occurring, that churn, but also getting to folks who are maybe in a... especially post pandemic, if we're out of the pandemic, getting the essential worker work, the hospitality industry, other industries that they need some help. They need some help getting onto their next job and getting to their job. Sometimes it gets that practical. So a lot of things to say about NOVA, but I would stress the customer service, the fact that I'm in a petri dish and we can try all kinds of new workforce development pilots, and then some really, really challenging economic conditions in lots of ways.

Julian: So Marlena, to kind of dig a little deeper there, what are some of the really sort of specific opportunities that you are seeing? And I am really very interested in the notion. I mean, I think in so many ways, in Seattle it was kind of the same in many respects. You know, in your current role at NOVAWorks, you really are sort of in the future of the economy where there's just this massive disparity. And everything we are hearing about AI is telling us there's gonna be more and more. So, I'm really interested to hear a bit about the opportunities you're seeing and then, in particular, that impact of being in a tech hub and how do you bridge that divide?

Marlena: Yes, absolutely. Boy, if only there was an easy answer to that question, those questions, Julian. But I would say, you know, I'm always looking for those opportunities and I always start from a perspective of strategic partnerships. And so for example, looking at folks who may never have heard of the semiconductor industry and the jobs that are available, and then looking at the opposite end of, okay, the CHIPS Act and oh wow, lots and lots of investment coming down to the private sector and where could a workforce board in the Silicon Valley fit into that model? And so seeing lots of opportunities with employers who, again, I think you both know I'm sure and I live this every day, workforce boards have a bit of a marketing and branding issue. We all have a different name. People don't know what is a workforce board. It's an odd title. And frankly there are some that have warts in the system around the country. So, one of my first opportunities that I saw with knowing that the CHIPS money was coming but knowing it wasn't necessarily coming directly to a workforce board, was to start to talk to some of the employers around this area who I knew would be applying for those CHIPS dollars, and seeing are you interested in talking about what we call incumbent worker money that the workforce board could actually invest ahead of any funds you're getting from the federal government, the US Department of Commerce, could we help you start to get your workforce ready? Could we help you with some of the community-based organization requirements in your grant, even the child care requirements in your grant? So looking at getting a little ahead of whatever curve it is. In this case, the semiconductor chip industry. And I have to say, the employers have been very receptive. While they're busy doing what they do, doing some amazing R&D, some amazing manufacturing and writing chips RFPs. They've also been very interested in starting some pilots with us. So trying to think through where might the opportunity be for a... NOVAWorks to slip in and say you know we actually have some resources too and some expertise to maybe make that match between a job seeker who doesn't know clean the manufacturing industry is, how technical manufacturing industry is, and how much opportunity is there in getting them hooked up with you while your you're doing what you do every day. So that's been one opportunity that's been very exciting. We've had some good play there. The other thing I am always looking at is what parts of the region, and again, I keep thinking about San Mateo County because there's a lot of rural areas there, are just not aware of us, and again, people who are workers or to-be workers, customers, job seekers, just don't know that we exist or how to get here. So we've been really pushing our great career advisors, I have amazing career advisors, to get out into the communities. They're going out into the libraries. They're going out intov community-based organizations to various housing places, certainly housing organizations, certainly community colleges, and being on site in a consistent way, writing the brand name of NOVA, what we do, but also just being consistent there to help people, putting workshops on, et cetera. And that's different. We've been used to, pre-pandemic, I'm told, we've been used to lines out the door at whatever centers we have and that all changed and our model pivoted. So now we're hybrid, we're more localized. We offer our customers, you can talk to us on the phone, you can talk to us on Zoom, or you can talk to us in person. And our in-person is, we'll come to you. You don't have to come to us. Well, those are a couple opportunities. Looking at both the employer side of my customer base and then the job seeker customer.

Kaitlin: Great, so you touched on this in a lot of what you just mentioned, but I guess I'm wondering what are some of the challenges that you see in your work? So I know you mentioned the wealth disparities a little bit, and then you also talked a little bit about the marketing and branding and what does it mean to be a workforce development board and how do you get that message out to people? But what are some of the challenges that you face in your work and how do you foresee going about addressing them?

Marlena: Yes, you know, I'm very optimistic. I always have been. So I always look at opportunities more than challenges. I think certainly impact and scaling up and serving more and more individuals. I would say one challenge is seeing, again, it's a very ironic kind of region. And what I mean by that is we have one of the lowest unemployment rates in the state, often the very lowest, and have for several years, and yet we have the most worn notices, worn meaning layoffs above a certain level that a company is doing, a worker adjustment retraining notice by federal law, those employers who are doing bigger layoffs need to notify the local workforce board, they need to notify the local elected officials. So, on the one hand, people are employed at very high levels if you look at labor market statistics. On the other hand, hundreds of people are getting laid off. And this is that churn that I was talking about. There's a rip because of the industries, the technology churn. Life Sciences and Biotech is another one that has quite a bit of churn. Healthcare a little bit. So the challenge is keeping up with the fact that we're seeing hundreds of people getting laid off and trying to make sure that we're looking right around the corner at what other companies in their industry are hiring. And we're very successful at that, but it's at thousands and thousands of person scale right now. So it's a hurry to catch up sort of situation. And then those who aren't just churning right from one to another, those who want to either need to take a step back and get some more retraining or their skills, maybe they've been in a certain field for 10 or 15 years and they need to get some new skills, letting them get the support they need to step out a bit and get that training. So it's deep assessing each individual customer and doing that thousands of times over would be my big challenge right now.

Kaitlin: And just out of curiosity, following up on the worker adjustment and retraining notifications, I'm just curious. How far in advance do you receive those? Because I would imagine you must have to react very quickly.

Marlena: That's a very great question. And it's been a…even me at my stage of my career… getting to NOVA and seeing the numbers that we see of those worn notices has been an education for me. They have to give us some notice. And the best of the best employers give us sixty or ninety days notice and the best of the best of them let us come in with what we call our rapid response team who are ready within twenty four hours to make those connections for soon to be laid off workers are laid off workers they let us come in literally come into the company. A lot of companies don't want to do that and I can understand why. If you're a chief people officer and HR professional and you're in the middle of a big layoff do you really want to invite someone from the government, as we can sometimes be perceived, to come in and talk to your soon-to-be laid-off workers. But many do. And when that happens and we have noticed, it's amazing what we can do. The workshops we can do on resume writing, the resources we can bring to the fore, we bring people with us. We bring community and technical college training providers with us or private training providers. We bring people from the Employment Development Department about unemployment compensation. So... If an employer does give us a little bit of notice, it's amazing. But if they don't, that's okay too. We get in touch with the employer and then we get very creative about finding those workers. We do some interesting things with LinkedIn where we'll do a lot of hashtagging and letting people know the connectivity of things that we can offer, get on social media, etc. So they give us notice, sometimes not enough, but even if they do give us notice, sometimes they don't want to kind of deal with us beyond giving us the notice. But we work hard to have a trusted messenger, maybe an industry association to help us get in the door and make sure those folks get to know the wealth of resources. The other interesting thing, back to my background and my start in the field is just realizing how long it takes for someone who's laid off to get to the next job. And if they've never been laid off before and maybe they have even a nice severance package, they think, oh, I've got months and months, this will be fine. There are stages of grief. There are stages they have to go through. And so we try to get to them really quickly, even if they don't want to use our services really quickly, to plant that seed and let them know we're here. If you try some things and you don't get it as far as you want, we're here. I've had great success stories come to me at NOVA. even board members and elected officials who've said, 20 years ago I used NOVA services and it really saved me. And so we always say, we'll be here when you need us, no matter what.

Julian: Wow, yeah. You really are, as you're talking Marlena, I'm just thinking it is incredible that dual customer role: the employers and the workers, really, laid off workers, and the complexity that feeds into all of this. And you know, you bring such a rich understanding, and I do also love this sort of, and I think that's something we've always connected on, the connection between the highfalutin policy and reading the tea leaves and the practice. And so, to kind of shift us a little bit to the high reading the tea leaves end of it all, we'd love to talk a little bit about workforce funding, because there’s a lot going on and it's in different realms that I'm interested to hear, we're really interested to hear your take on, you know, like let's first start with WIOA and then maybe talk a little bit about Pell and then maybe even talk about CHIPS and Science Act and, because I think that there's a lot happening out there. So yeah, your thoughts about the recent updates on we are reauthorization and how do you see it impacting your work on the ground?

Marlena: Absolutely, thank you. Well obviously, as you would hope I would, I've been following it very closely and reading all kinds of different opinions and different takes on the Stronger Workforce for America Act. You know, I'll say a couple things. One is it's in play. You know, nothing's solidified yet. The House has taken some action and it's, I would commend the House frankly, as I always do when we talk about some of these bills. It is a very bipartisan effort. There were compromises on both sides to get as far as it's gotten. Having said that, this has many steps to go through. I know there are certain sort of bullet points in that Act that a lot of my peers around the country are really reacting to. One is this thought of this requirement of the funds, the funds that 50% of the funds need to go into training. Well, who can argue against training? Nobody, of course training is a great thing. We want education and skill building and credentials and all those things.Tthe devil or the angel is always in the details. What counts as training? Is the training appropriate? Is it what industry wants and needs? So I'm a little bit more tentative and not freaking out at that thought. I think we'll see how that all plays out. I always think of the funny Harry Potter line that Ron Weasley said, is it time to panic yet? No, it's not time to panic yet. If you're worried at the local workforce board level about how am I going to come up with the funds? I mean, I think for most of us it's, well, will I have the funds to run my organization, et cetera? So, but I'll say there are several other parts of that piece of legislation that are great improvements. There's a lot of things that were looked at very hard and are being looked at, I understand, on the Senate side as well that are, you know, administrative nightmares for workforce areas and so that could be very much cleaned up. And you mentioned Pell. I think... The fact that these two things are happening at once is not a coincidence. I think that having the community and technical colleges and the workforce boards even further coordinated and joined together and partnering and mandated partnerships are good things. We want to use our country's vast community college system. We want to have those partnerships. We want to be able to, I'm speaking as a workforce board, we want to be able to influence curriculum and the delivery of programming to make sure, because I think the best of the workforce boards are very in touch with industry and can really be good translators for that. So I'm watching closely, I'm curious, interested, and I see some really good things. So I'm just, you know, you both know this, the world knows this. This is a year where a lot of things are gonna happen, 2024, at the federal level and local level. So, watching and interested, but again, it almost goes back to some of the reasons I love this field of workforce development. Who can argue with putting people to work? Who can argue with helping businesses find talent? So a bipartisan effort in these times is kind of a cool thing.

Julian: Well, while the discussions around WIOA and short-term Pell are in committee and ongoing, we do know and are seeing now the beginning of the rollout of funding through say the CHIPS and Science Act. There was an article today, a story today, in WorkShift. And what was striking was that at this point there's been, at this point there's 2.6 billion dollars allocated annually in STEM education and workforce funds, and if fully funded this is going to rival WIOA, two billion a year. And I guess the question is, so with all this kind of funding and movement and flux, and as a workforce leader, what do you see as the implications for the workforce system? And how do you position the workforce system around this?

Marlena: Right, so at a minimum, we better be right there in some great partnerships already, as I referenced earlier with some of these employers who are raking in the big bucks. At a maximum I would hope that we'd be right in there with them, helping them influence their programming, helping them recruit people. I won't mention names of companies, but there's a very large investment here in my backyard, right here in Sunnyvale, California, of an R&D facility in the CHIPS arena, the semiconductor world. And again, these companies are quite open. They have really good government relations, people officers, all kinds of folks who really understand, okay, there's things we do really well, but what's this about partnering with local community-based organizations? What's this about serving some folks who are underserved or historically left behind? What's this about having a childcare facility right on site? And again, at a minimum, I hope we're right there having these dialogues about how we can assist and partnering. So I'm not, again, we're only one. relatively small really, a workforce board, but we've got two or three pretty high level employers that are making some big inroads and we're in touch with them. So my advice to my colleagues around the country would be find those industries and maybe you're not in a CHIPS area, if you will, a semiconductor sort of area, but there are industries that are getting a lot of play through the Inflation Reduction Act, Transportation, et cetera, Commerce. Find those businesses that are even remotely attached to that and start talking to them about how you can help. And bring resources yourself. I know that sounds like bringing gold to people who are already mining gold, but I think even just a little bit of resource as a grantor speaks well for our system to be able to say, and we have resources. We want to be strategic about how we spend them, but we have resources ourselves.

Julian: Yeah. I mean, I think we may have talked about this at some point in the past, but for years I've thought of the workforce dollars, really the dollars you commit to the WIOA system, as catalytic, as leverage money, to really coalesce a lot of other resources. So I guess it's sort of just more in the pot.

Marlena: Exactly, and oh no, but you bring a great point there, Julian. And we should also be bringing to these private companies who may not know who are some of the other resources on the ground who can provide services, who can help if their new employees that they're hiring have some issues and some barriers who can help with those? Or, do they know who the workforce deans are at the various community technical colleges that can help with some training? And can we influence how those trainings are being built? So we can be a translator, we can be a resource with funds, but we can also really just be a partner, a partnership broker, I guess I'd call it.

Kaitlin: So Marlena, building upon your practical piece of advice you gave a policy and funding to what can happen on the ground through partnership. You've been a leader among workforce leaders for many years, and given this current landscape How would you suggest other workforce leaders become forces, as you have in the field? We'd love any other practical steps you might offer for our listeners.

Marlena: I'm going to be pretty blunt. Stop whining and start partnering. Start having those dialogues. I think our workforce system sometimes can say, well, wait, that money didn't come to us directly. Well, no. But does the money still exist? And could we still play a role and play an important role? I'm a big... believer in momentum, you know, sometimes if you just get a little seed money somewhere, you can show some great value and then build. So yeah, maybe it's just getting old in the tooth and I'm, you know, we've got such urgent needs, we've got so little time, we've got industry needs, we've got a community and a country that has a lot of workers who are displaced. We need to just roll up our sleeves and start figuring it out. And so. I don't spend a lot of time in those discussions anymore about, well, why didn't we and why can't we and woulda, coulda, shoulda? What can we do? Let's do it.

Julian: Well, and you've certainly, you know, talked the walk or walked the talk or whatever it is around partnering. I mean, that's really been central to your work as long as I've known you. And I think it's clearly positioned you at the forefront of the field. And as we wrap up the discussion, how can our listeners learn more?

Marlena: novaworks.org. I'm happy to always talk to anyone in the field, especially if anyone is interested in what is workforce development and how do I get into the field. Because as I do get older in my own career, I get very concerned about, do leaders even know what workforce development is? Do incumbents who might never even think about getting a role in education, training, workforce, so I'm always interested. So [e-mail]. I'm happy to respond to anybody, I'm on LinkedIn. Happy to talk especially to people who are interested in this field, because I think it's an amazing field. Every morning when I walk to my office here in Sunnyvale, I get to walk past. our career advisors who are literally one-on-one meeting with job seekers. And it's just so heartening to me that I have the privilege of watching things in action and lives being changed. So I like to spread that enthusiasm and inspiration for sure.

Kaitlin: Well, thank you so much for this inspirational discussion. We learned so much and it's really helpful to hear all that you're doing. And forward to continuing to be in touch.

Julian: Thank you, Marlene.

Marlena: Thank you so much to both of you for what you do.

Kaitlin: That's all we have for you today. Thank you for listening to workforces. We hope that you take away nuggets that you can use in your own work. Thank you to our producer, Dustin Ramsdell. Workforces is available on Apple, Amazon, Google, and Spotify. We hope you will subscribe, like, and share the podcast with your colleagues and friends. If you have interest in sponsoring this podcast, please contact us through the podcast notes.