Hi, everyone. If you are in this live welcome, I'm not able to see the live screen. I think I need to pull up another device to be able to see that on the line here we have miss Jackie Arnold, who is the director of strategic relationships at sailor academy and sailor academy as a nonprofit or that basically offers free online courses, which leads to, you know, increase and enhance career skills and in some cases college credits. Miss Arnold has also written and spoken on educational access for as an evolution of magazine. I'm going to talk about the NAACC RAO and the Maryland chapter of the NAACP. Also on the line, you do have our wonderful leader miss Kimberly Rice, as well. So, Kimberly's going to kind of take over moderating with Miss Arnold today. Susan, how are you? I am not going to say a lot today. I'm going to let Miss Arnold kind of do all of that and let her kind of lead us down this path, but I am here just in case we all were wondering I'm here. Wonderful. So whenever you are ready to get started we can go. Sorry, and I jumped the gun a little bit. Too much, too many energy drinks this morning. Wonderful. Thank you both Kim and Shana for having me today. Very much looking forward to chatting with the black global career network and talking about bridging skills gaps for black Americans. I have some slides I'll share with you all quickly. I just wanted to give an overview of what's going on and I'm sure many of you are, you know, kind of very aware of what is happening in the world's work and how things are changing, but also give some suggestions on how we can best address that. So you all can see my slides at this time. Just as an overview of what is going on. African Americans and really everyone. Many jobs are kind of under the threat of automation. So there are probably three key things that we need to look at. As many of you know I'm a member of the groups I've seen a lot of the conversations going on. We all know that African Americans usually controlling for the same job same occupation experience education are not paid equally so that's an economic threat that we face. Second, educational attainment is still something that's kind of under siege for us as a community. Third, which I think is really key to look at. And this may not be as relevant for many of the group I see that many of you are our professionals in white collar positions, but you may have family who are not. And those jobs are also under high threat of automation. So the top jobs if you look at this slide the top jobs that are under threat of automation customer service retail fast food. Those are also jobs where African Americans are overrepresented. And particularly when you control for and this graphic has a lot going on with it, particularly when you control for educational attainment. We really become under threat of being displaced due to automation. And that has I really observed that accelerating due to the pandemic. You may have gone into a grocery store into a drug store and seen the kind of automatic cashiering machines well those are workers that are now displaced instead of having four or five cashiers there for five stations and then maybe it's run by one person who's overseeing it and who's really kind of a support role. So how do I've been doing a lot of thinking about how do we educate ourselves and really skill ourselves to prepare for a new. Not only a post pandemic economy, but also the economy that was heading toward us anyway due to automation and the advent of artificial intelligence. As I mentioned before, education, educational attainment is really key. So there are about a quarter of African Americans who have a bachelor's degree or advanced degree, which isn't as far from the national average as some may think so national average is about a third of the population has bachelor's degree or higher. The population that has some college no degree is about a fifth and about a third of African American adults have high school diploma and no college. And so the populations that are really going to be vulnerable to job displacement, both due to the pandemic and due to automation are going to be primarily those folks who have a high school diploma and no college. No college and know that also includes no certification or credential or anything like that, and then those that don't have high school so again. Those of you that have friends or family members who are in the these positions. I want to encourage those folks and really think about ways that they can reskill and it doesn't necessarily always mean going back to school there are other resources out there and I'll talk about one that's really compelling so that they can get into those jobs that not only are kind of at risk, get out of those jobs that not only are at risk for automation, but they also tend to be lower paying not necessarily livable wage jobs, physically taxing jobs, and really get into the knowledge economy where they would be more insulated. So we've looked at what the jobs are what the educational requirements are, or what the educational snapshot is for where we are now, what is going on in the future. So I've done a little bit of research of where some potential jobs in the future are and you can look online. Mackenzie has a lot of great resources I have some that I've cited in this presentation. As well as there's an organization called jobs for the future. That's great literature to look at as well.  When we're looking at the future, talking about, you know, what's going to happen in the next 10 years. So by 2030 you may see people who need to be data detectives so not just data analytics, per se, but you'd need to have some background and problem solving and investigative analysis. As a consortium manager, as we look at companies and evaluate their environmental footprint more. They will need support and making sure that they're the resources that they use our fair trade are sustainable, and they will need support to do that. So the healthcare is going to continue to be a growing field. All the health fields are going to continue to be a growing field. IT services broker, more and more companies, particularly more and more entrepreneurs are going to need more and more sophisticated information services to catch up. So the future is going to be a big thing. UX and as user experience design so that goes a little bit beyond web design but anytime you use an app or Facebook or zoom or good examples. There's someone working behind the scenes to make sure that from a user perspective your app is easy and intuitive to use 3D printing engineer. That's the kind of the new ways of manufacturing will be smaller scale. A lot of people are predicting and also space pilot, which I thought was kind of fun so I threw that in that, particularly if Jeff Bezos and Elon must get their way there will be a lot of people going into space. So that's a career field that you can look at as well. And so this is not the slide that I wanted to show quite yet. But I'll know it is. There we go. So just keep those future positions in mind because I'll come back to that in just a second. But I wanted to introduce the Sailor Academy and why I think that this would be a good opportunity for this group and also any family members and connections that you'd like to help as they develop their career. We are a nonprofit. All of our courses are free, meaning that you could go on to the site right now. You could take a course like leadership and teams, which is only a few hours. All the study materials are included within the course. You have access to exams. Once you finish the course you earn a certificate that you can add to your LinkedIn profile and all of that is available for free. Why would we do that? That sounds like an awful business model, right? That is a question that I get all the time. We are fully funded nonprofit. We're very fortunate to be in that position. We were founded by Michael Sailor, who if you follow cryptocurrency, you may recognize him as a voice in that arena, but he's also the CEO, chairman and president of MicroStrategy, which is a business analytics firm in the DC area. And so Michael Sailor's backstory is that he was able to go to MIT on a full ride ROTC scholarship. And because of that, he graduated from MIT with two degrees with no debt. So very shortly after he came out of school in his 20s, he was able to make a leap to entrepreneurship. And because he didn't have student loan debt, he felt more comfortable taking that chance. So since he was able to benefit from free education, he wanted to use technology, which is his background, to make free pathways to education available for people worldwide. And so we serve many learners all over the world. We genuinely have students all over the world, particularly in the US were able to offer pathways to college credit. And very recently we were able to finalize our collaboration with Morgan State University, which I'm very excited about. And also have partnered with universities, particularly that serve adult learners, so those who are looking to maybe go back to school, and need a flexible way to do that. Which is UMGC and Southern New Hampshire University, Purdue Global University. We partner with almost 40 institutions that accept our courses for credit. But today we're really focusing on skill development. So I did want to let you know that the skill development pathway is completely free and offers you a way to bolster your portfolio for free. You all may be more familiar with some of the massive open online course providers such as Coursera or edX. And we were founded around the same time, where we're different is some of those platforms have like a set enrollment and set progression period for courses. We don't have that our courses are asynchronous and what that means is that they're completely self paced. You're able to take the course, any course of any length on your schedule. If you only need a week to complete it. Awesome, you'll be complete. You'll be done in a week once you pass your exam. If you need to take a month to do so. That's certainly fine take your month take your notes take your time. And then you'll have that certificate after the college credit I did want to mention because for those of you who have family members who are either looking to get back into school or in school. You can use our resources to do what's called credit by exam and credit by exam is what some students use to save money on their degree program. So say you've been a communications professional for 15 years and part of your degree plan says that you should take communications one on one. Obviously, if you were to do that that's probably going to be a waste of your time. So usually what your university will have is an option for you to be able to test out of the course in some way. Usually they're called challenge exams. Clep is another provider that does this, as well as some other providers. And we are a part of that vertical providers that allows you a way to earn credit without being in the seat at school. And so some universities vary on how many credits that they will take. But if you look into your academic catalog, you will find that you can transfer some credits in through us and providers like us.  It's an opportunity to learn skills. And so you may recall that list of professions that were of the future that we were talking about earlier. I just wanted to show some sample courses that might line up to that. I can't help you become a space pilot. But we do have courses that line up with a lot of these pathways. And so I wanted to just quickly show you some of the skills that might be useful to you as you're looking at, you know, how is your career going to fare in the future. I think it's about your profession in particular, look at places such as the Bureau of Labor Statistics. They have great information about the growth and decline of certain industries. LinkedIn puts out a skills report. I think yearly, maybe even more often than yearly depending on the region, they'll even do something that's a little more region specific. And just kind of always look to see what's out there. One of the things that I like to do, and I've told my team, when I'm working with a team to do as well, is you should always kind of look at your industry look at job descriptions that are kind of one job up from where you are, how do these skills match up with your current skill set. What software is this, you know, pick out a dream company, what software do they want your role, or your next role up to use. Is there a CRM that you could be using, are they using, which is a customer relationship management program. And then look at free opportunities to learn those skills. So we're just one in this very large industry of free or lower cost ways to expand your skill set, and the more skills that you have, the more flexible you're going to be as industries change. And every industry, just about is going to get some change that is enabled by technology in some way. So, this is something that you definitely want to look out for. So other courses that we have include short courses professional development courses in leadership organizational behavior. If you are trying to help your company along to to get kind of a diversity training program, going we have a short course on organizational culture and diversity, writing a conflict resolution program, but none of us work at places that need conflict resolution program so we probably don't need that. I'm being facetious there. The decision making is only two hours strategic management, human resource management, and regardless of the length of any particular course, you can earn a certificate from that course if you're not looking for a degree program. If you are looking for a degree program, I'd encourage you to look at our partners page, and I'll add the link into the chat as well. I've got some of the partner schools that we have, and some of the programs that are available. I'm really excited to see schools like Morgan State University. I've also recently participated in this and the United Negro College Fund is spearheading a program where they are inviting students to come back students that have some college no degree to reenroll into HBCUs. I think it's really going to be a game changer in terms of the educational attainment that I was mentioning before. And it's generational right so if you, you or your loved ones are able to earn that degree there's a higher chance that your children will earn more, etc, etc. And you know there's a lot of talk and social media about breaking generational curses. This is a way to do that. This is a way to do that, and there's funding available and it's not as expensive as you think it is to go back to school if that's something that you're interested in. So certainly contact me if you are and I'm happy to offer some guidance or even do another session on that. And this is a quote from one of our students who is actually outside of the US who was able to use our courses and partner with one of our partners who specializes in distance education. The school is called Thomas Edison State University to earn his degree while he was in India. So there's opportunity out there. We're so lucky that we've been able to help students even outside of the US. I'm really excited to be able to talk with you all and learn what your interests are in terms of your educational goals. The resources are out there just there's a there's a way all it takes is the world to do it. And just wanted to mention that we, we work with universities we work with nonprofits so again very excited to be able to collaborate with the black global career network today. We've also done some work with government agencies who are looking at ways to develop the skills of their populations their constituencies. So, again, when we talk about working with someone or partnering with someone it that is a completely free collaboration. We don't charge for anything. We're able to really focus on resources on creating great content, which we work with university professors to develop before publishing and focus on great partnerships, such as this work with the black global career network. And again, these are my resources. I think what I might do chem is provide a PDF of the slide show. And I've also recorded the session so that it could be put up as an additional resource for everyone. That'll be perfect and how could how do people, how could people get in touch with you if they want to like learn a little more or need a little bit more support or a little bit more guidance. Absolutely. So getting in touch with me personally I put my email address on this last slide here. You can also reach out to me on LinkedIn. If you are in a course and you feel like you're having some trouble. Send a note to the contact email address I'll put that in the, I'll pop that in the chat that goes out to all leadership so I'm on that email. Email chain, all the directors of the organization are on that email chain so that we can respond as well as our student affairs team, so that we can respond to you quickly. And actually, if we have time, I'd love to show you all a course, just so that you could get a feeling for what you would be in for. Yeah, Jackie we have plenty of time we kind of have this scheduled out until 1230 so you can take all the time you need. Okay, wonderful, wonderful I promise I won't, I won't take too too much of the time since since you guys have been hearing me talk. Pretty much non stop. So I'm doing a quick screen share, and this is the sailor Academy homepage. I'll log in as a student and creating an account is name, email address, and password, basically, or you can even use Google or Facebook to create an account and so it's even easier than that. It's very simple to use interface once you get in it, and I'll log in to show to show you how, how it can be used. And so you'll see here I'm a sample student. In terms of career skills, I'm going to pick on project management, which I think is an awesome awesome skill to have regardless of the industry that you're in very necessary skill. And so you'll see that when, when you go into the course, you'll see that there's a time advisory, and of course, as I said before, these are self paced courses. So say you have some experience in project management, and there are some of these modules that you're very familiar with say you're really familiar with organizational design, you've done work on that for years. You can go through that section a lot more quickly than someone who's not familiar. You'll see that this is a college credit recommended course and since we have some time off, I'll go into what that process means a little bit later on, but you can also earn a free certificate. This is really a necessary skill to be familiar with, particularly as a lot of people. As our work has gone more remote or might be more hopefully work environments will continue to be more flexible but I know that for the federal government for example, there's a big push to move federal government workers back into federal office buildings by September. I'm based in the DC area so that's, you know, for us that's that's pretty big news. And if you're in the federal government that's probably been have been working remotely that's probably pretty big news as well. So you'll need to have a grip on project management particularly as you consider people might be working more flexible schedules, you might be working with people across time zones, etc, etc. So in each course, I mentioned that there's there's nothing to buy in the course. And I want to show you what I mean by that within each unit. All the readings that you'll need as the course has a textbook, we use a digital textbook that's linked to within the course. There will be articles there will be videos there will be activities. These are all available within the course. So this resource is a video resource. The next one is looks like that's going to be a reading article. So you see there's a short article there. We even have a mobile app where you'd be able to access these resources if say you know you are a family member did not have a computer available at that time, or you're on the train, not driving don't do this and drive. You're on the train or flying or somewhere and wanted to do this to kind of keep you occupied as an option to be able to do as well. And you'll see it's very intuitive so there are several ways that you can click to navigate through the course. You can use this top menu here. And in some some sectors they call us a bread come menu here. You can navigate with the side menu here, or you can simply scroll down and click to expand here. At the end of each unit, there will be a short quiz that you can take to check your knowledge. What we also like to do to help students be more successful in their exams. So you can provide a study guide. You can see the study guide is very detailed. So you can even use this as a study aid. If this is something that you're taking for training or or some other endeavor. I wanted to also make sure that I highlighted that professional development section of courses that I had been speaking about earlier. These are courses that are designed to be very short professional development opportunities. Customer 104 is a little longer, because we are working on making that a course that could be used for college credit attainment as well. Most of these courses, you'll see four hours 12 hours. Everyone could probably use a time and stress management refresher spreadsheets. If you are someone you know struggles with spreadsheet programs. We have a few different levels of spreadsheet spreadsheet knowledge for you, preparing and delivering presentations. But I can't really think of a industry that couldn't use that, even if you're an entrepreneur, you need to be able to develop a presentation, and so that you can earn funding so that you can win clients. If you're in the nonprofit sector, writing grant proposals is something that's going to be important if you're researching resume writing is important for everyone. I really wanted to highlight many of these and Bitcoin for everyone is a fun, fun course that we have put together so if you're interested in cryptocurrency you can even take that course, but you can take any of these courses, as many of these courses as you want, and use them as an opportunity to bolster your resume. Also, if you do so. Please share that on social media. So if you share that on Twitter on Facebook on Instagram, and you tag us, we will then share your certificate with our network as well. And why you would want to do that is because you're, you know, you're boosting your visibility. So not only does your network and and the people in your network, when they, you know, congratulate you or share. Does that expand in terms of networking opportunities, but now you we have a platform where we're using that platform to boost your visibility further. We're sharing that to our network which is global. So, anytime you really have an opportunity like this, use it as an extra opportunity to promote yourself. There's nothing wrong with that and you never know where your next opportunity is going to come from. And we know that a lot of job searches are very relational. So, use that as an opportunity to kind of leverage us to promote you. And just to show that you're a candidate that takes initiative that's looking at your own lifelong learning and professional development as well. That's going to make you a more desirable candidate. At the very least externally and really is just another opportunity to kind of look good as you are looking for your next either entrepreneurial venture or business opportunity. Any other questions. Yeah, I think that was a pretty kind of in depth thing. How what's, what's been the success rate of like a pair of adults going back to school and getting their degrees at some of the HBC use because you know that's a big kind of thing for us like going back, finishing. How, how are we seeing that play out in the long run. So, this, my observation of this is that there have been some is dependent on the mission of the HPC so not every HPC is the same some are focused on access right. Some are very focused on which they should, which obviously they should be most institutions are are focused on, you know, prestige and really making sure that you have a great network of alumni that are, you know, going on to be full bright scholars and whatnot. I'm not remembering the exact statistics, but HPC use which we, which we unfortunately don't hear the news, HPC use are killing it in terms of the number of full bright scholars that they recruit and that are accepted by full bright, which I think it's awesome. I, my observation is that a lot of institutions have been. And this has been across higher ed as well. A lot of institutions have been really focused on recruiting students who were college age, quote unquote traditional college age. The reality of who's going to school and what their, what their lives look like is the majority of students that are are the majority of the pool students that are available, and the majority of students that are going to school will really fit into non traditional the classic definition has meant if you work while you're going more than part time while you're going to school if you are a parent, if you're taking care of a relative, if you're over the age of 24 27 depends on who you've asked. If you support yourself. Well, there are a lot of, there are a lot more students that even that are in the 18 to 24 range that could fit any of those criteria. Higher ed has been really slow to embrace that. And I think before because HBCUs are really focused on recruiting these great 18 to 24 year olds that they not as many HBCUs had been embracing degree completion or getting some of those students that have not completed to come back and go to school. So I think that this is very new I don't have, I don't have data on that yet. That's why the Morehouse and and Morgan State news made the splash that it did. And it's a space that I've been watching for a while. Because it hasn't happened quite at that scale. The, those haven't the, these are new initiatives at these institutions. I hope that's, I'm not trying to dodge the question I'm trying to answer the best way I can. No, I appreciate you will have to wait a few years to see what I'd love to see is, and I'm really excited about the United Negro College Fund initiative to enroll students. I'd love to see more of that happen. But keep in mind that across all of higher ed, say, four or five years ago, the notion that if you were a student and you didn't, you, you know, dropped out, which is what we, which is what hire what we're getting away from calling it we're starting to call it stop out because we don't always know the reasons that students do this. The, the thinking behind it was, Oh, you couldn't cut it. Oh, you didn't make it. And it's, and sometimes, well, you know, it could be the student ran out of money, or a family member became sick, or or something else going on that they had to deal with, or they want ready it doesn't necessarily mean they weren't academically ready of course they were academically ready they were, you know, applied and were screened before they came in. But degree completion rates among African American students are lower than their counterparts. They're not as much lower as people will think that they are, but they are lower. They're going to be more vulnerable to defaulting on student loans when we don't complete. And that's, that's one of the reasons I kind of started out with talking about kind of the triple threat that we're under right so there's automation is a challenge that will have to look to the future to face.  So this is our negotiation class, and then negotiate always try to negotiate your job offer there, and then educational attainment is a challenge. So if you're already coming from somewhere where you know you may need to take out more loans and then you take out loans to try to complete I did a, this is the part of the remarks that I did for the Maryland chapter of the NAACP. I mean, those loans are still do. You will still get a bill for those loans so so you have the kind of double whammy is what they call it. And I love that that's such a scientific term of where you are already in the job where you're paid less than you would be if you had a degree. You're probably getting not getting paid the market rate for that job. And then you've taken out more loans. So you have a higher loan payment dude. So you have these two pressures on the wages that you are getting. And the best way to solve that is to really recruit focus on those students and recruit them back into school but how do you do that when I already have this loan building. So I guess what I think is needed as outreach to those students and funding for those students so that they can really realize their full potential, but that was a little bit of a soapbox, I apologize. I appreciate that I think that we, that's one of my big things is you know always thinking about all of the barriers, sometimes the false barriers to entry for us. That you know sometimes that degree is the difference between, you know, $10,000 more and even though they're qualified, it's just a false barrier. So yeah I definitely wanted to, to make sure that we discussed that is there any other questions. I know I'm asking a lot. I'm enjoying this. And actually, some, some hope is on the horizon, where a lot of employers are starting to look at really making an equivalent between a degree and experience, which is good. But because you, you, they, they are realizing that when you put a degree requirement you are eliminating a lot of very qualified people of color who have the experience, who have the experience for that position and will probably do well they just don't have that. They just don't have that credential quite yet. And yet if they were able to get into the job they would probably have the capital that they need to get to go back to school and complete that credential. But again, there are there are kind of other ways to get at it. Where you can develop your portfolio. So Sailor Academy is a core, of course, an opportunity. There are other providers so say you are in marketing and social media. There's a company called HubSpot that has a free social media certificate that can just, you want to, you want to make yourself as, as really as skilled as possible, because you never know where the change or next is coming from. Google of course has its IT certification certificate that Coursera is offering and Google is rolling out a number of such certificates. There are other free skill providers. I would love that if you start with Sailor Academy first, but you can kind of search your field and free courses and see what comes up. You know, look at what the popular software is in your industry. So, so again, that's that guidance. And this is all my. This is all my personal. So I just wanted to my personal opinions. I'm giving that caveat again. But when you have a chance to really just do a quick browse through companies that are like yours positions that are like yours positions that are one or two tiers up from your position. And look at what software they're using. Look at what certification they're asking for. If you're in human resources, does the next position up require that you have a SHIRM certificate and that's a Society of Human Resources Management. Is there a enterprise resource program that your competitor is using? What if you wanted to make a move over to them? Would you want to have that certification? Does it make sense to learn how to code? There are all sorts of resources to help you learn how to code for free as well. So that's, this isn't the TED Talk. So I can't say thanks for coming to my TED Talk. But those are just some opportunities that I think you should take advantage of. And not just you. If you're, you know, young ones, if you have students who are in K-12 who are crying about how bored they are, you know, you can watch three hours in Netflix or you could have them take a course with us or any of those providers. And now they have a skill that they could use maybe to even make some money. You know how tech savvy people who are younger are. So there's an opportunity for them as well just to have that, just to have a little bit of an advantage. And I think that is what they'll need to stand out, particularly as the economy continues to shift. That makes sense. Shanae, you have any questions? No, Cam, of course, as usual, you asked all the good ones. Well, I'm sorry about that. So what we'll do is if you want to make that, if you want to send the video over, we'll post it and the PDF will post it. And then, you know, well, maybe we'll start some conversation around this topic of like going back to school or getting our kids ready for, you know, the automation. We'll start having those conversations and start using those resources a little bit more because I think it is a truth is that the, as we are seeing, when people don't want to work for peanuts, companies want to figure out ways to get rid of the human factor. Absolutely. Absolutely.  So I think that this is a conversation that we need to continue to have. We need to, you know, start preparing for that in the long term. And then this is going to be a little bit controversial. Some of us been coasting on that job that, you know, because it's a good one we need to move up so some other people can come in and get that, that mid level experience. Just saying and not even that, like, when you think about the fact that, you know, a lot of younger people are kind of forgoing college because of the cost and all of the baggage that kind of comes with that, you know, preparing, you know, parents preparing children to be, you know, ready for the workforce so that they can secure themselves some type of position which would actually pay for the education that they want to attain.  So, you know, just because someone does something in four years and it takes you seven, it doesn't mean that, you know, what you've done is any less than what someone else was able to do because they had that opportunity. Just, you know, it's just wonderful to have this so that people can kind of, you know, gain some different skills so that they can still support their dreams of, you know, getting that education but without maybe incurring that, you know, that debt that they may have. If they were to just go straight, you know, to colleges that are straight into the workforce. Right. And I think also, it's very hard. It's very hard to get guidance at that time and if you think about. So my niece who's hopefully not watching. I'm not going to say anything bad about her. My niece who's very smart. She was a salutatorian in her high school did not have college guidance. So she had to kind of pick for herself and didn't have guidance for you know here's how you get scholarships and and blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, because, even though she was going to a college preparatory school, but because of the, but the resources in the metro area that she is in our lower. And so, having that guidance is really important for our kids, because you know you can also sure you can work and go to school. What I'm, what I'm seeing particularly from like I watched this space and particularly from my research for this presentation is that those jobs are one, you know, entering and to the to the point that Kimberly had made being crowded out, because if you say you're an older professional and you're displaced, and you know those those jobs that maybe would have been entry point jobs for what age or I'm not sure what age you wonderful ladies are, but maybe even 510 years ago are also being crowded out by other workers who are since everyone's being displaced, or has had their job disrupted in some way those people who haven't been able to work from home. Now there's a smaller pot and already younger people, the jobs that younger people normally would use as their starting point job, wonder less, and then there are more people competing for them. So, you know it's, how do we make sure that our young folks have or anybody really have a plan so I think we talk enough about there are vocations, you could go into vocational training, where you would earn a very good wage, and you wouldn't have to go to school for a very long time so a mechanic, for example, working in what they're calling advanced manufacturing or you're working with robotics to do manufacturing assembly line type of jobs. Those are growing fields, and there's a shortage of talent in those fields, but that's not a that's not a job that you would hear about in high school, certainly not something that I think that I would have heard about if I wasn't already watching, watching that space. So, sure, work but you know if you're, if you're going to community college which is awesome community colleges are great entry points for students who want to save money on their degree program you can get a certification, look for programs with a certification. For fields that are growing will always, hopefully will always need electricians and car mechanics will need people who can do these advanced manufacturing jobs. Get some sort of certification or licensure just so that you have something to help you along something that you can use to command a higher salary. Well I feel like this was super super helpful and I appreciate you. Um, what I'd like to do is I'd like to see if we can schedule something, you know, maybe again like this isn't a topic that needs to go away so I'd like to look at something, maybe as you know the kids are back in school, so that we can start looking at preparing them like for our junior our juniors and our seniors, and as parents are like getting their kids back into the new normal of going back into the new normal. Um, so I think you know maybe around September October frame if we could revisit this topic and look at it from a different perspective I think that'd be super super helpful. What do you think Shanae. I think she's still on mute. Yeah, I actually agree. I think that, you know, we do have a lot of parents and we have a lot of questions, you know, my, my young adult son or you know my senior. I think that would actually be good to try to focus on that demographic of, you know, are, because I know that a lot of, they're probably not a lot of seniors and juniors in our group, but the parents of those students. So that they have some guidance on what to do because, you know, it's a bit cross world so it's a lot of responsibility for parent to have to help guide their child in the right direction, you know, and kind of start having those conversations. I think that would be a perfect time, kind of when school gets back in and, you know, the college applications and all that stuff is kind of on the top of people minds, or what they're going to be doing, you know, the next six to nine months once school is over. I'd love to participate. And I can even, I'll find out if I can recruit a colleague maybe who's like a registrar at a university to participate to and maybe they can talk about what what universities are looking for. I love it. I'm going to take notes because I'm really bad about forgetting so let me take notes. Mel and Shanae keep me on point. So, yeah, I absolutely love this, and we'll definitely are going to post this in the group as well as links to those resources. I think it's super super important that we, we don't get caught with our pants down again. You know we don't get caught the next pandemic or whatever is around the corner and we don't want to get caught on a whereas again. Yes, and if you're interested in more information on this space, as I said I linked some resources, but take a look at what Brookings is talking about in terms of. And this was, like I said this was something that was automation was kind of already coming for many of these positions before the pandemic, but many businesses felt that in order for them to stay in business this was kind of one of those events where you know the kind of the evolution of this jumped a couple of steps, and it really grew exponentially where businesses at the very least are figuring out are kind of tinkering around with how much staff do they really need to be operationally viable. What's what's that minimal number. And, you know, for some businesses that helps them stay in business for some businesses it's helping them become even more profitable, but what what that translates to is less people as fewer people have jobs. And there's been a more than one piece of literature about how vulnerable black people are to that. Many of those top jobs that I had in that third slide were overrepresented in and the next community is kind of in a similar position where there's going to need to be some work done in terms of making sure they're not vulnerable to displacement as well, and that we can get into the jobs that will become available. As that process occurs. Make sense, make sense this is this is excellent information thank you so much for reaching out. I would love if you, I don't see you posting a lot, but I just joined I just joined the group after Merlene contacted me, but I will post and get into the discussion. I think that would be really, really great our people, they have those long memories like elephants, and they look for the people who are their go to people so I think that that would be super super helpful. And is there anything that we can do to kind of help your organization. Sure, if you have a resource page, or if I can reach out to you. So I do webinars on behalf of say their Academy as well so perhaps there's an event that we could do together. If you have somewhere where you list professional development resources, where we could be linked to. Again, there's no cost to do this. It's your, you are paying with your time. And it does require effort for the college credit of course. There's not a cost from us for, and we can, you know, do a separate presentation that's solely on college credit as well. For those who have, who are interested in going back to school or have kids that they're looking at, you know, what are your college options. But there is what we call a proctoring fee that does not go to us. We work with proctoring you, and we're actually looking at another proctor provider that can do a proctor and that's that means they have to verify your ID, similar to what you would have done for the SATs or ACT. And that would be $5 an exam or for $5 an exam imagine you're transferring in a course that's saving you $12 to $1500. You know, $300 a credit it would be 904 a three credit course for 1200 for for credit course. And that could that could be the difference between someone leaving because they need to work for a couple of semesters to get the money for tuition, or being able to stay in a program and got it. Yeah, that's awesome. Alright, well, I really, really appreciate you and we did I think we did got a lot of great information. I'm really excited about this. Wonderful, I am as well. Thanks so much for having me. I'm not sure if Merlene is on but thanks so much to her for reaching out. Really excited to get to know you all and to talk more about this subject is so it's so important and I, I see a lot of research being done on it. I'm not sure what's being, maybe it'd be great to get a policy person on and find out what's being done policy wise, but usually what ends up happening is particularly for our community kind of end up having to make a way for ourselves so how do we get ahead of it this time. You know, get all these brilliant minds that we have together to really make sure that we're able to participate in the new economy as well. Absolutely. Well, thank you so much. I am going to let you go. I would love to get that once you get the video will go ahead and click post that recording. And then we'll definitely follow up so that we can continue this conversation and you've given me a lot to think about like I'm always thinking on new ways to engage our people and you like literally gave me a lot to think about it like what how do we help move to the next step. Excellent. Excellent. I would love to continue continue the conversation so yes we're all on an email chain and look forward to hearing from you soon. Thank you so much. Thanks so much for having me. Thank you. Thank you. Have a good day. Bye everyone. And thank you for those who are participating on zoom. Thank you for joining us today.


And as the People's Democratic Party commences the screening of aspirants in the forthcoming general elections, the Governor Beno State and Senatora Contenda for Benio Northwest, Dr. Samuel Autumn, has assured the people of success in the exercise. Governor Autumn, in an interview with journalists at the PDP secretariat in Malkudi, said that the exercise is to go with the party's act of preparing candidates for election and the Nigerian constitution. The party's guidelines, the constitution of the Federal Republic of Nigeria, especially, they are made of the electoral act. So we've gone through all this and those who are not qualified should know that they are not. But all the same, the party is open to accepting the screening of all aspirants who have done due process and due diligence. So for me, I presented my documents and I've been screened and I'm sure it will come out successfully. Our correspondent Francis Stairt reports that the party had so far screened members vying for the Senatora's seat in the state.