Building on the success of the Columbus Region as a premier destination for growing a business depends on more than great geography, infrastructure, affordable cost of living and quality of life. The region has all those things, but businesses can’t thrive without dependable access to the right workforce.
That’s where collaboration and public-private partnerships — our region’s superpowers — come in.
Businesses, governments, community organizations, and educational institutions are collaborating to provide the teaching and training workers need to be qualified for the jobs that are coming with central Ohio’s booming tech, data and life-sciences industries. Initiatives span from K-12 through college, but some of the most innovative outreach is happening with high-schoolers and even middle-schoolers.
As Emerging Talent Manager for One Columbus, Opal Brant specializes in workforce development at the K-12 level and considers high schools the “biggest workforce development engine.” That importance has grown with employers’ rising need for workers that can step into productive roles immediately; moreover, keeping as many young adults as possible in the community starts with showing them at an early age the wealth of opportunities available right where they grew up.
Powering up STEM summer programming
A focus on work-based learning — bridging the gap between classroom and real-world work sites — runs through the many programs sponsored by community and industry partners. The PAST Foundation, founded a quarter-century ago by an international group of anthropologists and other scientists and educators to link STEM learning to young people’s lives, operates Power Up Your Potential, an eight-week immersive summer program for students ages 15 to 18.
Participants get hands-on training on projects with real-world applications and spend time with mentors, ensuring opportunities to gain both technical knowledge and interpersonal skills. Critical support from key partners makes the summer program possible. Aspyr Workforce Innovation, formerly known as the Workforce Development Board of Central Ohio, provides essential funding, ensuring student participants can be paid competitive wages.
Another key supporter of the program has been the Columbus-based team at Deloitte. In the past three years, Deloitte employees have mentored more than 150 PAST youth; in the most recent summer program, the company developed and led a curriculum focused on artificial intelligence, with students working in small groups to develop AI applications that could be useful in health care, education, law enforcement and transportation.
Close collaboration with the Ohio Department of Education ensures that Power Up Your Potential helps students earn industry-recognized credentials that can satisfy part of Ohio’s requirements for high-school graduation. In 2024, participants in the program earned more than 250 recognized credentials for skills including leadership excellence, computer-assisted design and additive manufacturing, drone flight, Lean Six Sigma, information technology and CPR/AED.
Partnerships have been essential to the PAST Foundation’s success throughout its 25-year history, says Chief Executive Officer Annalies Corbin, who added, “Hands-on, applied-knowledge experiences have been largely missing in traditional school settings, so we are thrilled that public-private partnerships are now getting the attention and resources they deserve.”
Building skills for evolving business needs
Ohio Excels, founded in 2018 by a coalition of the Ohio Business Roundtable, the Columbus Partnership, the Greater Cleveland Partnership and the Cincinnati Business Committee, has focused on state education policy, advocating for graduation standards that ensure Ohio graduates are prepared to thrive in a global economy.
When JPMorganChase in 2020 chose Columbus as one of six U.S. cities to share a $75 million grant designed to prepare young workers in underserved communities for jobs in need of workers, Ohio Excels was named as coordinator of the five-year program. Central Ohio’s share was $7 million, with Columbus City Schools, Columbus State Community College, Ohio State University and the state of Ohio in league to expose young people from ninth grade and into college to high-value careers.
The result was the New Skills Ready Network, with a focus on pathways — collaborating to ensure that students’ career-building experiences at each level are aligned with what they’ll experience at the level that follows. The partners started with IT and health care and later expanded into advanced manufacturing and construction — fields being supercharged by Intel’s massive investment in chip-building in New Albany as well as central Ohio’s emergence as a magnet for data-center development.
“It’s all anchored in what the business community says they need,” said Ohio Excels President Lisa Gray. The collaboration goes both ways; as the educational institutions work to teach students the skills businesses say they need, Gray and Brant encourage businesses to communicate with the educators to make sure they understand those needs, which constantly evolve along with the economy.
Strengthening and extending the public-private partnership
As the grant that enabled the New Skills Ready Network comes to a close, Gray says central Ohio is “program rich,” with multiple educational systems and businesses combining efforts to match youthful potential with in-demand careers. Now, a new $2.1 million grant from JPMorganChase will help strengthen the system that ties those efforts together. It also will expand the impact beyond Columbus and foster equity by addressing the needs of diverse people and families.
One Columbus will lead the creation of a regional workforce collaborative, partnering with Columbus City Schools; Ohio Excels; Zora’s House, an agency supporting community and creativity among women and nonbinary people of color; and NationSwell, an organization that supports social impact organizations through leadership advice and training.
As its economy expands and ever more jobs are created, central Ohio’s workforce needs will be well served by the spirit of public-private partnership that distinguishes the region.
“First and foremost, the leadership of the business community sets us apart” in workforce development, Gray said. “The fact that there’s somebody waking up every day thinking about this — that’s what it takes.”