CLEVELAND — It’s no secret Downtown Cleveland looks different these days after the impact the COVID-19 pandemic had on the area’s employers and business landscape.
But the Downtown workforce became a bit larger Friday morning after five women embarked on new career paths as part of their graduation from a new workforce development program.
The program is a partnership between the Oswald Companies, an insurance brokerage firm based in downtown Cleveland, and the non-profit Olivet Housing Community Development Corporation in the city’s Fairfax neighborhood.
As part of the partnership, candidates are given six months of on-the-job training and professional development courses across different disciplines to prepare them to enter the field of insurance upon their graduation.
Robert Klonk, the chairman and CEO of Oswald companies, said the apprenticeship nature of the program sets candidates up for success.
“Our employees are the instructors,” Klonk said. “So many of our employees teach them through this, and make sure they go through.”
Increasing diversity in the workforce is also a goal of the program, with all five graduates of the program being women of color. Klonk said bringing in and training quality candidates in-house will help to introduce unique voices to the industry, as opposed to waiting for candidates to come to them.
“If there's good candidates coming through the workforce development program that want a job, we're going to go get it,” Klonk said. “We tried to build our own program and create our own diverse workforce, if you will, and we're going to continue to do it.”
Increasing diversity in the workplace was one of the main objectives of the project for Dr. Daisy Alford-Smith, the executive director of Olivet. Alford-Smith said her organization joined the partnership to expand access to job opportunities for people in the Fairfax community.
“We want to focus on meeting the needs of individuals in order to repair them, train them and move them into the workforce,” Alford-Smith said.
The training offered by the program opened doors to an industry that was previously thought to be out of reach. Alexis Moss, who graduated Friday, said she had no background in insurance, but now plans to enter the field fully trained.
“It opened a whole new world in which I was unfamiliar with, and the support that we received,” Moss said. “They don't give you the opportunity to be unsuccessful.”
Moss also spoke on the importance of diversity and said opportunities like the apprenticeship program can have a big impact on the community.
“To have this door open for people in this community is amazing because it gives them an avenue that they didn't even realize was there,” Moss said. “It opens a whole new role for people.”
All five graduates have insurance-related offers for a full-time job at the Oswald Companies.
