An item from a neo-liberal…  This one is an item from a business professor with little direct experience in education, but who believes free market economic principles are the answer to education’s (and pretty much all other society’s social) problems.

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NOV 8

Working with Individuals, Employers to Unlock Purpose, Potential, Passion, and Success

		MICHAEL B. HORN

For over 30 years, Cara Collective has worked directly with individuals experiencing a number of barriers to employment work through their challenges, invest in their development, and get great jobs. They’ve also worked with employers to help them rethink their hiring procedures so that they don’t miss hidden gems in their communities for any number of reasons. In this conversation, Kathleen St. Louis Caliento, the president and CEO of Cara Collective, shares her personal story to this role, the work of Cara Collective, and the stunning success they’ve had for over 8,000 individuals in helping place them not just in 13,000 jobs, but in jobs where they are more likely to persist and do work that matches their own sense of purpose. We explore what they’ve learned, how they’ve sharpened their process, their outcomes, and more. As always, subscribers can listen to the episode, watch it below, or read the transcript.

Michael Horn:

Welcome to the Future of Education, the show where we are dedicated to building a world in which all individuals can build their passions, fulfill their human potential, and live a life of purpose. And to help us advance that, today we have a great guest, Kathleen St. Louis Caliento. She’s the president and CEO of Cara Collective, where she’s been since 2021. She and I got to be on a panel together at the ASU-GSV Innovation Summit around the future of learning and work. And Kathleen, it is great to have you here. Great to see you.

Kathleen St. Louis Caliento:

It’s so great to see you again, Michael. Thanks so much for having me.

Michael:

Yeah, you bet. So first, let’s dive in. Tell me about the work that you do that CARA Collective does. How do you describe what the organization itself is?

Kathleen:

Absolutely. What I like to say is CARA Collective is an organization that helps people find themselves and then find jobs. We are a Chicago-based workforce development organization with a national footprint. And we have served over 8,000 individuals in helping to place them in 13,000 jobs. We understand the barriers, the particular barriers that many of our participants face, homelessness, poverty, health, child care, formerly incarcerated. And those are the barriers that often, unfortunately, keep them from employment. At the same time, we know that they are incredibly talented, and they have either found us because of a misstep, misfortune, or injustice, as we know prevails, unfortunately, in our society. And so the goal really is to figure out a way to help them, as I said, find themselves and find jobs. So Cara Collective is really comprised of four entities in the way that we do that. The first is Cara, which is our personal and professional training program. That’s where we provide these workplace competencies to help them prepare for jobs. But also what’s sometimes even harder is those social-emotional competencies, right? So we have workshops that are called Love and Forgiveness, and helping people truly understand what it means to rid themselves of some of the baggage, some of the myths, some of the narratives that they’ve been told their entire lives. And so those are the things that those personal and professional training workshops that truly help them get prepared for the workspace. As part of that, we provide these supportive services because, again, as we know, our folks are facing significant barriers to employment. And so connecting them to resources that help them address housing, homelessness, their health care, child care, if they have record expungements that need to take place as well. So those are the things that we’re helping them with in terms of background services. Then we have two social enterprises because we recognize the need for some of our participants to truly begin to build their resumes back up. And some of them had significant gaps in their work history or facing particular records and backgrounds that were not being taken on by some employers. And so giving them those reps through some social enterprises. Our first, CleanSlate, is an external beautification company. And we work with social service districts, chambers of commerce, neighborhood organizations to help beautify the city of Chicago and its neighboring areas. In addition, Connex is our mission-driven staffing firm. That’s where we work with employers who are looking for that temporary, sometimes temporary to permanent positions that we help to place our folks in. And then finally, the work of Cara Plus is our expansion. That’s our expansion arm. We do a few things there. Number one, we work with other workforce development organizations like ourselves to think about best practices and how to continue to multiply their impacts, working with employers and their job seekers as well. But we also work with employers to think about what it means to truly be inclusive in their employment practices. So providing them supports as they’re thinking about everything along the talent continuum from hiring, sourcing, and hiring to developing and retaining, in fact. And so that’s the work of Cara Plus. The final piece that they do there is affiliation. That’s where we work with local organizations who are looking to lift up workforce development programs and help them build those in their local communities. So really, really proud of the work that we’re doing, the impact that we’re seeing. Again, as I mentioned, the number of folks that we serve, but also retention is important for us. So a big measure of our success is that our folks are staying on the job longer than most folks. So our retention rate right now hovers between 65 and 70% for one year, same firm retention, which is really incredible, especially when you think about the national average being typically around 50 or lower percent.

© 2023 Michael Horn