More than 220 business, education, and community leaders filled the room for the Community Collaborative & Industry Luncheon, hosted by Collaborative Economic Development Oregon and sponsored by Lane Workforce Partnership. The gathering centered on a single idea that has guided Lane County’s workforce work for years: business belongs at the center of workforce and economic development, and sector strategies are how you put it there.
The keynote came from Francie Genz, Co-founder and CEO of Formation and a national leader in Next Generation Sector Partnerships. Genz pointed to Lane County itself as a case study — a region that has shown, over a long stretch of time, what’s possible when industries organize, collaborate, and stay at the table. Her core message was one that reframes how the room tends to talk about this work: sector partnerships aren’t programs to be run, they’re infrastructure to be sustained, and that distinction changes what success looks like. Paired with a panel of regional industry leaders, the keynote gave participants a working picture of how employer-led partnerships strengthen talent pipelines, tighten the fit between training and jobs, and build economic resilience that outlasts any single initiative.
Who Was in the Room
The luncheon pulled together a genuine cross-section of Lane County’s workforce ecosystem: industry leaders spanning construction, healthcare, technology, and manufacturing; workforce and economic development organizations including Lane Workforce Partnership and Collaborative Economic Development Oregon; education and training providers; and state and regional leaders such as Damon Runberg. The panel itself brought industry voices directly into the conversation, with representatives from Knife River Corporation, Penderia Technologies, and PeaceHealth speaking to what workforce challenges look like from inside their organizations.
The Problem Underneath the Event
Lane County’s industries are dealing with a familiar but stubborn set of problems: skills gaps between job seekers and what employers actually need, training programs that drift out of sync with real-time labor market demand, and communication between employers, educators, and workforce systems that too often breaks down before it produces anything. Any single business trying to solve this alone runs into a hard ceiling — the scale of the problem outpaces what one company’s HR department can fix. Genz’s keynote traced these symptoms back to a root cause: unclear labor market signals and disconnected systems, where employers, educators, and workforce providers are operating without a shared, current picture of demand.
How the Luncheon Moved the Work Forward
Rather than treating the event as a one-off, organizers used it to convene industry leaders around shared priorities and to make the case — through Genz’s keynote and the panel discussion — that the sector partnership model is a proven, employer-led way to close these gaps. The dialogue between employers, educators, and workforce partners surfaced concrete next steps, including the formation of industry-led action committees, and reinforced how workforce investments, training programs, and industry demand need to line up for any of this to stick. The throughline was sustained engagement rather than a single fix: a structure for ongoing collaboration, with employer leadership driving the agenda.
What Came Out of It
The luncheon produced outcomes that show up in engagement, not just attendance. Employer participation in sector partnerships increased, and connections between industry and education partners grew stronger. There’s a renewed commitment to solving problems collaboratively across sectors, and real momentum toward standing up and advancing industry-led action committees. Genz’s framing of sector partnerships as long-term infrastructure — not a program with an end date — gave the room a shared vocabulary for that commitment.
For Lane Workforce Partnership, the event affirmed a belief that sits at the core of its work: workforce solutions land best when industry leads and systems are aligned to support that leadership. Having a national figure like Genz deliver the keynote validated years of sustained partnership work in the region and confirmed something the local leaders already suspected — Lane County isn’t just participating in the sector partnership movement nationally, it’s leading it. The luncheon demonstrated the region’s capacity to move past conversation and into coordinated action.
The Longer Arc
The value of the luncheon extends well past the afternoon itself. Employers are now better equipped to articulate what they actually need. Education and training providers have clearer insight into industry demand. Workforce investments can be targeted more strategically, and regional collaboration across sectors has deepened. Genz’s keynote also left the room with a shared understanding of what “market-informed” workforce strategy means in practice — a concept that’s easy to nod along to and hard to operationalize without a common reference point.
That momentum is visible in the industries now organizing around it: construction, healthcare, technology, transportation, wood products, food & beverage manufacturing, bioscience, creatives, childcare, and hospitality are all in various stages of identifying shared priorities and forming action committees focused on workforce development, training alignment, and talent pipeline solutions. Genz’s insights continue to shape how these efforts get more strategic and more market-driven as they develop.
Watch this video to learn more about Lane Workforce Partnerships’ Sector Partnership Model.
