Follow NLC and LinkedIn on a Summer Road Trip

The National League of Cities and LinkedIn are visiting six cities this summer to promote equity, education and employment and create a model that all cities can use to boost economic opportunities for their residents.

This post was co-authored by Dana D’Orazio and Audrey M. Hutchinson. This is the first post in a series on the NLC Summer Road Trip in partnership with LinkedIn, an initiative made possible with funding from the Kresge Foundation.

The National League of Cities (NLC) and LinkedIn — with generous support from the Kresge Foundation — are headed out on a summer road trip as part of NLC’s Building Equitable Pathways to Postsecondary and Workforce Success initiative. Through this initiative, six cities are exploring and building policies and programs to support the attainment of higher education credentials connected to meaningful employment, with the ultimate goal of creating opportunities for all city residents.

Each of the six cities — Austin, Texas; Charleston, South Carolina; Corpus Christi, Texas; Houston; Jacksonville, Florida; and Nashville, Tennessee — is working on its own local plan, which incorporates a number of key steps:

  • creating a stronger connection from K-12 to college and career
  • leveraging new employer partnerships
  • implementing and scaling career exposure through summer jobs and apprenticeship models
  • using data to make education and career pathways more visible to the community
  • building pathways through Promise Zone efforts
  • creating two-generational approaches to education and employment
  • building strong cross-systems and sector support for education- and career-connected pathways to success

In December 2016, each city began working on these steps with NLC, and we have supported their efforts with an emphasis on equity and collaboration. We have also focused on making the necessary connections between needed skill development and meaningful employment. In the near future, we’ll share how each city is building and scaling their unique efforts in the hopes of creating more city solutions leading to thriving local communities and economies.

“LinkedIn’s vision is to create economic opportunity for every worker across the globe. We are incredibly excited to work with NLC and these six cities to help them help grow their local economies by shedding light on the skills employers need most, the workforce’s skills, and the gap between the two,” said Nicole Isaac, head of U.S. public policy at LinkedIn.

Together with LinkedIn’s Economic Graph and Data Analysis team, NLC will be visiting these six cities throughout July and August to share data on talent, workforce and education trends and work alongside mayors and local stakeholders to help each city in their local efforts to build pathways to success for all of their residents. This is the next phase of the Building Equitable Pathways to Postsecondary and Workforce Success initiative.

The National Summer Education, Equity and Employment Road Trip dates are:

  • July 27 – Charleston, South Carolina
  • August 2 – Nashville, Tennessee
  • August 10 – Jacksonville, Florida
  • August 14 – Houston, Texas
  • August 16 — Corpus Christi, Texas
  • August 17-18 – Austin, Texas

Learn more about NLC’s education and expanded learning programs, and follow our journey to build equitable pathways to postsecondary and workforce success in cities on our CitiesSpeak blog and on Twitter @leagueofcities via the hashtag #EquityEdEmployment.

About the authors:

Dana D’Orazio is the program manager for postsecondary education at the NLC Institute for Youth, Education, and Families.

Audrey M. Hutchinson is the director of education and expanded learning at the NLC Institute for Youth, Education, and Families.