The $10 Million Workforce Experiment That Could Redefine Apprenticeships in America - Lindsay Blumer, CEO of WRTP | BIG STEP

Workforce systems are often fragmented—built around short-term funding, disconnected programs, and a lack of coordination between industry, education, and community.

But a different model is taking shape - one that’s not only working in practice, but has the potential to scale across states and regions. In this episode of The TechEd Podcast, host Matt Kirchner sits down with Lindsay Blumer, President & CEO of WRTP | BIG STEP, to explore how her organization is building a future-ready, industry-led, and worker-centered workforce ecosystem.

Backed by a $10 million grant, Lindsay and her team are launching the Apprenticeship Pathway Coalition Initiative (APCI)—a five-year effort to expand apprenticeship pathways into emerging industries, strengthen regional partnerships, and create a scalable blueprint for workforce development in both urban and rural communities. From infrastructure and manufacturing to healthcare and IT, this episode explores how WRTP is aligning training, policy, and industry needs to meet the challenges of today’s labor market—and what other states can learn from it.

Listen to learn:

• What it takes to design a workforce model that can be replicated across states and sectors
• Why modern apprenticeships are expanding beyond the trades to include fields like healthcare, IT, marketing, and education
• How WRTP balances short-term upskilling needs with long-term career pathways for workers and employers
• The role of intermediaries in navigating funding, aligning stakeholders, and simplifying workforce systems
• What educators, employers, and workforce leaders can do today to become more effective partners in building talent pipelines

3 Big Takeaways from this Episode:
1. A scalable workforce model starts with alignment, not duplication. WRTP | BIG STEP acts as a “workforce intermediary,” connecting education, labor, employers, and community organizations to create coordinated talent pipelines across regions. Their funding model blends federal, state, philanthropic, and employer-based sources—like the cents-per-hour contribution from union contractors—to sustain long-term collaboration and flexibility.

2. Modern apprenticeships go far beyond the trades. Lindsay explains that apprenticeships now exist in fields like healthcare, IT, agriculture, marketing, and education, expanding far beyond traditional construction roles. She points out that 55% of new jobs in the next decade won’t require a college degree—making earn-and-learn models more relevant than ever.

3. If you want to replicate success, start by listening. WRTP’s statewide initiative begins with asset mapping and community conversations, not pre-built solutions—because what works in one region may not work in another. Lindsay emphasizes that local lived experience must inform system design, and that conveners should be flexible enough to lead, support, or step back depending on the context.

Resources in this Episode:

• Visit WRTP | BIG STEP's website: wrtp.org

Other resources:

• Read about the $10 million grant program
• Connect with

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Transcript

Matt Kirchner: 0:00

It's Matt Kirkner, your host for the TechEd podcast. I don't know where you're going to be on December 9 through the 11th this year, but I know where I will be. I'll be at the gaylord opryland in Nashville, Tennessee, for a CTE career tech vision. It's the largest annual conference in the nation for career and technical educators. And at vision, you will have the opportunity to build meaningful professional connections with educators and industry leaders, expand your professional development with hundreds of concurrent sessions, workshops and tours, ignite your inspiration while you learn from innovative keynote speakers and leaders on the vision main stage, explore the Career Tech Expo with hundreds of exhibits, workshops and live demonstrations. There will be so much more at a CTE career tech vision register by October 13 to secure discounted rates for this premier CTE conference. You'll find the registration page@careertechvision.com that's careertechvision.com can't wait to see you at this year's a CTE career tech vision. Welcome to the TechEd podcast. I am your host, Greg Kirkner, where this weekend, every week, we talk about how we secure the American Dream for the next generation of STEM and workforce talent. I'm a huge believer by the way, that that endeavor is an and not an or it's not. Do we do it in high school, technical college, community college, university, workforce training, workplace. It is not whether we do it in one of those areas. It is that we do it in all of them. We are going to talk to someone today who is doing amazing, amazing things in that workforce training side, so a little bit separate from formal and traditional education, but nevertheless doing incredible work and really important work in the area of apprenticeships, in the area of workforce training. Really excited to have this conversation with Lindsay bloomer. And Lindsay is the president and CEO of wrtp, big step. You're gonna learn all about that organization today on this episode of The TechEd podcast. Before the moment, let me welcome to the studio. Lindsay, thank you so much for being with us. Thanks for having me today. I appreciate it. You've had just a really, really diverse background. You've done a ton of work with nonprofits. You've been in education, you've been in workforce training. As you think about that background, as you think about all the different endeavors that you've been involved in, is there a common thread in your journey, and how did it lead to what we're going to learn about today is a really, really cool job as the president and CEO of wrtp, big stuff.

Lindsay Blumer: 2:34

So you know, the through line throughout all of my positions and my career journey has been at the center impact, community impact. How can we pull the levers, whether through workforce or support services or some other type of thing, to ensure that our strategies are industry led, worker centered, and that it wins for everybody when it comes to building a community that's safe, that has workforce and career opportunities and has great economic development and ultimately focuses on people and what we want our communities to look like. So came through lots of different positions, learning that from all different angles. So whether it's from the communications, the marketing, the programming, the administrative side, the financial side, really helped prepare me and I go all the way back to growing up in a veteran family, a trades family that really inspired me to find how we can support our economy through good workforce policy, through great training for workers, and ensure that we build the communities that we want to see and live in.

Matt Kirchner: 3:36

It's amazing how that whatever environment we grow up in has a huge way of shaping our career interests and what's important to us. You suggest growing up in a veteran family and in a trade family. Tell us a little bit more about that. Where'd you grow up, and what members of your family were a veteran and serving our country and also by working in the trade.

Lindsay Blumer: 3:53

So I grew up in southern Wisconsin. Here throughout my life, I've worked all over the country, but grew up here in Wisconsin. My dad was a Vietnam veteran who came back and on the GI, Bill decided to go to a technical college. He was welding for being a veteran.

Unknown: 4:06

Yeah, absolutely. Which Technical College up in Chippewa Falls? Yeah? Awesome. CBTC, love it, yep. So

Lindsay Blumer: 4:13

ended up wanting to be a teacher, and so was a welding teacher at public schools for a while. Ended up being the apprenticeship readiness industrial arts, what we used to call it with Waukesha County Technical College, and my mother was a four year kindergarten teacher, president of her teachers union, so really understood the importance of that holistic educational workforce timeline, because I got to spend a lot of time in kindergarten classrooms and a lot of time in the tilt crab at WCTC

Matt Kirchner: 4:41

really speaks to, I think in a lot of ways, this foundation that we have of Community and Technical College System, which is finally, in some ways, getting the recognition it deserves in terms of the incredible value that it brings to our state's economy. You and I are both Wisconsinites and to the entire economy of the United States with our great Technical and Community. Colleges. So I know you operate different from a community or technical college. I know you operate differently from I happen to serve on our regional workforce board that allocates WIOA funding in our region where our companies are located. Tell us a little bit about what distinctions you would draw between those types of organizations and what you're doing at wrtp. Big step.

Lindsay Blumer: 5:20

So much like we think of workforce and talent development, pipeline management, all of these things as an ecosystem. Wrtb, big step functions in that ecosystem as a workforce intermediary. So we use a sectoral partnership model where we can collaborate and convene all of the partners that are necessary to ensure that we have safe, skill, diverse, ready workforce that meet the industry demands, and we do that through a variety of ways. First of all, we are not constrained by any geographic boundaries as a private nonprofit, so we're able to work cross collaboratively and really these complex networks that require us to leverage certain areas, certain expertise across the spectrum for education, training, work, course and of course, career journey and career placement. So it makes us unique in the sense that we work with all of the partners, and we're able to work in different regions in the state and work cross regionally, because we know that a worker is a worker is a worker in Wisconsin, and that it's a pool of workers. And so we know that we're hitting folks all over the state and employers too, right as we become global here in Wisconsin, we also know that employers are doing business across the state, across state lines, nationally, internationally. So we have to be responsive to that as well, and that particularly workforce intermediary model works with wrtb, big steps, mission and its goals, to ensure that we have a work ready workforce. So

Matt Kirchner: 6:44

let's go a little bit deeper into what we mean by a workforce intermediary. I mean, as I'm sure you're under a variety of ways, private donations and private support, I would imagine, certainly grant support, where does some of the support and funding come from? And then how do you put that to work, in terms of building these partnerships. Are you actually doing the training? In some cases, are you providing resources to organizations that are doing the training themselves? Help us understand that a little

Lindsay Blumer: 7:09

bit more so I often describe the metaphor of a workforce intermediary as kind of the sound engineer. Could go to a concert, you see that sound, and you're kind of moving the levers up and down. Sometimes you need more of something, less of something. It all has to work together to make beautiful music. And so what we do is use a variety of funding sources and partners to ensure that we have different initiatives for different regions, different initiatives for when demand increases in certain sectors or certain areas. So that funding comes from some federal grants directly. So that might be the Department of Energy, might be Department of Labor, might be the Department of Commerce. Some state funding as well, through our 11 workforce boards, as you mentioned, through perhaps even WIOA. Vouchers might come through special initiatives, Wisconsin advancement initiatives, with the Wisconsin innovation grants that the state released earlier. So a variety of those sources, private philanthropy, private donors, private dollars. And then we do have a very special funding model with some of our unions and signatory contractors and employers who we provide Workforce Development Services and talent development services for a cents per hour model for the cents per hour worked by workers, which provides that sustained funding, and that sustained commitment so that we can work together on a long term basis. As we know, if you get funding for six months, solving our workforce challenges in six months isn't going to happen. We need that sustained and continued investment,

Matt Kirchner: 8:32

no question. And that part of it, that aspect of it's so important, and especially it's important for an organization to have that sustainability. It's important for your employees and team members as well to know that there's that common and that steady stream of revenue, and that's really where we see, I think, kind of that exponential impact for an organization is where we can build skill on skill, person on person, mission on mission, and really do some big things. You're doing big things, not just in the City of Milwaukee, but you've grown to be a statewide organization now, and something that obviously tells us that that model is working. Talk a little bit, if you would Lindsay about why you think that that growth has taken place, and what you think are the key factors to driving growth, not just for your organization, but for anybody involved

Lindsay Blumer: 9:15

in workforce. So in the last three to five years, I think we've focused on infrastructure in the state of Wisconsin. And with that comes about $9 billion in encumbered funds for the state of Wisconsin on various infrastructure projects. And again, when we talk about infrastructure in Wisconsin, it's vital to our roads, our bridges, our buildings, our schools, our water supply, all of these things. And when we start thinking about it holistically. It's going to take a statewide approach. It's also going to take a statewide approach to then supplying the workforce for all of these projects to meet the demands of what we need to have accomplished, to have safe drinking water, safe buildings, safe roads. And so I think that has driven quite a lot of the growth of what we do and providing everything from. Consultation on building and workforce projects, to actual training, pre apprenticeship training and apprenticeship readiness, to supportive services and convening anything from subcontractors to general contractors to ensure that they know each other in new regions. Think Another factor is Wisconsin is having a moment in the spotlight, because we do have natural resources here that are imperative for economic growth and job growth. We also are having a moment that not only do you have natural resources, but we have a great standard of living. We have, as you mentioned, wonderful technical colleges. As the Vice President of the Wisconsin Technical College System Board, I believe that we have great opportunities for folks to be educated, as well as great four year universities and colleges, and we also have a fairly climate resistant environment here compared to some of our other counterparts across the nation. So it's an attractive place for businesses to come to think about how they might see themselves here and really having an opportunity to meet the workforce here in Wisconsin and some of the Midwestern traditions we have here of being hard workers and being ready to work. You know, Wisconsin has one of the highest participation of women in the workforce across the nation. We're all committed to ensuring that we have a part in this workforce. So I think those are some of the bigger factors that have led to our expansion and the demand for our services across the state,

Matt Kirchner: 11:26

really, really important. And you are doing so much great work in regard to generating that next generation of the workforce and also upskilling the current generation to that point. I know you're the beneficiary of a huge grant, $10 million which can't be understated from the ascendium education group. So congratulations, by the way, on successfully winning that grant. I know you're going to put it to great work. Tell our audience a little bit about what the ascendium Education Group is, if you would.

Lindsay Blumer: 11:52

So send them. Got a start as a Student Loan Guarantee Corporation, and this is now the foundational arm, where folks at ascendium are very interested in how we can welcome everybody into the workforce, and what are some of the high performing initiatives or best practices we can use. And they are very generous in the sense of understanding that to solve big problems, they need big investment, because we're talking about a systems change approach to ensure that we're not only building or rebuilding or moving levers in a system now, but we want it to be sustained for generations to come, and so when we think about that type of work, that's the work they're investing in here in Wisconsin and across the nation, and using what they're learning in different areas to scale so that we can share these best practices that we're learning about and share even some of the risks we're taking with some of this investment, because that's what it's going to take for us to build and sustain a workforce system that includes all of us, employers, workers, everything, but also is really resilient to perhaps economic changes or other changes, which I'm really excited about. So they're very forward thinking and how they're making these investments. And who

Matt Kirchner: 13:03

is that group itself, at another nonprofit, is that help understand who they are and how they fit into the mix? Yeah,

Lindsay Blumer: 13:09

I think there are other large investments with Milwaukee succeeds. So that's a very specific program for, I believe, in school youth, and while we work in that same ecosystem, what I love about it is why we work in the same ecosystem. They have a very specific focus, and we have very specific focus. So we're tackling these issues from all different angles, and then sharing between us. You know, what's working, what's happening. So I think that's smart investing for any of us, whether it's in an organization or in your own portfolio, where you're trying to make different moves, to have

Matt Kirchner: 13:41

a common goal to the point we made in the introduction. It's an and not an or. And so many organizations doing such great work and people focusing on their highest and best use to making the greatest difference. Really important. I know you make huge difference in the area of apprenticeships. In fact, I think I just saw some information this week that we've got now more apprentices in the state of Wisconsin than we ever had in history. My friend David doing great work in that arena, for sure. And so this grant will fund at least in part, large part, that the apprenticeship pathway coalition Initiative, or what we call APCI. Tell us about that initiative. As you know, we see kind of a renewed focus on apprenticeships, and a lot more creativity and apprenticeships here in the United States, and certainly in the state of Wisconsin,

Lindsay Blumer: 14:22

we are so very lucky, as I'm sure David Pope would tell you, if he were here to be the originator of apprenticeship in the United States. And the oldest program 1911 is when the apprenticeship program started here in Wisconsin. So we stand on the shoulders of giants when we think about apprenticeship pathways, apprenticeship occupations, and how this Earn and Learn model can welcome more folks into the workforce, and can help employers have better retention, have better trained individuals, and be able to have better return on investment often. So something that the ACPI initiative. With support from ascendium, it's helping us doing is thinking about our model that we've had for 50 years at wrtb, big step, and how successful we've been in our multitude of initiatives. We focused on, how can we use that model and scale it statewide? And of course, make changes in customizable type apprenticeship pathway initiatives so that we can supply the workers necessary, or the employers who are wanting to be employer apprenticeship sponsors thinking about it, or thinking about what their own talent development pipeline might look like now and in the future. So a few things we're doing is targeting some specific regions in Wisconsin so that we can almost do a pilot or a Tessa proof of concept, working using some of what we've learned over the last 15 years at wrt big step, applying them in different regions with good partners, and seeing if they work. So I would say it's almost like we have the opportunity in this world, for the first time, I would say, to have these proof of concept or startups almost like the Google model, right? You're going to invest and try lots of different things, and you're going to learn a lot. Not all of them are going to be 100% successful, but the ones you hit on will be fantastic, right? And so that's what we're doing now. We're in that Learning Mode, listening mode. We're seven months in to this, and we have five years. We have a long runway, so it's a marathon, not a sprint, but we are looking for some very motivated partners to help us better understand what are the needs in each region of Wisconsin. How do are the apprenticeship pathways currently working? What are some new apprenticeable pathways, or occupations that could use a model like ours of apprenticeship readiness, and how can that build a better workforce for the employers in each region in Wisconsin, and

Matt Kirchner: 16:44

in the end, building that, course, we're all so focused on and really important work that you're doing there. I love the correlation you out of Google trying a lot of different things at the risk of frustrating our producer, Melissa, who drives kids tripping crazy when I bring up private equity or venture capital, it's kind of the same way of thinking that every one is going to be a grand slam home run. But what we want to do is bet on enough different options, learn from each other, figure out what works all in on those areas where we're having the whole success. So that model is certainly an opportunity to be very, very successful in this new emerging world of apprenticeships a lot of times, and even I sometimes, once you find myself falling into kind of that old school thinking, if you will, of limiting what we think about when we think about apprenticeships. And for me, for a long time, it was somebody mentioned an apprentice that's like, oh, that's an electrician, that's a plumber, that's somebody that's working in construction. And certainly the apprenticeship model is alive and well in that space and should be in is something that every young person quality just to be considering. But those aren't the only types of apprenticeships, right? We're starting to see apprenticeships emerge in areas like healthcare and technology, in in business, in some areas where maybe they weren't as commonly known and as prolific. So talk about that. Are these just the construction or trade focused apprenticeships? What are some of the emerging industries that you're seeing apprenticeships being

Lindsay Blumer: 18:02

used. I think it's tides are changing a little bit about apprenticeship, as you mentioned, in all different sectors. In fact, in all new jobs that will be created in the next decade in Wisconsin, 55% of them will not require a college degree. Not amazing. It's amazing. And so while there's lots of pathways to college degrees, one of them includes apprenticeship, the earn while you learn model, and you're spot on when you say marketing, it, childcare, teaching, healthcare, construction, manufacturing, right? Agriculture, there's a lot of apprenticeship pathways. And what makes it unique is that Earn and Learn models. So from day one, you're earning, you're learning on the job, the hands on experience, and then the related instruction at the same time. And as you mentioned, apprenticeship for a while was not as prevalent as it was early 1900s to now. And so we're also building up some of that knowledge about what is apprenticeship and what does that apprenticeship system look like, and it traditionally is known in construction and in the building trades. And it's something that is near and dear to our hearts, and we do a lot of work in that sector and in manufacturing, so a lot of work there too. But as we have lots of pathways available for folks now, I mentioned a few, agriculture, marketing, it, healthcare, teaching, these are all exciting ways in which both youth and adults can get exposure to a trade, to a craft, to give very intense experience and get paid while you do it. And for a lot of these pathways, earn the equivalent of a associate's degree or even a bachelor's degree while you go through these programs. So they are part of that ecosystem. You know, there's one that's better than the other. It's the and to gag that, it's another opportunity, particularly coming out of covid and the reevaluation of some of our youth, thinking about, what do they want to do while they're in that kind of 19 to 27 age range? Great

Matt Kirchner: 19:58

question. And there's so many benefits. I mean. Be being able to earn a living at the same time, in many cases, ending up money ahead while you're going through your education pathway. And I think it's an important distinction that you draw Lindsay, that these are it's not necessarily that you're precluding yourself from some other route, right? So there's on ramps and off ramp. There's stackable credentials, stackable skills, credit for prior learning, prior learning assessments, all these different models that we have, not just in Wisconsin, but really in so many safety set of thinking about this progressively, that it's not that you're deciding at the age of 16 that this is your career path and that's what you're going to do for the next 40 years. You're getting an opportunity to try to work in that industry at the same time, right? So yeah, heaven forbid this is something that isn't for you. You're not waiting four or five years through an education pathway to get to the workforce and say, Wow, I really didn't realize that this isn't what I'm cut out for. We learned that along the way. So I think the just the flexibility that we see in the apprenticeship model and the different opportunities into and out of apprenticeships, really, really important. You mentioned advanced manufacturing. That's where I spent my career, 25 years as a manufacturing CEO, leading companies in the Midwest. So that's an area that's near and dear to my heart, as are a number of the other areas that you mentioned. I know in manufacturing, one of the challenges that we have is that we have a problem now, right? I mean, I've got people that I need to put in place now. I've got positions open. I've got advancing technologies. I've got opportunities to pursue. May not necessarily have the 2346, years to wait for someone to work their way through an apprenticeship program. How does an organization like yours balance that need for long term learning and longer term career planning for individuals, and also that kind of quick fix that we need a lot of times in manufacturing where we need to rapidly upskill people around certain skills so that we can continue to grow our organizations at times where we can't afford to wait.

Lindsay Blumer: 21:43

This is where that ecosystem is vitally important, and the tent is large, the more people, the better. This is not an exclusive club by any means. So something we do are, as you mentioned, stackable credentials and credentialing with high quality curriculum, hands on experience, custom, customized training. So we have a base curriculum we can use, and we can plug and play different components of that based on industry need, or even employer need, to ensure that the employer market the industry is getting what they need quickly. A lot of our trainings, the shortest is around five to six weeks, and then it can go as long as 16 weeks, depending on what type of skills need to be in there. If somebody needs their high school equivalency degree. They didn't earn a high school diploma at that time and need stackable credentials, you can get those in as little as 16 weeks through some of our programming, and that's to ensure that folks are getting into the market quickly, and then once they're employed, we can either help with apprenticeship readiness, right? So after six months, they might be ready to enter an apprenticeship with a manufacturer or somebody, or while they're on the job, they might need some incumbent worker training. So we'd work with our local Workforce Board to ensure that those dollars would be available. We've also worked with employers on fast forward grants, right, so that there's a wage subsidy on taking folks who are maybe a little greener, maybe been through that six or eight weeks of training, and then we can help subsidize wages for a certain period of time to be like, is this what you want to do? Is this what works for me as an employer as well? Right? It's that kind of plug and play model to ensure that it's customized for the industry and sector or the employer. But also so students are in, participants are going through that program and getting what they need, absolutely what they need, at a bare minimum, and then stacking on, oh, I'm interested in this. And then I'm going to go through here, like that long term kind of career planning, and something we always say here at WR, to be big step is, once you've interacted with us, you're going to see us again and again and again, partially because we want to make sure that you're retained as an employee, that the employer is retaining happy with that match. But also then, is there additional training. Is there incumbent worker training? How can we ensure that you know that going through some of the trainings we offered, or others you have, you're already three, 410, credits into an associate's degree, so maybe the employer is looking to have some customized training with a technical college, right? Like we can ensure that we're connecting folks with the opportunities that are available while they're in the workforce while they've started working so that we can meet those demands quickly. Well,

Matt Kirchner: 24:04

I really like the balance. And if I'm put from memory, and I'm not going to get it perfect, but you said something in the is, we were just getting started about being, was it industry relevant, worker centered, industry something. What was that mantra? Again, industry led, but worker centered. Thank you. Industry led and worker centered. And every one of your answers is focusing on both of those. And that hasn't gone unnoticed, that it's it's not just about the employers, and how do they find skilled talent? Is not just about the employee or the the worker or the student or learner, and how do they find a career? It's really about how do we bring both of these aspects together? Lots of ways to do that. I am going to mention them while I'm thinking of it. That you had talked a little while ago about some of the resources that you have available for employers and how employers can plug in. We'll make sure and link those up in the show notes. So if somebody's interested, that's going to be found there, but we'll talk about that a little bit later. I also mentioned some interesting grant programs. So we've got all kinds of organizations all over the Midwest, and you referenced a couple of them, but to our listeners that may be outside. Had the state of Wisconsin, trust me, your state has funding available one form or another for continuing working worker training. And to that point, I know you're thinking beyond just the state of Wisconsin. And if this is a model, the ACPI model is a model that maybe other states might be looking to. You know What recommendations would you have for to them, for how you would replicate a model like this. So maybe, how are you thinking about that internally in your own organization?

Lindsay Blumer: 25:25

So thinking internally about it when we're starting to really examine the ecosystem here in Wisconsin is it has to be simple for the participant, for the worker, and it has to be simple for the employer. Oftentimes, in workforce development, we have our own language, with all of our own acronyms. You know, there's different pots of money. I mean, we've even mentioned here WIOA and

Unknown: 25:46

some other eWD passport variance.

Lindsay Blumer: 25:50

And you know, when we think about that, we want to try and discover how we might have this workforce intermediary model scale so that it's a one stop shop in partnership with the 11 regional workforce boards, with the 16 technical colleges, right? So there's some advantages of being able to scale statewide, so that we can be that connector. So when I think about how we might scale this, you know, to other states or nationally, we have to think about, we have to know our partners so well in any given state or region, and knowing that there are a host of opportunities. So as you mentioned, every state has something, economic development, commissions, chambers of commerce, workforce boards, some entities, training providers, most likely community colleges. Who is that convener or who can play that convening role in your state? And you know best is always looking word, is it your organization, or is it your entity you know, or if you're an existing entity, how can that convening role be integrated into what you do? Because you're going to find much more success with the integration of an intermediary type model. Because you know something I always talk with staff here about, is these complex connected networks, and these complex, connected networks are vital to this, to any initiative we want we want to launch, they are complex. They have different relationships. And it's, you know, a lot of relationship building. And I promise, if you put the time into that, then the product is going to be much better, right? Because, you know, something that I've always looked at, and you started off talking a little bit about, no, I meandered my way through my career, but I've seen this work from the participant side, the program side, the finance side, you know, the direct participant side. You know, I've been on all those sides, because in order to get that 360 view, you need to have people who are working in each of those areas to provide that perspective. And I often get asked, Oh, well, where is our wrtb, big step in our state? I was like, Well, you may have it, you may not like but that's part of the taking a step back from the one perspective your entity might have, and saying, how do we elevate this and look across the entities? That's the most important, and it's almost to start with an asset map of where are the assets within your region or your state, in order to better understand, then how the ecosystem is working or is not working, where the barriers are, and then what role does each individual entity or person or employer or employer association play in that and make that tent wide, make that tent huge, because it is going to be all of you at some point. Well, I

Matt Kirchner: 28:19

think you make a really good point, which is, every state is different, and I mean, I work all over the country. I know you spend a lot of time all over the US as well, looking at models and supporting different efforts. I do the same thing, and especially across seven states in the Midwestern United States. These states are a lot of them are really, really different. I mean, you just think about the technical college systems and the community college systems that you've talked about. And of course, you serve on the the State Board for the Wisconsin system, which is a, you know, a combination of 16 different independent technical colleges, all with their own governing boards and their own abilities to make decisions and and to respond, by the way, to their local employers, which have certain advantages. And then the lack of a central decision making process can have its downfalls as well. I contrast that to a state like Indiana, where the president of that system can make a decision today, and it's, you know, it gets implemented across the entire system, turnkey. And not that one system is better or worse than another, because there's benefits and drawbacks of both of them. But the point is that every state is a little bit different. Funding is different. Organizations doing workforce are different. The education systems are different, the employers are different. And so doing that asset map, as you suggest, really important, not just in the work that you're doing, but really in any expansion plan, which is, let's see what more we're dealing with. Let's see what opportunities and tools and resources we have available to us, and then let's have leverage those to the greatest extent. I'm going to challenge one word you used, and that is the word meandering. You said meandering through your career. As I look at your background, it may have felt like meandering, but it seems like a whole lot of purpose, and all of that purpose led to the incredible work that you're doing now. So you can call meandering, but it seems to me that there was probably a little bit more of a direction that was endemic in that you mentioned some of the important aspects of scaling. You talked about making it simple for employers. You. Talked about making it simple for employees that you talked about making sure that you starting with relationships. Those are really key, and not doing that are certainly going to present some risks in terms of how we scale. Are there other things you think about in terms of risks of scaling, or how we mitigate some of the challenges you might face as you're expanding an organization with yours?

Lindsay Blumer: 30:19

Listening before we speak, you know, we have expertise in certain areas, but that expertise is neither here nor there. If you're not a good listener about what is happening in a particular region, in a city, I mean, in a community, within a municipality, within a city, right? Like not everything is no can't translate everything, and that's okay, and getting over that, well, it worked here. So it's going to work here, or portions of this works will take it and we'll pick it up and prop it down. And that should work. You know, realizing that every person is their own expert and their own lived experience, and recognizing that that lived experience is incredibly valuable in terms of what has their experience been in the workforce or as a business owner or as an entrepreneur? Well, the more you listen, the more you aggregate some of this. You can pull out common themes. And it's really coming to those common themes where people can recognize themselves in the initiative or recognize themselves in the activity, and say, I was listened to somebody who listened to my story, my lived experience, and has incorporated that into whatever initiative or activity that they're doing. I think that's also vitally important when you're scaling and growing, and also understanding that there's not going to be 100% win rate. There's just lot. And also not everyone is going to want to jump on with you at the very beginning, right? It's not everyone is an early adopter, and we've learned that over the years with technology and other things. And that's okay. That's neither good nor bad. It means that, you know, we're going to dance with the people who want to dance with us, so we're going to try it, and hopefully that dance is so wonderful that other people are going to want to try it too eventually. And that's okay, you know, to I think the knee jerk reaction, particularly when we're talking about driving growth, and, you know, in being driven and having this purposeful drive, you know, like, I want it to be done yesterday, the model should have been implemented, except yesterday, when, in reality, that's not how life works. That's not how anything works. And there's a lot of learning to be done in that, and a lot of appreciating to be done in that, which

Matt Kirchner: 32:19

makes it stronger. And I think that's one of those things, certainly in my early days of leadership. And I think a lot of people who are new to leadership, they think because they didn't crush it the first time out that they you know that there was something wrong with them as we record this, I just happened to have I was in a small group last night that had dinner with a gentleman by the name of John C Maxwell, who's a really well known leadership guru, you might say legend in the world of leadership, a New York Times number one, best selling author. And so we were together last night, and he was talking about, look, if it's your first time through something, don't worry about failing. You're gonna fail. You're not gonna get it right. You're gonna screw up, right? And it doesn't mean that every single time that we try something, that we screw it up. But the point is, I always felt like, all right, if I did 10 things as a leader and I was only successful in eight of them, wow, why did I fail on those other two? And you know, years and years and decades of experience tells me 80 that's a really good win, win. If you can get 80% of it right, you've got something figured out. So I like your approach and your attitude toward that, which is that it's really about, how do we harden the target? How do we get as much of the ambiguity out of the way so that we can focus on the things that really make us successful, but knowing that even if we do all that, and if we do everything right, we're going to have some wins and we're going to have some losses, and the key is to just have more wins than losses, and the more we can have, the more impact we can have. And I know that that's really, really important to you as you're doing the work that you are at wrtp, big step, and not just there, but building all of these systems and coalitions as as you talk about, I like the fact that we have something to learn, and every individual brings something to the table. They all have their own lived experience. And there's value in that. That goes for educators, that goes for administrators, that goes for frontline trainers. So when you think about actually doing the execution, when you think about, you know, raising the stakes and getting that hit rate, or that success rate as high as you can, obviously, so much of that comes back to the importance of focusing on individual people. So talk about how you're doing that work at the kind of the frontline and the educator level. What role are those folks playing in making this work, and how you make sure that they're coming along for the ride and doing their best work. So we have such

Lindsay Blumer: 34:29

terrific people on the ground at, you know, doing that work. And they're doing some programming work, some outreach works, relationship building work. And you know, some of the initiatives and activities I see them doing is, you know, really coming in with an open mind, and we're always very specific and say, you know, when we come into a new room, a new group, right, a new industry association, whatever it might be, I'm saying we are here to learn first. We're here to learn first. We have things we can do, but we're not. We don't lead with that, because it. May not be a fit. First of all, it's a not a lot of time. It's just gathering the knowledge, right? Who are you and who am I? And how do we even fit together? What are some of the problems you're thinking about, or challenges you want to address, or what are you know? What would you like to see? And here's what we've seen in some other places. Do you experience that is or no, you know? So I think there's on the front lines, they're doing a lot of that work right now, and while they're doing that, they're building again, that forum, or that opportunity to find the commonalities in these conversations and then refining it, saying, you know, you know, this might be where we can kick down that barrier or kick down that door, or provide that forum, that line of sight for workforce, or that that forum to have that conversation of, why doesn't that process work here? Or why haven't we been able to see better outcomes yet, if we can be the convener, hold that, and be a steward of that, or we lead it, right? I think that really, there's an opportunity to say we can lead it, or is there a better leader? And that's okay, you know, we might hold it for now, but that might be something for somebody else in the future, but we can do that now and also help folks see the commonalities, as well. As an intermediary, we have the luxury as well to sit back and say, This is what I'm hearing. Is that what's happening, you know, we're new to the region, you know, is that it helped me understand how that's working here. And so those are some of the things our frontline folks are doing right now with an eye toward, you know, really, we actually today, shared some of our goal setting across our entire organization this morning at our all staff meeting. And we really break it down into three buckets. We say, how are we creating great partnerships? How do we expand opportunities? And how do we create impact? And for each goal we have, we have these one pagers with these three columns, and then what we do is we put them all up across the organization and find the commonalities so that we work smarter, not harder, right? If somebody's doing something in a particular area, they can be the expert in that. And that's the way we really approach our work and our expansion, our growth as well, when we're especially when we're going to new regions or new areas or even new sectors, is, you know, we learn first, we talk about, what are the partnerships, what are the opportunities, and what's the impact. And if we can do that every single time, we're able to really identify where we fit into that puzzle and be a value add, rather than just another thing.

Matt Kirchner: 37:22

And I think that sets a really, really good example. Lindsay, for anybody who's thinking about growth, you know, you start out with this whole idea, and I think in my younger, younger years of leading organizations, and you feel like you have to walk in with the answer, and you have to wow somebody with what you're doing right out of the blocks. But one of the things I've learned over time, and it's reflected and shared in the, you know, the comments that you just offered really poignantly is this whole idea that if we're vulnerable first, if we're transparent first, if we don't come in thinking we know all the answers, we listen first, we ask the right questions. That's a huge way of doing a number of things. One of them is, and, you know, and we do a ton of stuff in the workforce world, both, you know, in the volunteer side, and on the, you know, corporate and for profit side. And I start every conversation with, look, I don't know if we can help you or not. I am and if we can't, we'll go work at something else. We don't want to be where we can add value. So let's talk about whether we could add value. Let's talk about whether there's a fit here, and let's listen to each other. And if there's if we get to the end of the conversation, and it feels like we could do something real cool together. To your point, you know, build a partnership, create opportunity, create an impact. Let's go ahead and do that. And if we get to that point and there isn't a fit that, let's not spin our wheels and waste our time, let's congratulate each other for doing great things and recognize that, you know, maybe we're going to stay in touch and continue to support each other's work with that partnership. In terms of working directly together, might not be there. It's amazing how you start a conversation like that, and all of the defenses come down, you start with humility, and people start to realize, look, I this person isn't here to try and sell me anything or to convince me of anything, and you have a much, much more productive conversation. So I think that's really good advice. And I could go on with a bunch of other pieces of that last answer, which I think really have a whole slew of different leadership lessons embedded in them. In the interest of time, though, we'll just stay on this topic of advice, which I think you just offered some for anybody who's considered growing any organization and building a partnership, or, for that matter, creating opportunity and impact. If I'm a school, if I'm a workforce agency, if I'm I'm an employer, and I'm listening to this episode and I'm saying, Wow, this organization, wrtp, big step is really doing some incredible things. I love to emulate what they're doing, but I have no idea where to start or how to get going. What advice would you have for those folks?

Lindsay Blumer: 39:32

The beauty of the investment for the ACPI initiative with ascendium, our partnership with ascendium, is that we have the opportunity to travel the state and have these types of conversations. And so we've done quite a few already where we've sat down with a Workforce Board, or we've sat down with a nonprofit entity, or a United Way, who said, you know, I think I want to be involved, or I know I want to be involved, I'm just not sure how. And we've started out with some simple conversations about, just like we talked about listening, is there. In action, and that's been really helpful to better understand where we're all coming from. But we also do have some ready made things that we can offer through this investment. You know, that we're able to think about what does we just finished up a summer Trades Academy for Youth in the Northeast region, so anywhere from Appleton to Green Bay there. It's the first time it's ever been done, first time, and it was something that community, that region, identified as we want to try this. Can we take pieces of your model and try it? And can you help us, you know, fund this and get it off the ground? And it was wildly successful. It was fantastic. So it was, again, kind of a proof of concept in a way that they, they identified something that we already had, ready made, and we customized it, and it worked. Well, you know? So again, it's a I'm thinking about doing this or our career fairs aren't really working. How could we, you know, how might we work together to figure that out? Happy to come and talk with anyone, have virtual conversations, in person conversations, because this is all part of the building of what kind of workforce system we want to see in five years.

Matt Kirchner: 40:59

And I know our listeners are going to love to hear that open invitation, so we'll make sure and link up the contact information if people want to find you into the show notes as well. So I'm sure the phones will be ringing off the hook, and your email is going to fill up with people that are trying to emulate and partner with you, because of all the great things that we've been able to cover here on the TechEd podcast. I say that somewhat tongue in cheek, but I know people listening to this are going to this, are going to be interested in that you're that you're going to hear from them. So we're looking forward to that. Also looking forward to a couple last questions for Lindsay bloomer questions we like closing to our guests here on the podcast. And you know the first one, you have a unique perspective, right? You've been in the workforce. You've been in workforce development. You're doing all kinds of great things with the workforce boards all over the state of Wisconsin and beyond. You're involved in our technical college system to the point where you've ascended to the level of vice president of the entire system board. So I know you're no stranger to education. You also had your own education journey. So let me ask you this. Lindsay, is there something that you believe about the world of education, education in general, that might surprise other people.

Lindsay Blumer: 42:02

It's a good question. And, you know, when I did some work in academia, and I've taught in a business department before, you know, something I heard from a lot of like Career and Professional Development individuals was, you know, well, if you're passionate about it, you'll never work a day in your life, right? The kind of this idea of, you know, it just takes the passion to do it. And having been in skills training and academia and teaching and my own educational journey, I think what might surprise people is I don't buy into that. I don't buy into that. And it's not that you don't want to be passionate. Absolutely, I would say I am fully committed my entire career to, you know, helping folks in you know, connect with careers and things they love to do, but you're going to work so hard. You're going to work so hard at it. But the difference is, you're going to work hard at it because you believe in it. You're work hard in it because you want to see it succeed, and that should be celebrated. And if it feels like there are days it feels like work, there are times seasons, it's going to feel like a lot of work. But keeping that mission and that goal at the forefront is, to me, much more important than the that kind of adage of you know, if you're passionate about it, you don't work a day in your life, or it doesn't feel like you work a day in a life, especially with younger folks entering the workforce. I think sometimes we confuse them with that, when with our experience and our knowledge and our time in the workforce, we know that actually it's, we're gonna work a whole heck of a lot at it, but that's gonna feel good too.

Matt Kirchner: 43:26

Absolutely. Yeah, that's a really good observation. We do have a lot of folks that say, Hey, just follow your passion. And then the following thing is, you know, if you love what you do, you ever work a day in your life? And you know there's, there's nothing wrong with work, but it doesn't mean that it doesn't sometimes feel like work, and some weeks feel more like work than others. But you know, if you're willing to really put that time in to face adversity, to get over some of those hurdles, to fail, a few times, we've talked about that, even though it feels like work, it's such a rewarding type of work. I just had a meeting earlier today with a friend of mine who's thinking about a career change, and he said, What do I think about when I think about the next organization that I'm a part of? And we talked about culture and the importance of mission and feeling like you're serving something more important than yourself. It's not the only aspect or the only factor that's important, but it really is, and especially for I think, younger employees now, they want that sense of mission. They want to feel like they're making a difference, and yes, they're going there to earn a paycheck, and they want raises, and they want opportunities and so on. But they also want to feel like they're part of something bigger than themselves. I think you're exactly right, and when you do that, it certainly isn't that it doesn't feel like work, but that work feels like it has meaning and it's got value more than just collecting that paycheck. So I'm 100% aligned on that one, curious on the next question as well. Let's go back to your you're a 15 year old Lindsay. You know your mom is teaching and leading the teachers union in the region where you're growing up and and your dad is doing all this great work, you know, in places like Waukesha County Technical College and and here's Lindsay working her way through her high school journey. She's a sophomore in high school. Has her whole life ahead of her. If you could go back and tell yourself one piece of advice as a 15 year old, what would that piece of advice be? You?

Lindsay Blumer: 45:00

Every position, every opportunity, even if it doesn't feel like it's aligned with what you see yourself doing in the future. You are learning from it. You're getting paid to learn from it, and it will be relevant, because every experience you have will be relevant. I remember that 1516, year old knee that said, I'm going to go into this work of, you know, nonprofit organization management, I have to work in a place that is a mission and I'm mission driven. You're saying, well, that's for what you do when you retire, or that's what you do. And you know, I went through, I went to policy and government work, to nonprofit work, and I found that all of those experiences were relevant and valid, and they were always mission driven in some way. And so I would say, get paid to learn. Get paid to learn as much as you can, because it's all relevant. In the end,

Matt Kirchner: 45:51

I love that so much packed into that I'll tell you first of all, the best answers we get to that question are when the guest pauses for a moment, it takes a breath before they give it, collecting their thoughts and really thinking about a deep answer. That certainly was a deep answer. You know, another one of the things we talk about with young people quite often that I do is, like in with my own kids, for that matter, when they were deciding what they wanted to do after high school, I said, there really, I mean, there are, there are bad choices. You're not going to make the bad choices of the choices you have in front of you. You're going to make a great choice. It doesn't matter what you didn't pick. What matters is what you did. And that's your path. And then go after, then to your point, somebody's gonna pay you to learn. And you may find that, you know, there's a right turn here or there, or a little bit of gearing on or off of the course. That's all for a reason. You're learning along the way. You're gathering skills, you're gathering abilities, you're gathering experience, you're gathering confidence, and that's just setting you up for what comes next. That experience in that path certainly set you up. Lindsay well, for what came next, which is leading an organization like wrtp, big step, doing incredible work on behalf of employers, on behalf the economy of the state. And I would say most important, although they're all important, on behalf of learners and students and young people and people of all ages who are thinking about their futures, because that workforce really is the left blood of an economy, not just in the state of Wisconsin, in any state around the United States of America and around the globe. So so glad that you're setting that example. So glad that you took some time for us here on the TechEd podcast to share some of those thoughts. It was a really, really fun conversation. And thanks for being here. Thank you so much for having me. It was great. So we learned a lot on this episode of The TechEd podcast about wrtp, big step, which was awesome, and they are doing incredible work, securing phenomenal funding, doing great things for the future of the economy in the state of Wisconsin, and setting an example for others around the country. But we also went deep into things like leadership and what it means to succeed and what it means to fail and what it means to have a mission. I hope those lessons weren't Watson and all of our all of our listeners this week, because we really got into some during the course that conversation, some really fascinating discussion with Lindsay bloomer, who is, of course, the President and CEO of wrtp. Big step. Awesome conversation. We referenced all kinds of resources, including how you get in touch with Lindsay. We'll be sure put that in the show notes. You will find those at TechEd podcast.com/bloomer we'll put those at TechEd podcast.com/b l, u, M, E, R, as always, check us out on social media. You can find Lindsay on social media as well. I connected with her earlier today on LinkedIn, and she accepted the request, by the way, in about two and a half minutes. So she must be a LinkedIn addict like I am, I don't know, but certainly reach out to wrtp, big step, and check them out on social media. Check the TechEd podcast out on social media. We're all over. You'll find us on Tiktok, on Instagram, on Facebook, on LinkedIn, wherever you go for your social media, you will find the TechEd podcast, and you'll find us here next week, as we dive into another episode for this week. I'm Matt Kirkner, your host, and thank you so much for being with us.

Unknown: 48:49

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