Paul Szmal: Good morning, 749, it's FHELX Morning Tuesday and we're Zoe Orchengua. He is co-founder and CEO of a program called Emerge Career. The website is EmergeCareer.com and it gives people in poverty a leg up by training them for high-tech jobs. Zoe, good morning.
Zo Orchingwa: Hey, good morning. How are you doing?
Paul Szmal: Good. We appreciate your advertising business. We're going to talk in a moment about the CDL program for people coming out of jail, but Emerge Career is bigger than that. The idea is to train people in poverty in high-demand, high-wage jobs. Where did you get the idea to do this and tell us about the process of putting Emerge Career together?
Zo Orchingwa: Yeah, so Emerge Career really kind of emanates from my first company called Emilio. We looked at the prison system and noticed that a lot of individuals are unfortunately exploited while incarcerated. So Emilio started off as a free communication platform and provided a free network for folks to be able to reconnect with their families. But we realized that post-release, a lot of individuals are having a very, very difficult job finding employment and rebuilding their lives. So basically, Emerge started as a way to really solve the high recidivism rates that we see across the country for formerly incarcerated individuals. But then we soon expanded it to be able to cover anyone who's in poverty that's really looking for a leg up and a pathway to a high-paying, high-demand career.
Paul Szmal: How have you been able to overcome a reluctance on the part of employers to hire people who were incarcerated?
Zo Orchingwa: That's a great question. So really, our thesis at the beginning of Emerge was to really focus on industries with huge labor market shortages that were in dire need of workers across the country. We really didn't want to have to beg or plead with companies to give folks a second chance. So we started with the trucking profession, which a lot of us know has a really serious crisis of truckers. But there's a lot of research and data that shows that formerly incarcerated people are much lower workers because they are very fortunate to be given a second chance. There's much lower churn among them. So we started highlighting some of those positive factors in conjunction with the fact that there's various industries with huge labor market shortages. And that was kind of the core thesis that really allowed us to expand access to not just training, but employment options to this underserved population.
Paul Szmal: And that's one of the big parts of your program, is you carefully track results and you make those analytics available to a government agency so you can prove to them how the program works.
Zo Orchingwa: Exactly, yeah. The government wants to know that it is funding things that are having positive impacts in the community. So yeah, we have very detailed analytics built into our learning platform. So the platform makes it very flexible for our students to easily navigate incarceration while studying, easily navigate post-release life while also going through a course. But then we make it incredibly easy for the government to be able to track the ROI of the training programs that they are funding. So it's not only that folks are staying out of trouble and not going back to prison, but they're becoming tax-paying citizens contributing to their community. And also not committing crimes is another benefit that the government really sees as part of this program.
Paul Szmal: The program that our listeners have been hearing the ads about is the CDL program. Like you said, there's a big shortage of truckers and it's a high-paying career and it's a very portable career. Once you have a CDL, you can go drive for just about anybody. So how would one of our listeners get involved and tell us a little bit about the CDL program?
Zo Orchingwa: Yeah, so it's a very simple up-to-step process like most trades. There's a theory portion of the course and then there's a hands-on component. So anyone with a criminal record or anyone with a history of criminal justice involvement that goes to the emergecareer.com slash radioFLX will be able to sign up for the course. Once they create an account, populate their information, our success coaches will reach out to them and begin the enrollment process. So it's very simple. They'll get access to our learning system, where they'll start training for their commercial learner's permit. And once they have successfully passed their permit, we will place them at a range partner school in Finger Lakes, closest to where they live. And it'll be a four-week process behind the wheel. And then we place them with an employer after they pass their road test.
Paul Szmal: And you just mentioned another important part of your program. By the way, the website is emergecareer.com and that is individual student success coaches. Because many times in a program like this, someone might get off to a good start and then for whatever reason, something happens and they fall off. So you've got that success coach right there to help them set their goals and help them see the big picture ahead.
Zo Orchingwa: Exactly, exactly. So from day one, individuals are working with their own success coaches virtually. And they're guiding them all the way from enrollment to employment. In addition to that, we provide 12-month job retention support, recognizing that for a lot of folks, they're going to need some additional support even after gaining employment. But the program is developed to be extremely easy and flexible with the addition of these coaches that are there to just really be your personal assistant, to be there to guide you and answer any questions or solve any problems that may arise along their journey.
Paul Szmal: From the employer side, how does someone become one of what you call your fair chance employers?
Zo Orchingwa: Yeah, so it's very simple as well. We can go on our website and sign up to be one of our fair chance employers. That gives them completely free access to our graduates who are going to be really great workers for them. We work closely with companies like Western Express, Schneider. The industry is in dire need of workers, and so we're open to working with anyone eager to give folks a second chance.
Paul Szmal: Another service you provide for your students is what we call the soft skills, putting your resume together, learning how to search for a job, and preparing for interviews and that type of thing.
Zo Orchingwa: Yeah, definitely. And we wanted to bring that into the 21st century, recognizing that there are AI tools out there that really help guide folks into creating documents in a much quicker way. So the soft skills course can include the job readiness component, resume writing, preparing for your interviews. And then we also have a financial literacy course to kind of guide folks through property budgeting, saving their money, investing it properly, and a digital literacy course as well to just kind of brush up on any technical skills that they may have been lacking while incarcerated or just haven't been able to kind of access. So it's a really full end-to-end program, from not having any background in any of the trades to getting a CDL and then getting the soft skills course so you can do well on your way to a successful career.
Paul Szmal: Go to EmergeCareer.com, watch some of the testimonial videos. There's some students just saying, you know, I never thought I saw myself as a truck driver, and now they're successfully doing that and making great money and on the right path in life. We've been talking with Zoe Orchengua, co-founder and CEO of EmergeCareer. Again, it's EmergeCareer.com, and listen to the ads on our Finger Lakes FLX Media stations about that CDL program. Zoe, thanks for putting this together. What a great program, and keep doing the great work you're doing. And thank you again for your advertising business with our stations.
Zo Orchingwa: Amazing. Thank you so much.
