Two local organizations are partnering together to provide young professionals of color with career coaches in an effort to diversify the Dane County workforce.
The Urban League Young Professionals, a subsidiary of the Urban League of Greater Madison, and the Latino Professionals Association are partnering together to create a program designed to place minorities and people of color in jobs.
After graduating from college, many first-generation college students do not have anyone to advise them on how to enter the workforce, Tania Ibarra, Latino Professionals Association president-elect, said. But the Talent Connections Career Coaching Program aims to change that.
“We want to accelerate their careers by creating more formal career coaching to make sure they have that mentorship from the get-go,” Ibarra said.
The program will match young professionals with professional coaches who ideally have experience in the desired field, Ibarra said.
Local companies frequently say they cannot find any people of color to fill particular roles, and as a result have few working in their offices, Corinda Rainey-Moore, interim-president of the Urban League Young Professionals, said. The Talent Connections program is designed to help fill the gap by providing companies with qualified, talented young people who have been coached by a professional in the field.
“We don’t want to hear companies saying that they can’t find people of color anymore because we are going to bring those people to them,” Rainey-Moore said.
While there is a disparity in terms of employment in Dane County, the bigger issue is not a lack of employment, but the type of employment, Rainey-Moore said. Many individuals cannot support their families on their incomes, and are forced to work several jobs in order to make ends meet, she said.
Decreasing this disparity by finding well-paying employment is an important step in mitigating the effects of poverty in the community, Rainey-Moore said.
“If we can connect them with jobs that are offering a salary that will allow them to feed their family, pay for child care, pay for transportation — that’s where we want to be headed,” Rainey-Moore said. “We want to see people of color elevated into these positions.”
The program also seeks to improve performances of the young professionals in their fields, Ibarra said. Continuing to educate participants will help increase the value of the workforce, and will allow the participants to become advocates for themselves, she said.
These types of partnerships are crucial to making an impact on the sort of disparities prevalent in Dane County, Rainey-Moore said. Much of what the Young Professionals do is through partnerships, which allows them to extend their reach and impact a greater number of people.
“We know that we can’t do this alone,” Rainey-Moore said. “A lot of us have similar interests and similar projects, so why not work on those things together?”
The Talent Connections program will start small, with about 30 people participating in the program. Fifteen of those individuals will be coaches, matched with a young professional.
The program is slated to begin in January.
