Last week Partner4Work, the workforce development agency for Pittsburgh and Allegheny County, announced the hiring of a new chief executive. Our city is fortunate to attract one of the nation’s top workforce professionals, Earl Buford.
Mr. Buford has devoted his career to connecting jobseekers with employers in Wisconsin. He was appointed president and CEO of Employ Milwaukee, that city’s workforce development agency, in 2014. Prior to that, he spent 15 years leading a partnership that prepared workers for the building trades.
The recent report “Inflection Point” from the Allegheny Conference on Community Development sounds an alarm about 80,000 jobs in our region that may go unfilled because of a large wave of retirements in the next few years. There is not a sufficient supply of well-trained workers to fill those positions, and this may have a negative effect on the local economy. Mr. Buford is an ideal person to tackle this challenge. And as an indication of the key role of workforce development: Mr. Buford is filling a position held by Stefani Pashman, who led Partner4Work before becoming CEO of the Allegheny Conference this year.
In a survey of Mr. Buford’s career, one word stands out: collaboration. He spearheaded Midwest Urban Strategies, which brought together workforce organizations from 12 cities including Chicago, Detroit, Indianapolis and Minneapolis. The purpose was to improve services through collaboration and sharing of best practices. He also helped to develop Compete Milwaukee, an initiative to provide unemployed residents with temporary work, job readiness training and career counseling.
Workforce development agencies are not well-known to the public, but they run vital job training programs and our state’s unemployment or CareerLink offices. Partner4Work has a budget of nearly $22 million, which comes primarily from government funds. It has had several notable successes and, with Mr. Buford’s arrival in June, it can be expected to make further contributions to the growth and vitality of our region.
First Published: April 16, 2018, 4:00 a.m.