This past month’s CLA-OC executive committee saw the Education side of the flywheel purposefully connecting to the Talent workstream. The consensus among participating members is recognizing talent at a younger age in high schools and nurturing that talent in higher education will create a robust pipeline of talent while providing greater opportunity in our community.
It has been said that economic mobility for first-generation and underserved students is the civil rights issue of our time. EC members agreed to coalesce stakeholders in developing a K-Career talent pipeline, with the focus on the K12 and Community Colleges Education workstream.
Chair and co-chair of CLA’s Education flywheel, Kim Cripe, CEO of CHOC, and Robin Shanhan, managing director and PIMCO’s co-chief operating officer, are deeply involved in the Talent side of the flywheel. CHOC has reached out to the youth of OC to help them get on a path to live a full life, and have been focusing on initiatives in the K–14 space. Kim acknowledged the challenge in bringing these initiatives to scale. Robin added, “I have witnessed this success and the tremendous opportunities first-hand by virtue of PIMCO serving on the Talent side of the CLA flywheel, but it will take many of the leaders on this call today to gain the momentum to make progress.”
CLA-OC is encouraging all our CEO members to consider investing in the talent pipeline earlier as an example to the rest of the OC business community.