The Valley Industry Association kicked off its second annual Workforce Development Conference at the Hyatt Regency Valencia last week with keynote speakers Kim Lear and Seth Mattison offering business leaders advice on how to navigate changes affecting the work force.
Kathy Norris, CEO and president of VIA, said the event was inspired by CEO forums that VIA has done in the past, sharing that business leaders had concerns about the existing and emerging workforce.
“So, we put this together in the hopes that we could shed some light in that, offer suggestions, create new partnerships, and ways for businesses to be more successful,” said Norris.
Norris believes events like this are important because they help reinforce the needs of the business community in Santa Clarita.
“That’s why my organization exists, is to help the business community continue to grow and to prosper. So, this is one of the ways in which we do that by offering them as many opportunities and ideas and keen new insight as possible for ways that they can, you know, continue growing their businesses,” Norris said.
Hillary Broadwater, co-chair of the Workforce Development Conference, felt that this event was necessary because workforce development is much broader and a greater importance to the business owners here.
“To bring in skills for them; to be able to look at what is going on with their employees, why, and how to work with the emerging workforce, how to build it and understand, how to bring those new employees in and workforces, is just such a broad expanse of information, that our members are constantly looking for ways to improve their businesses and to leverage the strength of their employees,” Broadwater said.
The conference was set up to help members by giving them some tools to take and implement into their own businesses, Broadwater added.
Joanne Ainsworth, executive director of the nonprofit Santa Clarita Valley Food Pantry, was happy about the curation of the event and how well thought out it was.
“Santa Clarita is such a growing community, especially in what I do, I see it every day,” Ainsworth said. “And we have to be able to come together in a professional, but also educational manner. Once in a while, these wonderful events to put our heads together, to figure out, like, what can we do better, to learn.”
