Photo caption: SHRM Chief Administrative Officer Emily M. Dickens, JAG student Aiden Richardson, Nebraska Governor Jim Pillen, JAG President & CEO Janelle Duray, United Way of the midlands President & CEO Shawna Forsberg
By: Janelle Duray, President & CEO
Coming to Nebraska felt a little like coming home. I grew up in the Midwest, and there was something familiar about the warmth, the humor and the practical way people approach serious work.
At the governor’s dinner, there were high-stakes conversations about agribusiness and the future of the state. But people were in jeans, cracking jokes. The world is not ending. Let’s find a solution and let’s get it done.
Standing alongside Governor Jim Pillen at the Nebraska State Capitol earlier that day, without huge fanfare, we commemorated years of collective work coming together. Now, August 27th will forever be “Jobs for America’s Graduates Day” in the Cornhusker State.
JAG Nebraska, part of United Way of the Midlands, has grown from just three programs when it launched in 2019 to 90 programs serving 5,500 young people this school year. Last year, students in the program achieved a 99% graduation rate.
At its core, JAG’s workforce readiness model combines active project-based learning, career exploration, leadership development and work-based experiences so young people can build durable skills and move toward meaningful careers.
JAG Nebraska is now broadening its role in the workforce ecosystem by connecting that proven model to state workforce priorities and employer needs.
Through an expanded relationship with the Nebraska Department of Labor, JAG Nebraska is now serving as a group apprenticeship sponsor. This creates a more direct pathway for students to move from career preparation in the JAG classroom to real-world employment experiences and employer connections.
This work is happening alongside Nebraska’s Good Life, Great Careers initiative and SHRM’s Education-to-Employment Pipeline (E²) initiative, which focuses on strengthening education-to-employment pathways and better connecting learners with workforce opportunities. Through JAG’s national partnership with SHRM, the world’s largest professional association dedicated to human resources, we’re connecting young people more directly to the skills and opportunities employers value most.
It is a powerful example of what can happen when state leadership, workforce systems, schools, employers and community partners move in the same direction.
For nearly five decades, JAG has shown what’s possible when a young person has a caring adult in their corner, a structured program for developing the durable skills employers seek and continued support as they move into adulthood.
Today, JAG serves more than 88,000 young people annually in over 1,500 communities across 31 states , with 84% of our graduates achieving a positive outcome in employment, military or secondary education within 12 months of graduation.
Our model works.
And now we’re setting a broader vision to prepare even more young people to meet the critical workforce challenges facing our nation.
JAG is becoming a national connector across the workforce ecosystem, using what we’ve learned to help build stronger pathways between young people and opportunity.
We are looking closely at what’s already working across our network. Where are young people moving successfully from education into meaningful careers? Where are employers deeply connected to that process?
And then comes the harder question.
How do we take what works and scale it so that more young people in this country get the chance to contribute their talents. That is the work at hand.
At JAG, we believe we are in a unique position to facilitate workforce systems change. And we are setting an ambitious goal.
By 2035, we aim to connect one million young people to high-demand jobs and career opportunities.
That kind of impact will require all of us to think differently about scale and partnership.
We are actively engaging governors, state leaders, employers and national organizations to align around workforce readiness and build new pipelines to the jobs of the future.
There is tremendous work ahead, and tremendous opportunity.
I left Nebraska incredibly hopeful. We came to the table from different perspectives, but we calmly kept focused on our shared goals.
As we build toward JAG’s national workforce vision, that is the kind of alignment and bridge-building we’re orchestrating. There’s a growing coalition confronting the new generation of workforce challenges. And we’re inviting everyone to the table.