Leila Makarechi: The reality is these training programs are hard to fit in alongside a current job. Most folks who are having trouble making ends meet are working, they’re just not earning enough. So just being mindful of the complexity that adults have in their life needs to be really top of mind.

Amanda Ellis: That’s the voice of Leila Makarechi. She’s the Chief Business Officer at Merit America, a national nonprofit working to close the opportunity gap through training for in-demand tech careers. Leila joins us for part one of a two-part series on upskilling. Keep listening to learn how you can boost your pool of skilled workers and spark upward mobility for people in your community. I’m Amanda Ellis, and you’re listening to Inside America’s Best Cities, a podcast for chamber, economic development, and talent attraction professionals on how your community can be an even better place to live. To learn more about this podcast, visit livabilitymedia.com. And with that, let’s jump in. Leila, thanks so much for being here. I know I, for one, can’t wait to hear your insights on upskilling and how communities can work toward building and growing their talent pool. So thanks for being here.

Leila Makarechi: Thank you so much for having me.

Amanda Ellis: First of all, how do Merit America programs generally work? What sort of credentials do participants end up with? Just kind of fill us in with a high level overview.

Leila Makarechi: Absolutely. Happy to. So Merit America is an organization that really is focused on providing pathways to family-sustaining careers for adults who typically don’t have college degrees. We do that by providing technical skills training and pretty intensive personalized career coaching. Our programs are completely online and they’re really designed to be flexible and affordable and fit within people’s work and family schedule. So we like to say we’re designed to work for people who work. All of our training is part-time, technical training is asynchronous and the coaching slots in around someone’s really busy schedule. Our participants earn industry recognized certificates when they go through our training tracks. So right now we offer training in IT support, java development, data analytics, and we’ll be launching UX design soon. And our learners who complete our programs have really fabulous outcomes, and that’s what we care most about. So right now, our average annual wage gain for a learner going through our programs is about $18,000 per learner per year, and really opening the door to a more sustainable income source amid the rising cost of living we’re all facing.

Amanda Ellis: Yeah. That’s certainly no joke at the moment as I think we’re all seeing. So how much time are they typically going to be spending to complete one of those programs?

Leila Makarechi: Yeah, it depends on the track. Our Java development is the longest program and IT is the shortest. So to give you a sense, it is about 14 weeks of training. Data analytics is about 16, UX will probably be about 20. It depends a little bit between track, but on average some we’re around 20 hours a week.

Amanda Ellis: Gotcha. So as you know, Leila, our listeners work in the chamber of commerce, economic development type space, and a lot of them are really thinking about how do we upscale our people, make sure we have the workforce for our existing companies and new companies that we want to bring in and all of those things. So for communities who might want to partner with you to help meet some of those goals, how might that work?

Leila Makarechi: First and foremost, local community employers can hire our alumni. That’s really our biggest selling point. We have an incredibly diverse, highly talented, and really well-trained set of alumni, thousands and thousands of learners completing our programs in all 50 states across the country. Second, we can work with community for partners, employers, or chambers of commerce to really design innovative and effective upskilling programs either for existing employees who are on the frontline jobs or just for local residents. Third, we can partner with government entities, and I’ll talk in a moment about a couple ways we do this, to really make sure that residents have access to training even if they can’t afford to quit a job that they might be in and need to pay their rent month to month. And lastly, for community foundations, a really important source of our partnerships are working closely with community foundations and local donors who really want to invest in a proven approach to economic mobility. I’ll give a quick example of a couple ways we’ve worked with different communities across the country to have really strong outcomes. We partnered with the city of Sacramento in California and we worked with another organization called General Assembly to re-skill populations who had suffered from COVID-19 job losses. So in that partnership, we actually worked with local employers like Accenture who was hiring locally in the area, Zennify and VSB, to bring our alumni into roles that they needed to fill. And we had incredible outcomes. Of the learners Merit trained, over 90% were successful in securing employment. We’re also working at the state level on a partnership in Delaware called Tech Impact in a couple of different counties across Delaware to provide our training programs to local residents. And then lastly, just one example on the employer side, we partner with Amazon through a program they have called Career Choice, where fulfillment center workers in different communities actually can use an Amazon benefit program to get sponsored to go through our training programs. And last year we worked with over a thousand Amazon fulfillment center workers across the country. The how to get involved is pretty easy. You can start just by sending a quick email to [email protected]. Happy to bring in the right folks on our teams. Leila is L-E-I-L-A.

Amanda Ellis: Yeah, I think this is just such a great resource for communities trying to work towards these goals without them having to create something from the ground up on their own when there’s these resources that already exist, right?

Leila Makarechi: Mm-hmm.

Amanda Ellis: I know you already gave some examples, but do you have any other examples of programs communities have created, chambers, economic development, groups that don’t necessarily have to be once you’ve been part of, but just a few you really like that you could throw out?

Leila Makarechi: Sure. Yeah. I was recently reading actually about our program coming out of Iowa, the Story County Retraining Program in partnership with the Chamber of Commerce. I think if I remember, they launched in 2021 to address some of the workforce challenges resulting from COVID. What really caught my eye about this program was they offered retraining in areas like welding or manufacturing, construction, healthcare, kind of across the gamut, but it seemed like they were really focusing in on the needs of their local workforce and really training towards opportunities that existed in real time and matched their employer demand. And then in addition, I really was impressed with the other wraparound benefits that were provided, things like transportation assistance or childcare cash stipends.

Amanda Ellis: Yes. That’s actually a perfect example. We’re actually also going to be interviewing the Ames Chamber to talk more about what they’re doing. So that was a great one to pull out.

Leila Makarechi: Great.

Amanda Ellis: I also love what they’re doing with those wraparound support aspects. I love that you called that out. What do you feel are the biggest barriers typically to completion rates of programs like this and success of programs like this for the participants?

Leila Makarechi: Yeah. So our programs are totally online and it helps sort of address some aspect of the childcare, although those of us who work from home can attest to having kids around isn’t always the easiest. Some of those burdens are reduced by having kind of asynchronous online training opportunities. But look, the reality is these training programs are hard to fit in alongside a current job. Most folks who are having trouble making ends meet are working, they’re just not earning enough to sustain their family. And I like to say, if you asked me to do something relatively stress-free and in some ways easy like take yoga for 20 hours a week on top of my current life, I would really struggle to do it. It’s hard to fit in things around your existing schedule. And so I think just being mindful of the complexity that adults have in their life, especially people who are working really hard to try to just keep up with bills and bills that are getting larger and larger in our current situation. So I think the flexibility that programs offer needs to be really top of mind in making sure that the coaching element and the wraparound support fits within learner’s lives rather than disrupting their lives. And then the last challenge is from the other side of the table, oftentimes there are training programs that are offering great opportunities and learners might be really excited to enroll, and yet there can be a mismatch between the supply of jobs rating on the other end and the demand, let’s say, of employers to hire learners for their roles and the supply of learners graduating programs. So just try to be really mindful of real-time employer hiring needs. Obviously, we’re seeing lots of fluctuations across the country right now in terms of hiring freezes and layoffs and just keeping a really close pulse on who is hiring for what roles and aligning skills training specifically to those opportunities.

Amanda Ellis: Yes. So that sparks two follow-up questions for me. So the first one is kind of going back to those four focus areas that you mentioned. How did you all select those?

Leila Makarechi: We partnered with Bridgespan to analyze all job families in the United States economy, and we studied the economy and filtered through different factors. It was a pretty intense analysis, but just to give you a quick sense, we looked for roles that would not be at risk of automation and that would have projected increased employer demand over the future. So we didn’t want to train folks for jobs that might be available today, but may not be around three or five or 10 years from now. We also really looked, and I touched on this a moment ago, for that imbalance of supply and demand. So what are tracks where employers are really struggling to fill roles and have lots and lots of open requisitions, but we don’t have enough workers with the right skills to come in and take those jobs? We also looked for tracks that had some degree of openness to people without degrees. We know there’s over 50 million adults in our workforce stuck in low wage opportunities, vast majority don’t have college degrees. And if we’re training folks but not setting them up for success to get a foot in the door just because they don’t have the college degree, we knew we wouldn’t be successful. So that actually for us took out some roles in healthcare where you might get in the door initially maybe as a radiology tech and have a great job, but some of the healthcare fields we looked at, it is actually quite difficult to go up and experience mobility without a degree. And then lastly, we considered what are tracks we could focus on really effectively in an online environment. So again, lots of really great opportunities in healthcare, but we felt like some of those job families-

Amanda Ellis: Online might not be the best way to practice some of that.

Leila Makarechi: Exactly. Exactly. That’s right.

Amanda Ellis: That makes a lot of sense. That’s actually a perfect lead in to my other follow up question, which is related to the online coursework.

Leila Makarechi: Sure.

Amanda Ellis: So in my own experience, which has been doing a little bit of both and my educational background in terms of some online stuff, some live and in-person stuff, and then of course we’ve all done way more stuff online virtually in the last few years that used to be in person, what’s your all’s approach to keeping those courses engaging? Because I feel like so much of that piece of things can sometimes get lost in a virtual format.

Leila Makarechi: Absolutely. Yeah. Recent numbers I saw is something like online course completion rate is like, I don’t know, less than 10%. It’s quite low. And I personally really struggle to complete online training on my own. I think what’s really key here, and this is kind of our secret sauce, are our coaches, right? So it’s not just go online, get certified in IT, good luck. The material that we offer is broken down. So there’s a lot of flexibility in terms of when you do the training within a week and a lot of structure and accountability in making sure that from week to week certain material is being covered. And then the coaches are just incredible at creating a sense of community as well. So learners aren’t going through this on their own. They’re in squads with other learners and they meet in squads. They have coaches facilitate lots of their sessions in squads. So that sense of community and knowing you’re not alone or if you’re struggling or having a hard time with something, someone else who might be doing really well can reach out and say, “Hey, look, this module, I tackled it like this.” That community support is really important. So I think it’s a mix of flexibility, but also accountability and structure with a sense of community that really helps people have very strong completion rates.

Amanda Ellis: Yes. That definitely makes sense. Thinking about if a community were to partner with you all on one of the tracks that we’ve already talked about, would the people in that community be training alongside people who were also local or would it be just kind of mixed in with your reach kind of nationally?

Leila Makarechi: It can work either way. So in the Hartford Connecticut example, we set that up so that the Hartford residents were mostly in the same cohort or the same sessions together. So there’s flexibility there if folks want to be mixed in and just kind of pick the time that works best for them and they might have someone from another area in their cohort, that’s an option. Or if we have a community partner who really wants certain group of residents or certain organization to be together, those are definitely discussions we’re open to having.

Amanda Ellis: Gotcha. I know you’ve already rolled in a lot of different really good advice for communities of things to be thinking about when they’re looking at creating these types of programs, whether they’re doing it on their own or looking to a group for support, but any other advice, tidbits that come to mind that maybe you haven’t already addressed?

Leila Makarechi: Yeah, I think it’s really just kind of that magical combination of… I think the way I’d say it is there’s really important role to play for each different sector in our community, right? So government can be such a critical leader in bringing to bear some of these programs. We’ve seen that some of the examples I’ve shared, and there’s so many great funding streams available right now through Department of Labor, Department of Commerce. And then the employer community, I think really key to have a seat at the table as well, and again, making sure that we are as training providers, as community new organizations, we’re really training to the skill sets and the skill gaps that employers have and clear on what those are and having strong feedback loops for people who are coming out of programs and making sure they are equipped to not just to get the role initially, but to be retained and promoted and thrive long term. And then for nonprofit organizations or other community organizations like Merit and others, again, really important role to play in sort of providing the skill training effectively and in a way that works for the population you’re working with. So for Merit, our population, as I shared, most of our learners are working. And so that’s really top of mind for us. There are wonderful organizations that work with youth or people who are unemployed or offer full-time immersive programs, and there are different design components that are important for the population you’re partnering with.

Amanda Ellis: So as someone really entrenched in talent development, what do you see as the biggest challenges related to workforce in the coming years? Just kind of more of the same of what’s happening now? Or what are your thoughts?

Leila Makarechi: Yeah. Wall Street Journal recently had an article on the great rebalancing, talking about how with some hiring freezes and layoffs, there might be some leveling out of the employee power dynamic, which over the last two years, we’ve all heard the press about the Great Resignation and workers having a little bit more leverage. Actually, just a side point on this, we are actually saying that there are still many, many jobs to be had, technology jobs to be had. They might just be at different size companies or in different industries. It might not just be the big, big name tech companies where we’re seeing some layoffs, but a lot of our medium-sized employer partners or even small and medium-sized businesses are actually still hiring. There are many companies who are still on a really important digital transformation process and need people to be equipped in data analytics and know how to code. So that’s just sort of a side note. But looking ahead, I think it’s going to be a continued challenge and really at the forefront for companies to have real commitment to diversifying talent pipelines through partners like Merit. We know that, again, of those 53 million Americans who are stuck in low age jobs, a vast majority are our people of color. And bringing in more diverse talent pipelines, there’s so much research into the benefits of that, both financially and for the culture of the company. I think thinking about upskilling programs for frontline workers, the way that we’re doing with Amazon is just going to increasingly become important for retention and for keeping talent acquisition costs down. It’s much less expensive for a company to retrain and retain internally than to constantly be recruiting for new talent and in dealing with retention difficulties. And lastly, I think we’re starting to see employers really come to terms with the fact that degrees are actually not the best indicator for job performance and figuring out ways to measure and track signifiers of talent that isn’t just reliant on a college degree. I think these things together will lead to more equitable outcomes for workers. These challenges are really important, not just for the economic health of our country, but also to address the income inequality we’ve built up over the last half of century.

Amanda Ellis: Yeah. I know the diversification aspect piece that you were talking about is also a really important key focus area for our listeners and the organizations that they work with. We’re seeing this workforce development infrastructure piece be so important for site selection, for communities competing for both talent, and for businesses. So I know this info will be really, really helpful. As we head towards wrapping up here, so in researching you, before we got on today-

Leila Makarechi: Uh-oh.

Amanda Ellis: … I read that you are fluent in four languages.

Leila Makarechi: Yes.

Amanda Ellis: What are the four languages? That’s impressive.

Leila Makarechi: I do speak many languages and I say I don’t speak any of them super well. So obviously English is one, but I’m a first generation American myself. My first language was actually Persian. My parents are immigrants from Iran, so that’s one as well. And then I’ve had the great fortune to live and work in many Spanish-speaking countries doing some economic development work in a previous part of my career. So Spanish, and lastly, French.

Amanda Ellis: That is amazing. The thing I always ask all of our listeners, so where are you based?

Leila Makarechi: Yeah, I’m in Berkeley, California.

Amanda Ellis: What is like a bucket list item, something kind of off the usual tourist radar that visitors to your area should be sure to do?

Leila Makarechi: Oh, what a fabulous question. I would say to check out Tilden Regional Park. It’s probably not as famous unless you’ve spent a lot of time in this specific town. But it is just a gorgeous, gorgeous park. So much hiking, expansive views of the Bay in San Francisco and rolling hills, and lots of fun stuff for kids in there as well. Steam trains and a kind of little mini farm where children can play with animals, a carousel. It’s a kind of secret hidden gem of Berkeley.

Amanda Ellis: Awesome. Well, thank you so much, Leila, for taking some time to be on. I really appreciate it.

Leila Makarechi: Of course. Thank you so much for having us and for the opportunity to share about Merit America. We’re so happy to be here. If there’s anyone listening who’s interested in a partnership, we’d absolutely love to have a conversation.

Amanda Ellis: Thanks for listening to the Livability podcast, where we take you Inside America’s Best Cities. At Livability, we highlight the unsung awesomeness of small and mid-sized cities across the country. We also partner with communities to reach their target companies and potential residents through digital content and print magazine programs. If you enjoyed this episode, please follow, rate, and review this show wherever you listen to podcasts. You can learn more about us at livabilitymedia.com. Have an idea for an upcoming episode? Email me at [email protected]. Until next time, from Livability, I’m Amanda Ellis, sharing the stories of America’s most promising places.