Transformation: Building What’s Next (Vol. 2, No. 4)

By Dahab Hagos-Fewell

The Shift | Vol. 2, No. 4 – Blueprints for What Works

Building What’s Next Means Building Together

Earlier this year, leaders responsible for connecting young people to education, careers, training, and long-term economic opportunity gathered around the same table with a shared question: how do we stop asking young people to navigate systems that were never designed to work together?

The conversation was practical, with employers discussing talent gaps, community organizations describing daily barriers, and educators centering the challenges of aligning their work to a rapidly changing workforce. Despite approaching the issue from variations of possibility, each changemaker in the room was diligently working toward the same goal: creating stronger pathways to economic mobility.

Convening leaders across sectors in this way is significant because these conversations rarely happen in sustained, coordinated spaces. Too often, employers, educators, community organizations, and workforce leaders are working toward similar goals independently, without shared infrastructure or opportunities to align their efforts. At LeadersUp, part of our role as an intermediary is helping create the conditions for that alignment, building trust, coordination, and shared accountability around a collective vision for economic mobility.

At LeadersUp, we are seeing that momentum built in real time.

This month, much of our work is focused on strengthening the infrastructure needed to support long-term economic mobility for BIPOC young adults. Not only through individual programs, but also through the partnerships, regional strategies, and coordinated efforts needed to create clearer pathways to careers and economic opportunity.

One example is our continued leadership driving the Los Angeles Economic Empowerment Alliance (LAEEA) and Activate LAEEA. At a time when stakeholder collaboration is desperately needed across sectors, we are being intentional about breaking the cycles of problem-solving for the same opportunities, in isolation. By bringing stakeholders across sectors into deeper coordination, we are creating space for regional alignment around workforce priorities, employer engagement, and long-term economic impact.

This work matters because fragmentation has real consequences.

Too often, opportunity systems are fragmented, making it difficult for young people to access clear pathways and support. Employers frequently build talent pipelines independently, while community organizations work to fill gaps without shared visibility into larger regional efforts. The result is duplication, confusion, and missed opportunities for everyone involved.

Our role as an intermediary is to help close those gaps.

We help align employer demand, workforce strategy, and community-based support so young adults encounter clearer pathways instead of disconnected systems. We collaborate with partners to establish shared priorities, coordinated investments, and collective accountability.

Internally, that same transformation is taking shape through our cross-functional planning processes and systems alignment work. These tools are helping our teams operate with greater clarity, coordination, and intentionality as we continue scaling our impact regionally and state-wide.

But perhaps the most important shift is cultural.

More and more, we are seeing organizations move beyond short-term partnership models and toward deeper co-design. We are seeing leaders move away from questions like, “What are we building?” to “Who are we building it with?” and “Who’s benefiting when we succeed?"

That shift matters because sustainable economic mobility cannot be built through isolated efforts. True progress requires institutions that share ownership, communities that act as trusted partners, and systems designed for long-term access instead of short-term wins.

What would be possible if workforce systems prioritized coordination over competition?

The work ahead requires employers, educators, workforce leaders, and community organizations to move beyond isolated solutions and invest in pathways that young people can actually navigate.

Although collaboration brings complexity and, at times, short-term challenge, it also brings long-term sustainability and transformative change.

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Dahab Hagos-Fewell is the Vice President, Head of Transformation at LeadersUp, driving organizational alignment and cross-functional execution across the organization’s portfolios.