Philip Weinberg, President and CEO of STRIVE, discusses the organization's intensive, evidence-based model for workforce development. Drawing on his background in government and the private sector, Weinberg explains how STRIVE blends rigorous professional training with long-term "lifetime" coaching to help individuals facing significant systemic barriers move into family-sustaining career paths. The conversation explores STRIVE's rapid national expansion to 14 cities and its strategic approach to scaling without compromising quality, including the use of anchor employer partnerships to backward map training for high-demand sectors like healthcare, construction, and logistics. Weinberg emphasizes the necessity of ongoing coaching and social supports as the "secret sauce" for helping students thrive and discusses practical steps for building more inclusive talent pipelines. Transcript Julian Alssid: Welcome to the Work Forces podcast. I'm Julian Alssid. Kaitlin LeMoine: And I'm Kaitlin LeMoine, and we speak with innovators who are shaping the future of work and learning. Julian Alssid: Together, we unpack the complex elements of workforce and career preparation and offer practical solutions that can be scaled and sustained. Kaitlin LeMoine: This podcast is an outgrowth of our workforce's consulting practice. Through weekly discussions, we seek to share the trends and themes we see in our work and amplify impactful efforts happening in higher education, industry, and workforce development all across the country. We are grateful to Lumina Foundation for its past support during the initial development and launch of this podcast and invite future sponsors of this effort. Please check out our workforces podcast website to learn more. And so with that, let's dive in. Julian Alssid: Kaitlin, in so many of our recent conversations, we've discussed how workforce development has moved from being a fringe topic to a central economic imperative. Over the past few years, there's been a real shift toward a skills-based ecosystem where the goal isn't just a one-and-done credential, but creating sustainable, family-sustaining career paths. Kaitlin LeMoine: It's true, Julian. And while the policy and tech landscapes are moving incredibly fast, we keep coming back to the importance of the human connection and social supports as the true secret sauce for helping students persist and thrive in this new economy. It's not just about the technical training; it's also about the foundational skills that allow learners to pivot and grow over a long-term career. Julian Alssid: Which is why we're so thrilled to have our guest join us today. Phil Weinberg is a leader who's been at the forefront of this work for years, proving that high-quality, intensive training can fundamentally change the trajectory of lives and communities. Kaitlin LeMoine: That's right, and the breadth of his experience is what makes him such a powerful voice on this topic. Phil is the President and CEO of STRIVE, and his career has spanned the public, private, and nonprofit sectors. Before taking the helm at STRIVE in 2011, Phil was appointed by Mayor Michael Bloomberg as President of the New York City Workforce Investment Board, where he oversaw workforce development services for the nation's largest workforce area. Julian Alssid: Phil's journey also includes significant leadership in education reform and private sector experience at the management consulting firm Bain & Company. That range of experience is exactly what he's used to lead STRIVE through a period of growth and renewal. Under Phil's leadership, STRIVE has scaled to 14 cities, focusing on helping students facing significant systemic barriers across the workforce. Kaitlin LeMoine: STRIVE has become a model for how to blend rigorous professional training with the long-term coaching necessary to move people from entry-level jobs into sustained careers. We are so happy to have you with us today. Welcome to the Work Forces podcast, Phil. Phil Weinberg: Thank you. Really thrilled to be here. Thanks for having me. Kaitlin LeMoine: So, as we dive into the conversation today, Phil, we'd love to hear you tell us in your own words a bit more about your background and the journey really that led you to your role at STRIVE. Phil Weinberg: Like many people, my journey has not been a straight line. As you've described it, it's been across multiple sectors: corporate, government, and now nonprofit. And I think like a lot of people, I entered the corporate sector thinking that was where the innovation was happening and if you wanted to do big things in social impact, that would be the platform to do so. And I had an early experience, my first time working in government in Chicago—and this was, to date myself, back in the 1990s during the sort of welfare-to-work reform era—and I had the incredible fortune to work with some audacious, courageous, visionary leaders within government working across sectors. For me, it really opened my eyes to what's possible and the ability to do big things from government and across sectors. So, I once again found myself within city government, as you noted, working in the Bloomberg administration here in New York City, focused on helping uplift individuals and access career opportunities that could, in fact, change their lives and their families' lives. Whether it was on the education reform side, as you noted earlier, or on the career pathways economic mobility side, my career has always been focused on the question of how do we help individuals gain opportunity, advance in their lives, and how do we create communities that are more just and more equitable? And so, I'm sitting in city government, I got a call from a recruiter, and it turned out that STRIVE—which at that point had been around for about 25 years—had been a leading workforce development nonprofit. Its CEO was transitioning, and they were looking for someone to lead STRIVE into the future. And so, I came up to visit the team, I stepped into a classroom, and I was totally blown away by the power and depth and quality and engagement of what I encountered. And so for me, I just imagined how powerful it could be to take that model, expand it in New York City, and ultimately to consider how we could scale that in partnership with additional communities around the country. So, that's what landed me here at STRIVE. I am almost 15 years in and really grateful and energized to be part of this organization and part of this work, as you noted, in advancing economic mobility in communities nationally. Julian Alssid: So, STRIVE has grown and I guess serves about 2,000 students now, and you have a goal of serving 10,000 with support from your investors, like Blue Meridian and others. We heard you talk about using an evidence-based approach. So, how are you going to use an evidence-based approach to ensure that your really exponential expansion there doesn't compromise the quality of outcomes? Phil Weinberg: Well, I appreciate the question. You've actually perfectly hit upon the real tension, I think, for any organization that's considering taking a quality model and bringing it to scale. And so, I'd say that tension between quality, scale—I'd add a third component, which is the economics of scale—how to ensure that as you do grow and expand, that happens in a way that's economically sustainable. And I'd say for us, the focus on quality as we scale is first and foremost rooted in our values. As an organization, what do you believe? What's your true north? How do you ensure that you hold dear to those principles and those values and that all decisions really flow through that filter? More practically speaking, for us, it starts with having built an evidence-based model in partnership with our research partners at MDRC. So, building a comprehensive model that's built on the best evidence—in our case, it's predicated on the work-advance model. And so, ensuring that we are confident in the evidence base upon which our work is structured. Once we built that foundation, it then is incumbent on us as we grow to think about what elements of that model are essential to remain consistent across our communities we serve, and where do we see a need to be contextualized? In many cases, we see tremendous value and opportunity to contextualize the work that we do within our community partners—so, partnering with community colleges and other anchor institutions as a way to ensure that as STRIVE expands, we're doing so in a way that is authentic and resonant within the communities we serve. Investing in infrastructure. So, clearly there is delivering great programming, but then there is as you scale, having the infrastructure to support scaling with quality. What does that look like? These are often the not-the-most-glamorous aspects of operating a nonprofit, but often some of the most essential. Having strong performance systems and financial systems and data systems; having the operational backbone; having the programmatic support tools to ensure that as you grow, the support system is in place to grow thoughtfully and with quality. And I guess the last thing I would say is really growing with an eye toward being a learning organization. That certainly is one of our values at STRIVE, which is we've got a deep history to draw upon. Over four decades of service, over 90,000 students served. While there is that very deep reservoir of history of practice, we also approach the work with a great deal of humility, which is: what are we learning? What is the labor market telling us? What are the kind of policy context changes telling us? And how do we as an organization adapt accordingly so we can maintain quality and focus even as we grow? So, not an easy feat, I won't claim that we have sort of honed this, but we are certainly with a values-driven approach committed to that endeavor. Kaitlin LeMoine: So Phil, you've give
