Client Spotlight: The Chamber (New Skills Ready, TN BLU-SkillSPAN & Academics of Nashville Partnership Council)
Elevate supports the Nashville Area Chamber of Commerce (the Chamber) as they continue to bolster economic prosperity efforts within the Middle Tennessee region and statewide. Across our service offerings, we provide strategy, planning, evaluation, and facilitation support for three of the Chamber’s Talent Development initiatives including New Skills Ready, TN BLU-SkillSPAN, and the Academies of Nashville Partnership Council. See below for a description of these initiatives and how our project teams are involved in the work!
New Skills Ready
Launched by JPMorgan Chase in 2020, New Skills Ready (NSR) is a collaborative initiative that aims to increase the number of underrepresented students who complete high-quality pathways in high school and transition successfully into a related higher education program to earn a high-value credential.
Nashville is one of six national NSR sites working across four major priority areas: high-quality pathways, work-based learning, seamless postsecondary transitions, and closing equity gaps in educational and career opportunities. The Chamber serves as the Backbone entity coordinating activities and resources across government agencies, secondary and postsecondary institutions, and community organizations, including Metro Nashville Public Schools (MNPS), Nashville State Community College, Tennessee College of Applied Technology Nashville, Middle Tennessee State University, Tennessee Higher Education Commission, Tennessee College Access and Success Network, Scarlett Family Foundation, Tennessee Board of Regents, Tennessee Department of Education, and Tennessee Department of Labor and Workforce Development . Elevate works in tandem with the Backbone team to provide evaluation, strategy, and facilitation support to the Guiding Team, five Work Teams, and full collaborative working sessions.
Currently in year four of the five-year initiative, Elevate is proud to partner with the Chamber’s Talent Development team to support the collaborative work of addressing systemic barriers for high school students.
TN BLU-SkillSPAN
The Tennessee Business Leaders United (BLU)-SkillSPAN coalition is supported by the National Skills Coalition and led collaboratively by the Nashville Area Chamber of Commerce and the Martha O’Bryan Center as the Backbone entity. The non-partisan coalition addresses policy barriers that limit Tennesseans’ access to middle skill jobs (jobs that require education beyond high school) by convening partners in all three grand regions of Tennessee (West, Middle, and East) and hosting statewide convenings throughout the year. By fostering connections between regional workforce experts and skills advocates, the convenings allow partners to better understand local workforce development barriers, needs, and opportunities and in turn, develop a unified voice that advocates at the legislative level and contributes to the development of a robust and inclusive Tennessee economy.
Elevate’s role is to create structured spaces across the coalition’s regional, statewide, and Guiding Team convenings to explore trends and factors related to skills training, understanding the policy landscape, and develop strategies to advance policy priorities. Our project team is currently preparing for a statewide convening ahead of the 2024 legislative session.
Academies of Nashville Partnership Council
The Academies of Nashville is a longstanding collaborative effort established by four Founding Partners including the Chamber, MNPS, PENCIL, and Alignment Nashville. The Academies are career-focused small learning communities within twelve MNPS high schools and include career and technical education pathways across five industry clusters that provide students experiential learning opportunities to gain certifications, job shadows, attend job field trips, and more. As a Founding Partner, the Chamber convenes the Partnership Council, which is composed of business leaders in each of the five industry clusters to review and provide industry-related guidance on proposed Academy pathways and program modifications.
Elevate supports the Partnership Council in facilitation activities for their annual strategic planning retreat meeting, as well as quarterly meetings throughout the academic year. These meetings consist of relationship building, networking between business partners, strategy work, reviewing program modifications, and reviewing updates regarding the Academies, including economic trends and job sector data collected by the Chamber’s research team. The Elevate project team is preparing for the first quarterly meeting within the coming weeks.
Elevate looks forward to continuing to support the Chamber’s Talent Development initiatives in collaboration with additional Elevate clients who are coordinating and advancing workforce development in the Nashville Metropolitan and greater Middle Tennessee regions, and statewide.