Fewer Grads, More Demand: Winning the Talent Predicament with Brett Pawlowski from Roundhouse

In this episode, Lindsey sits down with Brett Pawlowski of Roundhouse Partnerships to unpack his new white paper, Investing in the Future, and why employers must treat early-talent development as a measurable, strategic investment—not a nice-to-have. Brett explains the “black box” between education and employment and lays out a practical, three-phase model—Awareness → Engagement → Recruitment—that any company can start using with limited budgets. The conversation hits major workforce headwinds (retirements, shrinking birth rates, rising skill demands) and shows how coalitions—associations, chambers, and industry groups like Next Gen Trucking—can create leverage. You’ll also hear surprising ROI wins from employee volunteerism (higher satisfaction and retention) and simple, high-impact actions: guest speaking, facility tours, job shadows, advisory boards, and CTSO support (FFA, SkillsUSA). Brett closes with a call to build shared metrics with local CTE partners and points listeners to his resources and papers at roundhousepartnerships.com.

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Transcript

Welcome to NextGen Talks, the podcast where we dive into the future of trucking logistics by highlighting the voices shaping it today. I'm your host, Lindsey Trent, and together we'll explore how schools, industry leaders and young professionals are coming together to drive change. From classrooms to truck cabs, from diesel shops to logistics hubs. We'll share stories, insights and innovations that are steering the next generation towards rewarding careers in this vital industry. This is more than just a podcast. It's a movement. A movement to inspire, connect and celebrate the people building the future of trucking. And we couldn't do it without the support of our sponsors. So thank you to Performance, Food Group, Descartes and Act One, Averitt, DHL Fusion, Gordon Food Service, KKW Coke Trucking, Louisville Paving and Construction, 10 Street Transfer, Trimble and Usher Transport. Let's get started. 

Welcome to NGT Talks and I'm really excited to have my guest here today because he wrote a paper that I have been referring to all year long and it has some really profound things, actions that we as an industry, every industry needs to do for early talent development. So I'm excited to have him on the show today and to get some insights into what we can do for early talent development. So Brett, welcome to the show. 

It's good to be with you. 

So tell us like a little bit about yourself and the paper that you wrote that we're talking about and what inspired you to write it and maybe like that elevator pitch of what's this paper about? Because we want everybody to listen to the end. 

Sure. So I've been working on basically business education partnerships for a very long time. Got my start working with employers who wanted to work with schools. And so for like example, I'd work with Citigroup to develop a financial literacy curriculum, something like that. And starting to work with industry which to this day industry has a hard time working with school. Schools, just as schools have a very hard time working with industry. But work, you know, getting my start with industry, I started to realize there's a very broad spectrum of the ways that industry and education can work together. So a lot of my early work, even though it was for industry approaching schools, it ended up being working with schools to teach them how to work with employers. 


And that came into, I've written a few books on the subject on advisory boards, employer engagement, things like that. Had co founded a group called the national center for College and Career Transitions, built one of the first work based learning management systems called Seamless Work Based Learning. And my partner And I had sold our company to Youscience a couple years ago and I'm now back on my own. But still, even after selling the company, I was trying to figure out where do I want to make a contribution to this field. And it continues to be on that intersection between education and employment. 

Because it's like the analogy I always use is that it's like a middle school dance where you've got the boys one side, you've got the girls on the other, they don't know how to talk to each other, they're all awkward, nobody's in the middle of the floor dancing, and we're still at sort of that impact. So I think doing whatever you can on both sides, helping industry learn how to talk to education and vice versa, it's really where I want to be. Because the people who do this work are just, first of all, they're awesome people. And second of all, I think that this is some of the most important work in education, industry going forward. So as far as where I want to spend my time, what I want to do, this is it. 

In the paper you talk about, which is called Investing in the Future, is really because a lot of the work that I've done has been with educators. But industry has two problems in working with education. The first is that it's such a long term proposition. Industry tends to think in terms of quarters. They think short term. I've got hiring needs now, I've got to get people in the door now. And so when you talk about, well, let's expand the early talent pipeline, let's get more kids in middle school and high school interested in our industry, that can be a five year or a six year process and it's really hard to justify that investment. The other challenge industry has is they don't know how to measure that investment. So I've got a certain number of recruiting dollars. 

If I invest it, like right now in LinkedIn, indeed, whatever it is, I can measure the impact of my recruiting dollars. If I put it into middle school or high school, how do I measure that? And there's not a lot of literature out there on how to do that. And so that's why I wrote this paper. Just. And I'm not saying that it's exhaustive or complete or even 100% right. I think somebody had to get the conversation started to say, can we measure this? If we can, how do we measure it? And how do we sort of quantify the early talent pipeline and figure out if it's a smart investment for us. And if it's going to pay off. 

Yeah. Should we be doing this? It's so funny you say that, because one of the things that I've said from the beginning about what NextGen is about is to bridge the gap between industry and education. Now we specifically want to do that for trucking and the supply chain, which is. I mean, that is like one of our main pillars. We have to bridge that gap. 

Yes. 

And I remember, as in being in the workforce as an employer working for corporations, and it was like, I was like scared to want to do a interview process or mentorship program at a school because I didn't know about it. But once I got involved and started sitting on advisory boards, I'm like, oh, it's so much fun to connect with and to really learn about them. So, okay, so let's talk about your paper. You describe the current education to workforce system as a black box. What do you mean by that? And why is it problematic? 

So I'll go into the history a little bit. Because in this country, we had the largest and most talented labor pool in history, really the last half of the last century. You know, after World War II, we started to invest in people. The National Defense Education act with this huge boomer population that fueled the labor pool. There were a lot of barriers that we took out of the way, so we made it easier for minorities and women and people with disabilities. We really sort of opened the spigots. Not that all of our challenges have been solved, but we at least structurally made it so that as many people as possible could develop skills and participate in the workforce as possible. So we had this huge, deep labor pool of skilled talent. And because it was so. 

Because we had so many people and we had a leaky pipeline, a leaky workforce pipeline, we didn't really care because we still had so many people coming out of the pipeline that we had as much labor as, like, as much skilled labor as we needed. But you look where we are now. We've solved all those problems that limited labor, the boomers are retiring, jobs require more skills. And all of a sudden, our policy for the past 30, 40, 50 years has just been, we don't have to worry about people coming into the labor pool. Let's just talk about upskilling and reskilling and moving the same people around. But everything's changed now. We don't have as many people coming into the labor pool, and we won't. I was just actually looking yesterday. 

I'm working on another paper back in 1960, we had a birth rate like number of children per woman was 3.6. 

Wow. What? 

In the 60s, in 1960 was 3.6 children per woman. Now 20, 23, it's 1.6. 

Wow, that's substantial. 

And the replacement rate is 2.1. So we're below replacement rate. So absent immigration, our population is going to shrink. This whole deep labor pool that we had, that's not going to be our reality anymore. And so just shifting around, you know, people hiring from each other, people reskilling, retraining and upskilling and just moving people from job to job, that's not going to fill all the open positions we have. 

Yeah. 

And you know, all of our workforce policy has just been, you know, talent doesn't exist until it comes out of high school or college. And that's not going to do the trick anymore. We, some industries, you know, construction, manufacturing, and I think trucking to a large extent have been in crisis mode for a while, but I think every industry now is starting to feel it. 

Yeah. 

So when I say a black box workforce policy is just ignored. High school entirely. And really only looks at post secondary as once people are in a degree program or doing advanced training like apprenticeships, other than that, they don't exist until they actually enter the workforce. 

Interesting. 

Not good enough. 

Yeah. So your early talent pipeline breaks it down into the model of early talent development into three phrases. Sorry, three phases. Awareness, engagement, and recruitment. Which phase do you see employers most often overlooking? 

I would say awareness, because you think about a talent pipeline and I'll flip it and talk in terms of a pyramid just for a second. A pyramid can only be as large as its base. 

Okay. Yeah. 

So I mean, if you think about it, and if you want a lot of people entering an industry, you've got to have, you know, in just. I'm making up numbers here, but 1000 people aware of it and 600 decide to explore it and 200 decide to enter the profession if you double those numbers. You can only double those numbers if you double the size of the base. And so if you don't have enough people aware of the occupations that you offer and the benefits and the advantages and why is this a great fit for me? You'll never be able to replace the talent that you're losing to retirement. 

Yeah. Back to the birth rates you were talking about. You said a 2.1 replacement rate. Like what does that exactly mean? 

So if we want to keep the population the same as it is now, every woman has to have 2.1 children. 

Okay, got it. But right now we're only having 1.6. 

Right, right. And that's true, I think for every western nation. I think that in a lot of the really, I guess what you would sort of call first world countries like Japan is at 1.2. Wow. Japan. And I heard this a few weeks ago and it just blew my mind. Japan sells more adult diapers than they do child diapers. 

No way. 

Isn't that something to think about? 

That is something. 

And so, I mean you can see that we don't have enough new people coming into the labor force. We're going to be very top heavy with older people. And you can do that for a while, but you're not going to have a 90 year old fireman, you're not going to have an 80 year old guy running electrical lines. 

Yeah. 

At some point the boomers have to leave that huge population. So we've got to do something now. We had to do something 20 years ago, but failing that, we have to do something now. 

Yeah. So. So what are some high impact activities an employer can do in each one of these phases? Right. Awareness, engagement, recruitment. But we're not working with a big budget. What can we do? 

Yeah, so the first thing we can do is, and I'm going to sort of jump ahead a little bit, the first thing we can do is band together. There are a lot of business coalitions. 

Yeah. 

And any group is a business coalition. 

So a chamber of commerce, our association, we are a business, that's what we do. We're banding together. 

Yeah. Trade associations, industry associations, you know, workforce development boards like EDCs, economic development coalitions. Anytime you've got a lot of employers who have a shared issue. And you know, for a lot of them, you know, for chambers of commerce, it started out as tourism with something that no small employer can tackle themselves. But as a group, they can do it together. Legislation is another area, but workforce is a huge area. And so certainly there are large companies that can tackle some of this themselves. You know, like a Siemens, for example, huge manufacturer. They've got the muscle, they've got the budgets to be able to invest in this stuff directly, to worry about their own pipeline. Most of us don't. 

And so if we can work together as a group, we all put in a little bit in this coalition sort of does the work on our behalf. That is a cost effective way to go about challenging some, you know, solving some of these challenges. And it's, it doesn't have to cost much. A lot of the activities that we talk about, it's really. It's time. Really, it's much more time than money. It's somebody going out and being a guest speaker at a school. It's participating in a career fair. It's, you know, doing virtual calls, virtual interviews with students. It's offering a tour of your facilities, all those sorts of things. They don't cost anything, but if you can build awareness, that I think is one of the biggest levers for change. 

And the deeper you get into it, as kids become more aware and more interested, you can go deeper with job shadows and mentors, supporting career and technical student organizations, things like that. And your level of investment goes up, but you've also got people getting closer to the workforce. So early career activities, very inexpensive to do. You just got to find the time to do it. 

Yes. Okay. One of the things I loved also about your paper that has to do with this is you also talked about the effect of volunteerism and employers, employees volunteering their time and what it does to that employee. So can you talk about that? 

Yeah, it's really cool. And a lot of this research comes out of what they call the cause marketing field, which really started, you know, probably back in the 80s. 

Okay. 

Cost marketing. And there was a group and I. They used to be called the Cause Marketing Forum. I think they're called Engage for Good. 

Okay. 

Engage for Good. They've got a fair amount of research where they've looked at this. And if you can provide employees an opportunity to volunteer on the company dime, that they're happier, they're more motivated, they tend to work longer hours, they stay with the company longer, and they're more satisfied. And these are all internal company surveys and that sort of thing. And it even goes to, you know, because young people care a lot about social causes. 

Yeah. 

If your company has a good reputation for social activity, and certainly working with students as a social activity, a pro social activity, it's easier to find new talent because they care about companies that will invest in their communities. So even just giving people the opportunity to do all that, it benefits your workforce pipeline, but it also increases the immediate return on investment for your contribution to the field. 

Yeah. So as an employee, if I went to talk at a local school about my job, that's volunteerism, right? 

Yep. Yep. 

That's going to make me more excited about my job. 

Yeah. Because, you know, if you don't work with young people, it's sort of easy to miss this very obvious point. But kids are fun they are fun. 

Yes. 

When you get a chance to go to a school and actually talk to some kids are awesome, you know, and so it's a great experience. And especially, you know, once you start to build those relationships with kids and you get into deep relationships like job shadows, externships, internships, co ops, apprenticeships, those relationships, and to see somebody building their interest in your career area and pursuing it is really cool. It's really fun. 

Yeah. We had that example with Dave Powell. He was a national tank truck champion. Winner, professional driver, owns his own truck. And when he won, he started volunteering at ffa. We do FFA every year. We've got a big booth with a driver simulator. We're gonna have a truck this year, like a sleeper truck, so students can climb in it and look what it would be like to. To live on the road. And he said this really reinvigorated my. My love for my job. Like, I feel proud of what I'm doing. I love talking to these students. I didn't realize that was going to happen. And it does. It's awesome. 

You know, those career technical student organizations, and that's, you know, it's FFA, it's SkillsUSA. I think there's like seven or eight of them in all, but they're so cool. They tend to have state and national conferences with competitions, and to see what these young people are capable of is amazing. 

Yeah. And the big thing that we're trying to do is get people, companies in trucking and the supply chain involved in their own communities. They're going to have a state FFA chapter, state Skills USA chapter. Get involved. Get involved in the school, in your backyard, and you'll really reap the benefits. Because that funnel that we talked about, Right. We got the base and. Well, I guess it's like this through the funnel. If early talent development happens, if there's engagement. Right. We're talking about this engagement, then what happens? 

Yeah, exactly. And it's really something because we talked about awareness, which is, you know, just the size of the top of the funnel. But you can't build awareness and just wait at the bottom for people to fall out. You've got to nurture them along the whole way. It's like, you know, the analogy I always use is a garden, you can plant a ton of seeds, but if you don't water, if you don't weed, if you don't nurture those seeds into plants, you're going to have a lousy harvest. And so to work with them throughout all the stages and sort of carry them along. It's really. The results can be phenomenal. And there are a lot of people out there doing it really well. I don't want to say that this is not happening at all, but. 

And you can look at some other associations like nccer, the construction and education research organization. They've got build your future huge campaign. They've really invested smartly in developing the next generation of construction talent, manufacturing people, the welding people, aws. There are people making really smart investments in the future, the next generation of talent, but it's not universal. And I think we could do 100 times more than what we're doing. 

Well, that is literally the whole reason we created Next generation and Trucking Association. I started seeing what all these other industries were doing, like construction and welding, automotive, and I'm like, okay, we've got to be doing this because our competition is that a student can say, I'm going to go and do this other career without even having a knowledge of what the trucking industry can provide because they don't know anything about it. 

Right. And how would they find out if they don't have somebody who is a family member, a neighbor, relative who's already in the industry, how are they going to find out? After we sold our company to YouScience, one of the things that I love about youscience, and I don't know if you're familiar with them or not, there are a lot of interest assessments out there, but they have an aptitude assessment which shows what you're naturally good at. 

Yeah. 

And it's a great tool to be able to say, you know, you may never have heard of this occupation or, you know, you may have misperceptions of this occupation, but based on your aptitude, your natural talents, you'd be really good at this. So why don't you take a look at it and just that sort of a kickstart when you don't have anybody in your life who otherwise would be able to tell you about this opportunity. I think it's phenomenal. 

Absolutely, it's phenomenal. And on our website we have a behavioral assessment where kind of those intrinsic behaviors that you were really born with. Right. Skills can be taught, but behaviorally who you are as a person. And you can take these assessments if you're a student for free on our website to see if maybe being a professional driver would be a good fit for you or being a diesel mechanic would be a good fit for you. They took like the top hundreds of drivers that who performed at the top of their game, Top diesel technicians. And they asked them all these questions to assess what behaviors they had to make them so good at their job. And they turned this into an assessment. So you can take it on our website. 

If you score a higher score, it takes about 10 minutes to take the assessment. Then you're more likely to like the job, be retained in the job and make it your career. 

That's fantastic. 

Yeah. So I love the idea of the aptitude as well. So what do you think the employer role is and what is the return on investment? Because you highlight the transformative potential of employment involvement. Employer involvement. So what are the most compelling data and outcomes you've seen from companies who's embraced this model? 

So it's a really hard question to answer because it really. There's some parts of workforce development and this is certainly one that are just total wild west. You know, there's not much infrastructure. There are people who have made the investment and they're doing it well. We've talked about some of those, you know, the Manufacturing Institute, nccer, aws, people like that. So there are people that have made an investment and they've made very smart investments because it's not only awareness and engagement, but they're also working on certification programs, for example, that allow you to document and catalog skills that are important to industry. They're, you know, industry sponsored certifications there in like the paper that I wrote, it was more of a proposition, like it was a proposal. 

Like people aren't doing this, but we've got to be able to measure ROI if we're going to change this because employers have got to have roi, they've got to be able to see a return on their investment. So it's hard for me to point to people who have built this system and they've got all their metrics in place and they've been doing it for years and they can show you the value. 

Right, right. 

It's, it's really, and I could be totally wrong, it could be out there somewhere that I haven't seen. But I've not seen a system that does that. That's actually one of the reasons I wrote the paper to be able to say we've got to do this. Here's a starting point. Again, I'm not saying it's right, I'm not saying it's complete, but let's start talking a little bit, let's build this language, let's figure out if these are the right metrics, if these are the right stages what data can we get? What does it cost to get this data? Because, you know, gathering data is an investment in itself. 

Yeah. 

So it's really early stages and we're again probably 20 years behind the curve. But we've got to start somewhere. 

We're all 20 years behind the curve in this. That's seems like a big hill to climb, doesn't it? 

Yeah, it's a big change because when we had this huge deep labor pool as an entrepreneur for 20 plus years, companies, we never feel like we have enough resources to do what we want to do. And so because we had such a deep labor pool, I didn't have to spend money there. That was taken care of. That was an investment where I could put my dollars somewhere else. And now I'm going to start to think about how I'm going to invest in that space. It's a new cost, but if we don't do it, we're going to be scrambling in perpetuity. If we don't change our pipeline, we're going to be stuck every quarter talking about how we can't find enough people. Yeah, that will go on forever and get worse. 

It's gonna continue to get worse, right? If the birth rates are right. 

Yeah, yeah. And we're already seeing the population for K12 education starting to decline. It kicked off with COVID because a lot of people sort of just left school entirely. We just lost a whole like a couple million people. But the birth rate just shows that those numbers are going to decrease gradually over time. So our problem is not going to solve itself. 

Well, and you talk about coalition based approaches and groups like us, how can we make this work more sustainable? How do we scale it? 

Yeah, that is a great question and I wish I had a great answer. I think it's one of those things where we've got to be able to at least create an initial data model and prove it out because the investment. And again, industry I always talk about, education focuses on inputs and processes, industry focuses on outcomes. And so we've got to think about outcomes and what happened for this money I put in, what did I get? So we've got to be able to prove the data out to employers and that's when you'll see employers start to invest and some of those returns are immediate. Like where we talked about the benefits to employers and current workforce, there's some other benefits, you know, just goodwill associated with the company name. But it really is. 

If you want to see an improvement in early talent development, we've got to be able to prove that out and it's something we've all got to tackle together. 

Yeah. That is like something I have just been racking my brain about for years and I wish somebody could help me figure out the answer. 

Yeah, we'll do it together. Knows that. 

Yeah, there you go. Well, and I mean that's why companies say why should I join next gen Trucking? I'm like, because if we all work together cohesively as an industry, we can make change. We can't do it on our own. Maybe if you're those big corporations, yes, you can do it on your own. But most even big companies, medium sized companies, we can't do it on our own. We need a coalition to do it together. It's, I'm all about partnerships. 

Yeah, that's exactly right. In the investment we make in the next generation benefits everybody. So I mean you can try to go alone and do it yourself. It'll cost you a lot more than it would working with others. And we're all facing the same challenges. So why don't we work together? And as the cumulative effect of that is going to be so much more powerful than we're all running in different directions trying to solve it ourselves. So coalitions I think are absolutely the way to go. 

Yeah. Well, what short term early wins can organizations look for to keep momentum going to building a long term pipeline? 

I think a couple things. The first would be to work on your own internal metrics, those employee satisfaction numbers. 

Okay. 

Because that'll show you immediate outcomes. The second thing I would do is start to build as many relationships as possible with career and technical education programs and leverage their data in ways that allow you to measure your outcomes. And so what I mean by that is if you're working with them or working on your own to build awareness, let's see if that translates into increased recruiting numbers for CTE programs. If we're doing activities like we're mentoring and we're working with the CTSOs or we're doing job shadows, let's see if that increases retention in the CTE programs that stand that they're already collecting. Let's see if the percentage of students who enter the CTE program complete the program. 

Let's track if the people who completed a high school CTE program go into that field at this like a go for a secondary or post secondary degree, community college, four year college, whatever it is. Let's see post secondary outcomes. Let's see if the people in the post secondary world enter the field. Those are all numbers that your education partners are tracking already? So if you've built those relationships, you can work together to track the data to see if your efforts are having an impact. 

Yeah. Do you think that education is tracking those numbers? 

That they are. Some of them are. It's. It's data that tends to be recorded internally. So it's really unfortunate that there's. There's a lot that happens in CTE that doesn't get reported publicly. Like, if you go to a state, it's even hard to find out how many schools have construction programs or mechatronics or diesel. You can't find it publicly. They. They know. They know the numbers. I've worked with states and I've seen the numbers, you know, for. For projects that we've done for them, but it's just something, for whatever reason, it doesn't get reported out. But, yeah, they're tracking to see if they're. And actually, as part of the program quality review process, they will be able to tell you if students are retaining in the program, if they're completers or concentrators with the statuses of the student. So they have those numbers. 

They just don't get reported out. 

Yeah. Yeah. But then I feel like the next step is, are they going to further their education and get more certifications that go along with their job, or are they going right into the workforce and apprenticeship program? I feel like those are some of the things that we don't track as well as we should. 

Yeah. And that there. There should be longitudinal efforts to do that, like the National Student Clearinghouse, for example. I don't think they're tracking workforce outcomes like that, but somebody should. 

We need to. 

And that's. You know, there's such a shake up in the workforce system now with the new administration. I've not seen any conversation about tracking longitudinal data, but I wish somebody would talk about it or somebody with influence, you know, not me, but somebody with influence would be able to go in and suggest this and start that conversation. 

Yes. Yeah, I like it. I think it's a good idea. So, the future outlook, what do you think? If you could change one assumption employers hold about talent development, what would it be? Where do you think our future outlook is? What do we need to see? 

Wow. It's a really good question. A couple of really good questions. I think the assumption that I would change is that we've got to invest in the awareness piece first. I think it's a lot easier to make the argument that we're going to invest in preparation. So internships, apprenticeships. That's an easy argument to make because people are so close to the workforce at that point, and they've proven interest and they've already done things to qualify themselves. So that's a really easy investment to make. The assumption I would make is that we've got to invest in the awareness piece just to change the volume of people who are entering the workforce pipeline in our industries. And what was the second question? 

Well, let me ask you this. Looking ahead 10 years, what would success look like if more employers adopted this? 

Yeah, it's. I heard a long time ago that there's a difference between problems and predicaments. 

Okay. Oh, okay. 

Problems can be solved. Predicaments are just reality. A predicament is like, you know, we're all getting older. You can't do anything about that. 

Yeah. 

The best you can do is manage it. And with what we talked about with. With the birth rate declining and just the sheer volume of people leaving the workforce now, we are going to see fewer and fewer. Fewer people in the workforce. It's a reality. It's a. It's a predicament. Best we can do is optimize for our industries and show the value that we offer, make people aware of the opportunities we have and the value that we offer and manage this as well as we can to bring as many people as we can into the field. We may not hit replacement rates. And, you know, there's. There's other solutions for that. There's, you know, technology, there's AI. There's other. Other things we can do for that. Yeah, but we can be in a much better position than we are now. 

And that may be the best we can hope for. But it's what we have to shoot for. 

It's what we have to shoot for. 

Yeah. 

So if I'm an employer and I want to take the first step besides joining Next Gen Trucking so we can help with all these workforce initiatives, what are some other first steps that an employer could take? 

That would be my first one, because again, I think the power of a coalition of being able to work with others who have shared concerns and shared needs is incredibly important. I don't think there's a substitute for that. I think you've got to do that. The other thing I would do is just on your own, is start to develop relationships with your local CTE programs. 

Yeah. 

And that's secondary. And it's post secondary. Get involved. You mentioned you'd been on some advisory boards, and I Think advisory boards are incredibly important. They're very powerful. Advisory boards ensure quality and relevance in a CTE program. So if you want young people to go through a program and come out prepared for an industry or for an occupation, the advisory board plays a key role in that. So learn about cte, invest your time. You don't have to pull out your pocketbook necessarily, your checkbook. It's just learning, developing relationships and investing some time. Even that will, you'll start to see some improvements in your outcomes. But the coalition, no substitute for building those relationships internally. 

So tell us some other things that you're working on. You said you write some papers or are there any other things that you're working on that we might be interested in? 

So a lot of the work that I'm doing because historically I've worked more with state departments of education, with school districts, with schools. I'm doing a lot of work in that space, working with a few state departments of education. And this is around the whole employer engagement space. So it's work based learning, it's advisory board, how to find and engage employer partners. A lot of that work. I've got a whole campaign called Elevate work based learning. 

Okay. 

Talking with some states about to roll out training for educators, resources, improvements in the, you know, coaching and consulting. Right. Advisory boards providing some support services for schools and districts and CTE programs like communication audits, partnership surveys, things like that. So a lot of my work is focused there, but I would really love to engage with some industry associations, with some larger employers to take theories in that paper, the investing in your future paper, and prove it. I want to see somebody invest and build these data models. Models, these tracking models, and let's prove that they work. And if they don't, let's fix them. So we've got the right model to be able to say, if I invest in people at the middle school level, here's my roi, you know, let's do that. So that's where I would love to be. 

So continue to look for those opportunities. But in the meantime, the schools and the districts in the states have new business busy. 

Where can our listeners find more information about you, what you're doing, and where can they download your white paper? 

If you go to roundhousepartnerships.com there's a resources page that has this paper, a couple other papers as well. Well, one other paper that I actually just put on there today. 

Oh, okay. 

To help, to help employers understand how to work with schools. 

Great. 

Because we talk about that whole middle school thing where they don't know how to talk to each other. This paper is a first stab and I'm trying to get it distributed widely to be able to say, here's why you should work with schools. Here's what it's like to work with schools. Here's how schools are different. Here are the different ways that you can work together. So that's a brand new paper. I wrote a book on advisory boards earlier this year. There's information on that there. But if you go to roundhousepartnerships.com you'll find all my stuff. You'll find my contact information. Would love to talk to any about a, about this stuff. It's a passion. 

Absolutely. Well, we'll put that information in the show notes as well as your contact information. And are you on social media where we can connect with you, the listeners? 

I'm on LinkedIn. Not terribly social otherwise, but I am on LinkedIn. Well, there just search for Brett Paulowski. You won't find too many of us. It should be easy to find me on LinkedIn. 

Well, Brett, it's been a pleasure. Thank you for being on this show and this paper and I'm excited. I am literally right after this, going to download your new white paper and learn what you have to say because this is what it's all about. So thank you for being on Next Gen Talks. 

Thank you for having me. It's been great to talk to you and I really appreciate all the work that you do. So please keep up the work.