We’re thrilled to announce that Pacific Community Ventures and our President and CEO — Mary Jo Cook — were chosen as one of 15 fellows by the Aspen Institute Economic Opportunities Program to more deeply engage in work that expands the availability of better quality jobs in our economy.
Americans place a high value on work, and believe hard work should offer a pathway to economic security. But decades of lagging wages, eroding benefits, and declining employment security means too many jobs do not match that vision of work as a pathway to a better life. To restore the ideal of work as the pathway to the American Dream, our economy needs more quality jobs.
“Now is the time to focus on making better quality jobs,” said Maureen Conway, vice president for policy programs and executive director of the Economic Opportunities Program at the Aspen Institute. “That’s why we’re launching the Job Quality Fellowship. It is our direct engagement with an impressive range of innovators already leading the way toward expanded opportunity and improved job quality.”
As part of our forward-looking strategy, PCV has three goals related to quality jobs: Increase quality-job creation among our Bay Area small business borrowers; Increase quality-job creation far beyond our own borrowers by using our national BusinessAdvising.org mentoring platform to get the quality jobs toolkits we’re building into the hands of as many small business owners as possible; and continue to conduct and disseminate quality-jobs field-building research.
More About The Program
With support from The Prudential Foundation and Ford Foundation, the Job Quality Fellowship aims to support and strengthen the work of leaders dedicated to expanding access to and availability of better quality jobs in our economy. In June, EOP released the call for applications and received hundreds of responses. Today, we are proud to announce the sixteen inaugural Job Quality Fellows. Over the next year, this group of thought and action leaders will work together on these crucial issues. The 2017-18 Job Quality Fellows are:
- Emylene Aspilla, Director, Social Responsibility & Community Sustainability, San Francisco International Airport, San Francisco, CA
- Betsy Biemann, CEO, Coastal Enterprises Inc, Brunswick, ME
- Laphonza Butler, President, SEIU 2015, Los Angeles, CA
- Amanda Cage, Chief Program Officer, Chicago-Cook County Workforce Partnership, Chicago, IL
- Mary Jo Cook, President & CEO, Pacific Community Ventures, San Francisco, CA
- Jose Corona, Director, Equity & Strategic Partnerships, Office of the Mayor, Oakland, CA
- Christine Curella, Director, Business Initiatives & Job Quality, Mayor’s Office of Workforce Development, New York, NY
- Jess Kutch, Co-Founder and Co-Executive Director, Coworker.org, Washington, DC
- J.D. LaRock, President & CEO, Commonwealth Corporation, Boston, MA
- Sean Daniel Murphy, CEO, ICA Fund Good Jobs, Oakland, CA
- Jenny Riggenbach, Workforce Director, Incourage, Wisconsin Rapids, WI
- Liddy Romero, Managing Director, WorkLab Innovation, Denver, CO
- Anjali Sakaria, Senior Community Development Analyst, Federal Reserve Bank of Boston, Boston, MA
- Palak Shah, Social Innovations Director, National Domestic Workers Alliance, New York, NY
- Lara Shock, Senior Director, Associate Choice Initiatives, Walmart, Bentonville, AR
- Walt Tobin, President, Orangeburg-Calhoun Technical College, Orangeburg, SC