After successfully completing its Affordable Housing Accelerator in January, co-working space Impact Hub Austin launched its sophomore effort—a Workforce Development Accelerator—on April 11.

“They’re two sides of the affordability coin,” Impact Hub Austin Managing Director Ashley Phillips said of the two accelerator agendas: affordable housing and workforce development.

The Workforce Development Accelerator will run through June 20. Nine organizations, each represented by one to three members, comprise the inaugural cohort.

Creating opportunities 

The accelerator will focus on three industries projected to drive the significant job growth in Austin: health care, information technology and advanced manufacturing.

The decision to focus on these industries was based on the Austin Metro Area Master Community Workforce Plan, the goal of which is to create 10,000 middle-skill jobs for economically disadvantaged Austinites by 2021.

With the help of sponsors and industry leaders from the public, private and nonprofit sectors, cohort members will work on ventures related to these three industries and that address Austin’s workforce challenges.

Solving problems 

According to Phillips, these challenges include a mismatch between local job openings, which are largely high-skill positions, and the local unemployed population, which is made up of predominantly low- and medium-skill workers; historic and systemic inequity within industries when it comes to recruiting, hiring and promoting diverse employees; and creating pipelines to industry jobs that are both entry-level and well-paid.

Cohort participants include 3 Day Startup, a local nonprofit that teaches entrepreneurial skills across the world. The organization hopes to democratize entrepreneurial thinking and develop a version of its curriculum that is accessible to more people, including adults transitioning to new careers and workers in low-skill jobs.  

Another cohort member is KeyUp, an online platform that connects 18- to 24-year-olds looking for employment with job opportunities by reaching them where they are most comfortable: on their phones.

Participant Jereka Thomas-Hockaday is hoping to develop her organization: Central Texas Allied Health Institute offers allied health professional degree programs. Her goal is to expand the annual graduating class from 40 members to 220 members by focusing on students in East Austin.

Educating the community 

The accelerator is also focused on educating Austin residents about available job opportunities, Phillips said.

“People grow up wanting to be a nurse,” she said. “People don’t grow up wanting to be a cybersecurity expert.”

Part of the issue, Phillips said, is many residents do not know which jobs exist in new industries, such as IT, or that there are entry-level positions that are well-paid and do not require “ninja skills”—such as coding proficiency—that may seem prohibitive.  

Looking ahead 

As with its Affordable Housing Accelerator, Impact Hub Austin will reprise this accelerator later in the fall with a second Workforce Development cohort.

"These are really complex, systemic issues," Phillips said. "It's really great to focus on them for three to six months, but obviously that's not enough."

Ideally, the network created by the inaugural cohort in each accelerator will contribute to the next cohort's success, expanding and strengthening the network of experts, supporters and mentors tackling these big issues.

Although Austin has near record-low unemployment, workforce development remains a critical issue when it comes to the city’s affordability challenge, Phillips said.

“How many of those [employed] people are underemployed and actually not able to thrive or survive in Austin?” she asked.