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1. Lead and Collaborate
Advancing cities embraces collaboration as a fundamental principle. They promote solid partnerships across the business, nonprofit and political sectors to solve pressing problems. And by uniting around a common vision and shared goals, partners are able to put aside their differences and play their part to find solutions. The most successful collaborations leverage the unique strengths, skills and resources of each partner, making the whole stronger than the sum of its parts.
Cities That Foster Collaboration Have:
Strong political leaders
with the will to make tough decisions necessary for their cities to thrive
Deep nonprofit expertise
to create opportunity and deliver and sustain change in the community
Private sector engagement
with an understanding in solving urgent challenges
Greater Washington Region
Working across sectors, geographies and jurisdictions is not easy. It takes planning, strong civic and business leadership, and a commitment to do what is right for the long term. This is the philosophy behind the Greater Washington Partnership. This coalition of civic-minded business leaders is collaborating to drive growth and create economic opportunity from Baltimore to Washington, D.C. and to Richmond, the seventh largest regional economy in the world. In joining together, the members of the GWP saw not only tremendous economic opportunity for the region, but also the challenges that needed to be addressed if the regions would grow within the global economy.
One of the Partnership’s key areas of focus is helping people build the skills that employers need – and that are the ticket to entry for well-paying, in-demand jobs in the region’s fast- growing technology sector. The Partnership recognized that one of the best ways to strengthen the tech talent pipeline is to build a connection between employers and educators. That’s why, with support from JPMorgan Chase, in 2018 it created a region-wide system for collecting information from employers about the skills and qualifications they need, and sharing it educational partners across the region, from higher education to high schools. Educators can then use that insight to design curricula that prepares graduates to enter the labor market and seize the career opportunities the region has to offer. This effort is the cornerstone of JPMorgan’s New Skills for Youth Greater Washington Initiative, where five regional school districts will build their capacity to offer high-quality career pathways to local students so that more of them are able to take advantage of the region’s exceptional economic growth.
With better labor market information like this, the Partnership is putting its cross-sector, problem-solving ethos into action through the Collaborative of Leaders in Academia and Business (CoLAB). Launched in 2018, the CoLAB brings together 12 area universities and 10 regional employers – including JPMorgan Chase – to strengthen the digital capabilities of the region’s workforce. One way the CoLAB works is by creating region-specific credentials, developed jointly by business and universities. In a region that has the third largest digital technology workforce in the United States, better data and partnerships across business and education are a sure-fire way to boost economic growth and create new avenues of opportunity.
Creating the workforce of the future is an ambitious task. But the Greater Washington Region is showing that when the public, private and nonprofit sectors work together, anything is possible.
It's a powerful force for good when public instituitions and private sector leaders form partnerships to prepare our youth for high-skill, high-wage jobs.
Mike Rawlings, Mayor of Dallas, Texas
Cutting-Edge Nonprofit Leadership
JPMorgan Chase works to help nonprofits accomplish their essential missions. While these organizations work tirelessly on urgent issues, they sometimes don't have the resources to dedicate to management training. For the first time, JPMorgan Chase is offering Leadership Edge, the firm's in-house leadership development program, to nonprofit leaders in Washington D.C., and Chicago. Through the program, these leaders enhance their individual and team-building skills, from problem solving to managing talent. In 2018, 50 nonprofit leaders attended the two-day training--and then went back to their organizations to immediately put into actions new skills and tooks to help increase operational capacity in continued pursuit of their mission.
