CRAIN’S CLEVELAND BUSINESS
Source Lunch
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PA G E 3 9
Jill Rizika
Executive Director, Towards Employment When Jill Rizika enters Bloom Bakery, she’s welcomed with smiles and hugs. ¶ The bakery is a benefit corporation owned by Towards Employment, the nonprofit she leads as executive director. Towards Employment’s mission is to empower individuals to achieve and maintain self-sufficiency through employment and last year, Bloom Bakery became a part of that mission. ¶ The retail bakery, which opened in March 2016 at Public Square, provides jobs for low-income and disadvantaged adults in Greater Cleveland. ¶ As Cleveland’s economy comes back and downtown sees a renaissance, some neighborhoods still haven’t seen the benefits of that. ¶ “(We) are not going to have the community I think that we all want to live in if we continue to have these disparities,” Rizika said when she sat down for lunch with Crain’s. “And getting a job is the first step to reduce recidivism, to be getting off public benefits, to be able to care for your family, to be able to feel connected and like a contributing community citizen. So we should all care about the health of all of the neighborhoods.” — Lydia Coutré
Five things Favorite book(s) “Born a Crime: Stories from a South African Childhood,” by Trevor Noah; and “Evicted: Poverty and Profit in the American City,” by Matthew Desmond
Favorite place you’ve traveled? Morocco
First job Scooping ice cream
Hobbies Cooking, eating, reading and walking on the beach
What’s the best piece of advice you’ve ever received “My dad always encourages us to do what we love. I feel in some ways I have the luxury to do that, and not everybody has that luxury. But trying to find a way.”
Lunch spot Bloom Bakery 200 Public Square Cleveland
The meal Tuna Niçoise salad and butternut squash soup; Cheesy baby panini with potato salad and an iced tea.
The vibe This cozy eatery serves up soup, salads, sandwiches and breakfast, as well as bakery items made at Bloom Bakery’s location near Cleveland State University, where it offers catering and maintains a retail store.
The bill $23.30, plus tip
What drew you to this work? I came to Cleveland as a “trailing spouse” from Washington, D.C., where I had spent 15 years in a career in international development, with a focus on sub-Saharan Africa. I had to figure out how to reinvent myself and make a new career. … Workforce development drew me in because of the multilayered approach. Every day we impact individual’s lives, in many cases truly changing the trajectory of their future and that of their family, while we also work on system and policy issues to try to address some of the reasons why so many people are underskilled and un- or underemployed in our community in the first place. To support someone with barriers to employment, you need to understand not just what business hiring needs are, but how the housing, health care, criminal justice, mental health, education, economic development systems work as well. ... On the one hand, we help individuals navigate all these systems to help them change their lives; and on the other we look at the system as a whole and think about how we could better align services, programs, information flow to get more people who need work and businesses who need talent connected more efficiently. We also think about how policies and practice influence inclusion and access to opportunity. Our direct service work helps inform policy and systems discussions. How does Towards Employment support ex-offenders? First, it is important to note that we serve all kinds of people who lack the resources to gain the skills and experience to get a job on their own, or advance and build a career pathway. Their challenge may be lack of housing, low educational attainment, a young adult aging out of foster care, or those in a dead-end job that have not been able to advance. Of the 560 people placed in jobs last year, about 60% had some criminal justice involvement, but it is important to note that our services are not exclusively for those with that history. We have been offering specialized services to people with backgrounds since we merged with Cleveland Works in 2004. What goals do you have for Towards Employment? We want to grow and scale our successful programming in order to
have greater impact on the community. We want to help people achieve greater economic mobility so they can care for their families and help their communities thrive. We want to help businesses find the talent they need that reflects the full diversity of our community. We want to leverage what we have learned to help strengthen and align the workforce system so that it creates more opportunities for those who have been left behind, while making it easier for businesses to find talent. What opportunities do you see for growth in the work you’re doing? The labor market is tightening and business is citing “talent” as a constraint on growth. Everyone is talking about workforce! We are hopeful that this will lead to new opportunities for creative partnerships to prepare people for the jobs of today and tomorrow — more earn-and-learn programs (apprenticeships), more wraparound supports and coaching linked to technical training, more employers creating supportive policies to help entry-level workers advance, more attention paid to job quality, more openness to those with criminal backgrounds. What keeps you interested in and passionate about your work? Every day there’s a story of somebody who did something for the first time, whether they got a job or got a promotion, the first time they were able to actually have benefits. Somebody who was able to change their shifts so now they can be home with their kids for dinner. They bought their first car. I mean, there’s always something amazing happening at an individual level. And then sort of thinking about how you can use that learning to change the system so more people can see that kind of change … contributing to these broader conversations about how to make the system work more efficiently and effectively, but also more equitably. I would say the one other thing is that Towards Employment is a pretty special place to work. It’s also the people, the staff that we have who are amazing. We’ve hired graduates of our programs, and so we have great role models. People are extremely passionate about what they do, and that really makes going to work every day a different kind of experience.
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Volume 38, Number 47 Crain’s Cleveland Business (ISSN 0197-2375) is published weekly at 700 West St. Clair Ave., Suite 310, Cleveland, OH 441131230. Copyright © 2017 by Crain Communications Inc. Periodicals postage paid at Cleveland, Ohio, and at additional mailing offices. Price per copy: $2.00. POSTMASTER: Send address changes to Crain’s Cleveland Business, Circulation Department, 1155 Gratiot Avenue, Detroit, Michigan 48207-2912. 1-877-824-9373.
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