U.S. Secretary of Commerce Penny Pritzker, JPMorgan Chase and The Cara Program honored for their commitment to help Chicago’s unemployed/underemployed job seekers
CHICAGO—October 9, 2015—Skills for Chicagoland’s Future (Skills)—a public-private partnership that meets the hiring needs of employers by offering innovative solutions to place qualified, unemployed and underemployed candidates into available positions—today hosted the first annual Employment Champions Breakfast to announce that it has reached a milestone of placing 2,000 job seekers into jobs, publicly release its strategic plan for continued growth in Chicagoland and national replication of its model, and celebrate the success of employers and community partners who support Skills’ mission of returning the unemployed and underemployed to work.
More than 350 Chicago business, community and workforce development leaders joined Mayor Rahm Emanuel in attending the event at the Standard Club, which was chaired by Motorola Solutions President and CEO and Skills Board Chair Greg Brown. Event co-chairs included Michele Carlin of the HR Policy Association; John Challenger of Challenger, Gray & Christmas; Rich Floersch of McDonald’s Corporation; and Joseph High of Grainger.
“Today, we honor and recognize the more than 50 Chicago-area employers who have partnered with Skills for Chicagoland’s Future, our generous donors and sponsors, as well as the many community partners who have helped us to achieve a milestone of connecting more than 2,000 unemployed and underemployed job seekers with employment—many of whom are from Chicago’s most underserved neighborhoods,” said Marie Trzupek Lynch, founding president and CEO of Skills for Chicagoland’s Future. “We look forward to continuing our work with you and to partnering with additional employers to help more Chicago-area residents get back to work.”
Launched in September 2012 in partnership with the City of Chicago and Cook County, and with support from the corporate sector, Skills was created to help return unemployed Chicago-area job seekers to work by creating demand-driven solutions for employers committed to hiring this population. Since then, approximately 70 percent of the candidates Skills placed into jobs were considered long-term unemployed, having been out of work for 27 consecutive weeks or longer. Further, nearly half of those placed into jobs last year reside in Chicago communities with unemployment rates over 20 percent, including Auburn-Gresham, Austin, Chatham, Humboldt Park, Roseland and West Garfield Park. Skills has become a national thought leader on innovative employment solutions, and is regularly tapped as a resource in the field, demonstrating the need for business intermediaries both locally and nationally.
Earlier this year, Skills introduced a three-year strategic growth plan to scale its placement model in Chicagoland, innovate new demand-driven placement offerings for employers, sustain and diversify funding, and serve as a labor market thought leader on demand-driven solutions leading to systematic change. Skills’ strategic plan goals include placing a total of 5,000 job seekers into employment by 2018 and expanding the model nationally.
“I applaud Skills for Chicagoland’s Future for supporting local employers by putting unemployed and underemployed Chicago-area residents back to work and for helping our residents gain meaningful employment—both of which has made our city stronger,” said Mayor Emanuel. “We look forward to the future with Skills and building our economy by providing hardworking Chicagoans with the opportunities they need to thrive.”
The inaugural Visionary Award was presented to U.S. Secretary of Commerce Penny Pritzker. As the founding Chair of Skills, her vision paved the way for the continued growth and success the organization has realized over the past three years. In honor of her innovation, vision and continued national leadership in the employment space, this award will be renamed the Penny Pritzker Visionary Award.
“Thank you to the leaders of Skills for Chicagoland’s Future for awarding me the first-ever Visionary Award, and I am humbled the board has renamed this award in my honor,” said Pritzker. “I look forward to continuing our work at the Department of Commerce to prepare our nation’s workers for the jobs of the 21st century. I wish Skills for Chicagoland’s Future continued success strengthening the competitiveness and securing the long-term prosperity of our great city.”
The Champion for the Unemployed Award was presented to JPMorgan Chase in recognition of the company’s commitment to supporting Skills’ mission by serving on its Board of Directors, hiring the unemployed, gifting in-kind advertising space and being one of Skills’ primary donors. To date, Chase has contributed more than $1.2 million in financial support to Skills through the company’s News Skills at Work program, and has hired more than 30 unemployed job seekers.
The Advocate for the Unemployed Award was presented to The Cara Program. The teams at both Cara and Skills have become extensions of one another and are invested in tackling employment obstacles together to get the unemployed back to work. Since the partnership began in 2012, the team at Cara has referred nearly 150 candidates, resulting in over 25 placements.
Austin resident Katrina Williams, who with the help of Skills found a job as a loan support specialist at JPMorgan Chase, shared her personal struggle of coping with long-term unemployment.
“I was sending out five to ten job applications each day, but hardly got any response. After a while, you start to feel the mental effects. You think you’ll never have a job again,” said Williams. “Skills was concerned with connecting me to jobs that were the right fit, and they gave me the confidence to keep trying. When Chase called to offer me my job, it was like an answer to a prayer.”
The breakfast was presented by Walgreens Boots Alliance and Motorola Solutions. Additional sponsors of the breakfast included McDonald’s Corporation, Accenture, Aon, CDW, Challenger Gray & Christmas, Grainger, ITW, JPMorgan Chase, True Blue and United. Proceeds from The Employment Champions Breakfast will support Skills’ strategic plan initiatives aligned with returning unemployed and underemployed job seekers to work by creating demand-driven solutions for employers.
