• April 17, 2019

    Conference of Minority Transportation Officials Careers in Transportation Conference

    Earlier this month, PacTrans Assistant Director, Cole Kopca, attended the Careers in Transportation Conference hosted by the Conference of Minority Transportation Officials (COMTO) at the Downtown Seattle Public Library.

    This half day event featured a conversation with Phil Washington, CEO of LA Metro, who spoke about many of the issues they face with future workforce and several of the most innovative strategies that he has been implementing to try and address those concerns, “40% of our workforce is currently at retirement age and 70% will be at retirement age within the next 10 years.”

    We also heard from Maud Daudon, Executive Leader of Career Connect Washington who spoke in depth about their efforts to provide opportunities through new career paths. She described our classical career path as a very linear and inflexible path from all education to all career. She then talked about a more “braided” pathway that connects students to the career opportunities around them, starting earlier in their schooling. She spoke about how they have involved government, industry, and every level of education to begin creating programs that are more flexible for students for whom the classical path does not work.

    The final component of the day included a panel with Rob Gannon, General Manager of King County Metro, Joe Lawless, Assistant Chancellor for Strategy & Assessment at the UW Tacoma, and Marilyn Strickland, President and CEO of Seattle Metropolitan Chamber of Commerce. Each spoke about and reiterated the coming challenges with regard to future workforce from their respective perspectives and some of the ways their institutions are attempting to address those concerns.