The Greater Cleveland Partnership is creating a sustainable, equitable ecosystem of technology jobs that bridges the IT talent and equity gap with its Talent Accelerator initiative. The first five apprentices signed letters of acceptance with their sponsors  on Tuesday.

Literary Cleveland is introducing a new, free, Breakthrough Writing Residency program to support emerging writers in Greater Cleveland as they develop book-length writing projects.

One of the more intractable problems facing manufacturers is the mismatch between the location of jobs and where entry-level workers live. Many low-income and Black workers live in Cleveland and don’t own cars, but many jobs are in the suburbs, far from public transportation. 
 

West Side Catholic Center's mission is to help all who come to them in need of food, clothing, shelter, advocacy and a path to self-sufficiency. Ohio City Pizzeria is one way the nonprofit provides hands-on job training. Now, WSCC is holding a fundraiser to step up its training and offer more personalized coaching.

Robots are here, though it doesn’t mean they’ll take all our jobs. But the work is changing. Manufacturing jobs in particular are becoming more high tech, creating demand for workers who can use both their minds and their hands.

Barbara Moore has been legally blind her entire life, but that didn't stop her from teaching herself to sew. Moore still remembers the day she took the measurements of a comforter in a store, went home with her sewing machine, fabric, a yard stick, and chalk and made her own comforter on the living room floor. For the past 16 years, Moore has put that knowledge to good use as a seamstress at Vocational Guidance Services, sewing buttons and buttonholes on women’s military trousers.

As Ozy put it, "bioscience entrepreneurship has reshaped Cleveland's sagging economy." Yet though the Health-Tech Corridor has certainly become a hotbed for biosience, the struggle to attract health information technology (HIT) employees to the region continues to be real. Luckily, LinkedIn, BioEnterprise, Cleveland State, and other Northeast Ohio agencies are committed to closing that gap—joining forces to provide in-depth analysis and form strategies for fostering local HIT talent.
 
Government Technology had this to say about the initiative:

"One of the critical limiting factors to growth in Northeast Ohio's bioscience industry today is the availability of health IT talent," Aram Nerpouni, BioEnterprise president and CEO, said in a statement. "Thriving health IT companies are hindered by the dearth of software developers and data scientists. The LinkedIn project should provide meaningful data and analysis to inform how we address this challenge."

With the support of the Cleveland Foundation, BioEnterprise launched HIT in the CLE in 2015 to address the lack of available talent in computer and data science. The project is an important tactic within the larger HIT in the CLE talent strategy, the partners said.

LinkedIn will provide Cleveland with information of the skills local employers need, the skills its workers have and the disconnect between the two.

"The city can use those insights to create a stronger IT talent pipeline, and grow its IT industry," said LinkedIn U.S. Head of Policy Nicole Isaac in a statement.

Read the full piece here.

Welcome to the latest edition of Fresh Water Cleveland's “who’s hiring” series, where we feature growing companies and organizations with open positions, what they’re looking for and how to apply. 

Get the whole list here.

When Carly Hill attended East Cleveland’s Shaw High School, she was accustomed to being one of the star pupils — earning good grades, participating in mock trials in preparation for her planned law career and she was often chosen for special projects.
 
Hills describes her experience at Shaw being a part of a small group of students intensely interested in learning. In fact, she earned all As, except for her first and only B in 11^th grade.
 
“Imagine being in a class of 20 students,” Hill says. “In most of my classes, there was a small group of students interested in learning among a disruptive group, and as a result, we were always the only ones picked for special projects. Then those five well-behaved students were placed in AP and honors classes. That group of students aren't necessarily there because they know more, it's merely because they are not disruptive.”
 
Carly HillSo when Hill graduated in 2010 as valedictorian and headed off to Howard University on a scholarship, she expected life to be the same at the prestigious college. But things were different from the moment she stepped onto the Washington, D.C. campus.
 
“Shaw High School is 99.9 percent African American and Howard also is an historically black college, and I thought I knew what it was like to be black,” Hill recalls. “But I was around a completely different group of people. It was culture shock.”
 
No longer was Hill among a select group of serious straight A students. She was among the country’s best and brightest. “I expected it to be a little different, but not as different, and I knew it was a good college” she recalls. “It was a real culture shock to realize they don’t know me and I had to prove myself. At Shaw it was not as hard to separate yourself. At Howard, everyone is that kid, everyone is the best.”
 
By the time she got to Howard, Hill had decided to major in biology instead of law. But she was not prepared for the required chemistry minor and received a D in the class. Hill lost both her scholarship and her self-confidence. After her first semester, she briefly dropped out of Howard.
 
“I lost hope,” Hill says.

Read the rest of the story to find out how she regained it.

Cross-pollinating Cleveland's charter and CMSD schools by transferring educators between them - along with their experience and ideas - helps advance the Cleveland Plan's goal of ensuring quality education for all students.

The Ohio Motion Picture Tax Credit has created the equivalent of 1,729 full-time jobs since 2011 and generated more than $400 million in economic impact - and Northeast Ohio has had a starring role in all of it.

The technology and software business startup accelerator Flashstarts  will now offer a way for companies in the formulation phase a way to speed up the process.

Starting today, the organization will begin taking applications for Flashstarts Labs – a way for startups to prepare for the accelerator program.

“It’s a formalization of something we’ve been doing for the last couple of years, where we can work with teams before they are accepted in to the accelerator,” explains Flashstarts co-founder and CEO Charles Stack.  “A lot of teams are missing something – skill sets, market validation, strategy, a co-founder – this will help them get into the accelerator program.”
 
The idea behind the Labs is to offer the fastest path between business concept and startup formation. Companies accepted into the three-month program will receive access to more than 40 mentors, consulting, business tools and office space in StartMart, Flashstarts’ 35,000-square-foot entrepreneurial co-working space in the Terminal Tower.
 
Stack explains that in Flashstarts’ three-year history, he has found that a lot of startups need help getting things organized. “We learned that a lot of people and ideas need a high-speed on-ramp,” he says. “Now we have StartMart, so we have a lot of space to bring in Labs. When a good idea bubbles up from the goo, we grab it and put it in the accelerator.”
 
There's room for 50 people in the Labs, and accelerator companies will be chosen from the Labs teams. "I don't know how many we'll pick for the accelerator, but we will pick from these teams,” Stack says. “We will spend a lot of time working with these teams.”
 
Applications will be accepted on an ongoing basis. Selection criteria will include uniqueness, market opportunity, team background, and likelihood of success.