Registration

Description

Centering Community Voice and Experience to Achieve Equitable Individual and Family Sustaining Workforce Investments

Across the SoCal Region, various government, nonprofit and philanthropic entities are seeking to make investments in workforce development and educational approaches that ensure people have employment opportunities that help them thrive and lead to upward mobility and equitable outcomes.  Many of these efforts are intentionally seeking out non-traditional organizations and partnerships to expand the reach of workforce development investments. The most innovative and successful use strategies and approaches that emphasize the importance of centering the learning and investment in the experiences and needs of the communities and people they serve.  These initiatives are centering workforce needs and related system changes in human centered design and worker power. They reach across boundaries and strive to build intersectional responses that reach beyond traditional workforce development organizations and systems to develop approaches that are rooted in a holistic/whole person approach. This requires looking at root causes, removing obstacles such as poverty, discrimination, forced powerlessness, and lack of access to good jobs with fair pay quality education, housing, safe environments, and health care.

This webinar will feature several examples of organizations that are promoting holistic workforce strategies that improve educational and employment outcomes and close disparities for youth and adults, with special attention to groups impacted by policies, practices, and narratives that act as barriers to advancement.

About the Workforce Funders Group

The SCG Workforce Funders Group convenes funders from various disciplines working with systemically and historically excluded communities to promote equitable access to quality jobs in the Southern California (SoCal) grantmakers region. The group focuses on advancing workforce development and educational approaches that seek to ensure young people have employment opportunities that help them thrive and lead to upward mobility and equitable outcomes.  As part of its work together, the group will share learning, create networking opportunities, and explore various funding models to inform individual and collective grantmaking. 

Speakers

A charming Black queer with a short afro, wearing a black sweater and glasses, stands and crosses their arms in front of a grey and white background. They have a big, friendly smile.

Janel Bailey

Los Angeles Black Worker Center

Janel Bailey is a campaigner who has devoted their time to organizing to improve the lives of working people, with an emphasis on queer and Black workers. Janel is currently the Co-Executive Director of Organizing and Programs at the LA Black Worker Center, where Black workers come together to address the Black jobs crisis in California and improve their working and living conditions. Their current 1000 Strong campaign is redefining "Workforce Development" as it's known to instead center equity and Black workers' leadership and connect 1,000 Black workers in LA to public sector jobs.

Prior to joining the L.A. Black Worker Center, Janel led canvasses to help establish the Chicago Worker Center for Racial Justice’s first membership. Janel—who later served on the Board of the Center for Racial & Gender Equity—was an Organizing Coordinator with the SEIU based in Chicago and is a National Trainer for Jobs with Justice. Janel has organized alongside Black workers and allies to reclaim more than $100,000 in stolen wages and to win union contracts for hundreds of workers in Chicagoland and Milwaukee, Wisconsin, including the first industry-wide union for security officers in Milwaukee.

Janel Bailey was a Weingart Foundation Mack Fellow in 2020 and a fellow of the inaugural Executive Cohort of Women Empowering Labor Leadership (WILL Empower) at Rutgers and Georgetown University. If there were three people, dead or alive, they could join for lunch, they’d be Mayor Harold Washington, Questlove, and Prince.
Black Hair, Brown Skin, and Facial Hair. Blue suit with red tie.

Jason Cordova SCG Member

Senior Program Officer, The James Irvine Foundation

Jason Cordova joined The James Irvine Foundation in 2022 as a Senior Program Officer serving the Better Careers initiative. Jason oversees strategy development and grantmaking focused on supporting community-led and -accountable non-profit organizations across California that provide comprehensive support and connections to quality training and jobs for Californians who have been failed by multiple systems.

Jason has over ten years of nonprofit experience, focused on inclusive economic, education, and workforce development. He previously served as Vice President of Entrepreneurship and Workforce Development at the Los Angeles Area Chamber of Commerce, Vice President at the Inland Empire Economic Partnership, Senior Program Coordinator at Bright Prospect, and Program Manager for the Southern California College Access Network. Jason is a first-generation college graduate with a degree in American Studies & Philosophy from Connecticut College.
Sam Lewis, Executive Director from the Anti Recidivism Coalition.

Samuel Lewis

Executive Director, Anti Recidivism Coalition

Sam Lewis is the Executive Director of the Anti-Recidivism Coalition (ARC). Previously, Sam served as the Director of Inside Programs. A former life prisoner himself, Sam understands the various obstacles, challenges, and difficulties the prison and reentry populations face. In 2017, Sam created the Hope And Redemption Team (HART), a first-of-its-kind initiative he built from scratch. The Hope & Redemption Team (HART) was a group of nine former California life prisoners who go back into California state prisons to provide hope, demonstrate that redemption is achievable, and prepare participants for successful reentry into our communities. The Hope And Redemption Team is now a statewide program that is offered in every Prison. Sam’s work directing the Hope and Redemption Team exemplifies what’s best about ARC: our desire to reach and walk with those who have been most marginalized by society. Since 2015, on most Saturdays, Sam can be found leading a team of Credible Messenger Mentors who support youth currently housed at Barry J. Nidorf Juvenile Hall. These youths are facing potentially long prison sentences. These unique mentors are trained in Transformative Mentoring and use a peer-to-peer Credible Messenger model to encourage incarcerated youth to believe in themselves and pursue their education while incarcerated. Through the Department of Youth Development, this model has now been adopted, and ARC Credible Messengers work full-time in Barry J. Nidorf Juvenile Hall and Campus Kilpatrick mentoring incarcerated youth. Sam serves on the Probation Oversight Committee and the Transformation Advisory Council.

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