EDC Leads New Work to Help Power Emerging Regional Economies
EDC has received an award from the William and Flora Hewlett Foundation to connect and support four U.S. hubs that are strengthening K–16 education and workforce training to ensure the current and future workforces are ready to power emerging regional economies. The four hubs focus on key industries such as photonics, energy security, coastal resilience and water utility management, and disaster prevention and mitigation.
Our four hub partners include Headwaters Tech Hub Consortium in Montana, the NSF Futures Engine in the Southwest (Arizona, Nevada, and Utah), the Greater Boston Coastal Resilience Jobs Alliance (Massachusetts and New Hampshire), and the Mississippi Energy Resilience Workforce Consortium.
EDC’s team—led by Andrés Henríquez, Josephine Louie, and Jacqueline DeLisi—will connect leaders of the hubs and support them in identifying shared K–16 education and workforce development challenges, codesigning solutions, and widely disseminating best practices. By fostering cross-hub collaboration and sharing hubs’ learning, EDC will accelerate the progress of efforts to meet growing demands for workers with new sets of technical and occupational skills.
“We greatly appreciate the William and Flora Hewlett Foundation’s investment in this important work,” said Andrés Henríquez, EDC director of STEM education strategy. “Each of our hub partners is doing incredibly innovative and important work to quickly prepare and position the current and future workforces to meet the needs of rapidly growing economies in their regions. It is an honor to support their efforts and to spotlight their successes.”
Our work will include:
- Establishing a four-hub community of practice to foster collaborative learning and work
- Providing technical support to advance each hub’s strategic plan
- Helping connect K–16 education and workforce development systems
- Leading the publication of best practices and resources to benefit the broader field
- Gathering data to document activities, guide improvement, and assess impact
We invite you to learn more about EDC’s STEM Education and Workforce Development and Resilient Futures work.
