Nursing assistant graduates who attended Milwaukee Area Technical College as part of the Hispanic Collaborative’s upskilling initiative for Latinos pose with their diplomas.
Credit: Hispanic Collaborative
Last summer, Sara Orozco was sweeping up hair in a beauty salon making $13 an hour. Today, the 18-year-old Golda Meir High School graduate is working as a certified nursing assistant in an oncology unit at Aurora St. Luke’s Medical Center in Milwaukee, making $21 an hour while earning a four-year nursing degree at Alverno
Last summer, Sara Orozco was sweeping up hair in a beauty salon making $13 an hour.
Today, the 18-year-old Golda Meir High School graduate is working as a certified nursing assistant in an oncology unit at Aurora St. Luke’s Medical Center in Milwaukee, making $21 an hour while earning a four-year nursing degree at Alverno College.
Orozco was able to secure the higher paying health care job due to an upskilling initiative piloted by the Hispanic Collaborative, an organization founded in 2019 with the aim of making Milwaukee a top 10 city for Hispanic well-being.
Loosely referred to as the Latino Cohort or the Upskilling Initiative Pilot, the program kicked off last summer and has so far helped 62 students earn nursing assistant diplomas through an eight-week training program at Milwaukee Area Technical College, but its broader goal is to increase the household incomes of dozens of Latino households across the Milwaukee area. This fall, another 100 students are slated to go through nursing assistant training. The collaborative has also worked to develop a similar effort focused on information technology skills.
“The Latino workforce is the only growing sector and it is about 18 years younger in this region than the rest of the population,” said Nancy Hernandez, president of the Hispanic Collaborative. “For us, we want to help stabilize and improve as many of those households as possible.”
With that goal in mind, the collaborative set out last year to figure out how best to help workers in those households – those who have been in the workforce for a while or may just be entering it – get into higher-paying jobs.
Staffers interviewed different types of workers to see what obstacles existed in their lives that might keep them from training for a better paying job, gaining insights they then used to shape the program.
“So, we asked ‘how do we mitigate some of those risks?’ The program we built really has the market in mind, and by ‘the market,’ we mean the workers who have jobs now but are looking to train-up to something better,” Hernandez said.
What they’ve developed is a hands-on approach that works with lower-wage workers from recruitment through training and job placement, to help ensure that things like child care issues or even a flat tire, won’t knock them off their track toward a more fulfilling, better-paying job, but also won’t jeopardize their current employment.
“They are going into a field they feel might be better for them and their family, but they also need those assurances, because the $10 or $15 per hour that they are making right now is still very important to their household,” Hernandez said.
To keep participants on track, the program enlists cohort navigators that regularly check in with the students and instructors to make sure any hiccups are addressed before they snowball into something harder to manage.
Once hired, the CNAs can make about $18 to $19 an hour to start, but many often use tuition reimbursements offered by their new employers to pursue even better-paying health care jobs.
Kim Quetschke, senior talent sourcing specialist for Advocate Aurora Health, who has worked closely with the cohorts – holding presentations about preparing for interviews and the like – said the nursing assistants Aurora recruits are often encouraged to pursue any position with the health care provider they feel will suit them best.
“Sometimes when people start at the bedside, they may decide that direct patient care is not where they ultimately want to be, so we encourage them to explore other careers at Aurora, like medical lab technician,” she said. “And we have a really fabulous tuition reimbursement program.”
For Orozco, becoming involved in the pilot program made her realize she chose the right path in being a nurse.
“At first, I was a little nervous, but now I feel a lot more confident,” she said. “It’s been great just gaining that experience and working with patients.”
Upskilling and upscaling
The collaborative received initial funding for the pilot project from Advocate Aurora Health, but they hope it will raise enough funds to provide upskilling training to about 1,000 Latinos in the region each year. The program is free for all participants and could remain that way as long as the collaborative has funding.
While the effort is designed to help Latino families, it will also serve the entire Milwaukee region, Hernandez said. That’s because Latinos make up one of the fastest growing workforce populations in the country.
According to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, one in five workers in this country will be Latino by 2030. In the Milwaukee-Waukesha metro region, about 15% of workers over age 16 were Latino in 2021. They are also the only demographic in the region, Hernandez said, that has a birth rate that isn’t contracting.
“So, when you think about who your Gen Zers and Gen Alphas are? America is going to look more and more Latino.” Hernandez said. “If you are in a three-legged race, you want to make sure that your partner is strong and coordinated. If you want to win, that’s what you gotta do.”
