From Siloed to Systemic: Finalists for the Deborah Vesy Systems Change Champion Award are redefining Northeast Ohio workforce development
The Deaconess Foundation established the award in 2021 to honor the legacy of its longtime president and CEO Deborah Vesy.
“The work of these finalists resonates deeply with the core of Deborah Vesy's work – her commitment to changing the conditions which held back people and employers, her persistence in the face of complex problems and her ability to bring diverse groups together,” said Cathy Belk, president and CEO of the Deaconess Foundation, a foundation committed to helping people build careers that sustain them and their families. “The projects are celebrated for their real-world impact, moving beyond simple solutions to enact lasting, systemic change and innovation.”
WINNER
Towards Employment
Towards Employment works with 2,000 people a year. The nonprofit trains, coaches and helps its job seekers – many of whom are overlooked by mainstream recruitment efforts – secure good-paying jobs. The organization also provides post-placement support, linking program graduates to resources ranging from transportation and childcare to financial literacy and career advancement counseling.
But what if Towards Employment used its support model to impact the broader workforce instead of just its job seekers?
That’s the idea behind the Employer Resource Network (ERN), said Chief Business Solutions Officer Staci Wampler. Through the ERN, Towards Employment provides on-site success coaches to all employees of partnering organizations.
“We are helping companies change the narrative,” she said, “from ‘how can we find new people?’ to ‘how can we keep the people we have?’”
The ERN, which started in late 2022 with one employer, has grown to 15. In the last year, 704 workers received 2,485 coaching sessions, resulting in more than 265 community referrals and $15,142 of direct supportive services, such as bus tickets, housing support and legal services.
With the cost to hire, train and lose an employee within 90 days reaching nearly $7,000, Wampler said that retaining even a couple of workers pays for the coaching. Yet, she suggested the true power lies in the collaborative nature of the program, which regularly brings participating companies together.
“It’s a unique opportunity for them to hear a range of experiences and solutions,” Wampler stated, “and really begin to chip away at some of their own staffing challenges.”
FINALISTS
Greater Cleveland Works
While the newly relaunched Greater Cleveland Works (GCW) is poised to broaden its reach – from its predecessor’s service footprint of 10,000 job seekers and 400+ employers – the past year’s focus was on quality, not quantity, according to CEO Michelle Rose.
GCW is the nonprofit successor to the Cleveland-Cuyahoga County Workforce Development Board and operates the county’s OhioMeansJobs (OMJ) Center serving Cuyahoga County, located at 1910 Carnegie Avenue. Rose said the shift in organizational structure, guided by the Board for years and finalized in July of 2024, coincided with a new strategic plan and brand identity, which collectively have allowed GCW “to act with greater agility and focus.”
One significant recent change is the implementation of performance-based contracts for services to job seekers and youth, linking payment directly to achieved outcomes. The new contracts mark a critical move “beyond the foundational, operational work of the previous year,” Rose explained. The immediate result is streamlined processes at the OMJ Center, ensuring job seekers are efficiently guided to quality services and progress is better tracked.
“This is really when we can see some of the reasons we became a nonprofit,” Rose said, also noting a forthcoming queue management system to improve intake at the Center.
“The ultimate objective remains treating both job seekers and employers as our dual core customers, providing the training and technology needed to match them better, and continuing to focus on major metrics like placement, retention and moving the needle on the racial wage gap in this community,” she said.
Greater Cleveland Career Consortium
In 2019, a critical community challenge was identified in Greater Cleveland: approximately 50% of graduating seniors had no solid plan for after high school.
In response, a coalition of educators, employers, philanthropic organizations and government agencies came together to rethink the traditional “college or career” binary and ensure every student graduates with a clear path to a family-sustaining wage and how to achieve it.
“We’re shifting the focus from college or career to career readiness for every student, realizing there are multiple pathways to success,” said Autumn Russell, president and CEO of the Greater Cleveland Career Consortium since its launch in 2022.
To help students chart a course toward what Russell calls “high-value jobs,” GCCC embeds career awareness and planning into sixth through 12th-grade curricula. This involves implementing a structured framework that integrates in-class career exploration activities, offers comprehensive career advising and provides students with meaningful, real-world work and career-based learning experiences.
The secret sauce lies in the systemic collaboration between employers, educators and community organizations, creating seamless supportive pathways for students while driving meaningful impact and economic growth for our region.
Of the 1,948 participants who graduated in 2025, 91% indicated they had a career plan, a 34% increase from previous school year and 400%+ increase from launch year.
