Alexandra Simon: Building High-Quality Youth Apprenticeship Pathways

Alexandra Simon, Senior Policy Analyst with the Center on Education and Labor at New America and a key contributor to the Partnership to Advance Youth Apprenticeship (PAYA), discusses what it takes to build youth apprenticeship programs that are rigorous, equitable, and ready to scale. Drawing on her experience leading technical assistance for U.S. Department of Labor Youth Apprenticeship Readiness Grants and her recent report "Employers Report Four Indirect Benefits of Youth Apprenticeship," Alexandra reframes youth apprenticeship not just as a talent pipeline strategy, but as an organizational development investment that strengthens managers, renews employee engagement, and improves training systems across the board. The conversation explores how youth apprenticeship differs from internships and other work-based learning experiences, why the field looks so different from state to state and community to community, and what it takes to bring employers to the table. Alexandra also walks through PAYA's five quality principles for high-quality youth apprenticeship, makes the case for starting small and building toward programs that prepare young people for both college and career, and offers practical guidance for educators, employers, and policymakers who want to expand access to youth apprenticeships in their own communities.

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 Work Forces 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 Work Forces podcast website to learn more. And so with that, let's dive in.

Kaitlin LeMoine: Welcome to Season 7 of Work Forces. As we head into a new season and a new school year, we're excited to kick off the season by further exploring a theme that has been running through our recent podcast conversations: the g