As a year two Challenge Detroit Fellow, you finished your fellowship almost three years ago. What are some of your highlights, personally and professionally from the past three years?

Three years ago… you’re making me feel old here! In that time, I continued to work in ‘people operations’ and identified hundreds of jobs for individuals in the Metro Detroit area. I became one of the youngest Certified Contingent Workforce Professionals in the country, and I’m now halfway through my Master’s degree in Human Resources and Employment Relations at Penn State University. I’m happy to say that my interest in all of this started with my Challenge Detroit host company, Strategic Staffing Solutions.

You recently started a new position at Grand Circus, tell us about your position, what your experience has been like and how you continue to carry what you learned during your fellowship in your work today.

That’s right – earlier this spring I joined Grand Circus as its Company Engagement Manager. Grand Circus started in 2013 to help fill the skills gap happening throughout Detroit as the tech industry began to boom. Companies were unable to effectively grow due to a lack of IT professionals in the area and GC has helped decrease the challenge — we now have graduates working at over 120 companies across the state of Michigan! My role is to grow our presence with future companies and help to curate portions of our soft skills training to make sure our students are job ready. Some of the big problems I’m looking at now are diversity in tech and workforce planning efforts, both of which have required me to lean on my design thinking days from Challenge Detroit.

What do you believe are Detroit’s top three opportunities for change and why?

The first opportunity is the new versus native mindset that still persists when it comes to growth in the City. As I saw with Challenge Detroit, individuals coming into the City need to connect, survey and value the interests of those already there before plowing through with an idea that may not help the surrounding residents. Real change can come with the backing of the community, and that buy-in pitch should never be patronizing or misleading.

The second opportunity is diversifying our economy with skilled professionals and leveraging the talent already here. Historically, I think it’s safe to say that Michigan has been the home of the automotive industry in North America. We have more engineers per capita than other states, and the other end of the spectrum will tell us that there is an opportunity to get our unemployed back to work. There should be better use of our workers to continue training them in growing fields, and more opportunities for our unemployed to gain practical skills and show that they can add value to expanding organizations.

These thoughts lead into my third opportunity, which I would consider the benefits of non-traditional educational opportunities in the Metro region. My generation (I’m a millennial) was told we had to go to school — and that we had to earn a 4-year degree. I have friends who never went the 4-year route, never assumed student loan debt and were financially independent because they did something different. Community colleges, trade schools, job-shadow opportunities (and even coding bootcamps!) provide something a little different from the traditional path, take less time (and money) and can train an individual with practical skills to contribute day one. It may require more effort upfront to get the initial job, but it can be an option to put more people to work and get them closer to their dream job sooner.

What are a few of your favorite ways to play and explore in Detroit?

I am a huge fan of Meetups, which I use – like our GC students – to get to know new people in Detroit and learn about new places. Working downtown has also afforded me some great opportunities to get out and explore. I had the chance to tour the StockX space not too long ago and can’t wait to go back!

Favorite date restaurant is still El Barzon, despite heavy competition from Grey Ghost. And I can’t wait for fall to come around to head straight from Grand Circus to the QLine to go see the Pistons (and Raptors when they visit) downtown.

What excites you most about Detroit’s future?

I think contemporary Detroit generally ‘knows what it does not know’ — which is a huge step up from not knowing what it does not know. When we have goals and targets for our successes, we can tactically work to improve those topics and get feedback from our stakeholders. The gains may be incremental, in some cases, but it all helps move us in a better direction!