Director of L.A. Compact, Los Angeles Area Chamber of Commerce/UNITE-LA

So I'm Carrie Lemon, and I'm the director of the LA Compact, at the Los Angeles Area Chamber of Commerce. So my role is in the education and workforce development division of the LA Chamber, and so we really try to engage youth and system leaders in order to improve education outcomes, in order to improve the regional economy of the LA region. The initiative that I work on is called the LA Compact, it's a collaborative initiative to ensure that all students in LA graduate from high school, complete post secondary education, and have pathways to sustainable jobs and careers. The LA Compact was really founded in this belief that no single institution can solve the complex challenges facing our region, and we have some very big systems and institutions in Los Angeles, so LA Unified School District is the second largest school district in the country, LA County by itself is the largest county in the United States, we also have the largest community college district and a host of four year universities, and the idea behind the LA Compact is that all of these institutions from early childhood through workforce and higher education, need to come together to work collaboratively to figure out what are the barriers to students persisting in education, and how do we work together to break down those barriers and improve outcomes. So one example is, we have an initiative working with transition age foster youth. So LA county has also the largest population of foster youth in the country, so one study found that in LA County 50% of foster youth aging out of the system are unemployed in their first four years, and their average wages are less than $30,000 over four years, cumulatively over four years. They also do not go on to higher education, so about half of them enroll in community college, but ultimately only about two to 4% ever complete a degree, so we're really, our systems are failing to prepare these youth for self sufficiency in life. So one of the issues that we've been working on is trying to ensure that these youth have access to paid work experiences at a very early age.