CEOs begin task of helping state grow jobs

NEW HAVEN — Individually, the resumes of the nearly 50 people gathered at tables on the third floor of the student center at Southern Connecticut State University Thursday are impressive.

Collectively they represent all of the biggest industries and most of the biggest companies in the state — they are the biggest names and some of the most powerful people in the state — and together they formed the inaugural meeting of Gov. Ned Lamont’s Workforce Development Council, a group that will work on behalf of the state to bring new jobs, industries and training to the state.

Lamont established the council last month by executive order, an effort to make good on a campaign promise to increase hiring and job training, and change the narrative around a state that has struggled with growth and retention in the workforce. It’s not the first time

Lamont has brought together a group of his high powered friends to come up with solutions for the state.

The group, all of whom are volunteers, has been tasked by the governor to improve the state’s education and training ecosystem and pipeline — otherwise known as job training — in order to increase midrange employment and meet the hiring needs of the state’s businesses.

Council chairman Garrett Moran, a onetime investment banker with the Blackstone Group and former president of Year Up, a nonprofit that prepares disadvantaged youth for careers, said the goal of the twohour inaugural meeting was to make sure all of the members were on the same page, establish committee structures and share information from the various groups involved.

“The goal was just to really get familiarized and get organized to do work,” he said. Moran also helped lead the governor’s transition team.

Presenters at the twohour meeting touched on everything from the hurdles workers face, such as childcare and the complexities of the job application process, to the various groups that make up the state’s unemployed population and how to get those people into stable jobs, to the state’s education system starting in PreK all the way to the universities that do so much of the actual workforce training.

“It was a mountain of data,” Lamont noted in his closing remarks.

Cindi Bigelow, CEO of Bigelow Tea in Fairfield, said she was impressed by the caliber of members on the committee, which includes chief executives from all of the state’s biggest industries and several of the biggest companies.

“It’s a little intimidating to walk into this room. These are some

significant individuals of our state, but within a short period of time, I felt so fantastic that you have these people that are all driving for the same thing and that’s to make our state more competitive, and to bring businesses in and to give individuals that might not have an opportunity for a job to get a great job, not just a job, but a great job,” Bigelow said. “So to align the education system, starting as early as possible, all the way up into the various forms of businesses out there, it was really, for me, very inspiring ... and very motivating for me personally, to make sure that I can be someone that can contribute to this group.”

Bigelow pointed out Connecticut is not the first state to take this approach to workforce development. Committee member William Villano, president and CEO of Workforce Alliance in New Haven, said he’s worked with other state’s who have taken on similar initiatives and noted a common denominator was the involvement of the governor.

“I’ve been in this business a long time and the state’s that have been very successful in these initiatives, the governor has been involved in the way that Governor Lamont is involved here,” Villano said. “It is important that this is one of the governor’s top priorities.”

Lamont, who attended the meeting, collected many of its members through connections he’s forged through his career in the business world as well as his time as governor. Lamont offered opening and closing remarks, but spent the majority of the meeting quietly listening to those he’d brought together.

“I get the sense in this state that a lot of people are doing extraordinary work,” Lamont said, commending the group for sitting through the lengthy meeting. “What I’d like to see this committee be able to do is to make sure we’re all rowing in the same direction.”