On December 22, 2020, WPTI Executive Director Sharon Sewell-Fairman published an op-ed in City Limits, titled, “How We Can Rebuild NYC’s Hospitality and Retail Industries.” The piece addresses the critical state of the city’s hospitality and retail sectors, and the impact this has had on New York City workers – with nearly one-third of all workers receiving unemployment benefits, and a disproportionate impact on people of color, young adults, immigrants, and entry-level workers.
Few sectors have been hit harder than retail. Even before the pandemic, many of NYC’s 32,000 brick-and-mortar businesses were struggling against strong competition from e-commerce and national chains, shifting consumption patterns, and fast rising costs of operation.
On November 17th, more than 100 workforce practitioners and stakeholders joined Workforce Professionals Training Institute (WPTI) and the New York City Economic Development Corporation (NYCEDC) to learn about the state of one of New York City’s most important sectors: Hospitality.
On September 25, Gotham Gazette published an op-ed by Sharon Sewell-Fairman, Executive Director of WPTI. The op-ed highlights how the workforce development field, particularly frontline workforce training professionals, are generally overlooked in New York's economic recovery conversation and how their contributions to training and reskilling unemployed populations are critical for helping low-income populations, who were hit hardest by the pandemic, access available jobs and businesses rebuild their workforce.
On Monday, August 3, AM New York published an op-ed written by Sharon Sewell-Fairman, Executive Director of WPTI, focused on closing the digital divide to get New Yorkers back to work.
Read the op-ed here
WPTI, the Workforce Field Building Hub, and Coro New York are pleased to introduce the 2020 Workforce Systems Leadership Program (WSLP) cohort!
Leaders in the workforce development field are facing unprecedented challenges in the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic.
Update 8/4/2020
WPTI and the Workforce Field Building Hub are pleased to announce the official release of Voices from the Frontline: An Introduction to New York City's Frontline Workforce Professionals, the first in our Voices from the Frontline series.
The Workforce Field Building Hub at Workforce Professionals Training Institute (WPTI) is pleased to release Why Focus on Frontline Workforce Professionals?, the second in our series of briefs in connection with our recently administered 2020 Survey of New York City’s Frontline Professionals.
Through a strategic partnership with Coro New York, WPTI’s Workforce Field Building HUB has launched a 24-member cohort training program, for leaders from government, community-based organizations, academia, and the private sector to advance leadership skills, cultivate a deeper understanding of New York City’s workforce system, and create change at the systemic level.
With support from The Pinkerton Foundation, we are pleased to announce the sixth cohort of the Job Developers Learning Group(JDLG). The JDLG is a rigorous cohort-based training program designed to equip and empower job developers with skills that best meet the needs of employer partners and program participants. Represented in this cohort are 36 frontline workforce development practitioners from 28 organizations that provide direct service to youth and adult jobseekers across NYC’s five boroughs. This cohort joins 190 practitioners who are successfully applying lessons learned from this program to their work in the field.