Workforce Policy Lab Research and Evaluation Team is making a difference in Colorado, Illinois and beyond
About a decade ago, the Workforce Development team in NIU’s Center for Governmental Studies expanded its work with the State of Illinois on workforce development programs – helping with program development, policy analysis and program delivery. Soon, the Workforce Policy Lab was born, and the team’s work expanded to Colorado and Wyoming.
In 2021, the WPL hired Yolanda Clark, Ph.D., to lead the Workforce Research and Evaluation Team. Yolanda and the WPL team have developed a portfolio of work – highlighted by work in Colorado – that serves as a model for best practices across the U.S.
Yolanda Clark
We spoke with Yolanda to learn more about this work and why successful workforce development programs make a difference in communities.
Before we get into the conversation, here are Yolanda’s top tips for her team or anyone evaluating workforce development programs:
- Focus on change management. Change is inevitable! Every time a new administration comes into power, the priorities may shift, so you have to be proactive.
- Focus on individual experiences and outcomes. It’s possible for a program to successfully meet all its annual or quarterly metrics – but a significant number of people who have completed the program are not doing well financially. You must analyze the right data to know if individuals are successfully advancing their careers and gaining economic self-sufficiency.
- Remember why this work matters. People want to work, but they need to earn a family sustaining wage to make up for any benefits lost when entering the workforce. If the people in a community are not developing their skills and careers, the community cannot sustain itself.
Keep reading for an in-depth conversation with Yolanda.
Can you introduce yourself and the work that you’re doing?
I’m Yolanda Clark. I lead the research and evaluation work for NIU’s Workforce Policy Lab, in the Center for Governmental Studies. I started working for WPL in 2021, and our projects for the State of Colorado began then. We have an awesome team. I’m so grateful to be working with them, and I love the work we do.
Can you say a bit more about your work with Colorado?
We started working with Colorado in response to an Office of Inspector General audit of training-related placements for the Workforce Innovation and Opportunity Act (WIOA) program. Since then, we’ve built a partnership with them and started doing their annual WIOA evaluations each year.
What’s your philosophy and approach to evaluation work?
Instead of being reactive, we try to be proactive. That means being forward thinking and focusing on change management. We do a lot of research on evolving priorities and try to get ahead of the changes that are inevitable whenever a federal administration changes, so we can help the state align their work with what’s going on currently.
For instance, right now the focus is on the America’s Talent Strategy under the current administration, which is their vision for workforce development. It has five pillars: Industry-driven Strategies, Worker Mobility, Integrated Systems, Accountability, and Flexibility and Innovation. In the most recent evaluation we completed for Colorado’s largest federally funded WIOA program, we focused on two pillars in particular: Industry-driven Strategies and Worker Mobility. We looked at income and employment outcomes, and we compared incomes of program participants to different income thresholds to help us measure economic self-sufficiency.
In addition to gathering quantitative data from thousands of program participants, we also do focus groups with those participants and the frontline staff to follow up and understand what the quantitative data means.
Why is it so important to do these evaluations?
First, because it’s a requirement through the U.S. Department of Labor who funds these programs.
It’s also important because the states want to learn how to improve their programs. With the focus being economic self-sufficiency, we’re trying to see if the programs are doing what they’re designed to do, which is to get people into employment and make sure they have career ladders to move up and to earn family sustaining wages.
One important part of the analysis is to help states identify career ladders. One example is Certified Nursing Assistants (CNAs). In all the states, we’ve noticed that CNA jobs don’t pay family sustaining wages. But it is a rung in a career ladder, to go from CNA to LPN (Licensed Practical Nurse) and then RN (Registered Nurse).
I like the idea of change management to meet the current situation and improve. Can you share examples of changes that you’ve seen or recommended over the years?
One example is the modernization project Colorado began when we started doing their evaluations. All the states have local workforce areas who each have their own programs and collect their own data. Colorado realized they needed more consistency in data, so they redeveloped their forms and their data procedures to be consistent across the state. This modernization project has been amazing, and the state is very proud of it. We can see the results in higher quality data.
We’re also working with the state on a new initiative called House Bill 26-1317. It deals with the unified post-secondary talent development system. There are many different agencies in Colorado that work on post-secondary education and workforce development. The goal of this bill is to create smoother, more systematic collaboration of all these agencies. It was very exciting for me and for our team to be asked to assist with this project.
Is there anything else you’re really proud of that you’d like to share?
We’re very proud of the national recognition we’ve gotten for our work in Colorado. The U.S. Department of Labor highlighted our innovative use of data originally collected for federal reporting requirements to evaluate the effectiveness of workforce development programs. We’ve also been invited to speak nationally about the work we’ve done, reflecting our growing reputation as a national leader in the field.
What makes your team so successful?
We have so many amazing people working on this team. Julie Gommel-Bailey is our lead data analyst for the work we do on federally funded workforce programs, including Colorado. Andy Blanke also brings economic and workforce development experience to the team, and together they do the quantitative analysis and data visualizations. Brian Richard, of course, is our Workforce Policy Lab founding director, and we bounce ideas off him all the time. Deidra Minor, Anastasia Kocher and Sumabindu Odipelli have also made significant contributions to the research and evaluation work. We have an amazing team across the WPL, and we all pitch in to help one another.
Can you share a little bit about your education, your background and why you care about this work?
I have over 20 years of experience in affordable housing, specifically with Section 8 housing. I got to know many low-income clients over the years and became passionate about the work. While I was doing that work, I already had a bachelor’s degree in psychology, but I wanted to understand the community more deeply, so I went back and got a master’s degree in community development. Then, I pursued my Ph.D. in human capital development with an emphasis on workforce and economic development.
My master’s thesis and doctoral dissertation both focused on economic self-sufficiency and the cycle of poverty – which is both cultural and structural. I’ve always been passionate about understanding and disrupting the cycle of poverty. Because of my background in affordable housing and my research on the cultural and structural aspects of poverty, I have a perspective of workforce development that’s focused on the whole system – how do housing, culture, education and workforce training all work together?
If you want to know about me, you should also know that when I’m not doing workforce development research, I’m usually dancing! I’ll be somewhere teaching Zumba or Intrinsic Dance, which is my own creation that’s a little bit of hip hop and line dancing and chair dancing.
I love that! Is there anything else you want people to know about the relationship between workforce development, economic development, and the impacts on communities and families?
I think people often underestimate the true impact workforce development can have on communities. Workforce development, economic development and community development have to work together. You can do all sorts of economic development, bringing businesses into a community, but if the people themselves are not being developed, your community is not going to sustain itself. Workforce development is where the individual gets the training and support to help them fully participate in the workforce and the community.
How does that focus on individuals and communities influence your approach to program evaluation?
When I first got into this evaluation work, I noticed that often people were analyzing whether a program was successful – and then they assumed that if the program was successful the individual participant who went through the program must also be successful. But that’s not necessarily the case.
You can have a program that successfully meets its metrics each quarter, but a significant number of people that have completed the program are not doing well financially. So, our approach to workforce program evaluation focuses on the individuals, using data to find out if they’re successfully getting on a career ladder and gaining financial self-sufficiency.
My work in affordable housing, my knowledge of how people manage and make decisions about public assistance, and my experience of having public assistance myself has been very beneficial to doing this work. I would not have guessed that life would lead me here, but my past experiences have led me full circle to the work I’m doing now. It’s not easy, but it’s very exciting work, and I love it.
