Bridging Education and Industry: The Tomorrow’s Talent Revolution

The traditional school-to-career pipeline is broken—but Tomorrow’s Talent is changing that in Southern California. Today, Erin sits down with Tomorrow's Talent Founder and Visionary, Dr. Dale Marsden and Ginger Ontiveros, CEO of Tomorrow’s Talent, to explore how they’re reshaping the future of workforce development.

Under Dr. Marsden’s leadership, SBCUSD achieved a historic transformation—boosting graduation rates to 90% and creating 53 career pathways. Now, through Tomorrow’s Talent, he and Ginger are forging game-changing connections between students and the industries of the future, from high-tech manufacturing to cybersecurity and beyond.

Don’t miss this conversation about revolutionizing education, closing the skills gap, and empowering students for success in the workforce of tomorrow!

Transcript

Erin Brinker: 0:00

Erin, welcome to the making hope happen radio show. I'm Erin Brinker, today we're talking about some incredible things happening in youth workforce development with two guests from tomorrow's talent, Dr Dale Marsden and ginger Ontiveros, how we work is changing faster than at any time in history and tomorrow's talent is connecting education with employers and providing a direct bridge for young people entering the job market. Before we get started, I wanted to say what I'm grateful for, for those of you listening on podcasts, you may not know that this show airs on two radio stations in inland, Southern California, X, 95.7 FM and kql H, 92.5 FM at nine and 10am respectively on Sundays. In the uplifting spirit of an easy Sunday morning, I want to talk about gratitude, and I do this almost every week. Today, I'm grateful for independent media and local news. Both of the stations I mentioned are non profit and independent. X 95.7 carries local news and features all local talent. In the age of corporate media empires, independent news providers are critically important for community cohesion and reporting beyond gossip on social media and y'all know what I'm talking about on all of the platforms. So support that local media buy things from their sponsors and from their advertisers, depending if they're for profit or nonprofit, and share read those newspapers, those weekly newspapers, especially, read, you know, everything that you can from local news providers, because we need them in our community. We need them in our country to ensure that we're getting well, we're hearing people's real voices. So with that, onto our guest, well, I am absolutely thrilled to welcome back to the show two people who have been on before and have made such a dramatic impact in our region. Dr Dale Marsden is the founder and visionary for tomorrow's talent. Ginger Ontiveros is the CEO of Tomorrow's Talent and the former CEO of the Making Hope Happen Foundation. Both of them are making a tremendous impact on the workforce landscape in our region, the entire region. Dale Marston and ginger on taveros, welcome to the show. Thank you. So tell us about kind of what tomorrow's talent is, how you got started and and what the leading up to this point where you've been and Dale Marsden, I'm going to kick this

Dr. Dale Marsden: 2:30

to you sure, you bet so. I think much of our foundation was built on the success of a wonderful team, you know, school board, cabinet and board one and superintendent, when you can work together in harmony, you can get some real things done and built well. And we took one of California's lowest performing large urban systems and transformed it in one of the state's largest one of the state's largest and most successful school districts, our graduate grew from 66.8% to 93.6 that's incredible, passing state, national county averages. So you know, growing that graduation rate, but then also preparing kids. I sat on the County Workforce Board for about a decade and looking at high growth, high demand, high wage industry sector careers, and so we we really worked hard to build what we call wall to wall pathways from K 12 and grew those pathways from five to 55, pathways ultimately, kind of accumulating, ultimately culminating on an event called Generation go, where we had students and job alike paid internships with the County of San Bernardino as an employer. So, for example, students who were in cohones medical pathway would would go to a paid internship with Arrowhead Regional Medical Center. And then students who were, say, in Pacific High Schools diesel program, which is second to none, by the way, in the state, they would, they would then go into the county's fleet vehicle service center and have these build these wonderful relationships with folks that are in our community with great paying jobs. You know, 90% of these county employees will drive in and drive out every day. And our goal is to really try to find ways to help students stay and help help that local, talent state. So as I left the superintendency in 2020 founded tomorrow's talent with kind of the same idea and goal and foundation. Foundational to that was the 2020 US Chamber of Commerce report on the future of talent finance. It said, look, the future is employers and education system leaders need to work together, and we highly recommend you working with intermediaries who can help bridge that gap. And that's what tomorrow's talent is. We are this intermediary. We serve multiple counties in Southern California and just continuing to grow in our impact and helping young adults find and identify their passion. And connect them to real world experiences with employers, ranging from micro internships that are short experiences, to tomorrow, for example, going on a pathfinder day where hundreds of students will get to see what dozens of employers do and and get a behind the scenes look in real world activities, all the way to internships and apprenticeships, registered competency based apprenticeships and anything from water operations to cyber security, we're agnostic to kind of the career space. So that's what tomorrow's talent does. That was kind of the short version of how we were we were designed.

Erin Brinker: 5:34

So this was, I remember, a meeting that we gathering of excellence, I think is what it's called. And you had people who had been connected with the Swiss model. And this is actually a model that you see throughout Europe where students actually start their apprenticeships at 16. So they go to school, they finish at 16, and then they have a structured apprenticeship program. And that was kind of the model. So my host brother in Austria all those years ago was a Goldsmith's apprentice when I was staying with his family, and today he's a master goldsmith. And that was, you know, all kinds of different pathways. Now we don't do that in the US for lots of different reasons, but the model is very interesting to get to get young people connected with careers when they're kind of making a decision about who they are. Can you talk about that a little bit? Yeah,

Unknown: 6:19

you're right. Erin, I mean, most of the developed world has students engaged in some way in the real world by age 16, whether it's professional trades or professional fields, you know, doctors, lawyers, you name it. We don't do that so well in America. You're right. I mean, the last look at apprenticeships. And you know, our governor has a big goal of 500,000 apprenticeships by 2029 but the last look, there were maybe, maybe a dozen students that were under the age of 18 involved in

Erin Brinker: 6:49

apprenticeships. Oh, wow, throughout the entire state. That's crazy,

Dr. Dale Marsden: 6:52

right? So the youth apprenticeship really has a lot of work to do to get our young people engaged in these experiences. And so yeah, that's what we're trying to build, is this mindset around youth, talent pipeline development, and really, at the end of the day, it's a it's a return on investment and a cost benefit effort for employers to pay attention to these kinds of spaces. So yeah, that's that's working on. So

Erin Brinker: 7:22

I understand that the reason why we kind of moved out of the vocational ed that used to be really common in the 60s and 70s and even the 80s, you had wood shop and auto shop and all the different, you know, vocational programs in high schools. But there were people were tracked into those, into those roles. Oh, you'll never be college material here go be a whatever, a woodworker or a carpenter rather, or whatever, and and that that, unfortunately, was often based on socio economic, socio economics or or racial lines that people were tracked. And this is, this is very different from the model that you're that you are envisioning, and that you are working hard to put into place kind of talk about that difference.

Unknown: 8:03

Yeah, right on Erin, you're right. So, so in the, you know, some of the European models, you are tracked, and you would be on a maybe a trades track or a college track, the Switzerland model, which was what was nice and attractive about that model. And that's why we, we showcase that with former US ambassador to Switzerland, Susan Levine, came and spoke to our community some time ago. And you know, the reason we like that is it's permeable. So you can, you can start out on a trade track and then end up in a college kind of space, or vice versa. So having those permanent, permeable opportunities are really important. And you brought up another important point, is trades used to be. And what we're hearing a lot from employers is, you know, Boy, I wish they'd bring trades back, and I, I'm here to tell you trades are alive and well in our state and in our high schools, what we see now is not just, you know, CNC machinery, but advanced manufacturing at the highest levels of sophistication. Some of the shops that we've seen in on high school campuses are second to none, and sometimes even better than what's available in the industry standards, transportation, electrification. I mean, any person involved in automotive work should take a walk into Pacific High School, and you're going to see state of the art types of experiences that students are getting engaged in and leaving high school with the highest levels of certification to get started and step right into the workforce. I know ginger will spend some time talking about this. You know, a lot of the employers now are, you know, really hungry for competent, entry level talent, and yet a number of those jobs are going away, and that's something that that we need to give give attention to. So

Erin Brinker: 9:44

thank you for that perfect transition and ginger. I'm, I'm curious about what is called entry level talent. What does that look like? Because, you know, there's so many things that are being replaced. You know, instead of flipping burgers, they have machines who can do it, for example, and everybody. How many people? Their first job was McDonald's or something like that, and there seems to be fewer of those workers. It seems to be that everybody who has what used to be an entry level job wants experience. Well, how do you get experience if you can't get that entry level job? So I know you see this every day. Ginger, talk about that issue.

Ginger Ontiveros: 10:16

Yeah. Erin, thanks. It's it really is a big challenge, the gap between school and employment or work is getting bigger, not smaller, because a lot of the traditional places where young people were able to practice or learn how to be employed are going away. So, you know, they don't have there are no paper routes for young people anymore. You don't you place your order at a kiosk at McDonald's instead of to a person behind the counter most often. So a lot of these, these experiences that students used to be able to have as entry level jobs, where they could learn the skills of being employed, and that's different than the technical skills they're learning in school, are disappearing from society. In fact, about 35% of entry level jobs today require three years of experience. So how does that work? Yeah, I know right. How do you how do you get experience in an entry level job, if there, if it requires experience to get it right? So, so what's happening, though, is employers are saying the entry level to my company requires three years of experience, which essentially means they're cannibalizing the workforce in their own industries, which drives up wages and further then, increases the expectation of what that entry level employee would be able to do, widening the gap between where young People are coming out of really high quality education programs, and what that entry level role or expectation is. I was talking with Dale some time ago. I said, kids today have to be Evil Knievel to get from school in order and land safely in a workplace, right?

Erin Brinker: 11:56

Yes, and Evil Knievel didn't always land safely. Go. There you go. Yes.

Ginger Ontiveros: 12:01

So, so we, you know, we really believe that these work based learning experiences, well structured ones, internships, apprenticeships, are the answer to this. Today, a lot of entry level jobs also are being replaced with technology, as we talked about, or AI, for example. So they're changing, like the skills that that young people need when they go into the workplace are different in some cases, than they were before. So entry level now might be reviewing AI content as opposed to writing and researching it yourself, right?

Erin Brinker: 12:38

So as an example, yeah, and I, and I've seen how many people with bachelor's or master's degrees find themselves working in the service industry, if they are at Starbucks, or they're, you know, working at and retail or another kind of position, so that the people who are who don't go to college for whatever reason, are finding them finding themselves facing people who have gone to College as their competition. And there's this assumption that if you've gone to a four year university, that you're automatically better, and that is not always the case. You know, kind of what are you seeing from your students on that front?

Ginger Ontiveros: 13:12

Well, we find that about national statistics. I don't have to say just what I find or what we find, right? But the 35% of students who are graduating with bachelor's degrees are under and unemployed today. So and worse than that, they're coming out with a you know, often coming out of those experiences with debt. So you know, they're they're going to college, they're getting their degree, they're doing what everybody said was the right thing to do. And yet, when they graduate, those opportunities are just not available to them. And yet they're saddled with the debt that they have to pay, that they have to repay. So it is a real crisis for the for the workforce and the future of our country, quite frankly. So yeah, it's a huge challenge. So

Erin Brinker: 13:57

talk to me about the difference between an internship and an apprenticeship. And I think that people often with an internship think you're getting my coffee, you're answering my phone, you're doing but that's not at all what an internship is, or at least it shouldn't be, and it but an apprentice. Apprenticeships are structured, so kind of talk about the difference between the two. So

Ginger Ontiveros: 14:17

an internship is a short term, finite experience, where there is not necessarily an expectation that employment would come on the other side of it, it's a it's a way for an employer to maybe audition, you might say that an employee and it's A way for a student to really just get immersed in an environment to to reaffirm their desire for that kind of career. So it's a test run, if you will, an internship is what I find. Is not so much that employers are asking, well, they do this. Are asking. Get coffee, or, you know, take out the trash or what have you, which are not in and of themselves, bad things, so, but what I find is that the employers are creating artificial experiences in the name of internships. So, you know, they they want to, they feel like they have to entertain the intern instead of providing them with real work to do. We really believe that the schools are doing a phenomenal job right now of creating mock environments where students are able to practice being employed in a artificial space. We don't encourage employers to further that by creating more artificial experience for them, we'd rather, from an internship standpoint, that they got to actually practice being employed. So anything that you would ask an entry level employee to do that is within their skill set is the kind of thing that an intern should be doing while they're interning. An apprenticeship, however, is a structured Erin and learn model where a student who is enrolled in a training program in a registered a registered training program, would take on a job that allowed them to apply the competencies that they learned in their training program and prove that they can do that competency in a workplace. Then from there, there may be a wage progression after they do their next competent set of competencies, to the point where they can become a full fledged employee. The idea with apprenticeships, really is that that you're hiring your next employee you're doing on the job training in concert with the education or training institution that's helping them to master the technical skills that you want them to have as they come into your workplace. So that's like a student teacher, but they get paid. Well, yes, you can absolutely say that it's exactly the kind of thing that it is.

Erin Brinker: 17:00

So how long are apprenticeships? Do they and forgive me if you said that and I missed it, but how long is your average apprenticeship? Or does it do they vary

Ginger Ontiveros: 17:08

very anything from six months to four years, depending upon the program. But one of the things that Dale talks about a lot, so I know he'll want to share that is about churn that employers are struggling with. You know, they have a lot of turnover in entry level positions or in any of their positions, and the the idea of an apprenticeship also does help to increase the loyalty of that of that employee. So if you see a lot of entry level roles turning over an apprenticeship might be a really good way for you to bring in somebody who who's going to be there with you for a while, because they have to go through their education program, and then they have, generally speaking, more loyalty to you because you invested in their growth. So it's a great model for addressing churn while also developing the future of the workforce. Well,

Erin Brinker: 18:03

I have to imagine, and this is a question for Dr Marsden, that there's a reticence from employers to pour so much energy into somebody you think is going to be gone in a heartbeat, you know, and that you think that they're that they're, you know, because it takes effort right to you have to create, you have to to build the infrastructure to be able to manage this person so they can learn, although in an apprenticeship, because they're in there, in a school of sorts, they're getting that, but in internships, they're not. And so kind of talk about that dynamic,

Dr. Dale Marsden: 18:35

yeah, I mean, I would say that first. Let me just say that as ginger was mentioned before the and this really leads to the return on investment with employers. One of the one of the strategic challenges that I think we face in this space is the engagement of employers. As ginger mentioned, you know, your most employers want competent, experienced, entry level talent, and then they're not finding that competent entry level talent, and when they do, they might be leaving, as you just described Erin and that that's a cost to the employer. And and Gallup and Aspen Institute have both done some deep dives on this, and the cost to employers general estimates are like, one and a half to two times of their annual salary leaves. And I so I was talking with one local manufacturing employer recently. They had 30 positions open in their company in a year, and they cycled through 300 people. Oh my gosh, you think about the costs to the employer. Now, you're just you're just a machine. You know, you're hiring people, you're training people, you're onboarding them, and then all of a sudden they leave. That cost is is insurmountable for for employers, if you're if you sit with a you know, have about 100 employees, you're looking at about a million dollars in loss of revenue. If you're not paying attention to this, in terms of the cost. Costs of, you know, losing employees. And so, you know, there's, there's lots of reasons, in addition to hiring talent young that can help an employer. You know, culture, obviously, is important. People don't quit their their jobs. They quit their bosses. So culture is a big part of that. But I would say probably one of the, you know, easy lifts for employers is pay attention to your talent pipeline development. So by investing in these early internships with students, you're building your talent pipeline. You won't have to worry about having a skilled workforce coming in, and, by the way, coming into your your industry, with the skills and competencies that you need. You know, if you're an employer, reaching back into the education systems, whether that's the university, the community college, or the K 12 level, you're able to invest in, hey, here's the competencies I need for students to leave with to be successful in my space. And one of the challenges that that both employers and education systems leaders are up against today is with the advent, and the advent of AI has accelerated this exponentially. Is that the time, the cycle time from new ideation, you know, these are new ideas, to getting them to market, is very short if you're going to be successful. The challenge is, when we're taking new ideas and trying to get them in front of our students, it takes a minimum of two years for these ideas to go through and into curriculum development and get that curriculum approved by community colleges, for example, or even the K 12 environment or university environment takes a there's a long lag time to get this information in front of our students, and we're changing at such a rapidly pace that both educators and employers have to pay attention to this space that we're in, because it's it's accelerating and we're not if we're not watching it, we'll quickly lose our position as the world economic leader, and our students will become more and more disengaged, because they're becoming smarter and seeing through the advent of AI that they have tools now that can be thought partners with them, that could help them take their knowledge instantly to Another level. So those are the kinds of things that both education systems, leaders and employers are up against.

Erin Brinker: 22:26

So wouldn't this? And this is, I can see this happening on the nonprofit sector, for example, because we don't generally pay on this side of things as well as the for profit sector does. They will. Kids will come in. I say youth will come in, and they'll, they'll work for us, and they'll work really hard, and they'll develop great skills, and they bounce because they can get paid better somewhere else. And we so I've seen that that kind of churn and and the impact on the organization is it is high, I mean, because you have to find the next person, and you have to train them up, and you have to develop them, and, you know, and so it is, it is difficult. And I, I see it happening in real time. I'm wondering, you know, if this because with the push for everybody to go to a college or a university, students were thinking about, you know, going to the right schools by somebody's definition, and and doing the work, doing whatever they thought they were supposed to be doing. But I I don't know that they were being true consumers of education, being able to weigh programs, one against the other. I imagine that this will change that, because it the more that they learn how applicable their skills will be when they're done. You know, the more that they have information to be able to make educated choices about where they go and what they do. I think universities and colleges are going to have to adapt, because they're not going to have the bodies there, because people will find other options.

Dr. Dale Marsden: 23:48

Yeah. Erin, you're right on I mean, there's a big question mark over the value of a college degree. Students 53 as ginger alluded to earlier, 53% of students leaving college with a bachelor's degree, are under or unemployed, and so I still believe, you know, when Jeffrey Canada was asked by a parent in his community you know, should, should every kid go to college? He said, If in doubt, do it rich people's kids, do they all go to college? And he's got a point, every kid you know should go to college. But the question is, do you go college to career or career to college, and I'll give you a great example. David Rojas comes from a fairly blue collar family out of COVID High School auto. He's in the auto Auto Program, and he saw himself as going into the same space as many of his family members did. And we introduced him to water operations at a local East Valley Water District, one of our local water agencies, and he just took off. He loved it took the certifications while he's in high school at the community college to go into water operations one year out of high school. He gets a priority interview, because that's our agreement with the employer, if you work with us and we bring you this high quality talent. And prepare them. You give me, you know, give them a priority interview. He gets the interview lots of people in line, 100, 100, plus people in line for this job. He gets the job one year out of high school. He's paid 57,600 him just several months after that, he said, You know, I'm going to be earning 75,000 this year with overtime. And he gets full benefits. And his employer, by the way, will pay a portion of his college for when he's ready to promote to other spaces. And David has this in mind. I just talked to his employer yesterday, and he's still continuing to accelerate and do very well. He's a model for, you know what that looks so you think about that as an employer if you can invest now in that young talent and and share with that that person, okay, maybe. And here's the advantage to employer, right? You're you're paying less than entry level wages when they're coming in as an intern or apprentice, and then once you get them into your system, you're paying them more that you're putting them on a progressive, progressive wage scale so they can, you know, earn a earn a living wage over time. And so, you know, this is the kind of art and science to the work that we do. We help the employer build their capacity to, you know, take this work on, and we do the air traffic control. We manage those relationships. We speak the language of both the education system and and the employee employment system. And so we, we try to bridge that, you know, great divide that Gallup shared with us years ago. They when they surveyed all you know, our chief academic officer said, how well you how well you do to preparing kids for the world of work? And 96% of US education leaders said, we're doing a great job. And then they asked the employers, how well or do? How well are we doing? And the answer was 11% so the device there's got to be a conversation between both entities, and the focus of the topics needs to be our young adult. And I'll just put a footnote to this that many agencies, US and abroad, central CIA, et cetera. Use youth unemployment data as a predictor for future pockets of social unrest. So we think about this if we're trying to build healthy communities. So we talk a lot about social emotional learning and supports in our schools. One of the greatest social benefits and emotional benefits we can have is to make sure we have gainful living wage employment for young adults as they're leaving our education systems, and that hard wiring has to be done with thought, with care, so that it can occur in a way that makes sense in our country. I think our country is capable of it, but it's going to take a lot of work. It

Erin Brinker: 27:43

requires a paradigm shift in the mind, the minds of young people well and the adults around them. And I, I think the best thing that came out of the the gentleman that that went from high school to the Advanced Manufacturing had gone through your program, and forgive me, I don't recall his name, but the best thing that happened is that he now sees that he's in control of his future, right? So if you're in a job where you can't see that forward motion, you can't see that upward trajectory, then you feel hopeless, and it's just a job, and you don't want to be here anymore. And I think I'm out of here, but, but he's given a role where he clearly feels like he has a strong impact on where his life goes, and he's being compensated for his hard work, compensated beyond money, but compensated through upward mobility and increased responsibility, etc, etc. And I think that our kids are missing that if you go to college, because your parents think you should then, then you're not, not necessarily going to connect the dots with how that really is important to

Dr. Dale Marsden: 28:39

you. Yeah, Erin, Erin, you're, you're right on and you bring up a thought where, I remember walking through commercial aviation in the high desert. You know, it's a, it's a shop that that owns, excuse me, they, they lease aircraft airline companies. Because most of your airlines don't own aircraft, they lease them. So they lease, they store and they maintain aircraft. It's a very large corporation up there on the old base. And I was walking the shop, making a video to share with other students and folks about, you know what they do there? And we had a few students with us, a few educators, and Craig Garrick, the CEO at that time, he said to me, he said, Dale, the next time you come and bring students to see what we're doing, bring their parents with them. And you know, the point in that which I think is very important for us, is parents need to understand that, yes, college is important. And every every kid, as I said, should go to college. The question is, do they go to college and then career? Or do they go to career first and then college? And because you want to launch them, because the whole aim of all of this at the end of the day, the aim of college is a career, right? Getting your feet wet, getting experience, making sure you love this. Before you launch off is so important. So that's, that's what I think. You know, parents have a huge role in this. They're very influential on their child's future. And so by, by really taking a pause moment and examining the pathway the students on. And I always ask kids when they're going off to college, I said, Well, what is it you want to do? And and they say, I want to do, I want to be a lawyer turn or whatever. I say, Well, have you interned with a law office? Generally, the answer is no. Said you need to call you need to get interned. And I think that's, that's the space that we've got to start moving in, because

Erin Brinker: 30:34

really, otherwise, you're swinging from a trapeze in the dark. You're making decisions based on an idea that may or may not have any grounding in reality. So I think that that's that is critically important. So let's talk about kind of who is going into these internships and apprenticeships. I know that there's especially in the trades where you use your hands more, the construction and that sort of trades you don't see a lot of women. You know, is there a desire to make make these trades and make these apprenticeships more diverse. What are you seeing has is the landscape changing? And I'm going to ask this one of ginger,

Ginger Ontiveros: 31:08

so yes, I think there is a concerted effort on the part of schools, especially, to really get more women into non traditional roles. But also, I will say, to branch out into apprenticeship models in non traditional fields. So So we're definitely seeing both of those things happen where there are more and some of those might be more female based. So the direction is the other way. So we do see that there's an interest in in trying to create more diversity in the employment pool, and not just gender diversity, but other types as well. So you know, there definitely is that schools are monitoring that and actively trying to recruit different, you know, groups of students to consider careers. Because, let's face it, most students, especially many students, especially if they come from disenfranchised backgrounds, don't have social capital to be aware of the variety of job opportunities and the futures that they might provide for them. I remember once having hiring a young man who had graduated, went to college, he got a degree in business, and graduated from with his business degree from Cal State, San Bernardino and and he we were advertising for a job. He I had to reach out to ask him, because I knew him, if he would apply for the job. And when he applied, I said, What are you doing today with your degree? And he said that he'd taken a job in a warehouse that didn't require a degree, one of those 53% who were under underemployed at the time. And I said, Why are you doing that? If you have a if you have a bachelor's degree? And he said, because there are no other jobs. And it dawned on me at that moment that young people don't see what's not around them, right? They don't necessarily see the opportunities that aren't playing out in the lives of people they know. So the career exploration and the acts, the experiences that we provide not only open doors to their future, but maybe open eyes to what their future might

Erin Brinker: 33:17

hold. So take me through the experience of a young person, and maybe they're a junior in high school, they maybe they see a presentation, or see you all at an event, and they want to go through the tomorrow's talent process. What does that look like for him or her?

Ginger Ontiveros: 33:33

So I'll say that we should probably start earlier than that. So we definitely believe that young people need to have more exposure to careers in the younger grades Middle School, especially so we use a or facilitate an experience through a program called you science. It is a career assessment basically that matches your interests and your aptitudes, developed by the owners or the developers of WebMD, so it helps students to to find out what they're good at and what they like and what the intersection of those are, so they can start looking for careers that match in those two areas. Just provides them with some additional information and making a decision. But we want them to have that kind of experience and exposure to a variety of careers before they miss the opportunity to do this free and incredibly powerful skills training that is available in the pathways at our schools. You know, a lot of employers think that the schools took all the shop classes out, and as Dale said, they're back on steroids. I mean, our schools are doing some amazing things, and our students are mastering skills and getting certifications in high school that are really preparing them for the future. The last thing we want them to do is career exploration in college, because then they're paying for that experience. So, so we help them, we help them to identify what you know, where their passion rests, and get plugged into a pathway. Then we come alongside the school, and we provide work readiness training for students so that they understand the difference between the culture of school and the culture of work. And they are two very different environments that as great a job as our schools are doing to prepare those technical skills, it's very hard for them to be able to also then teach the soft skills and have students master those things they need to hear it from an outside voice sometimes. And so we we equip and prepare those students for experiences, and then we start putting them in front of employers. There's a number of different experiences that we we organize for students, whether it is a master class where an employer comes into the school and works with a group of students, to a collaborative learning project, to a micro internship where they spend a half a day out in the workplace, just meeting an employer and doing something hands on to show that they know what they're doing to the internship and apprenticeship that we talked about. In fact, I know we have another story about a student who started in a micro internship and is now finishing up an apprenticeship, working toward a full time job at a with an employer. So pretty excited about what that process looks like. And we do have a good multi step process for helping a student get from, I don't know, have any idea what I want to do to discovering their passion, to landing in a career.

Erin Brinker: 36:40

You know, it strikes me that kids who grow up with a lot of trauma or loss or challenges, and if you're in a low income community, there's a lot of kids like that. They think that they may know, like even thinking about being a doctor or a chemist or, you know, something that's higher and more difficult, more challenging. They think, I could never do that. I'm not good enough for that. That's not for me. That's other people, even if they see doctors in their world, because they go to the doctor, or, you know, people with high levels of education, they think that they're not they're not up for that. Does? Does? Do you help? Do you? I'm sure you see this with working with your youth, and how do you overcome that challenge?

Ginger Ontiveros: 37:22

We do a number of workshops as well that help students with you know, resiliency and understanding what their you know, what their passions are. It's really about tapping into their passion, because if you're passionate about it, you figure out. You really apply yourself and figure that out, even with students who, you know, young people who don't necessarily have that in their background, we find that that once we've given them, you know, the Youth Science piece really does help build that confidence, because it does test their aptitude, too. So it really does help with that. It's an initial piece, but once they do have that passion, and you plug them into the right place to start exploring that passion. It kind of builds on its own. These smaller experience, yeah, these smaller experiences then also help to reinforce their confidence. So, yeah, it's a, it's a combination of passion and confidence

Erin Brinker: 38:17

that is a that's very exciting. Now I know that there's the typical school day is pretty rigid in how you know how it flows in a comprehensive high school, for example, there's a lot of flexibility in the continuation high school space and the in San Bernardino City, unified, which is the one that I'm most familiar with. There's a lot of innovative things going on there. Are you finding that partnering with the more innovative schools, whether it's continuation high school, or maybe like entrepreneur High School, which is a charter school, etc, does that provide some interesting opportunities, not to take away from the case, the comprehensive high schools at all. But this is, you know, a slightly different space.

Ginger Ontiveros: 38:58

Flexibility helps, you know, the flexibility in the schedule helps, the the the flexibility and the training helps. But I can tell you that there hasn't been a school leader that we've talked to that doesn't want to make internships work. And so we're seeing some really, really creative things happen, not only in the charter space, but also in the traditional K 12 space. You know, yes, there are, you know, some structural barriers that can get in the way, but people are pretty motivated to work through those barriers and figure out, how can we make time available for young people to participate in internships? So how can we get employers plugged more into our school day. We just, we just did a phenomenal project in Fontana called Future shapers. And, you know, Hilary wolf over there, her vision for that was amazing. So, you know, instead of trying to find time outside of school for students to participate in internships, let's create a real light, a real world problem. Problem that a group of students could engage with a group of employers over the course of several months to produce an outcome that was powerful. And in this particular case, the city of Fontana invited those students to redesign their downtown and how cool. It was very cool and multiple we brought in multiple employers to do master classes with them about the process of development and about designing, you know, facilities and how you work together in a master plan. And this group of students came up with some amazing plans and a really cohesive vision for what the downtown should be. The city wanted the young people to do it, particularly because they were looking for, what does the downtown of the future need to look like? You're the future. Help us design it, and they're actually building some of it now. So we're pretty darn excited about how that project worked out. And I think all of those students were offered jobs at the end of that experience. So it's it's been a really that was a really powerful, non traditional way to go about the work,

Erin Brinker: 41:01

and how likely are those kids to be when they get to the point of buying a house that they're going to want to buy it in Fontana, because they had a stake in building it.

Ginger Ontiveros: 41:08

I think Fontana was onto something there.

Erin Brinker: 41:10

I think they were. So let's talk about, you know, the COVID learning loss. We're now just past the five year or no, the 13th will be the five year mark from the fateful day when everything shut down in 2020 and a lot of hay was made. And for good reason about learning, loss and education took a took a dip during this time, just because it was just such a difficult time. Are you seeing the the impact of that still in your students? Do you think that that's that they've overcome some of those challenges? How is that playing out? Or is it at all? This one is for Dale,

Dr. Dale Marsden: 41:45

yeah, you know, I think this was will remain in history, because one of the greatest disruptions of public ed in America. And I think my hope coming out of that was that we would really pay attention to transforming our system away from its grade and time and place bound model. You know, we students are hungry for a kind of experience in school that's kind of any, any path, any, any pace, any any time, any place and students in schools. I was hopeful that the hybrid learning environment would really take off, and I think now that students, and especially this generation that lived through COVID, have tasted it that, hey, I can do school at different times of the day, when I'm awake and ready, and I can, I can learn at my own pace. And you know, there's, there's a lot of advantage that I think we lost. There's lost opportunity, you know, there's what do they call it in I think there's a Chinese character for for crisis, which is a mix of danger and opportunity. As a dangerous opportunity is what we had. And I think we missed it. We had an opportunity to redesign the system in a way that really engaged students. And so there's going to be some lag time, and we can't wait. I mean, we've got to do this. You know, as ginger mentioned, visionary leadership, like superintendent Mickey in body and superintendents from Palm Springs, Riverside, Orange County, San Bernardino County and other counties that are beginning to see, hey, there's, there's got to be a focus on our students life after school. That's critical. Life after high school. What's their plan and is, do they have a credible, solid plan that when I'm shaking their hand on graduation day, they're walking into something concrete next, which is whether it's a Career College, military, whatever. So you know, and I'll underscore Erin that you know, schools, students, parents, communities, schools and employers can't do this work alone, and that's really where a team like ours comes in. We're like the SEAL team, six of intermediaries. We come together, we help bridge, we help build, we help brighten, you know, this path so that students have a real shot at opportunity for them. And so, you know, we're super excited and grateful, grateful for the leadership of our county of San Bernardino, Leonard, Luther Snoke, who's the new the CEO of the of the county and our county supervisors vision for the success of young adults, specifically foster youth, and our County, the county asked us to survey all 50 of their departments for readiness for internships and apprenticeships, and how do we work with foster youth? And so what's exciting about that is here you have a public sector employer, where, you know, 90% of their employer, employer employees drive into the community and drive out every day, and most of our families, students don't know that these jobs exist. So there's real opportunity. And I think the answer to what we've lived, you know, out of. COVID Five years ago is, you know, double downing on engagement. You know, what can we do to engage our students where there's local opportunities, to help them stay in their local communities and brighten the future of this entire community and lift it up? That's what this is about. So we're super excited. We think this is the really, the the smart economic development strategy for cities, counties, municipalities, to pay attention to. We're hopeful that we can impress legislators in thinking about ways to incentivize the governor's vision and dream, and that, you know, employers get some serious capital to invest in young talent that will help lift the environment for everybody. So I think it's a win, win. It's a, it's a, it's a great investment opportunity, and I think there's much hope ahead.

Erin Brinker: 45:51

So I have to think that there are some barriers for the students to participate in the internships and apprenticeships. Maybe it's transportation, maybe they don't have money for, you know, the proper clothing, maybe their parenting. Maybe they have kids and they have childcare issues. What are some of the barriers? Or maybe they're undocumented. What are some of the barriers, barriers that you all see, and what kind of support can either your program, or do you know that other programs can can offer to help students be successful.

Dr. Dale Marsden: 46:23

You know, it was interesting as we lived through this kind of social experiment with generation. Go with the County of San Bernardino and I asked this question, because transportation is a barrier. You know, housing, food, scarcity, all the things you named your barriers. But I'll tell you what happened when kids and their families knew they had a ripe opportunity. They got there, they found a way, found a way to get there. Now there's always going to be the outliers. There's going to be a percentage of kids that they're going to need CPR, but not every kid needs CPR, and I would say the vast majority of our students, when given an engaging opportunity, they and their families and their community will move heaven and earth to get them there. That's been my lived experience, and I am certain, as we really develop robust opportunities for students and the families, the parents, the communities, their communities, see that they're going to get behind them and get them there. They're going to make it happen. Schools even will begin to alter their schedules and make make ways to carve out the right kind of time that's needed to make these barriers. You know, because school leaders are creative, they're they're incredible people able to do some things that given the opportunity that might get happen. That's my belief. Yeah, I find that our families are very resourceful. They absolutely can find solutions. It's helpful to them when we also provide them. But I do know that, you know, they are capable of finding ways to get there. When we're talking about transportation, I will tell you an interesting barrier that we've come up against. All of them are interesting but, but this one is completely correctable. So and we find that most young people today are not getting driver's licenses, young, and that is meaning they have no government ID. So when it comes time for them to get a job that actually pays them, they don't have a driver's license to prove identity or or a state issued ID card and and that first job that becomes a barrier to them. So it's one of the things that we definitely coach our young people to do is is introduce them to the DMV and make sure they know that they need to go there to get at least a government ID, rather than, you know, just try to rely on the school ID, or just not be aware they need one. So,

Erin Brinker: 48:46

so I would have thought about that. That would not have ever occurred to me, because, yeah, but you're right, driver's

Ginger Ontiveros: 48:52

ed out of the schools, right? Like, when you and I were young? I mean, I'm assuming, Erin, when you and I were young, we had driver's ed in the school, so it was a rite of passage. And we went there and getting a driver's license was a just something you did, right? It is not something normal for kids to just do anymore. There are so many alternative transportation options that you know, kids who are in their early 20s are not, don't have driver's licenses, which you know, if you'd have told me at 15 and a half that there would be a peer of mine who was 23 and didn't have a driver's license yet. I would be shocked. What's

Erin Brinker: 49:29

wrong with them, right? But the difference is that we didn't have social media to keep in touch with our friends, right? We had to go so either talk on the phone and your family was like, get off the phone, or you had to go to wherever they were

Ginger Ontiveros: 49:41

your social network was how many people can fit in my car

Erin Brinker: 49:46

or meet at the mall? That's

Ginger Ontiveros: 49:47

right, that's right. So it's definitely there definitely are barriers. But as Dale said, our families are very resourceful, and our schools are very creative. They absolutely want to open these doors for their students. And you know, the the barrier sometimes is just the employer's willingness to try this. The and attention, you know, their business moves fast, and employers have to pay attention to their bottom lines. And we get that right. They do not have time to become education experts for the purpose of creating an internship. And so that's one of the things we do, is we carry their water so that they can also benefit more quickly from these kinds of experiences. And really, you know, it's all about making sure that the economy of the future has the workforce that it needs, and that the young people in our schools have the opportunity that they need as well. So

Erin Brinker: 50:46

we haven't talked about one particular area that I know is really big, especially in San Bernardino County, and that is a focus on entrepreneurship. So if a student goes through takes the Youth Science aptitude test, finds out that they would be a great entrepreneur. What would you do with that student?

Dr. Dale Marsden: 51:06

Yeah, you bring up a great, great question. So, you know, and I love, I love what a couple colleagues of mine have talked about on this and seen and done, you know, not just in our in our nation, but worldwide. And that's Jim Clifton, CEO of Gallup. They've done some work at Gallup where they have an assessment, what they call they look that they look for builders in third world countries. These are entrepreneurs who have can have great ideas, and then they surround that entrepreneur to get that idea to market with a strong marketing person and a strong finance person. Those two, that court of three, is not easily broken in these in these third world countries, and they take that idea then to market and help to bring and build, you know, economic health within some very challenged communities. And he tells a story of one such young lady in Mexico who had a was a great candy maker, and she used local kinds of things from the the ground that grew to make these candies. And they were very tasty. And so they took that idea to market, and turns out they're making money now, creating jobs, and in the middle of nowhere, that's fantastic. And you know, Ernesto soroli has a wonderful TED talk, and I've talked with Ernesto personally, and you know, he talked about the hippos and the tomatoes and his TED Talk and and what you see is, you know, going into communities and not just doing things to them, but really listening and looking for Who are these people that have ideas and the capability to bring them to market? And so we have our own set of structures and skills and ways to do that within tomorrow's talent is we're working with students, and so it's taking that idea then to market, surrounding them with the resources they need to be successful. And you know for us, we're so blessed to be in the community where you have the Inland Empire Center for Entrepreneurship in our backyard, and so we're super grateful for that body to be able to provide the kind of resources that are necessary to help students. I was just on the on a zoom a couple weeks ago with a young lady who has a great entrepreneurship mind and ideas to take to market, we just spent a good hour talking about what are the types of things you need to pay attention to to be successful in the real world when you're doing this work. And so, yeah, building that entrepreneurship muscle is very important. When you survey our students, many of them want to be entrepreneurs and take their ideas to market and be their own boss. And I often tell the young people, you know, you got to start with having a strong set of fundamental skills. Very few entrepreneurs start out of nothing. They always, generally start on a foundation of some basic experiences, skills or loves, than they build from there. And so that those are the kinds of things that we have to build, that entrepreneurial mind mindset in our community, that that's going to help us become, you know, we create job creators, you become a much more healthy community.

Erin Brinker: 54:15

Indeed, it's kind of like being a jazz musician. In order to play jazz, which seems completely random. You really have to understand music theory and how it works. You have to understand the people who are playing with you, because if you just get out there and make noise, it'll just be noise, but jazz, it all comes together and sounds beautiful. And so, you know, you have to be an expert in the thing to be able to break the rules. And that's, you know, entrepreneurs are, are doing it their own way, but they gotta learn how to do it first. That's right. That's right. So how to do because we're just about out of time, how do people get more information, either for their students or their their children, or as an employer, about tomorrow's talent?

Ginger Ontiveros: 54:56

Visit our website, at tomorrow's talent.org, that's i. A one place that you can find information. We're also very active on social media, Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn, so you can connect with us in all of those places, or, for that matter, if you, if you just happen to bump into one of us, we'd be happy to talk with you about what we do and how we do it. So, so, yeah, it's, you know, those are the places I think that we could direct people to to find information about us and how we how we can help them.

Erin Brinker: 55:28

Well, I am so thrilled that you spent this both of you spent this time with me today. It sounds like you were doing incredibly important work. And I hope that that that this is scalable, and I know that you're building it so it is so that it exists in every community to be able to connect the youth with what's needed in the workforce in that particular community. So thank you so much for joining me today. Dr Dale Marsden and ginger Ontiveros from tomorrow's talent.

Unknown: 55:53

Thank you, Erin. Been a pleasure.

Erin Brinker: 55:59

Well, that is about all we have time for today. I'm Erin Brinker and you've been listening to the making hope happen radio show. For more information about the making hope happen Foundation, please visit www.makinghope.org That's www.makinghope.org Thank you so much for listening, and we'll talk to you next week. You

Noraly Sainz: 57:00

Hi, my name is Nora Lee signs, and I am Program Coordinator at uplift San Bernardino, a collective impact initiative at the making hope happen Foundation. And this is my story. In November of 2017 my husband, our four young sons and I moved away from our families to San Bernardino with the hope of reaching our goal of home ownership in 2018 as our oldest son started kindergarten, I connected with the school district and learned about making hope happens Kids program with my oldest in kindergarten and my twins act preschool, I had the opportunity to tote my youngest to the kids parenting classes. In January of 2020, my husband and our family's breadwinner unexpectedly passed away. I found myself in a pandemic with my sons in an uncertain future. It was then that that oasis that I found at kids turned into my support system, as the staff and friends rallied around me while my sons and I struggled to find our new normal. In October of 2020 after seven years as a homemaker, I joined the making hope happen foundation as a program coordinator for uplift San Bernardino. This career opportunity reignited my family's dream of home ownership in November of 2022 through the mutual support of the uplift San Bernardino Housing Network, my family was able to buy our first home in my role as program coordinator and as I connect with other families in our community, I can wholeheartedly attest to the opportunities that the foundation is bringing to our community and truly making hope happen. For more

Erin Brinker: 58:31

information about the making hope happen foundation and to make a donation, please visit www dot Making hope.org. That's www.makinghope.org your donations make our work possible. Aloha, get ready to embark on an unforgettable journey to the islands of the making hope happen. Foundation's 2025 Gala, a tropical escape. Join us on Thursday May 8, at 6pm at the breathtaking hilltop banquet hall where the spirit of ohana meets the power of education and community transformation. This year's gala will be an enchanting evening filled with live music, vibrant Island themed entertainment, festive tropical cocktails, mouth watering cuisine, an inspiring student art auction and the prestigious hope and carne awards. Your presence will directly impact the future of San Bernardino students, let's give back celebrate and create brighter futures together. For more information, visit www. Dot Making hope.org/events. That's www, dot Making Hope. Dot O, R, G, slash events sponsorships are now available again. For more information, go to www.makinghope.org