Greg Morris shares how advocacy, partnerships, and storytelling can powerfully impact local workforce systems and uplift underserved communities.
Podcast Transcript
ALEXIS FRANKS: Good morning, good afternoon and good evening all you, workforce warriors across the country. Welcome to another episode of workforce on the mic, where we explore people, programs and policies shaping workforce development across the country today, we’re excited to peer into the challenges and opportunities and workforce development at the local level. Our guest, Greg Morris, CEO of the New York City Employment and Training coalition, brings a wealth of experience in implementing strategies to tackle metropolitan area workforce challenges, and he’s also on the front line of connecting underserved job seekers and businesses in New York. So we’ll discuss how to advocate for workforce programs in our communities, strategies that organizations can use to tackle employment barriers and what’s working to create real impact for job seekers. So as we say, we are going to pass the mic over to you, Greg. So welcome to you.
GREG MORRIS: Oh, thank you for making this time. I really do appreciate it. It’s always a pleasure to talk to and engage with the workforce warriors.
ALEXIS FRANKS: Yes, absolutely. We’re glad to hear from you today, and really for all of our listeners today, if you can just start out by explaining an overview of where you are in the country and the work that you do.
GREG MORRIS: So I am located right now in New York City, so I represent the New York City Employment and Training coalition. And the New York City Employment and Training coalition is an association of organizations, entities, agencies, not for profit, providers who are all in the business of serving New Yorkers, who have an interest in finding a job, finding a new job, Thinking about career advancement currently employed, but are looking for other supports and resources so that they can retain their employment. These are also entities that are thinking about reskilling and upskilling. These are singularly focused, in some cases, training providers. These are multi service, multi generational providers. This includes higher education institutions. It includes labor. It includes consultants and other partners who are thinking about this work. It includes city government agencies. What I do, essentially, in running this coalition is sort of seek to meet the needs of those entities that are thinking about supporting New Yorkers and making sure they have the budgetary supports they need to be successful, the legislative sort of commitments that are necessary to ensure that their work is as impactful as it possibly be. And we’re also always thinking about the contractual or compliance related issues that are affecting the workforce, because what we want is to ensure that New Yorkers are on pathways to good jobs, better jobs, and growing, expanding industries, but always with an eye towards ensuring the right wages, the benefits and the supports that are necessarily for people to live and excel in a city that is, to be honest, increasingly unaffordable.
ALEXIS FRANKS: That’s big. That’s big. When Greg it sounds like this is a huge network of what all sounds like, workforce professionals, which we feel as our members and our listeners are chiming in. Those are all of the pieces that really make our programs work, the agencies and entities that you mentioned. So that sounds like a just a beautiful coalition or area and environment for people to come together, to all serve the same purpose. So that’s great to hear the work that you’re doing. So just a couple of questions for you today. So Greg, how do you and the coalition advocate for workforce programs in New York?
GREG MORRIS: So the coalition itself is representative of 220 organizations, entities, agencies, and that is made up of 6000 professional give or take. And that’s everything across the spectrum of individuals who are thinking about how it is the workforce that supports and creates workforce development opportunities in New York City, right? And so the starting, the reason why I sort of frame that, or start there, is to say, while I’m in the policy and advocacy space at this point in my career, I started out 20 plus years ago in New York City, focused on program development. So I say that because the individuals and professionals that I think always relate. To best are those folks who are on the ground engaging in the lives of individuals. And I say I bring that to the table when I talk about advocacy, because at the end of the day, I know based on my history and my experience from where I started all those years ago to today, I know how challenging it is when in front of you is someone who’s trying to get a foothold in the job market, and the energy and effort that you put into trying to help them create a path for themselves to be able to do that with as much energy and focus as you need to advocate for investments in workforce development gets really hard, and I think our coalition is about representing those needs and interests. But at the end of the day, the storytelling that those individual workforce development providers, those focused organizations do to talk about the value and impact of the work, who it is that they’re serving, and how, whether it is the under resourced, underserved neighborhood from East Harlem to the north shore of Staten Island, or Morosini in the Bronx to part of the west side of Manhattan. You know like to be able to tell the story about what you do and how you do it, and how you’re creating value and impact across the city in support of individuals is a key piece of what it is that advocacy has to look like. And so you want to tell that story about what’s happening in that neighborhood, in that specific industry, with those specific individuals at the same time as you have the data that says, this is what the employment numbers are like, where you are right now. This is what wages look like right now. These are the job opportunities. This is who’s finding the job opportunities. This is who’s not in this city right now, the middle class has essentially shrunk in New York City. There’s a lot of low wage workers and there’s high wage workers, and that, what that means is that folks are not able to sort of make their way from low wage workforce to the middle class workforce, and that’s a particular critical function. So when I think about advocacy, I’m thinking specifically about how it is that we story tell about the individuals who are finding their way, or how it is that we story tell about the barriers and the complexities that make that hard to do, or how it is that we need to reduce the barriers to do that at the same time as we have the metrics and the data and the detail that sort of says this is what it takes from a financial commitment. This is what it takes from a legislative point of view as well.
ALEXIS FRANKS: Right, Right. Well, and you bring up a great point for a lot of our frontline team members that are working with customers every day, it’s hard to tell the story when you’re in it and you’re focused on serving the customer, serving that participant. So really taking that time out to say, Okay, we have our data, we have our metrics. How can we tell the story and put the individual to the forefront of how we’re really making the impact? That’s huge. So as I’m glad to hear that as the coalition coalition, you’re really making that effort to do that storytelling piece in that same network, in that same space with those frontline workers. That’s that’s huge. So Greg, how does your organization address challenges and barriers for customers at the local level as well?
GREG MORRIS: So the beauty of the organizations that we work with and that we’re connected to the business of this work, and this has certainly been true over the course of my career, is that, and this is as someone who started 20 plus years ago, starting actually signing young people up for a program called Summer Youth Employment in New York City, where young adults get pathways to, you know, six weeks of work during the summer. The city has made a big investment over the course of that time, just the prospect of being able to help people put their paperwork together to find a job for that six weeks. That’s how I started all that time going I remember thinking all those years ago, because of my own background, my history, of my experience, I just thought if you got a foot in the door, that’s all you needed to be able to find your trajectory. And it did not take me long to understand the benefits and privilege I have had in my life as a white cisgender man is not shared by a lot of other folks. And what I think we benefit from as a community is being relentless about seeking to equalize opportunity, and that’s about reducing the barriers that exist. And when we talk about barriers to success, we have to understand, I think, and I think it’s important to say this, that there are systemic barriers. There are historic barriers. You know, in New York City, the pockets of the city that have had the highest levels of unemployment, they haven’t in the highest levels of poverty. They haven’t changed in 20, 30, 40, they’re the same spots. And I think there’s something really important about the organizations that I represent who in many cases, are not solely focused on job training and readiness, and they’re not simply sort of focused on they’re not simply focused on having relationships with just one employer or one entity, and they’re not. Not just the sort of entities that are saying we have all the answers. I think the providers that we work with that are most impactful and most successful. The folks that we represent are thinking about this from the perspective of when I meet someone and I do my assessment to understand what their needs and interests are, I’m going to seek to meet those needs and reduce those barriers here. If I can’t do it, I’m going to work with others to do that if, if the systems that we are working within do not have those particular pathways, we have to relentlessly advocate for them. We have to work to find them with our employer partners. By the way, I just want to say right off the top, hardest part of my job is when someone says to me, I got a great training program, but I don’t have any employers. Because the reality is we have to flip that and turn that upside down to say, where is it that the business community needs talent? What does that talent look like? And we have to hold the business community accountable for investing in making sure that those on ramps to jobs are available. But all in all, none of that works unless we’re reducing the barriers to success. So for many of the communities that we work with, the ones, especially who historically have been the farthest behind in being able to maximize the on ramps to good jobs and good wages. We know that there has to be focused training opportunities. There has to be an intersection of employment and education pathways. There has to be credentialing and certifications that result in good jobs. There has to be retention supports that keep people in the jobs, there have to be great relationships with employers, because the employers have to buy in and believe there has to be the supportive services and wraparound supports, whether it’s related to childcare, transportation, housing, and we have to understand that no one provider is good at all of it. So you got parts of it, and then we got to figure out how to stitch together all the other providers that are around us to create that strong backbone that allows people to, I think, find a foothold in the opportunity that suits their needs and interests.
ALEXIS FRANKS: Wow. So you’ve unpacked a lot for us in that one question, Greg, and I think you said it so well that really it takes that holistic view of the person we there’s no one program or service that we can provide without connecting a resource, without connecting and building a network for our customers, so that they have all of the services that they need. That’s huge in itself, and without the network, then we’re really not even building the job seeker that can be successful, that can get the better job, that can go on in the career path. So I think you’re you, what you’ve mentioned is a lot of work for us as workforce professionals, but it’s a lot of work for partner agencies and for all of us to really come together and align missions and purposes and programs and compliance, all of those things so that we’re still serving the customer. At the base of what we’re doing, I’m glad to hear we’re pulling all of those pieces together.
GREG MORRIS: By the way, I’ll just say in pulling those pieces together, I just the way I think about it is we used to think about pipelines, opportunities. Sometimes people talk about safety nets. I think about it as it relates to scaffolding. Okay?
ALEXIS FRANKS: Okay.
GREG MORRIS: Talk about how we come together is building the scaffolding. So regardless of where my starting point is, I have the way to get up to where it is that I see myself being. And so I look at it from that perspective. And I wish I could tell you, in New York City, the scaffold was strong and sustainable, and it’s been around forever, and we’re making it all work. It’s the exact opposite, which is it’s fragmented. It’s siloed. The job of the coalition is to put the pieces together. So like you said, there’s the foundation and there’s the pieces I can work my way up over time.
ALEXIS FRANKS: Absolutely, absolutely. I love the way you think about that. That’s definitely helpful for all of our workforce listeners today. So just one more question for you, Greg, I promised I wouldn’t keep you for too long. But what advice would you give to any workforce, professional that’s adapting to changes and program development, design or implementation?
GREG MORRIS: I always come at it this way, you know, a lot of times. And this goes back to my orien-, my orientation as someone who started as a program development person, right? Someone who on the ground trying to figure out how to get people access to jobs and the intersection of employment education experiences, and how that related to career pathways or college and how that sort of evolved over the course of time in my career, and I come at it from the perspective of and to all of our workforce warriors, you know the right answer. And what I mean by that is a lot of times there’s going to be people, especially I’ve learned this, city government, state government, other entities, who are going to think that they know how it is that workforce works. And if you say to them, Do you support workforce they go, workforce development. They go, Yeah, of course. And if you ask them, what is that? Then they’re lost. You know what workforce development is? You know when it works? You know how it feels when it’s not as our universe is shifting. And we have to think about tech and AI, and we have to think about new industries, and we have to think about the green pathways, and we have to think about clean energy opportunities as much as. We’re capable of still talking about that, and we talk about how it is that all these machinations in the world that we had pre pandemic is not like post pandemic. Right at the end of the day, the reality remains, you workforce, Warrior, know better than anybody else what it means when someone is finding a foothold in a good job, what they have to be able to stick and grow within that job. You know better than anybody else, what wages people really need to make to be able to live safely, comfortably in in the communities that they’re part of. And you know better than anybody else, at the end of the day, that workforce development has to always be connected to economic development, because the hardest thing of all is when someone’s talking about, we’re building a big new thing in this neighborhood, or there’s a new opportunity related this particular industry, and all those local job seekers that, you know, go, how do I get my foot in that door? It’s not happening. Why isn’t it happening? You know, if it’s not happening, then we’re not doing workforce right? So I would just say the world is continuing to evolve. But at the end of the day, you know exactly what it feels like when it’s working. You know exactly what it feels like when it’s not. Trust that and trust that you know workforce better than anybody else. So you need to put forward your vision and understanding of what workforce development is and be very clear about it. And that clarity is about it’s job training, it’s career development, it’s supportive services, it’s creating a pathway to a living wage and a good job and taking care of one’s family. Stay on that track. You already know it. You live it, and I trust your judgment to be able to execute on it from here on and make it real.
ALEXIS FRANKS: Wow. That is great advice. That’s great advice. I think you even for me, like for you to talk to me that way. It’s a reassurance, right? We are confident in our ability and our knowledge. We’re confident that we can share skills and resources to other individuals, and we have to keep that confidence. That is excellent advice for anyone here today, and honestly, Greg, what we do every month on work, workforce on the mic, is we have some mic drop moments. You’ve given us a few today, and I’ve heard the word multiple times in our conversation. But really being relentless, being relentless about how we’re connecting individuals, how we’re providing services, how we’re engaging other agencies, being relentless is a huge piece of it, and the other part that you gave me to today. So we know, right? We know the work that we’re doing. We’re familiar. We have the passion and the heart to do this work and be confident in putting our vision forward of what workforce really is. Those are all great reminders, some key takeaways for any of our listeners. So we definitely appreciate you, Greg. Just one more thing, if anyone wants to learn more about the New York City Employment and Training coalition, how can we get in contact with you?
GREG MORRIS: The easiest thing is to find us on the web, www.nycetc.org. Once again, that’s www.nycetc.org, and I’ll also say this, I’m a very active user of LinkedIn. Gregory J Morris, MPa, New York City Employment and Training coalition. You can find me there because I try to keep up to date on LinkedIn, because I think it’s a good connection for the professional community. Let’s all stay in touch in that way as well.
ALEXIS FRANKS: Absolutely, absolutely. Well, we are glad to have you on workforce on the mic today. Thank you for your time. We’re looking forward to engaging you in the future.
GREG MORRIS: Genuine pleasure. I’m available anytime and listen, we’re going to work it out, we’re going to figure it out, we’re going to get there together. Thank you.
ALEXIS FRANKS: All right, thank you.
