Civic Infrastructure

Growing Inland Achievement seeks to help the Inland Empire’s 4.7M residents with transition points from kindergarten to employment. The regional convener is part of StriveTogether’s network, which is getting attention from foundations and state policymakers. Also, Central New Mexico Community College is betting big on noncredit programs, with a boost from the state. (Subscribe here.)

Education as Economic Development

California’s Inland Empire faces a serious economic mobility challenge. With a fast-growing and diverse population of 4.7M, just 34% of adults in the region hold a college degree, the lowest rate among large U.S. metro areas. And while roughly half the Inland Empire’s population is Latino, only 15% of Latinos there hold at least a bachelor’s degree.

A strong majority of local students and families see the value of college. But pursuing a credential too often is hard to navigate, with confusing messages and daunting costs, says Ashish Vaidya, president and CEO of Growing Inland Achievement.

Meanwhile, potential college students can land jobs for $25 an hour at a local Amazon warehouse, with a $2K signing bonus.

“It’s a complicated risk decision that they have to make,” Vaidya says. “They’re forced to choose between earn and learn.”

Growing Inland Achievement wants at least 70% of working-age adults in the Inland Empire to hold a credential aligned with regional workforce needs. The nonprofit intermediary’s focus stretches from cradle to career.

“We’re looking at the transition points,” says Vaidya, former president of Northern Kentucky University. “That’s where people fall through the cracks.”

The group argues that educational attainment is an economic development strategy. It seeks to bring together the necessary players to attack the region’s challenge holistically, with partners ranging from K–12 educators and college leaders to employers and policymakers.

“We’re not going to solve the problems of the IE if we all work in silos,” Vaidya says. “We need to bring people to the table.”

StriveTogether’s Network: The cradle-to-career intermediary model is gaining momentum. Most of the policy action on workforce development and education is happening at the state and regional levels. And a growing number of states and philanthropies are backing regional conveners like Growing Inland Achievement.

The strategy was pioneered by the Cincinnati-based StriveTogether. Two decades ago, a regional college-readiness project grew into a cross-sectoral push for a new civic infrastructure. StriveTogether later was founded to create a network of community partnerships that deploy this approach to increase economic opportunity.

The network now reaches 70 communities across 29 states and D.C. Growing Inland Achievement signed on last year. “Our network has a lot to learn from the work that they’re doing,” says Jennifer Blatz, StriveTogether’s president and CEO.

StriveTogether directly backs its network, having invested $124M in cradle-to-career and placed-based partnerships since 2018. Variation is wide across those organizations. But each one sets a core goal like Growing Inland Achievement’s target for credential attainment. They also focus on results across key life milestones stretching from kindergarten readiness to employment.

“All intermediaries that we fund are moving toward that North Star goal,” Blatz says. “Our partners are really focused on scale.”

StriveTogether recently launched the Pathways Impact Fund, with financial support from the Walton Family Foundation, Britebound, and the Gates Foundation. The fund seeks to coordinate fragmented investments to create pathways to economic mobility. The pooled effort is attempting to align strategy and capital to move beyond a patchwork of programs.

The fund announced its initial $7.5M in awards in February, with $1.5M grants to regional organizations in Delaware, Illinois, Indiana, Massachusetts, and Ohio. 

For example, the grantee EmployIndy is coordinating a complex education landscape of 11 public school districts, charter schools, and 25K+ employers. The Indianapolis-based intermediary’s focus includes the implementation of Indiana’s new high school graduation requirement and pathways that embed career-connected learning, advising, and dual-credit courses with high-demand sectors.

The pathways strategy is seeing growing interest from funders as well as students, families, and employers, says John Garcia III, the fund’s executive director. He says the central aim is to develop public infrastructure, citing the footprint of Delaware’s pathways system, which now reaches almost 75% of the state’s high school students.

“We want to see regions get to that level of scale,” Garcia says. “Philanthropy is the catalyst for public-sector investment.”

Growing Inland Achievement is one of many intermediaries across the network that has pulled together a coalition to advise statewide policy. The organizations can help drive broader impacts through state funding. For example, Minnesota funds several cradle-to-career intermediaries in the StriveTogether network—citing the group’s approach—through the state’s Education Partnerships Coalition.

In some ways, Garcia says, the place-based collaboration model draws from industrial policy and CHIPS, which has sought to bring together a wide range of local partners to develop talent pipelines for semiconductor manufacturing. Garcia previously was a senior advisor for policy at CHIPS for America.

“We’ve been doing this for 20 years,” he says. “This is the moment.”

Vaidya agrees, and says the stakes are high for the Inland Empire, which has a larger population than 25 states. He says success for the fast-growing IE and its rapidly changing economy could be a model for other regions.

The Kicker: “This is the proof point, not just for the state, but for the country,” says Vaidya.

The Future of Work Reporting Fellowship, co-managed by Work Shift and New America’s Future of Work & Innovation Economy Initiative, will support journalists telling stories that explore how government and private investments are reshaping economic opportunity. Learn more and apply by July 24.

State Funding for Short-Term Training

Community colleges have been expanding their noncredit offerings, as student interest in short-term programs of all kinds has exploded—but few have committed as fully as Central New Mexico Community College.

The college has been rapidly expanding CNM Ingenuity, a nonprofit branch that offers about 80 noncredit workforce training programs, and building clear pathways from that noncredit training into the college’s core academic offerings. That’s a core selling point for students, including several whom reporter Colleen Connolly talked with for an article in Work Shift this week.

Since 2025, enrollment in CNM’s noncredit programs has surged from about 6K to 10K. The state has bolstered the effort, setting aside $60M over three years, beginning in 2025, to fund short-term credentials of value. About a third of that money has gone to CNM, and it covers 100% of program costs for students—significant support, considering the average cost for the college’s bootcamps is $12K. 

“The state support for higher education, particularly at a time when many schools are closing or shutting down programs, is significant,” says Tracy Hartzler, president of the community college. “The fact that we have a state that believes in workforce funding has been a game changer for us.”

Even with Workforce Pell coming online this month, Hartzler expects state funding will remain the primary support. Nine of CNM’s programs will likely qualify for Pell, but Hartzler says that, generally, the federal program is too inflexible and bureaucratic to support most workforce training. Noncredit programs, in particular, have to jump through a lot of hoops to qualify.

That may get easier over time, depending on how states and colleges modify their programs and policies to align with Workforce Pell. But as Mark D’Amico, an expert on noncredit education, recently told us: Some noncredit programs may never qualify even if they are filling an important need.

“States use the noncredit function to meet their specific needs,” he says. “Not all those are going to meet the Workforce Pell parameters, but they may still be meeting local and student needs.”

Read Connolly’s full story on Work Shift. —By Elyse Ashburn

Open Tabs

Employer Co-Investment
At least 18 states collect employer contributions that are dedicated to funding workforce development, often for training for currently employed workers, finds an analysis from New America’s Taylor White and Braden Goetz. For example, a program from Louisiana seeks to upgrade worker skills to prevent job loss. The authors ask about creative ways to develop more employer co-ownership of talent development systems, including career pathways.

Two-Year Colleges
Student enrollment in Texas community colleges immediately after high school has declined sharply over the past 15 years, with rates recovering slightly since the pandemic, finds an analysis from the Federal Reserve Bank of Dallas. Some of the decline can be attributed to students instead enrolling in public four-year institutions. The analysis also found that completion rates for bachelor’s degrees have risen in Texas, including for students who first enrolled at a community college.

AI and Jobs
The statistical infrastructure needed to measure AI’s impact on the economy already exists, writes Nathan Goldschlag, director of research at the Economic Innovation Group. But that infrastructure needs an upgrade, fast, to match the scale of the challenge. Goldschlag, a former principal economist at the U.S. Census Bureau, outlines investments in U.S. statistical agencies that will give them the ability to answer key questions about AI and the economy.

Data Centers
The skilled-labor shortage in the U.S. is limiting growth for builders of data centers, Rachel Phua reports for Bloomberg. A lack of electricians, pipe fitters, and site supervisors is forcing firms to turn away work or poach crews. The data center boom is exacerbating construction labor shortages in key markets, according to a paywalled analysis from Oxford Economics. Building costs in Pittsburgh, Baltimore, and Dallas have surged 7% over the past year.

Journeyman Credentials
Licensure is the choke point for the skilled trades, investor Ryan Craig writes in his newsletter. Producing more licensed journeymen is part of the solution. Rigid state supervision ratio requirements often prevent the hiring of apprentices, he argues. And not every construction worker needs a journeyman credential before being allowed to work independently. Craig calls on states to create narrower credentials for journeymen with shorter time frames.

Employer Intermediaries
Strada Education Foundation is backing seven employer intermediary groups with grants of $100K each. The grant program seeks to test and support the effectiveness of intermediaries, which can include chambers of commerce, community colleges, or industry associations, as they implement functions outlined in a Strada framework. The Kentucky Chamber Foundation, for example, will leverage the framework to build statewide capacity for intermediaries.

Job Moves
Kymberly Lavigne-Hinkley has been hired by Goodwill Industries International as senior director of workforce innovation and systems integration. Lavigne-Hinkley previously was director of the learning and employment record ecosystem at Western Governors University, and most recently was the university’s director of national philanthropic partnerships.

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