LEADING WORKFORCE INITIATIVES
Felicia has led and facilitated numerous workforce initiatives throughout the nation. Her focus has been eliminating barriers between potential employees and potential employers. Whether the barrier is credentialing, affordability, ease of access, or a lack of awareness, Felicia diligently works with multiple stakeholders to craft meaningful experiences that gets a prospective student from a place of interest to that of employment. Here are two examples of this work!
State Farm Initiative
In 2016 when State Farm built a new regional corporate site in Arizona, the company’s focus was developing insurance studies programs at the community colleges. During conversations on building insurance programs, Felicia pitched the idea of an enrollment concierge program to support current State Farm employees in pursuing and completing degrees at the Maricopa Community Colleges. Just like the hotel concierge service, the enrollment concierge would be the one point of contact that would advise, enroll, purchase/deliver textbook and school supplies, and settle the tuition bill for the student-employee. The student-employee’s only responsibility was to show up for class and pass it with a “C” or better. The concierge would handle all transactions on behalf of the student through a direct billing process to State Farm.
Through the great work of Felicia, Jesus Chaidez, and April Orr, this initiative netted Maricopa more than $1.6 million in actual revenue and more than 3300 additional state farm employees as its students. Based on the success of the first year at State Farm, Chase Bank, Lowes, and Amazon signed on to implement concierge services at their work locations within Maricopa County.
Exploring Possibilities
In 2018, after a lunch conversation with State Farm Executive Deb Colbert, Felicia imagined a large-scale expo that would introduce students and their families to the plethora of career opportunities through the academic and career programs at Maricopa, and the regional employers who would hire students who successfully completed these programs. During this expo, the students and their families would also have an opportunity to learn about free services in the colleges and in the community that would help to support the student/family while enrolled in a program. Felicia’s desire was to ensure that all middle and high school students would be exposed to careers they didn't know existed by “seeing, touching, and experiencing these opportunities live and in living color!” This idea resulted in a two day expo entitled Exploring Possibilities held at the Phoenix Convention Center.
With the support of the local corporate entities, community and municipal agencies, as well as regional university partners, the first Exploring Possibilities hosted 120 middle schools, 280 high schools, and numerous charter schools. Managed by Donna Lopez Martinez and Pam Asti, the Expo successfully hosted more than 8,000 students and family members over the course of two days.