Cheryl Broom (00:00.11)
Hi, this is Cheryl Broom, CEO of Graduate Communications and host of Higher Education Coffee and Conversation. A top job of colleges, actually arguably probably a number one job, is to prepare students for careers. But what exactly are employers looking for? And how do we get students connected to local jobs?

Well, I turn to one of my close friends and colleagues, Margot Turner, CEO of PowerMines. She's bought and sold companies, and she played a key role on the passage of the strong workforce legislation in California, which transformed career education programs at California community colleges. Margot and I have a great conversation about partnerships, internships, and how to best leverage businesses to support our colleges and students.

It's a great conversation with a wonderful person. And as always, I learned so much from my guest and I think you will too. Enjoy. And I'm really excited, Marga, that you that you joined me today. You and I have kind of known each other from afar for many years, but really just connected at the beginning of this year, if you can believe it. I know. It's been such a short period of time, but

You're my sister from another mother. That is so true. But you're a lot taller. Yes. We're we're both foster kids. Yes, exactly. Well, you've had a really fascinating career in workforce development and in the community college system. So I wanted to start off by giving the listeners a little bit about your background. So if you can tell me about about yourself and your professional career. Happy to.

I refer to myself as a serial entrepreneur and an accidental one at that. I went to business school at USC, was fortunate enough to receive an academic scholarship to attend there. And thought I wanted to be in marketing and had the opportunity to take on an internship while I was there with Anheuser-Busch, three of my four years at USC, and was able to work that internship.

Cheryl Broom (02:27.448)
parlay it into my first full-time job at a school. And I think we may touch on internships later in our conversation. They're vital. That's certainly how I got my start. And had the fortune, with you know, luck favoring the prepared, to find out about a year in at only 21, just getting on 22 years of age, that what I studied and what I thought I wanted to be brand management, I didn't want to do at all because the daily

Job was nothing like I had read about or been prepared for. That was certainly a turning point in my life to start to look at other opportunities and where I wanted to be when I grew up. And through multiple iterations, I've built and sold several businesses over the last many, many years. I don't even want to put a number on it now. But the I had the opportunity to

Start a security company and grew it from zero to seven years later, 450 employees, mostly hourly. During that time, it was like getting an MBA on the streets and really gave me a look into what it's like to be the person who actually has all the risk, all the liability, and signs the checks. And then to have an opportunity.

Years later in my consulting practice to serve for five years as a technical assistance provider, director for the communications of the 115 California community colleges through the workforce division. I was able to really see where the large pipeline of talent in our country gets stuck. So it's put me in an interesting spot to see from

unique perspectives. There's I don't I've never met anybody that has had the combined experiences and perspective I have in workforce or economic development or education for that matter. I think it's so interesting your first business that you owned because first of all you're you're you were young right in your 20s. 25 when I started that 25 years old a woman in a male dominated industry. Yes

Cheryl Broom (04:53.13)
And then to grow it so rapidly and not have it collapse, but then be able to sell it is an amazing accomplishment. And I think there's people, there's women, you know, including me now that are much older who are like, How in the world did you do it? How did you make that happen? maybe more stubbornness than sense. I

Always was told by my parents that I can do anything I put my mind to. And I have lived that. And the more challenges get in put up front of me, the more excited I get about how to find a solution. And I think that's who I am in business, in personal, in sports, because I've been a competitive athlete on national and world stage.

So I think that that determination more than anything else was the first part of what gave me that energy and motivation. And then the second is always being curious. I ask why a lot. And I'm always curious to understand whether it's how a mechanical operation works in a device or whether it's

you know, a healthcare problem or a workforce problem or just finding a simple solution to a problem that was happening in security services and industrial security at the time. I think that my way I approach with enthusiasm and humbleness, my curiosity, people open up and I ask lots of questions.

And if you keep asking questions, you find common ground and you find ways to come to solutions. I think that's great advice. I mean, not just for business, but in all walks of life. I get asked a lot of questions from people at colleges who struggle within the hierarchy with getting their voices heard or being at the table to make a decision. And I think that's something to keep in mind is to show that curiosity and to ask questions and to be.

Cheryl Broom (07:12.388)
knowledge driven is always going to get you a lot further than you know coming in and trying to like wield a heavy hammer. Yes. I always advise new business startups. I have an investment firm that I started with, a gentleman named Stan Sewit, gosh, 18 years ago now, and we've invested to grow middle income jobs in the region. And we always

Preach a CEO perspective, regardless of whether this is someone in the corporate or academic ranks, or someone new starting a business because they have a great idea. It's about understanding the perspective of the CEO or the leader or whomever it is that you're trying to have your voice heard with.

sitting in their shoes trying to understand in the big picture operations where this particular issue sits and how the conversation can be set or the platform framed in a way that it resonates with the issues that leader has to deal with. And if people can find that commonality, that is a way to have a voice heard rather than just talking louder.

as people do when they're told that someone, for example, doesn't speak your native language, English. You've watched people do this. They just talk louder, which is hilarious. Don't talk louder. Change your perspective. Learn more. Great advice. I had a flashback of my mom doing that constantly to anybody who speaks Spanish.

They're not deaf. Okay. Speak a different language than you. so from from this entrepreneurial mindset, how did you get involved in education? Through a friend of a friend, heard that someone who had a consulting firm doing work with the colleges needed some communications assistance. And could I step in and fill that role for a very small amount of time commitment? And frankly,

Cheryl Broom (09:35.384)
financial commitment to just help out. And I said sure. I took the contract on. It was supposed to be 10 hours a week. And after five years there, I was pretty sure I was working 50 to 60. And I never thought that I would have anything to do in academia or public service. But I found myself having this unique perspective

where I had to get on a plane and go to an edpac Wedpac meeting the next day, which I didn't know what that was at the time, nor did I realize I would be mic'd with a live mic as soon as I sat down at my seat. So it was certainly something I wasn't prepared for or familiar with. But what I did is what I would do as a CEO or a business consultant, and I grabbed the annual report the day before when I was told get on a plane the next morning. And I read the annual report on the plane.

And I would think probably very few in academia or workforce and economic development reads annual reports of community college systems, but that's the way business people approach the beginnings of research. And I think that that right there set a stage for a completely different perspective because it's a completely different approach. And fortunately, there were some folks within leadership that had come from private sector and understood that.

So you jumped right in, feet first. And I think what's really interesting about your story that you haven't brought up yet is your experience combined with with some other people who worked in the California community college system really began to transform the way we think about and approach programs that prepare students to join the workforce. And I have some listeners on the podcast who are out of state and some even who are out of country. So they're not

familiar with the strong workforce program and and what it does and what it is. So I'd love for you to explain, you know, what that program was, how you got it, you know, started, and then you know, where it's headed, what happened to it. Great questions. Strong workforce came out of the precursor to the strong workforce campaign, which was the Doing What Matters for Jobs in the Economy campaign. That genesis came

Cheryl Broom (12:01.706)
Interestingly enough, from that annual report I referred to, that I was the only documentation I had when I jumped on that plane to head to that meeting. All I knew when I got off the plane is that the budget for the workforce and economic division of the California community colleges had been slashed in half due to not meeting performance metrics. Now I say that in a very non-workforce way.

I intentionally not saying student success metrics because again, remember the perspective, it's a business unit. So what we realized was that the stewardship of those tax dollars was not producing the student success outcomes that the current students and taxpayers need and deserve, as well as employers. So

The initial Doing What Matters for Jobs in the Economy program, which was spearheaded by the then Vice Chancellor Von Tong Quinlevin, who came out of PGE private sector workforce pathways. And she was brought on by then Chancellor Bryce Harris to modernize and revamp the division to focus on learning outcomes and today's needs.

That ended up being a multi-year campaign, which was a wonderful outreach, which we had never done before, engaging stakeholders from faculty and academic senate to COOs and other C-suite leadership, to everyone in between in the key talent roles of support throughout.

the state. And it was 14 town halls. I can't remember all the other stats off the top of my head, but it ended up being a $250 million legislative agenda that was passed and an injection into a funds targeted specifically to boost the streamlined new system and focusing more on

Cheryl Broom (14:28.108)
the relationships with employers and those outcomes. And that's for the workforce division, exactly where those funds should be targeted. When the program came out and you know it's a very complex program, the state, you know, was divided into regions and regions were given funds and people were hired and money came into community colleges to purchase equipment.

And to market career education programs. So it was really transformative for a lot of these programs that for years felt like they were, you know, the redheaded stepchild of academia. So, you know, programs like welding and machine tool technology and automotive technology and even biotechnology were programs that were always kind of secondary to transfer. And I remember being out of college when the shift happened and people were kind of irritated. And now, like five.

Maybe five years later, I think, six years and not sure how many years. Like it's really changed the thinking of workforce development and raised its profile within the colleges and I think within the communities as well. And in fact, one of the consortiums that I work with on a marketing campaign specifically for career education, workforce development, their programs, even through the pandemic, grew in enrollment at nine colleges when all of the other

Transfer programs shrank. So it's just amazing to see this transformation and the importance that's now being put to creating programs that drive the workforce needs of the region. And to that point, revised, updated communications like Kevin Fleming's Success in the New Economy, we have it on our website at PowerMines my consulting agency.

because we are such big believers in what this new economy paradigm is and how, to your point, absolutely the doing what matters and strong workforce dollars supported the infrastructure that was created from that legislation. Yeah, definitely. And and it's also recognition that, you know, not every single person who goes to college wants to go get a four-year degree. Like some people want a

Cheryl Broom (16:50.722)
good local job where they're going to be successful and happy and you don't have to invest four or five or six years to get that. Absolutely. I did a lot years ago with apprenticeships in the Department of Labor and in advanced manufacturing. And I also sit on the National Small Business Association Executive Leadership Council. And we are really subscribing very much and have for years to the Swiss model.

Over the German model for apprenticeships. And if you look at Switzerland, their entire paradigm of how they look at education and workforce education is one of parallel respected tracks into multiple vocations. And there are opportunities to slide horizontally. And their system really is one that we should be looking at seriously to model.

Yeah, just it seems like our public education system just takes so long to make changes like that. Which is a significant problem. And what I think, as community colleges, you know, the competition that comes for student enrollment is only increasing in pressure as more and more privatized tech training solutions are out there. And with the advent of the way we work.

Mobile now, you don't have to be sitting necessarily in a classroom anymore. And so I'm very curious to see what metrics and outcomes are coming out of the 116th completely online community college. Think that that was an attempt to be more agile, and I'm interested to see how it goes.

Yeah, those metrics are interesting to track and see and see progress. And I I really like now we have a place in California to go just to see like students who graduated from this particular program in a region, like how many of them actually got jobs in the region and you know what's the outlook for jobs and what's the median salary for those jobs. And that's really important from a marketing point of view.

Cheryl Broom (19:08.768)
Because a lot of the campaigns that I've seen that have done the best in marketing career education is in selling the field, not just the program. You have to tell people why they want to get involved in these fields and paint that picture and that story and make them interested enough to then give up their time and their money and their energy to come take classes. Exactly. We actually are so big on that. We created an app called Verify Viper that actually does everything that you're talking about.

Because the navigation of the information available is not comprehensive. Perspective students see things in siloed windows. For example, I'm holding in my hand a career in professional development workforce training summer catalog from one of our local colleges and looking at the Machinist Technology program. And this gives me very little contextual information about.

what that would mean to me as an individual if I were to do that program. And that's, I think, what we need to help educate students on, because when a student can get educated, prospective student on the entire process and where the off and on ramps are and what that looks like for them, then I think the case can be so much more competitively made for why the community colleges are a better financial and

other logistical route to take for job education versus some of the privatized education out there. Yeah, I wonder why colleges have such a hard time with this. I mean, are we just are they have such a hard time because they're talking academic speak to someone who needs to get a job. And it's like we're, you know, the joke we made earlier about not speaking the language and someone yelling at them louder.

They're speaking two entirely different languages. This is the same problem we have with all of the academic advisory of workforce training educators trying to go out and get academic advisors to inform curriculum. That is the most ridiculous thing I have ever heard of. This is the same conversation whether you're talking to a business about what training do you need us to give to students so you'll hire them.

Cheryl Broom (21:36.968)
Or talking to a student about this is an opportunity for you. We are not speaking the language. We do not have that CEO leader perspective. We don't put ourselves as advertisers and academic recruitment people properly in the mindset of the people we're speaking with because we aren't them. So what we need to do is find people who are them to craft that messaging and make our strategies and

Plans and executions if you want to do recruitment. Such a good point. And I really gets to kind of the heart of why I want to have this conversation with you is I feel like so many colleges don't know how to partner well with their area workforce leaders. Like it's this untapped like relationship and potential. Like, yeah, there's an advisory board meeting, and I've been to them and they're like donuts and coffee.

And like tabletop rubber chicken lunch and a handshake. Exactly. And it's like twice a year. Yeah. And here's what's unfortunate about that. You're going to attract a peer to the community college contact. Now, what's the problem with that? The problem with that is that peer in the business is most likely not anywhere near enough powerful decision maker.

for that organization to truly engage with the college and what the college is really asking for and what the organization could provide if the colleges asked the questions properly. So how do you build that relationship and what what should you be asking? Like what is a good way to make that connection? I'll give you an example. The investment firm Ki investment holdings in its KI, it's the Japanese form of the word Qi in Chinese, which means energy

Stancy, which also is now just retiring as vice president for global affairs for WD 40. And Gary Ridge, who's the CEO there, is also in our key investment group. So what they did is they approached San Diego State, who has an MBA program, about having a group of their students come in to do a research project. And this was a mutual

Cheryl Broom (24:05.038)
contacting the university and the business organization. And they laid out a specific research project they wanted, what the factors were that were needed to be considered and how it all might play out and what they were looking for. Very specific drill downs. This is a way for a group of students to come in and do something meaningful in an organization. But all of that conversation can't start with academia.

It has to start with business advisors who have only worked in business because if that instructor or workforce professional, administrator, field key talent, what have you, has not been the person to actually sign the checks and have risk in a business, they're not going to have the perspective. We need high-level leaders.

Perhaps in a facilitated group appropriate to them in a privatized business manner, perhaps to do a gleaning and what those big business problems are that need to be solved. And that's how you have a conversation with a business. If someone calls me as a business leader and says, Can you inform our curriculum? I would say, no, I think that's your job.

but if someone calls me and says, can we meet and take 30 minutes of your time to do a business analysis to determine if there's areas that our students can come in and help improve your efficiencies or tackle a problem you might have? Wow, that's a different conversation. That's a conversation I'll happily have. Yeah, and that really gets back to what you said in the beginning of the conversation of being curious, right? So exactly.

Yeah, asking businesses, well, what do you need? rather than just yeah, inviting them to the chicken lunch. And that we don't know what we don't know until we ask. So there's a lot of things, for example, I don't know in the classroom unless I ask. I'm not a teacher. I haven't been educated to be a teacher. I don't have experience other than trying to corral my children. And in much the same way, how can we expect academia

Cheryl Broom (26:31.82)
Who has no experience in business to have a conversation on how we can inform curriculum that makes no sense to me. We also have not just a hard time connecting on this whole like curriculum and programmatic and marketing, you know, level, but also just even with internships. And this was something I told you I wanted to talk to you about. And you had brought up in the beginning of our conversation the importance of your internship and how it actually made you.

You know, not want to go into what you had planned on going into. And my experience is similar, though it had the opposite. I wanted to do something fun. And so joined the radio station and got an internship at the local TV station, helping the morning show producer produce the news. And then all of a sudden I didn't want to be an attorney anymore. I wanted to be a reporter.

And my mom was like, Are you sure? Do you realize how much less money you're about to make? But you know, back then it's like you didn't, I didn't listen to my mom. money, who needs money? I could live off 18,000 a year. So needless to say, I was only a reporter for three years. And then I was like, mom's right, I to go get some money. I need to go make some money. But I would always tell my students when I was teaching that

My advice to them if they could if they had the time in their lives and they could make it work with their other responsibilities, that an internship is by far the best investment that you can make in your future. You meet people, you make connections, you you learn on-the-job skills. And I feel like there's not enough of those opportunities with some of our community college students. There's just this kind of

Messaging that's lacking around going out and getting this experience. I would agree. There's a part of our socioeconomic community that is told from early days an internship will be part of your college experience because, of course, you will go to college and you will have an internship, and that will help you establish relationships and gain experience to make connections.

Cheryl Broom (28:47.736)
For either your first job or second or third, right? There's other socioeconomic parts of our community that don't hear that message at all. So when they're college age and they hear the word internship, it's a big mystery. So I think contextualized appropriate languaging around what it is and the value and importance of it is all we need to share.

And I've never seen any good messaging on a systematic level for sure about that. The second piece of that puzzle is needing to create plug-and-play systems for internships in the same way we do apprenticeships. If we could create that internship system and we allowed

all of the colleges to feed into it. What we could do is larger scale, less regional, more statewide, communicating with the large employers in our state or multi-location employers who have infrastructure that would need internships and could facilitate that work training continuum. That's the two pieces of how we should put that together.

And I would be happy to spearhead that if we want to bring together some funding to do it because it's the piece that's missing. Yeah, it is. It is a big piece that's missing. And I was thinking too, even from like, even from a marketing, because that's you know what I am at the heart as a marketer. I'm like, even from a marketing perspective, we miss telling the story of the power of internships and the connections the college has with local employers. Those are big selling points. Well, and you want to talk about.

diversity, equity, and inclusion, the internships are the piece that they're still not equity. And that's an area where that foot up of equity in an internship that launched me. Without that, I can't say that any of my trajectory would have been where it is. And I had that privilege because I went to a learning institution that highly publicized it.

Cheryl Broom (31:13.93)
It made it easy for me. The interviews were on campus. It made it very easy for me to apply and learn about it. Yeah, it just really hit home to me because if we have any development officers or foundation directors listening, yes. Community college in California is not expensive and we may end up with nationally free community college. But still a majority of our students cannot take advantage of.

Getting an internship or an apprenticeship because they have to work or they have children or they have responsibilities and they have to have a paycheck. So you're right, it is an equity issue. And what a wonderful thing to fundraise for is to give students the opportunity to launch their careers by taking away a barrier to getting an internship or having that experience.

And there's no reason we can't build our internship program like the Swiss apprenticeship model, as well as the Colorado model. They've adopted the Swiss apprenticeship model. It is working in Colorado. So do students get credit for what they learn on the job? Is that part of that model? Absolutely. And they get paid. And it's the entire community of business and private sector.

All the way from the governor down to your newest frontline employee at the newest organization on the line. Well, here's an interesting thing too, now that I am a business owner. What if a foundation set up a program where students got scholarships in lieu of paychecks? So your businesses are donating money to a college scholarship who's then setting up a fund to give a scholarship for an internship. I might have just discovered a tax loophole.

It. I like your creativity. You know, you could even go so far as to think about this. The internship at San Diego State that I mentioned, that was not very much in person. That was a lot of research and writing that could be done and paid for so that students who might be a full-time single mother working two jobs and trying to go to school could, you know, in the hours from 3 a.m. to 4 a.m.

Cheryl Broom (33:40.994)
Do a little work on that project and get paid for it. Yeah. I don't want any mother working at 3 or 4 a.m., although I know too many do. I know. Well, I was working at 4 a.m. this morning. There's one right there. I would like to wake up at 3 45 and I'm like, okay, if it's if it's past four o'clock, I'm gonna get out of bed. If it's not four o'clock, I'm gonna go try to go back to sleep. So I and then I looked at my phone, it was 3 58. And I was like, yeah, I'll get up.

Good things happen in those wee hours. Yeah, I got a lot done. It was amazing. That's one of my secrets for working remote remotely. I get up at 5 a.m. and get hours of work done before anybody else has a cup of coffee. Yeah. And there are no emails coming in. That was the thing I reflected on this morning. I'm like, wow, I just worked for two hours straight and nobody called or emailed me. Mm-hmm. Exactly. Great time to get things done.

Well, I love this idea. This is now sparking all this creativity with how am I gonna get out there and tell foundations they need to make internship scholarships? They could even find, I mean, if they can find great candidates for local employers to hire and then have to take one more thing away from employers of having to do a bunch of screening. So Exactly. And being able to use our networks to bring in, you know, like I said, the WD forties of the world, who is a large

worldwide employer. You know, how do we bring those folks to the table and what do they need? And, you know, clearly they they need help and are happy to look to academia to support them. And you know, they have employees. They understand the nurturing and need to continue to educate and train. And they're always looking to fill their employee talent pipeline. So it's a win if it's done properly. Yeah.

Well, as we wrap up our conversation, you always have such great advice, and you've already given a lot of it. But I wanted to see if you had any other advice for people working at a community college who might be early in their careers dealing with the issues that come in working in academia, the bureaucracy and the hierarchies from your experience as a businesswoman and working in education.

Cheryl Broom (36:02.944)
Any advice that you can give? Well, the first thing I will say is don't give in to old paradigms. You're fresh, you're the next generation. Do research. Learn about other community college systems other than your own. Where are they having successes? Where are the models that work? Look to other academia, whether it be four-year, two-year, private, public.

Look to business for models of where things work and then introduce them with that benchmarking because people won't listen if you say, I have this idea. If you're young and you haven't had experience, the way to bring more gravitas to your voice to be heard.

is to show people that you've intelligently gone out to look at where best practices are happening and those are benchmarks that you want to set for your own organization's performance. And don't benchmark them to another me too. Benchmark them to the best organization you want your organization to be. Leadership and management will appreciate it. I love it. So here are my big takeaways from talking with you, Margo. I always have a big takeaway.

Don't talk louder, right? Don't always talk louder, talk smarter. Okay, always be curious, view your challenges as opportunities, and don't give in to the old paradigms. Yes. And as you work on your book, those possibly could be chapter headings.

The book that you're gonna ghostwrite for me. Because you are the you are, for everybody listening, the most talented writer I have ever come across in my life. that's really kind. Except for my typos. I might be a good writer, but man, those typos are really catching up to me. That's just grammar. That has nothing to do with actually writing. I'm talking about writing and you're gonna. Yeah, well, thank you.

Cheryl Broom (38:20.354)
Well, it's always a delight to talk to you and I'm sure I will be seeing you soon on the golf course or out paddling. Paddling. I think I think we have to have a board meeting soon. Let's go have a board meeting for sure. I appreciate this. Lots of fun, Cheryl. Keep up the good work you do. thank you, Marg. All right, take care. Bye. Thank you for listening to Higher Education Coffee and Conversation.

If you like the podcast, please leave me a five-star rating. And to discover more great higher education related content, make sure to visit us at graduatecommunications.com. And with that, I'm going to say thank you for listening. Thank you for the hard work you do for students each and every day.