Darnell Epps on opening career pathways

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Speaker C: I felt like, you know, students job prospects shouldn't be limited to a career fair, you know, however many local, uh, employers show up, you know, that shouldn't be all students are limited to it. I also felt like students, you know, the woman, young woman who can outwell the Internet. You'll never know that from a resume, right? You'll never know that from a resume that they upload on. Indeed. So what better way to honor the dignity of her craft or her work than to give her her a platform that makes her skills more legible to employers?

Speaker D: It's mid-2026 and demand for workers in the skilled trades continues to outstrip supply. Yet training programs are producing candidates who still struggle to get hired. That points to a breakdown in how skills are recognized in the limits of conventional resumes.

Speaker E: In this context.

Speaker D: Welcome to the Managing the Future of Work podcast from Harvard Business School. I'm your host, Harvard Business School professor and non resident senior fellow at the American Enterprise Institute, Joe Fuller. I'm, uh, pleased to welcome Darnell Epps, founder and CEO of Thurgood Industries, to the podcast. Thurgood provides a platform for students in vocational and technical programs to showcase their skills through portfolios of real work. That helps employers spot talent earlier and recruit them more effectively. Darnell followed a unique path to this work. After dropping out of high school and spending time in prison, he earned his ged, graduated from Cornell University, and went on to the Yale Law School. While at Yale, he Also enrolled in a vocational training program. That experience led him to focus on how workers can better demonstrate what they can actually do. We'll talk about making skills visible, improving hiring outcomes, and expanding access to durable careers. Darnell, welcome to the Managing the Future of Work podcast.

Speaker C: Thanks for having me.

Speaker E: Darnell, tell us a little bit about your background and how you developed an interest in opportunity employment pathways, mechanisms to get more people who are on, um, the margins of work fully engaged, not just in the workforce, but in jobs

Speaker F: that have a future pay a, uh,

Speaker C: household sustaining wage, really through lived experience. You know, I grew up in nycha, New York City public housing in the 1990s. I dropped out in the 10th grade, uh, and you could look at the statistics. Any inner city youth at that time who dropped out of high school was likely to have some contact with the criminal legal system. And I did. As a young adult. I was incarcerated, uh, at the age of 20, uh, and I spent quite a long time in prison, uh, 17 years to be exact, uh, before eventually being released. And it was there that I took my first college course. I earned my general equivalency diploma early on, but, uh, with the advantages offered by the pilot called Second Chance Pell, I was able to, uh, participate in some college programming while incarcerated. I later matriculated at Cornell University, earned a, uh, bachelor's degree in, uh, government and minored in law and society. Uh, had an interest in opportunity pathways for people, uh, you know, who live in communities that historically have been underserved or, um, you know, stricken with poverty. Right. I think of my grandfather who, you know, came up during the early part of the Great Migration. He, um, uh, you know, fought in World War II. Uh, he didn't benefit from the GI Bill in the way that white veterans had. And he had to live in New York City public housing, Walt Whitman Houses, which is now gentrified, by the way. But so I always had tremendous sympathy for people growing up in communities that resemble the one that I grew up in. And I wanted to create opportunities for them because not everyone is going to end up at Cornell or Yale. Uh, and, you know, we gotta create dignified, uh, pathways for everybody.

Speaker E: Let's talk a little bit about your experience at Yale, but it is sobering your data about high school non completers and the demographics of outcomes for them.

Speaker F: Because as we all know, there's really been an attendance crisis in the aftermath of COVID with a lot of young people.

Speaker E: And, um, I shudder at the thought that as they start getting to employment age, how well prepared they'll be, especially given the dynamism and skills requirements that

Speaker F: we're seeing in today's economy.

Speaker E: But you went on after Cornell to

Speaker F: go to the Yale Law School, but

Speaker D: at the same time or during your

Speaker E: time at Yale, you enrolled in Lincoln Tech, which is a skills oriented vocational school. Tell us about that choice and what motivated you to do and what did you learn from it?

Speaker C: Yeah, that goes back to opportunity pathways. Right. I was doing work with Professor James Foreman Jr. Um, with the Law and Racial Justice Center. I was focused on providing, uh, free legal training to people in underserved communities. But what that did was it brought me face to face with many folks who were working in the gig economy. New Haven itself, uh, is economically stratified. Uh, at the time you're talking about 2022, uh, it was, uh, you know, there was a 26% poverty rate in a median household income of $42,000. Uh, and you know, so many of the uh, folks I was meeting were looking for jobs that paid above a living wage. And I also read, you know, a report by Deloitte in the Manufacturing Institute indicating that some 2.1 million jobs were expected to go unfilled due to an existing skills, skills gap. Uh, and there was a deficit of some 700,000, or actually 650,000 skilled construction jobs at that time, uh, in Connecticut was and is a huge manufacturing hub with companies like Electric Boat and Groton Connecticut or Sikorsky. And these companies were looking to fill tens of thousands of entry level positions. Uh, at the time I met with talent acquisition at Sikorsky. I believe they just had the contract for the G54 chopper, uh, with the DOD and uh, they were hiring over 100 entry level machinists, uh, who um, you know, in the jobs paid above $30 an hour. So this was, these were great careers that I thought, you know, other people should have, uh, exposure to people in communities with a hunger for economic opportunity was greatest. So I knew little, uh, in terms of skills, you know, about manufacturing. Uh, uh, I wasn't even the most handyman around my own house. My wife would tell you. So I decided to really understand, you know, those skills in a deeper way and immerse myself in this problem. I call it like, you know, uh, anthro entrepreneurial myself in the actual space to really understand it at a deeper level. This is a time when VR and augmented reality was the big thing. Maybe we could use augmented reality to train people, uh, to fill some of these positions. But ultimately I wasn't convinced, uh, due to Some of the shortcomings of the actual hardware. But one insight I took away from my experience at Lincoln Tech was that there were very little in terms of bridges between students who were very talented and employers. Employers were looking, uh, to hire talent that they said they couldn't find. And employers were looking to, you know, have a better way to kind of make their skills more visible to employers.

Speaker D: So, Donald, you went on to start,

Speaker E: um, an organization called Thurgood Industries, uh,

Speaker F: off of these insights you developed. Tell us a little about that.

Speaker E: I'm also curious about the name.

Speaker F: Is it an homage to, uh, the

Speaker E: legendary Supreme Court Justice Thurgood Marshall? And what was the motivation to start it? Uh, and what were the considerations you weighed in deciding to create an organization

Speaker F: to advance people into these jobs you were just describing?

Speaker C: Yeah, uh, to answer your question, yes, Thurgood Marshall, my idol, named, uh, our company after him. He stood for the right to industrial self determination. I felt, uh, like, what better way to, you know, capture, uh, our mission. He was someone who was a legal engineer, Uh, I consider a legal engineer. He, ah, spearheaded the arguments and Brown v. Board to, uh, overturn Plessy v. Ferguson. Uh, and, you know, I had, have tremendous respect for what he stood for. His jurisprudence, his writings, all, you know, speak to that, uh, question of equality for all. Now. Yeah, I landed my first job, uh, uh, as a qualitative researcher when I graduated from Cornell, um, using a tool called hanshing. Right. Uh, there was no similar tool available for students in vocational schools or CTE schools or any of the career schools that I was visiting. I felt like, you know, students, job prospects shouldn't be limited to a career fair. You know, however many, uh, local employers show up, you know, that shouldn't be. All students are limited to it. I also felt like students, you know, the woman, young woman who can outwell the Internet. You'll never know that from a resume. Right. You'll never know that from a resume that they upload on. Indeed. So what better way to honor the dignity of her craft or her work than to give her, her. A platform that makes her skills more legible to employers? Right. So students don't rely on a single document to find a job. Students rely on a portfolio of projects, video, other media that they upload, and build a robust profile that's visible to employers who want to source, uh, talent. Right. Entry level talent.

Speaker D: So, Darnell, let's talk about how you built the platform.

Speaker E: What are the attributes of the platform that you thought were necessary to advance

Speaker F: people's interest and I will just comment that Garrett Lord, who's CEO of Handshake, was a guest on the podcast.

Speaker E: Uh, for those of our audience that

Speaker F: aren't familiar with Handshake, it's uh, a mechanism to get college students particularly introduced to internship and job opportunities.

Speaker E: Trying to augment the career development offices and job placement offices of universities. But you mentioned that, that creating a mechanism for having that woman, uh, welder or machinist, be able to demonstrate that

Speaker F: she has those skills.

Speaker D: What are the other attributes that you

Speaker F: wanted to build in to Thurgood's ah,

Speaker E: offer so that you would build that bridge between candidates and employers looking for

Speaker D: all this missing talent.

Speaker C: So there's the job seeker student experience, which is a mobile first app. Uh, and you know, students have the convenience of using their phones to snap pictures, photos and make video of projects that they can upload to their profile, um, as well as a jobs board, uh, and other social, uh, features that you would see on any other platform, uh, like LinkedIn or Instagram. Except this is for the purpose primarily of finding a job. We do have a community feed where students can connect with their peers, they can comment on each other's work. Uh, and that was really inspired to bring dignity to this space because there's always been a stigma about working, about blue collar work, about working with your hands. Right. Five years ago, going to, working as an H vac technician wasn't looked at as uh, a plausible alternative to college. Uh, unfortunately that attitude is shifting a bit. But we wanted to give uh, students a space where they can celebrate their craft. Right? And we wanted to create an aspirational pull for doing great work in this space. The second part is a career, uh, operating system that we provide to schools for free. A career os, uh, that schools do not have to pay for. Schools can, uh, onboard all their local employers, uh, to the platform, track student engagement, get verifications, and have access to other, uh, tools that create efficiencies in job placement and student engagement. Um, and we realized that we had to, in order to really build out a community in this space and build out the bridge that I had mentioned, we had to become part of the central workflow of schools. So we have one career point, Portal Integration, that went live with Lincoln Technical Institute on September 29th. That spans some 23 campuses, providing access to over 20,000 students. If you were to download the app today, open up the community feed, you'd see some remarkable production behind some of the posts that students are sharing. That's the school experience, right? Uh, the career Portal Integration, and then employers have access to their own dashboard.

Speaker D: So let's talk about the employer experience.

Speaker E: And how did you come to understand what employers would find useful, uh, and how does that show up in their dashboard and in your vision for how to evolve the evolution of the upstream data, uh, to make it ever more valuable to employers in sorting through candidates and identifying talent?

Speaker C: Yeah, I mean, just on the employer dashboard, the fact that they can see actual student projects in itself is a way to, you know, gauge whether students are enthusiastic about their work, the level of pride they take in their work, which does speak to retention, uh, and whether or not this is someone who's looking for a career. We engaged in a design partnership with Cox Automotive, uh, uh, in 2025, uh, and we would meet in Atlanta, we'd meet with their hiring managers and their head of marketing. And we realized quickly that there were two needs here. Employers, you know, they needed both mid and senior level technicians, they needed entry level technicians. But sometimes employers just didn't have the capacity to invest in a training apparatus for those entry level technicians. And they were more concerned with looking for the more experienced ones. Given a scarcity of talent in this space. Employers, uh, you know, like Cox Automotive, like Crash Champions, who's a current sponsor, uh, of students on our platform, they wanted to get in front of the next generation of talent. Right. And that they were willing to tap into their marketing budgets in order to, uh, uh, to do that. Right. Even if they didn't weren't ready to hire, they still wanted increased brand visibility with this next generation of talent. Um, and we were, you know, and it's much easier to tap into marketing budgets than it is to tap into HR budgets, which are much more heavily scrutinized companies. Only spending, they're spending roughly less than 1%, uh, from the HR budget and roughly 5, 5% of their, uh, annual revenue on marketing. So it allowed us to engage with employers even when, um, they didn't have immediate hiring needs at the entry level. Right. Uh, employers were willing to pay for, uh, that opportunity.

Speaker E: How do you think that employers are measuring, uh, their interaction with programs like yours? What are the metrics they're using to determine whether or not this is really

Speaker F: a good avenue for them for finding talent?

Speaker C: Lower cost per hire. Crash Champions, one of our biggest, uh, sponsors to date, uh, is seeing, uh, record recruitment and lower cost per hire. Uh, you know, uh, the sure benchmark for recruiting a single entry level hire today is roughly $4,700. We've uh, reduced that by 70% for crash champions, uh, just based on that partnership.

Speaker D: And what metrics are you continuing to

Speaker E: track yourself, to look for opportunities to improve Thurgood's offers and to make sure that you're in sync between the learner's objectives and your improving understanding of what

Speaker D: the employers are looking for.

Speaker C: Yeah. In addition to interviews and hires, we're also tracking student posts. How many students are actually sharing their work? Right. How many students are clicking on jobs? How many students are, are using the near field communication cards that are sponsored by employers, uh, at these career fairs that they so frequently attend? I think over 90% of vocational schools today rely on career fairs to connect their students with job opportunities.

Speaker E: Darnell, tell me about these near field cards. What are those?

Speaker C: Yeah, so it's more like a white glove, uh, experience for employers who want to engage with embedded talent pipelines. In addition to having access to a sponsored dash where, you know, Crash Champions, for example, has access to every single collision, repair or finishing student across Lincoln Tech's 23 campuses. All of those students are given what's called a near field communication card. We call them NFC cards for short. And those are basically digital business cards. If you ever seen someone with it, uh, you know, they tap your phone and maybe it's synced with their LinkedIn, maybe it's synced with their Instagram. Uh, it's a way of passing off contact information through smartphones. But we distribute sponsored cards on behalf of employers like Crash Champions, and they're targeted to specific cohorts of students who are in the trades that they're looking to recruit from. Right. Um, and we capture the analytics from those from student use of those cards at Career Fairness. It's synced with their Thurgood account, and they use the cards to give campus recruiters candidate snapshots of their portfolio. So if I tapped your phone today, Joe, uh, you would see a candidate snapshot of all the projects I've worked on at Lincoln Tech. Right. As a machinist. Right. It makes it so that these conversations at these career fairs aren't fleeting, they're not short lived, and that something substantive is left with a campus recruiter. Those campus recruiters may not even have a Thurgood company account, but yet they can save that student's contact information in their work portfolio. So it's a way of sharing work, and it's something that lives with them even after they graduate. They can continue to add posts, uh, to their profile. And it's all captured in that, uh, uh, uh, card. Uh, and it's branded with the company sponsors logo on it.

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Speaker E: talk about both sides of this market. We've got skill. What would be traditionally called skills providers

Speaker F: usually going to be educational institutions.

Speaker E: It could be a Lincoln Tech or

Speaker F: it could be a community college, could be even a four year program. Uh, and then we've got the employers.

Speaker E: What's been your experience in terms of

Speaker F: the receptivity of those skills providers to

Speaker E: a program like Thurgood Industries?

Speaker F: Have you found skills providers open to this?

Speaker E: And how are you explaining the value that Thurgood provides to advance their sense of mission as opposed to merely the experience of an individual learner?

Speaker C: We just, uh, demoed the platform at Purdue in Mac and met with folks from the Toyota Academy, Ivy Tech, and many high schools in the state of Indiana. Uh, and they love the platform. Lincoln Tech loves the platform. They love the ability of students to showcase their actual skills. Right. That portfolio building approach is something schools are very receptive to. They understand the value of it. Uh, you know, many schools already have a marketing, uh, staff member at their campuses that, you know, is responsible for, uh, taking snapshots of student projects and then posting it on the campus accounts. Instagram. Right. Uh, but there's no system in place that really connects the actual skills that are on display there to job opportunities into employers. Right. That's more for promoting the school. We're focused on promoting the student. Uh, and obviously schools have accreditation needs. They need to place, you know, 70, uh, percent or more of their students in the field. Um, and many, many schools want to you know, be at 95% placement. They want to even go high. They want to be 100% on the placement side. So they see Thorgood as an additional tool. Frictionless tool. We don't charge schools. Uh, that's not how we generate our revenue. Our platform and our network. Our growing network of tens of thousands of students is not dependent entirely on career portal integrations. Yes, we're integrated with career portals both at the high school level and at the post secondary level. But uh, on near field communication cards were designed as a way to map out uh, um, um, um, student cohorts. Uh, we just met with Siemens Energy looking to recruit uh, entry level technicians, uh, in Charlotte and in Florida.

Speaker F: Indiana is consistently one of the leading

Speaker E: states in this area.

Speaker F: Going back to Governor Mitch Daniels, um, uh, Governor Pence, Governor Holcomb. Each has been really at the forefront as governors and Ivy Tech's one of the elite community college systems.

Speaker E: So if they're enthusiastic, that's just a

Speaker F: great test of um, your value proposition.

Speaker D: Let's go to the employer side for a second.

Speaker E: You've talked a little bit about getting

Speaker D: through the hiring process, but now there's

Speaker E: the onboarding process and there's the getting someone settled into a job. The history of skills based hiring over the last five years according to our research at the Managing the Future Work project is pretty uneven. A lot of employers have taken uh,

Speaker F: a bold public stance that they want to shift to uh, skills based hiring.

Speaker E: But when you look at the actual uptake and change in hiring patterns, it's pretty modest. What's your observation and particularly about what

Speaker F: are the follow on practices post the hiring decisions that help these qualified candidates

Speaker E: you're presenting them with, get enrolled, start

Speaker F: being a success and build uh, a, a performance management profile in the company.

Speaker E: Which means, you know, the deal's really

Speaker F: sealed, that they're going to stay, that, that the uh, the uh, the opportunity

Speaker E: has been realized for both the worker and the employer.

Speaker C: Yeah. And I mean this comes back I think in some ways to the question of soft skills, leadership qualities, uh, goal setting, communication skills, emotional intelligence, um, enthusiasm about your craft. Right. These are all questions that can speak to the issue of retention. Is this someone who's going to stay for 10, 15, 20 years? Right. My argument is that that's visible in the portfolios that students share. You know, that they have initiative, they have excitement and enthusiasm about their craft and that these are people you should invest in, that they're going to stay long term at your company and they're going to be good. They love what they do. I think a problem that employers face when they hire someone based solely on a resume straight out of trade school or straight out of community colleges. Some people can fake it through school, some people can pass and everybody looks the same. So this gives insight into students abilities, into those soft skills that I mentioned that otherwise doesn't exist, that you will not get on any other platform. And that is the argument I would make about why Thoroughgood is so incredible at addressing that later issue of retention.

Speaker E: What is it that you are observing that employers do post higher to really

Speaker F: up those chances of retention?

Speaker E: Because you use the metric earlier of,

Speaker F: of cost per hire, which is a,

Speaker E: uh, widespread and really important metric.

Speaker F: But we find that something that employers don't spend as much time on is the cost of turnover, the cost of

Speaker E: losing someone you've already decided to employ.

Speaker F: And that uh, they can take steps

Speaker E: early in the employment history to raise

Speaker F: the chances of that employee both feeling

Speaker E: successful and actually being successful.

Speaker D: Are you observing things that employers can

Speaker F: do to, to kind of help guarantee the gains they're seeking once they've got

Speaker C: someone on their payroll investing in their workforce and ensuring that they understand that their career path isn't static, it's not limited that they can grow within the company. Right. And that could be by having a robust tuition reimbursement program. Right. If you're a machinist at Monty or you're a machinist at Snap on Tools and maybe you want to pursue a degree in mechanical engineering, you uh, want to work more on the engineering side, uh, you know, having a program in place that workers are familiar with, uh, and can see the trajectory of their own growth from the start of their employment I think is vital. I think also having, you know, and understanding early on as a worker as to what the career trajectory for you can look like at a company, I'll give an example that doesn't involve tuition reimbursement. Crash champions, for example, have a uh, mentorship program. So when you make it from tech one to tech three, you can qualify to be a mentor for other tech ones and apprentices. And you can earn an additional $19,000 a year on top of your base salary, which is already six figures. When students hear about that early on, they get much more interested in a career Crash champions. They want to know the culture, they want to know what the long term benefit is of staying with the company. They want to know, they want to grow with the company. You have to help those entry level technicians, uh, understand that this is something, uh, uh, that can change their lives in the long term and they could achieve the American dream. Because I think that's what everybody wants to. Wants to do.

Speaker F: You mentioned, um, uh, the financing of

Speaker E: training, and you previously mentioned that you are a beneficiary of Second Chance Pell. A lot of our listeners will be familiar with the Pell program, which is part of the federal system for supporting workers in different categories.

Speaker F: The classic Pell grants relate to income

Speaker E: level, but there are specific programs like Second Chance Pell, uh, which you mentioned earlier. We now have a new experiment called Workforce Pel. And, uh, it's the first time we've had this. It's reasonably modest program in terms of size, certainly relative to the overall spending

Speaker F: of the federal government on tuition support.

Speaker E: Are you beginning to see Workforce Pell

Speaker F: or conversations beginning to happen about how

Speaker E: Workforce Pell might play into the career paths that you're supporting?

Speaker F: Are you optimistic and what's got to

Speaker E: happen for this thing to take off?

Speaker C: I am optimistic. So there's going to be more of a need to capture data that ensures that students who use those Workforce Pell dollars are actually finding or getting placed in careers that pay, uh, you know, well above what they otherwise would have earned had they just pursued employment straight out of high school. Some. Some of these funds want to see, you know, 15% increase in what the average wage would be. So, you know, Thurgood is a, uh, platform that is, you know, primed to. To do some of that measuring. Right. And we're kind of tailoring our platform to. To ensure that those, uh, you know, those outcomes are seen on behalf of students who. Who are, uh, utilizing those Workforce Pell dollars.

Speaker E: Darnell, do you see other areas of, um, policy that.

Speaker F: That if you could wave a magic wand and cause there to be a couple of other changes that.

Speaker E: That would accelerate the ability of people

Speaker F: to get on and move up these pathways to really good playing employment that

Speaker E: will support household formation and economic independence. Are there other policy. If only that were different?

Speaker F: Um, are there a couple that come to mind?

Speaker C: I mean, the first one I would think of, uh, uh, like we were working with the PHCC in the state of Indiana, not only to, you know, connect high schoolers to apprenticeships, uh, with their member companies, but also people impacted by the jail system. And, you know, I was a beneficiary of Second Chance Pell while incarcerated. I, uh, think, you know, we need to explore ways to ensure that Workforce Pal is used for people who are currently incarcerated, uh, as well, to help funnel them into some of these jobs. I also think, you know, we need more second chance employers in the manufacturing space, and a lot are. But when you think about roles where you need security clearance or if you're working at Sikorsky or electric boat, you know, those jobs seem out of, uh, the way for many, uh, of the folks who are incarcerated. Now when you're incarcerated, you're always taking some kind of vocational training program. Right? Uh, but there's not much there in terms of, uh, dollars or a policy structure, uh, that can help, uh, create pathways for returning citizens to pursue some of these careers. These are the next generation jobs really. Being an h VAC technician at a data center, uh, working as an electrical apprentice. And we need to, you know, realize that, you know, being too selective in excluding a lot of talented people who, like myself, may have made some poor choices and found themselves, uh, impacted by the jail system or the prison system is not a wise approach. If we're going to, you know, fortify our manufacturing base, we're going to, you know, bring manufacturing back to the states and really, uh, uh, you know, compete on a geopolitical level and de risk supply chains and all that good stuff. We really have to start investing in people. And that starts with not, uh, just working with people who are in schools, but also working with those populations of people who will be returning from, from prison and jail and finding ways to provide them with the training opportunities. Uh, and if that's leveraging workforce pell dollars to get more programs on the

Speaker E: inside, you know, I think some of our listeners may not be well versed in the data.

Speaker F: They'd be surprised to hear that more

Speaker E: than almost 80 million Americans have an arrest record.

Speaker F: They'd be probably even more surprised to

Speaker E: Hear that almost 40% of people who

Speaker F: are judicially impacted and are released from

Speaker E: the prison system have no employment in their first year.

Speaker F: Uh, and that recidivism rates getting back involved in the judicial system, almost always a deeply negative consequences, um, is very

Speaker E: highly related to whether you're steadily employed

Speaker F: in your first year back in the community and how much you make.

Speaker E: That recidivism rates for people making zero to $7 an hour, or 12 to 14% higher than those who are making seven to $10 an hour. And those are 10% higher than those

Speaker F: people who are making $10 or more an hour.

Speaker E: So it really shows how employability and

Speaker F: the ability to get back on your

Speaker E: feet and begin to build a stable life based on a living, uh, wage is integral to this. So one final question, Darnell Let me. Thurgood is still, uh, a young institution. Uh, you're still, uh, uh, a, uh, fairly recent, uh, a little bit, maybe more mature entrepreneur.

Speaker D: What can we hope to hear from

Speaker E: you and see out of Thurgood in

Speaker D: the next several years?

Speaker E: How are you measuring success and what

Speaker D: are your ambitions for Third Good Industries?

Speaker C: Yeah, our goal is to scale the platforms in our career os to more schools. We're in talks with Lone Star, we're in talks with, uh, you know, several more high schools in the state of Indiana. We, uh, want tens of thousands of more students on a platform, engaged, posting. We want to build that community that I mentioned earlier that creates an aspirational pull toward, uh, careers in these spaces, um, that brings dignity to the craftmanship, uh, that we see on a daily basis. And, you know, it's. It's. We want to be the go to platform for entry level blue collar workers in America. Uh, that's our goal. That's our goal is to have not just tens of thousands but millions of skilled workers on the platform in five years, uh, helping them not just find jobs, but build community. Uh, and that's the North Star of our platform, Darnell.

Speaker E: That's a great, bold aspiration, and, uh, your whole life history is one, um, of making changes and really, uh, accomplishing

Speaker F: things that many people would not have

Speaker E: given you the benefit of the doubt that you'd be able to do. So in your particular instance, I think my, uh, listeners and I will be not only rooting for you, but not betting against you fulfilling, uh, an ambition like that. Particularly when I hear also you're engaging with Lone Star, which is, uh, uh, uh, an elite performing community college in the Houston area, where they've got a lot of outstanding community colleges like San Jacinto and others. So, uh, you're swimming in the deep end of the pool with really great

Speaker D: institutions and partners, and that's a great

Speaker E: endorsement of what you're trying to achieve at Thurgood Industries. Such a pleasure to welcome you to our podcast, Darnell, and we're looking forward to watching how things unfold for you.

Speaker C: Thank you. Appreciate it. Thank you for having me. It's an honor to be here and huge fan of the podcast. So, uh, glad I could contribute in a way that's meaningful.

Speaker D: We hope you enjoy the Managing the Future of Work podcast. If you haven't already, please subscribe and rate the show. Wherever you listen to podcasts, you can find out more about the Managing the Future of Work project at our website, hbs Edu. Managing the future of work. While you're there, sign up for our newsletter.