Solving Workforce Skills Gaps: Community Colleges, Employers and Integrators
A Conversation with Kenneth Adams, Richard Kane and Barry Puritz
Kenneth Adams (LEFT) is president of LaGuardia Community College. LaGuardia is located in Long Island City, Queens, and is part of the City University of New York (CUNY). Since taking the helm in 2020, President Adams has led the college’s efforts to improve student success, strengthen its commitment to diversity, equity, and inclusion, and increase government and philanthropic support. In 2021, he raised $15 million to help LaGuardia students and Queens residents rise and recover from the COVID-19 pandemic. President Adams was previously dean of workforce and economic development at Bronx Community College/CUNY. Prior to joining CUNY, President Adams spent more than 20 years leading economic and workforce development organizations in New York State. President Adams serves as chairman of the boards of directors of New York State’s affordable Housing Finance Agency, the State of New York Mortgage Agency, and the Housing Trust Fund Corporation. He is a director of Opportunity America, the Queens Chamber of Commerce Foundation, the Long Island City Partnership, and the Research Foundation of CUNY. President Adams received BA and MA degrees from Middlebury College.
Richard Kane (MIDDLE) retired as Chief Administrative Officer of the American Red Cross in Greater New York. Since then, he has been President of the Harvard Business School (HBS) Club of New York and is a current board member. He is a board member of HBS Community Partners, which provides pro-bono consulting for non-profit organizations, and helped found the HBS Angels Association of New York. In addition, he co-chairs the HBS Club Small Business Partnership Initiative, and is involved with advising, mentoring and investing in early stage companies. Prior to the Red Cross, Richard had a long career in the financial services industry, holding senior management positions at Marsh & McLennan, Bank Leumi and Citicorp. He has an MBA from Harvard Business School, an MS in Chemical Engineering from the University of Massachusetts, and an undergraduate degree from New York University.
Barry Puritz (RIGHT) is a board member of the Harvard Business School Club of New York’s (HBSCNY) Community Partners Board and active in the HBS Club of New York. He co-chairs the Strategic Partnership Initiative and the Skills Gap Initiative, a pro-bono workforce development team focused on middle-skills employment in the technology and non-clinical healthcare areas. Barry’s career started in commercial and general aviation, and then he started his own design/build merchandising display firm that he sold to a public company. Barry was the long-time president of a post-secondary school, training audio engineers and music producers. He has an MBA from Harvard Business School and an undergraduate degree from Cornell University.
Meredith Cass Callanan: In 2021, the New America and Lumina Foundations published their New Models for Career Preparation study, identifying five criteria for successful non-degree programs leading to high-quality jobs and careers: labor market outcomes, equity, credential stackability and affordability and completion. Let's start with an overview of the program that you created together – the Medical Billing Specialist Certificate Program at LaGuardia Community College – and how this program meets these criteria.
Barry Puritz: This is a rigorous, five-month-long program with LaGuardia Community College that trains people for non-clinical, high-quality healthcare jobs related to insurance billing. It teaches specific skills required for the job category, as well as the soft skills required to be successful in the work environment. Importantly, the program is free for students, assists in getting job interviews for all graduates and provides college credits. The target population for LaGuardia is very diverse, primarily first and second-generation immigrants. The program was created through a partnership among multiple stakeholders, including the Skills Gap Initiative, LaGuardia Community College, Weill Cornell Medicine and Mt. Sinai Health System as our business partners, and the Small Business Services Departmentof New York City.
Since we started the program in 2015, we have had 215 students enroll, 90% have graduated, 81% have been employed by one of our 10 participating employers and 80% have been retained in their positions beyond two years. We typically have 1,500 people express interest for each cohort, and eventually get to a carefully selected group of about 25 people per cohort. For the 10th cohort that graduated last October, about 80% had offers within a month of completion.
Kenneth Adams: This program is an exemplar. We hold this up around New York City as an example of a program designed right from the beginning. It has some of the highest completion rates and job placement rates of any of the 130+ LaGuardia programs.
For a program like this to succeed, it is important to look at labor conditions more broadly and then identify employer partners that can describe their specific needs and then agree to hire the graduates. We ask our employer partners to design the curriculum with us to ensure we are teaching the skills and competencies required, not just to get the job, but to succeed in the job. The Skills Gap team also played a critical role, with access to C-suite contacts at the various partner organizations, to help overcome objections and identify the people who would work with us to develop the curriculum with my staff. They also ensured the curriculum was driven by our employer partners, and that the students would finish the training with all the skills and competencies needed.
Callanan: Ken, tell us about LaGuardia Community College and the type of students who are attracted to this program.
Adams: LaGuardia is one of seven community colleges in New York City that are part of the City University of New York (CUNY) system. We are based in Queens, and have approximately 12,000 degree-seeking students, and 9,000 students in non-degree workforce training programs. A majority of our students are foreign-born, first generation in their families to go to college, and almost all qualify for federal and state financial aid, because they're low income. We have students from 133 countries who speak 62 native languages. Our students tend to be older than typical college students. We're also a Hispanic Serving Institution; 47% of our degree-seeking students identify as Hispanic.
The Medical Specialist Billing program has many unique qualities, including that it is open to students from both parts of the college. You could be a student in other healthcare programs such as nursing or radiation technology, or even in our business programs, because of the finance and business administration aspects of this program. You could be pursuing your associate degree and seek this additional credential because you want to get a job and have good work experience – what we call a stackable credential. It's a credential on the way to other credentials.
Students could include someone from Queens who worked in hospitality before the pandemic, perhaps in catering or housekeeping, but lost that job when New York shed a million jobs in the spring of 2020. Perhaps they always wanted to work in healthcare and were looking for a point of entry – not looking for a college degree, but for a credential that leads to a good living wage job in a field of interest – in this case, non-clinical healthcare.
Callanan: The Skills Gap Initiative was the genesis for the Medical Billing Specialist Program. Where did the idea come from?
Richard Kane: In 2012, Harvard Business School (HBS) created the US Competitiveness Initiative, led by Michael Porter and Jan Rivkin, in which HBS alumni across multiple industries were surveyed regarding America’s global competitiveness. I attended a presentation of the findings, in which alumni thought the US was falling behind. Local alumni clubs were encouraged to find a way to work on the problem in their communities. As president of the NY HBS Club at the time, I was intrigued by the importance of this work, which led to some alumni getting together to figure out what we could do. We decided to focus on the growing “middle skills” gap in the New York area. “Middle skills” roles are defined as being below the level of professionals but requiring some education/training to achieve competence. We recruited volunteers from the NY alumni network to create the Skills Gap Initiative.
Puritz: The “skills gap” was part of the issue about why companies can’t be competitive in New York. We realized there were two things going on. Coincidentally, there were approximately 400,000 people who could not find jobs because they did not have the skills required, and there were about 400,000 jobs not being filled because employers couldn’t find people with the required skills. Our HBS alumni team went to work on how we could do something to address this skills gap. We thought about the industries where this could be occurring and identified healthcare from our personal experiences. To confirm our anecdotal observations, HBS initiated a study with CareerBuilder that confirmed that healthcare was at the top of the list where these skills gap issues exist.
Callanan: How did you move from identifying an employment need to developing a full-blown program?
Puritz: We used our personal networks to find senior-level people at local medical centers. This led us to Weill Cornell Medicine and the Medical Billing Specialist role. The industry hiring practice was to poach people from other hospitals. Ultimately, Weill Cornell agreed that if we could train people to meet their specific skill requirements, they would hire them into the role of Medical Billing Specialist.
We went back to our network and found our way to the Chancellor of CUNY and a meeting with three community college presidents. Dr. Gail Mellow, then-President of LaGuardia and Ken’s predecessor was interested in pursuing the idea. LaGuardia became a full partner, working with Weill Cornell to create the curriculum for the Medical Billing Specialist Certificate Program. We stayed involved to prod a little here and there. It was an iterative process and it worked.
Sally Bloomberg: What obstacles did you experience and how did you address them?
Kane: One of the first hurdles we had to overcome was employer resistance to change. The medical centers held the perspective “we know how to hire people; we’ve done it this way for years.”
Puritz: We had to overcome credential creep in job prerequisites. For the Medical Billing Specialist role, medical centers required more than one year of direct experience and a post-secondary degree. Credential creep was screening out candidates who could be trained and be successful in the role. Initially, the employers were not willing to revisit these requirements. By leveraging our networks to access senior-level leaders and tapping into the expertise of our colleagues, we challenged the job requirements. This was one key role that our HBS team filled – a hard role for the community college to take on itself.
Adams: Employers and people in human resources are somewhat risk averse when it comes to hiring; understandably, they don’t want to make poor hiring decisions. To reduce the risks, there is a tendency for people to hire people that look like themselves or have a similar background. With the Medical Billing Specialist program, we are often sending graduates who don’t look like the others in the office or have the same background. In addition, some don’t speak perfect English because they may have recently moved here from another country and are still mastering the language. We are saying to employers, “Look at their skills. Give them a chance. Let them do the work and interact with their colleagues.” When the employers give our students a chance, they perform well. We have found that the program gives students the skills and confidence to be successful.
Kane: What the employers have found is that they are hiring people they would not have hired in the past. And these employees are successful. They're being retained in their jobs. They're getting promoted from those jobs. Now, there is no longer a perception that the employers are hiring people that are not qualified.
Another challenge was cost. Our pilot program was initially $2,500 for the students. We had 19 applicants who were all accepted. Half of them graduated and only three of them got jobs. We were dismayed with the results and did an analysis of the program. To the target population, cost was a barrier. This led to a partnership with the New York Small Business Services Department, which provides funding that enables LaGuardia to offer free tuition to students in this program.
Puritz: The program continues to be dynamic. COVID led us to modify the program for virtual learning. We also had to train students to work in a virtual environment. We had to make sure that we were teaching empathy, aspects of customer service and human relations that were not included in earlier versions of the program.
Bloomberg: The Skills Gap Initiative has been playing the role of “integrator” for creating and nurturing this unusual partnership. Can you talk more about that role?
Kane: Having champions as integrators who can help put the pieces together is critical in this kind of work. In addition to our passion, commitment and drive to get it done, Barry and I have invested our time, along with other alumni who brought different skills and contacts we could draw upon throughout the project. This would not have happened if Gail Mellow, former President of LaGuardia, did not see the potential and initiate the effort. When she left, Ken shared her vision and enthusiasm for the effort. They had the influence to make this program a reality. If we had gone in at any other level within the community college, it would not have turned into the partnership we have today. It is also important to have senior contacts within the employer organizations who can help overcome resistance.
Adams: The role of the integrator is the “special sauce” for the Medical Billing Specialist program. Having intermediaries with senior level contacts was critical for LaGuardia to be able to establish relationships with the medical centers who helped design the program and employ graduates, as well as get Mayor Adams’ office to fund tuition. Typically, employers don’t think to call upon their local community colleges to help address workforce skills gaps. And, there may be perception issues regarding our students. Looking ahead, we have got to get the message out that employers with workforce training needs should look to the Continuing Education or Workforce Development Division of their local community college. They will be pleasantly surprised that they can get a training program customized to meet their needs set up in a matter of months and maybe even have it funded by a local government partner.
I often say that we have to do four things for our students; we need to provide them with knowledge, skills, experience and relationships. Our amazing faculty are very good at the first two: they help our students acquire knowledge and skills, but given their teaching load, it is unfair to expect them to provide our students with experience and relationships. The integrators are important because they have access to the C-Suite of local employers, which can open doors for our graduates. These relationships are beyond the reach of the typical community college faculty member or program manager. Once they are in the job, our students demonstrate that they are highly capable of performing in the workplace. They just need opportunities to develop the right skills and work on teams in a business environment to gain experience. Then, they are well positioned to move up within the organization or move to other employers.
Bloomberg: What is LaGuardia doing to address other skill gaps beyond the medical billing work? What skills and characteristics are most aligned with the capabilities of your institution?
Adams: LaGuardia is unique among the CUNY schools because of the size of our workforce development programs. We're interested in honoring people’s experiences and helping those who have had situations in their life that may have been an impediment to employment turn these situations into opportunities for employment.
For example, we have a new three-year grant to support a training program for mental health peers. This program is funded by the Health Resources and Services Administration within the Department of Health and Human Services. It targets students who have had a mental health condition and prepares them to become certified Peer Specialists. They obtain training and on-the-job experience so they can apply for entry level jobs and use their lived experiences to help others going through treatment.
Another new effort is a state-approved certification program that trains individuals with lived experience in addiction and recovery to support the recovery of others. Students are eligible to apply for entry-level positions in not-for-profit, government and other recovery programs where they work as peer coaches to help people with addictions create and manage their own recovery plan. These individuals work under the supervision of a licensed clinical social worker and other health professionals.
At LaGuardia we have new opportunities every day to design workforce training programs. These non-credit, intense skills development programs are important because the New York economy is rebounding. New York City itself is the biggest employer in town with over 300,000 in the workforce, and there are opportunities there as well.
Bloomberg: Thank you for sharing the details and success of this partnership with us.
About the Authors:
Sally Bloomberg was a member of the 2021 Harvard Advanced Leadership cohort. Sally is passionate about the human side of change. She has extensive experience in strategic planning, organizational change management, coaching, and product development. Sally was a founding board member of Compass, a provider of pro bono consulting services to nonprofits, and served as the Chair of The Tuck School of Business Washington, DC area alumni club for many years. She also mentors underrepresented and first-generation undergraduate students as they prepare to pursue professional careers.
Meredith Callanan was a senior leader at T. Rowe Price Group for many years, focusing on marketing and communications, corporate responsibility, and philanthropy, before participating in the Harvard Advanced Leadership Initiative as a Fellow in 2019. As a Senior Fellow in 2020 and 2021, she conducted national research on leadership diversity and development in the US early care and education (ECE) sector which culminated in her establishing the Early Years Leadership Diversity Initiative to address barriers to advancement for emerging and rising leaders in ECE.
This interview has been edited for length and clarity.