On March 3, 2017, Phoenix hosted our city’s first 100,000 Opportunities (100K) Fair and Forum. At the end of a long day, 149 young people had attended, and 44 had received job offers or conditional offers. This event was a great opportunity for Phoenix. The 100,000 Initiative is a employer-led coalition focused on hiring opportunity…

An Ominous White House Announcement On Monday the White House announced that the president would propose a 10 percent spike in defense spending, offset by cuts across other agencies’ budgets. It’s unclear at the moment what those cuts will look like. Offsetting the proposed increase would require $54 billion in cuts across non-defense discretionary (NDD)…

One line in particular from President Trump’s inaugural address jumped out at me: “an education system flush with cash [that] leaves our young and beautiful students deprived of all knowledge.” I’m confident that I read this statement through a different lens than our president as he (supposedly) wrote it, but in many ways President Trump is…

In a breakthrough Federal policy development for the youth reconnection field, the U.S. Department of Education (ED) last week announced priorities for 2017 innovation grants that include an emphasis on dropout recovery programs. The former Investing in Innovation (i3) program, renamed Education Innovation and Research (EIR) grants by the Every Student Succeeds Act, supports “early…

This year has not turned out as many of us imagined, in many ways. I didn’t think my Cubs had a shot at coming back in the World Series, down three games to one. In fact, prediction site fivethirtyeight.com deemed their comeback less likely than Donald Trump winning the presidential election. Especially as it relates…