The Allegheny Conference on Community Development has found a new leader, one with deep understanding of the Pittsburgh region’s workforce challenges.
Stefani Pashman has been tapped as the new chief executive officer of the Downtown-based nonprofit that supports economic development across 10 counties in southwestern Pennsylvania. Ms. Pashman will assume the position effective Oct. 2.
The Allegheny Conference announced in April that Dennis Yablonsky, who has served as CEO for nine years, would retire at the end of the year and that it had appointed a search committee, chaired by William S. Demchak, president and chief executive of The PNC Financial Services Group. In 2015, Mr. Yablonsky earned a total of $557,000, which included $424,575 in base compensation, plus $128,127 in bonuses and incentives, according to tax filings.
“Stefani is an accomplished leader, well respected by the many organizations and officials with whom the conference partners,” Mr. Demchak said in a press release. “Under her leadership, the conference will achieve great things on behalf of the people and businesses of the Pittsburgh region.”
Ms. Pashman has spent more than seven years as CEO of Partner4Work, the Pittsburgh region’s state-funded workforce development board that connects employers with job-seekers in the Pittsburgh area. She presided over the agency, a nonprofit with an expected 2018 budget of nearly $22 million, as it confronted the region’s workforce challenges following the Great Recession.
In particular, the agency in recent years has tried to expand its reach to the estimated 40,000 people who are unemployed or underemployed in the region. As technology has disrupted jobs across industries, the skills employers are looking for and those workers could offer do not always match up.
This year, she led a new campaign that rebranded the agency — formerly known as the Three Rivers Workforce Investment Board — and aimed to promote a less bureaucratic and more compassionate message.
Three years ago, the agency took over handling summer youth employment programs that serve about 2,000 teenagers and young people living in Allegheny County. And she has placed a heavy emphasis on employers to do their part — mostly, by hiring people — to help increase labor force participation.
As a business group, the Allegheny Conference has acknowledged a disconnect, too.
Last year, it released a well-publicized report that predicted a shortfall of 80,000 workers in the Pittsburgh region by 2025. According to its study, employers need to retool their expectations for new hires amid a wave of baby boomer retirements and as technology disrupts the skills needed for certain jobs.
On Tuesday, Partner4Work also released a statement congratulating Ms. Pashman.
“Stefani has been a tireless champion for the region by building a world-class workforce development system that rivals systems in areas twice our size,” said Mark Latterner, the board’s chair.
“Under her leadership, Partner4Work has transitioned from a $2.9 million policy-driven think-tank to an approximately $21 million comprehensive and aligned workforce development system serving job seekers and employers in Pittsburgh and Allegheny County.”
Partner4Work named longtime board member Debra Caplan, a former Allegheny Health Network executive, as interim CEO until a search committee identifies a replacement. Ms. Caplan serves as an executive in residence at The Forbes Funds and is principal of HobartHumphrey.
Daniel Moore: dmoore@post-gazette.com, 412-263-2743 and Twitter @PGdanielmoore.
First Published: September 12, 2017, 7:29 p.m.
