Ron Stefanski on Upskilling the Workforce

Ron Stefanski is host of the DisruptED podcast and Chief Community Affairs Officer for the Alliance for Adult Education Foundation. Ron shares his extensive experience in leveraging education technology to revolutionize learning and career opportunities, particularly highlighting his pioneering work with McDonald's to launch the impactful Archways to Opportunity program. This initiative has not only provided significant educational benefits to thousands of employees but also spurred the broader movement of education as a benefit across various industries. Ron discusses the early successes of these programs, the strategic partnerships that amplified their impact, and his current focus on upskilling and educational equity in today's rapidly evolving job market. Join us as we explore the key strategies and partnerships that are shaping the future of education and workforce development.

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Transcript

Julian Alssid: Welcome to Work Forces. I'm Julian Alssid.

Kaitlin LeMoine: And I'm Kaitlin LeMoine, and we speak with the innovators who shape the future of work and learning.

Julian: Together, we unpack the complex elements of workforce and career preparation and offer practical solutions that can be scaled and sustained.

Kaitlin: Let's dive in. Thank you for tuning into this episode of Work Forces. Today, Julian and I are joined by Ron Stefanski, host of DisruptED, a podcast that focuses on the very disruptive future in education, manufacturing, and healthcare. Ron is also the Chief Community Affairs Officer for the Alliance for Adult Education Foundation, an advocacy organization focused on expanding access to education and career opportunities for the 36 million Americans without a high school diploma. Prior to his current roles, Ron spent many years in the field of education technology, creating transformation across higher education and workforce development in both the private and public sectors. Most notably, Ron's work with the executive leadership at McDonald's launched Archways to Opportunity which invested $65 million in 2022, providing over 75,000 McDonald's employees with education as a benefit. Ron's work has been recognized at the Obama White House, Clinton Global Initiative, the Harvard Opportunity Summit, Jobs for the Future, and the US Department of Labor and Education. We're so grateful that you could join us for this conversation, Ron.

Ron Stefanski: I'm so glad to be here, and thanks for that send up. I mean, it's pretty flattering. Thank you, I appreciate it.

Julian: You have a very rich background. We'd love to hear just a bit more about your background, Ron, and how you approach your work.

Ron: So I've been in the upscaling arena in the workforce, higher ed space, for over 20 years now. And during that time, worked with a lot of ed tech companies. And so my expertise is in using education technology to close learning gaps and to accelerate learning and to provide greater access to learning. And I've learned a lot from the people that have participated in our programs over the years. I started out at the state level, helping to launch a virtual high school for the state of Michigan. And from there, I went into private industry and worked with Cengage for over 15 years, developing different programs. And during that time, we launched an online career focused high school program, not a GED, but a full-fledged high school diploma that was nationally accredited called the Career Online High School. And we launched that at the enterprise level with various organizations that were looking to do more to upskill their employee base. We benefited from participating in a commitment to action with the Clinton Global Initiative back in 2012. And from that experience, we made introductions with Walmart, McDonald's, Taco Bell, and a host of other organizations. Probably most notably is the work we did with Rob Lauer and Lisa Schumacher. Lisa had come from CAEL, Center for Adult Experiential Learning, and she knew so much about what, you know, needed to be done, but also amazingly was able to move the initiative forward throughout a large organization like McDonald's in a very short amount of time. We started out offering a high school diploma program to their frontline employees. We started with a small cohort of about 50 people. And we were kind of bedding the ranch. We expected that if those 50 people had a really rich experience we would see McDonald's take the program forward. And that's exactly what happened. And we were really gratified by that. They had some really tremendous experiences. And so we became part of the launch of Archways to Opportunity, a really state-of-the-art workforce program that McDonald's and Lisa had the vision to develop and launch over the years. And now, you know, they're offering that program in 14,000 stores. They went back to the federal government and got a waiver on the implicit employer agreements so that they could offer the program at no cost, not only to employees in their company stores, but radically in all of their franchise stores. And so franchise owners recognized, wow, this is a free benefit from McDonald's Corporation and we can offer this to our employees. And that was really one of the things that launched what I would describe as the education as a benefit movement where companies started to recognize, we need to do something to upskill our talent if we really wanna grow. And more and more companies then came to the table. Walmart was right there and Taco Bell followed and then Hilton and Amazon and Target and all of, you know, and over a hundred others have now joined that cause and are offering that program.

Kaitlin: You mentioned the initial launch of what became the Archways to Opportunity Program. What were some of the early indicators that that was going to be a success? And you said like, kind of bet the farm and then you saw this huge success emerge.

Ron: I think one of the early indicators was working with Lisa and her team. She recruited an amazing team of people, Marianne Mariola, Aaron Voss, and a number of other folks that were just truly, really passionate about helping employees. And you know, it immediately rendered invalid the stereotype you have of McDonald's, sort of, you know, not caring a lot about employees. And then that's simply not the case. They really went at it wholeheartedly and said, we really want to make an impact with our employees. And so that was one of the early signs. I think several of the early folks that came out, I remember Rob Lauber inviting me to their annual conference with all the franchisees from 14,000 stores. And he asked me to sit at the front with him. He said, I want you to watch this video sitting next to me, because I think you're going to tear up when you see this. And it was a young woman from Guatemala who had emigrated to the United States to Florida with her grandparents, and she didn't have a high school diploma. And so her grandfather knew a franchisee at McDonald's and got her a job there. And she found out about this program. And just as she was graduating, she got promoted to assistant store manager. And so that was an immediate, you know, first success, you know, and all of us were really proud of that and we all had an opportunity to meet her and speak with her. And that was, I think that was very energizing because when you see programs like that, that truly have an impact on frontline employees, that's a real, you know, energy boost to moving the work forward.

Julian: Yeah, it's incredible what Lisa, with your help, was able to build and really set the course for this, you know, for education as a benefit. Talk to us a little bit more, Ron, if you will, about your approach to working with McDonald's and other partners, you know, and your role.

Ron: I was the spokesperson, so to speak, of the program. So I made the initial connections with Lisa and Rob, and then we sort of outlined what we thought was possible, and they were going through their own ideation stage of what they wanted to accomplish in the program. And so we had a series of meetings to say, you know, how can we assist you in rolling this out to folks? And there were a lot of unanswered questions. How do you set up an online program and how are you going to track enrollments and how are you going to track, you know, when people actually count as an enrollment, you know, we wanted to be sensitive to the fact that in the early stages, we didn't want to be providing enrollments and have a lot of dropouts and then have, you know, McDonald's spending a lot of money on tuition for a lot of people that didn't complete the program. So we put those kind of safeguards in place. And then one of the key things we did was we recruited academic coaches for every one of the students. So each student that was entering the program had one-on-one support from an, you know, an academic coach and mentor, someone who was certified as a teacher. And I would say over 80% of our teachers continue to be and were at that time, formerly high school dropouts. So they were people who had gone on a different pathway to get their high school credentials. So they very much understood the mindset of an adult learner. And the Career Online program was designed for second chance high school participants. These are people that maybe through no fault of their own had a drop out of school to take care of a loved one, a parent, someone else. In the cases of a lot of men, males, women tend to get pulled out for daycare and family responsibilities. Men tend to get pushed out of high school for truancy and all that kind of stuff. But I think it's important to know what you also learn about people who have dropped out is that the myth of them being gang bangers and pregnant teens is just not accurate. There are a lot of people for whom life simply happened, and we really wanted to address their needs. And so the Career Online High School Program specifically, and I think rather innovatively, starts by bundling the four elective credits in an 18 credit high school curriculum and turned those into career certificates, onboarding career certificates, you know, at the high school level. And those can be in healthcare, daycare, teaching, medical technology, manufacturing, et cetera. Food and hospitality was one. So, you know, if someone was interested in really liked working at McDonald's and wanted to get promoted, that would be a great onboarding career certificate to obtain. So the students going through the programs are, you know, average age is 34, and they came into the program looking to get re-engaged in their education. So our approach was how do we re-engage them? The first way we did that was to offer this career certificate. So they could start taking those courses and feel confident and then build enough confidence to persist through the program. Uh, the second thing we did is we, we set up a competency based model. So no one fails the course. You know, a lot of these folks had experienced a lot of failure. And so they were convinced over the years, it just wasn't possible, uh, for them to succeed in a school environment. And the opposite of that is also true. What we find now after 10 years of doing this: We've graduated over 15,000 adults and 82% of them have gone on to post-secondary. So what happens is when you take someone that believes for the first 15, 20 years of their life that they're not capable of learning, and then you set them on its head and they can now see that they can succeed, their energy, appetite, enthusiasm, and persistence around advancing their education just continues. Many of them go on to four-year schools, but a lot more of them go on to trade school or two-year programs or certificate programs, just as importantly, because all those things are making headway into helping them enter the workforce in a much more mobile way, in a much more agile way, where they can take advantage of upskilling opportunities.

Kaitlin: So building on that point. You've mentioned to us prior that you have a particular interest in upskilling these days. So can you give us a sense of what you're seeing in that space in the present day?

Ron: Yeah, I see this with a lot of the guests on my own show, DisruptED, that, you know, we've come at an interesting time where education is highly disrupted. We're trying to figure out now does a four-year degree matter anymore? You know, does, you know, what are we going to do about the cost of education for many people? And so upskilling has become a particularly strong interest of mine. And it's because I look at it, frankly, from an economic equity perspective. We now live in a world where 700 people possess as much wealth as the rest of us. In history, we've never seen such economic inequality. And so when you start thinking about people in poverty, or you start thinking about people who are not where they want to be economically. Many of them think the game is rigged against them. And yet time and again, we are able to disprove that with one of the game changers in that equation, and that's education. So if we can accelerate education, if we can modify it to meet the needs of those learners, if we can deliver it easily and effectively through a series of different mediums, either face-to-face, hybrid, online, all those things are going to contribute to helping people get ahead in the game, and move ahead economically. And I think that's, for many people, that's all they're looking for. Many of our students, our parents have several children. Many of our graduates are intergenerational. So a parent may have taken the program, or a young adult who dropped out of taking the program and convinced a parent or another family member to do it. So I think all those things point to the same conclusion. And that is, education remains the most significant game changer. We have to figure out more and more how we deliver it most effectively to a broad audience.

Julian: So given that it is still the game changer, can you speak a bit now to the current state of affairs and the current workforce? And is there nuance with regard to getting people the education they need to thrive that we need to really consider now and as we go forward.

Ron: If you follow the work of Byron Auguste at Opportunity at Work, or you follow a lot of people, they're looking to move the skills forward agenda, where, you know, skills matter more than having a college degree. But I don't think it's an either or. I think it's an and. I think that ultimately people are going to settle around the idea that they need skills training, and that's important. And that can actually be the starting point for their work life, but they're going to also need and benefit from more education. And that ultimately leads to a degree granting program. So I think that's one of the things we're seeing in the upskilling arena is that the affordability issue is front and center, number one. And the second one is relevancy to work experience. So many students coming out of liberal arts schools, I happen to be a liberal arts major, I'm an art history and English major, and I really value and champion liberal arts degrees is a fine way to get into organizations. Research shows time and time again, liberal arts students may start out slower than an engineering person or a finance person in the workplace, but very oftentimes they leapfrog them because they've learned critical learning skills. Those things we used to call soft skills, now we call them durable skills or power skills, but they have developed mastery around that. Collaborating with a varied audience of people, multicultural audience of people. They've learned how to critically analyze things, so they're very good at critical thinking. And they have excellent communication skills, which remains one of the most important, durable skills in the workplace. So I think all those things have changed how people are evaluating educational options that are out there. On the affordability index, Southern New Hampshire University came in and made radically disrupted how we're delivering four-year education. Western Governors has done the same thing. National University, American College of Education, all of those have set education on its head and said, you know what, we can deliver a four-year education, but we're gonna have to do it much more affordably to reach that arc of people who can't afford the very high cost of a standard college education. And I think that's a really critical piece.

Kaitlin: And one thing Julian and I have been talking a lot about too, is are the links between, you know, high school or high school equivalency training certifications and then other post-secondary options and then what does it look like to go from that to a four-year degree and that those links are not or pathways are not always clear. I wonder, Ron, if you have any thoughts as to how we can, you know, strategies or best practices you've seen to help make those links clear for learners as they navigate from one experience to another.

Ron: Well, I think as educators and educational providers in the nonprofit or the more profit space, I think collaboration is gonna be a really important factor in helping to mete out best practices in terms of what those pathways might look like because they're no longer gonna be linear. Vicki Green, who's the general manager and senior VP at the GED services, an excellent example, they're doing a lot of great work to provide a GED equivalency. And we don't see them as competitors in the high school credential space, we see them as allies. Because all of us are trying to do the same thing and that's to advance these people in their pathway to gain full employment. And so I think we need to work together. So we've been talking with Vicki about how we can collaborate. And there are many other organizations out there that are looking to do the same thing. How do we bundle additional certificate programs or hands-on experience? I'm working with an organization now, 418 Intelligence, which has created an extremely robust platform for threat hunting. And you can't pick up a copy of The New York Times on a daily basis without reading about some significant cyber threat. Well, this boot camp that they've developed in concert with the U.S. intelligence services can detect live threats in real time. So imagine putting workers who have some technical competency or, you know, success, and then you give them a micro apprenticeship in cybersecurity. Now they're leaving after nine weeks and they are cyber threat hunters. Now they're not simply entry level people. We did a project with Eastern Kentucky's workforce system, and we took a whole cohort of people from making $15 an hour to moving into $60,000 and $80,000 cyber jobs while they remained in Eastern Kentucky, which is significant because we've moved away from face-to-face work in a building and more employers are getting creative about hybrid and remote workers. These folks all became remote threat hunters, never had to leave their community, and now they're going from making $30,000 or $40,000 to $60,000 to $80,000 to $100,000. I mean, that's a significant example of the kinds of things we could do in upskilling with technology, but also in partnership with the workforce system, the technology providers, and the community. And I think that combination, you're going to see more and more happen. Everyone talks about public and private partnerships, but we need to get real about that. We need to look at real situations and make a real difference. And then people will say, oh, that's what you mean by that. Oh, we should be talking about that.

Julian: Exactly. Ron, we like to ask all our guests, based on your lessons learned, what are practical steps that our audience can take to become forces in the future of work and learning?

Ron: Well, I think as an employer, I think we need to look at talent differently. At the senior level, we've now established that the problems we face as companies are larger, more impactful, more challenging. And the only way to address that is with a more diverse executive team. So diversity, equity, inclusion are no longer a proposition for the organization. They're strategic imperative. You just have to have a more diverse group with more women and people of color. If you wanna solve some of these problems, you have to have people that think differently and come from different perspectives in order to solve some of these problems. So that's one of the first things we need to do is look at the executive leadership and talk in those terms. I think the second thing we need to do is if you're in the mid-level or if you're in the enterprise in the learning and development space, you need to look more aggressively at what are the kinds of things we can be doing to help our employees succeed and build those programs around the learner and the people that are coming. And there I see a lot of people who are doing great work. Rob Lauber is still working with a lot of organizations to facilitate and advance that work. Starbucks is another force in that field. So there are a lot of people like that and we need to we need to shine a light on their efforts because the the Brandon Carson's of the world are really the ones that are taking big corporations and saying hey we're going to stand what we've done on our head and we're going to look at how we can make life better for our frontline workers and and part of that is providing an education. I think many of the companies that employ frontline workers have recognized that they need them to be more educated and more skilled and that they can't ensure those people lifelong employment anymore. Those days of us starting out in the company and advancing to a point and then staying there for 30, 40 years, those days no longer exist. And so I think the obligation, the employee contract that many organizations like McDonald's, like Walmart, like Starbucks, like Amazon are doing is they're saying, okay, we can't guarantee that you'll have a job with us for the rest of your life, but we can guarantee that your fortunes will be a damn sight better when you're, you know, when you work with us for three to five years, because you will have acquired durable skills and a job front facing with customers, critically important skills and experience. And we're going to provide you a range of educational options based on what you need and where you're at, so that you leave us in a better place. And I think that was the motivation for McDonald's to engage with us at the outset. I think that's the motivation that Starbucks has. And those are really, you know, virtuous motives that we have to help accelerate and incubate with and for them.

Kaitlin: Absolutely. It's really helpful to hear the different connections you're making across employers that are doing this work really well. And mentioning, I think specifically that link between public and private partnerships. You know, it's, I feel like it's one thing to say it and another thing to do that well. The complexities are real, but at the same time, like you're saying, when it's done well, the impact is really very powerful. And it's really helpful to have you call out models to learn from. I think that that will be very helpful to our audience. I know it's helpful to me.

Ron: I think one of the other things that we've learned in standing up the Alliance for Adult Education is we're looking for educational partners to join us in Alliance to advocate on behalf of those 36 million Americans that still don't have a high school diploma. That's fundamentally wrong. And everyone should be staying up at night worrying about that. So the Alliance is centered around bringing those organizations together that can advance that work from a policy perspective as well as a practice perspective. And I think that's very vital. So we were in Washington, DC a few weeks back. We've hired a public affairs group, the same one that works with McDonald's, the Prism Group, great group of people. And they've been taking us on the Hill to talk to people on both sides of the aisle and in both houses to talk about these things and to talk about it from a policy perspective. WIOA is up on the table right now for discussion and for reauthorization. And it's important that private providers as well as public providers, credible operators, are in that conversation. You know, for example, many people thought with the reauthorization of WIOA in 2014, we'd see a lot more online providers entering into workforce agreements to provide alternative pathways for people that didn't really happen. Why? Because we have snags in the policy and the process from the feds down to the states, as that money is trickling from the federal government to the state level, other restrictions are being put on it. So, in some states, for example, online providers are required to have a physical presence in the state in order to do business. That defeats the whole purpose of online providing. And so we need to make clear in those policies some of the details that allow credible, vetted, certified providers advance the ball. And that's all we're looking to do at the Alliance is to help them see, okay, this is a program that's having success. How do we make sure that we can fertilize, you know, more benefit and more opportunity to more people. And the workforce system is very vital part of that. But we also have to streamline their ETPL process. And that's a big discussion on Capitol Hill these days is how do we make that easier for organizations that are new to the game? You know, there are a lot of standard uses of that money that's being available through Pell through Title I through II. And we have to be pushing and helping advocate that the federal government sees the importance of broadening the aperture so more and different providers are in the game. And those providers are dictated by performance, not anything else. It doesn't matter whether or not they're public or private providers. It matters whether or not they're getting the job done. Clearly the K-12 system wasn't getting the job done for any number of reasons, but we now have a backlog of 36 to 40 million people that through no fault of their own, don't have a high school credential. 40% of the people going through college don't finish. I mean, we have to get real about those things. And I think the private sector plays as equally important role as the public sector in that.

Julian: Yeah, in terms of sort of the practical steps, your focus on, your real kind of end user focus on those people, on those frontline workers comes through loud and clear. And this really resonates for me in both in the conversations we've been having on the podcast and in our own work. How can our listeners learn more and continue to follow your work?

Ron: So in my case, you guys are partners in crime with me, so to speak. So I really enjoy the collaboration we're enjoying. People can find out about the work we're doing on a number of fronts in the DisruptED community, because that community started out with just a podcast, and then we developed a newsletter, and then we developed different editions. So we have an addition on upskilling and education. We have an addition on advanced technology manufacturing, and we have a third on healthcare. And we also have a DisruptED podcast now for what is most essential, which is ordinary people making an extraordinary impact. I think there's so many do-gooders out there. You too are vivid examples of that. People who are really just trying to help others that are doing it under the radar in our disruptive community is putting a spotlight on those people to talk about the work that they're doing and to amplify it. So I think that's really important. DisruptED now represents four different EdTech companies, 418 Intelligence, a cyber company I mentioned, Honor Education, which is doing some amazing things in launching a next generation learning platform for students. Honor Education was started by Joel Padolny, who was a former dean at Yale, and I'm really privileged to be working with them. Interplay Learning has developed skilled trades training using virtual reality. Amazing, amazing work that they're doing, helping people get really high quality, really high quality skilled trade certifications, really important. And then of course there's the work I'm doing with the Alliance and that's vitally important and kind of bringing people together and connecting them. And that's where the network of the DisruptED community has really come to bear. So you can find the network, you can find DisruptED on my LinkedIn and you can find it on Spotify and the other podcast channels that are out there. But by all means, I'm readily accessible on LinkedIn. I invite your listeners to reach out to me and to have these conversations. It's always great to connect with people and to find out what they're doing. And every day I find more and more people like you guys, the day-to-day do-gooders, the passionate and purpose driven, who are making a difference in people's real lives. I think that's just essential.

Julian: Well, thanks so much, Ron. We really, really appreciate the kind words and it's been incredibly, you know, I feel I've learned a lot in this last half hour. It's amazing. The work you've done, the network you've built will include information about connecting with you, you know, in the podcast notes. Look forward to continuing our conversations together as well. But thank you so much for taking the time.

Ron: Well, yes, and we'll have to have you on DisruptED to keep this conversation alive and vital. I think the work you guys are doing is incredibly vital to this whole movement. And I think we just have to build each other up and stay connected and move the ball forward.

Kaitlin: Well, thank you, Ron, so much. I really appreciate that. Look forward to keeping in touch and keeping the conversation going. And really appreciate your time today.

Ron: Well, thank you too. It's been a real pleasure and a real privilege.

Kaitlin: That's all we have for you today. Thank you for listening to Work Forces. We hope that you take away nuggets that you can use in your own work. Thank you to our producer, Dustin Ramsdell. Work Forces is available on Apple, Amazon, Google, and Spotify. We hope you will subscribe, like, and share the podcast with your colleagues and friends. If you have interest in sponsoring this podcast, please contact us through the podcast notes.