Impact. We are better together.

At the Silicon Valley Leadership Group, we focus on three principles to guide our work to enhance our impact: We set ambitious, even audacious, stretch goals; we work to build bridges, to bring people and communities together; and we never forget those less fortunate than we are, knowing as we lift up others, we can lift up entire communities.

Our Community College to Career Initiative (CC2C), led by Dr. David Palter on our team, is a great example of our first principle – we reach up to set ambitious, audacious goals.

We are partnering with 19 Bay Area Community Colleges that collectively help educate 360,000 students.  Our community colleges truly reflect the rich diversity of our region: 78 percent are people of color; 54 percent are female.  These bright, eager students already live here.  Overwhelmingly, they have figured out our housing challenges.  They already know how to endure our traffic problems.  And as employers, we know that not every great high-tech profession requires a four-year or advanced degree.  We know that many job clusters can be successfully filled by someone with the right two-year community college degree or certified course schedule.  So here are the twin challenges we can solve with our CC2C Initiative – We can rebuild our hollowed out middle class with great paying careers across our industries, and we can greatly diversify our workforce, which almost all of us as employers know we can do better.

In just two years, working together with member companies like Lawrence Livermore National Labs, Steinberg Hart, and Silicon Valley Bank, and nonprofit partners like Growth Sector and Work 2 Future Foundation, we have connected 1,400 students with 100 employers.

Impact.

To engage directly in our Community College to Career Initiative, please reach out to me directly at cguardino@svlg.org.

-Carl Guardino, President and CEO, Silicon Valley Leadership Group, Nov. 11, 2019

Editor’s Note: This is the first of a three-part series on the guiding principals that drive our work at the Silicon Valley Leadership Group.

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