That partnership can take many forms, from helping educators identify in-demand skills to providing students with greater exposure to career opportunities through internships, mentoring, career technology partnerships and classroom engagement. Funk said employers bring valuable real-world insight that helps ensure students understand the careers available to them and the skills those careers require. He pointed to the skilled trades as one example. As experienced workers retire and fewer young people enter those fields, demand continues to outpace supply despite the strong wages, long-term stability and meaningful careers many of those professions offer. Helping students understand those opportunities earlier can strengthen the workforce while creating better outcomes for employers and workers alike. Those ideas mirror the conversations taking place through the Chamber’s partnership with CivicLab. By bringing employers into the discussion alongside educators and community leaders, the initiative aims
to better align education with workforce needs while creating more opportunities for students to succeed and businesses to grow. Funk believes Oklahoma City has already demonstrated what long-term investment can accomplish. “Oklahoma City today is nearly unrecognizable compared to the city many of us knew just a few decades ago,” he said. “That did not happen by accident. It happened because people made intentional investments in this community and were willing to think beyond the next year or the next business cycle.” He believes the region’s next investment should continue to focus on its people. “My message to business leaders would be that education and workforce development are not separate from economic development. They are economic development,” Funk said. “If we want Oklahoma City to stay competitive, we have to keep investing in the people who will power its next chapter.”
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