(energetic music) ♪ ♪ good morning and welcome to mosaic. i'm honored to be your host this morning. throughout the country communities are taking a very deep look at issues of work and its economy and ways in which a community can contribute by working an economy to the common good. we are pleased to have in this conversation this morning lisa countryman who works with jvs to talk about this important issue. welcome, lisa. >> hi. >> let's jump right in and ask

you, what is jvs. >> jvs we believe in the power of work to transform lives. we are a nonsectarian group. our mission is to open up opportunities for those who are left behind. >> it's a beautiful big vision statement. i'm wondering if you can give us a couple examples of how does that find its way to the ground? >> of coyes. so we work closely with employers in sectors that are showing very strong growth and particularly sectors that have a large percentage of what we call middle skill, middle wage jobs. one of the things that's happened since the great resection has been kind of a hollowing out of the middle of the labor market. what that means is that the growth that's been happening has been happening in the highest paid, highest skilled jobs and unfortunately also in the lowest

skilled, lowest paid jobs with kind of a shrinking pool in the middle. so we focus on making very deep connections with employers in those sectors that do still offer middle skill, middle wage jobs and building out career pathways, training partnerships with employers in those sectors. i'll tell you a little bit more about what catleexactly that lo like. >> please. >> connecting people with skill building training, hard skills, soft skills or communication skills followed by a paid work experience in partnership with an employer, often paid by the employer, and then a direct connection to employment with a goal of getting people into jobs er you know communities throughout the country have faced this issue and every community has a lot in common with every other community and at the same time every community is unique. i'm wondering if you can talk a

little how jvs understands our local bay area community and then makes decisions about what sectors it moves into to form partnerships to contribute to the economic work life of the community at large. >> that's a great question and a really big question. couple of things i'd like to draw out about that are first of all that the bay area economy in terms of the inequality and the hollowing out in the middle. it's the most acute and in that se sense it makes the work we're doing a really great testing ground for programs that can work and can solve the problem. we believe if it can work here, it should be able to work pretty much anywhere. other things to think about in thinking about the bay area economy are looking at sectors that still offer high percentage

of middle skill middle wage jobs. some examples of that are health care but also utilities and the public sector. another piece of why those particular indus sfris are still offering so many middle skill, middle skill jobs is because for the most part those jobs can't be off shored or in shored, they have to be done by people who are here. health care sector have the advantage of being fairly recession proof so that means those are good investments for us in terms of building programming, partnership. >> you used an interesting word. i think people are familiar with the term off shore. a job leaves the country. what is in shore? >> yes, so in shoring is a dynamic that we think about and in a city like san francisco but really the broader bay area and we work across multiple counties

across the broader bay area, many companies are -- in response to the increasing cost of leafing and the increasing cost of doing business, moving jobs that can be moved to lower cost areas of the country. >> i see. so a job might leave the bay area for another part of california, another state? >> that's exactly right. >> interesting. so want to take a quick break, lisa. come back in just a moment here on "mosaic."

good morning and welcome to "mosaic." we're in the middle of a wonderful conversation with folks from jvs. we'd like to welcome back lisa countryman and welcome becca rosenbaum who is the director of health care programs. welcome back lisa and welcome, becca. >> thank you. >> thank you. >> becca, let's just jump in and ask you what are the health care programs at jvs. >> we have a really diverse portfolio of programs at jvs. we serve people who are licensed and people who don't have health

care experience but want to get a foot in the door. we serve really a wide range of occupations. we work with medical assistance, dental assistants, lpns and rns. those are in high demand in the bay area and have good entry-level wages. so our refresher programs are designed for people that already have a certificate, already are licensed but maybe people have taken a little bit of time off, got a license or certificate and weren't able to find work in that field. we have targeted short-term trainings to refresh their clinical skills, get their confidence back up and practice all of the soft skills employers really want. then they go into a work-based learning experience, they're earning a wage, and then we support them in finding a job. our other training programs for folks who aren't certified in dental assistant and medical

assistant programs and medical administrative assistant training as well. folks, again, are going through a clinical training program. sometimes in partnership with a local accredited training provider like san francisco state. we're supplementing that training with soft skills targeted towards the employer and then a work-based learning program again, practicing those skills, wrap around services at that time and then support with a job serve again. >> so lisa was talking about a commitment to jvs's commitment to a gap and middle wage jobs and middle level types of jobs as you describe it, dental assistant, cna, i know for anybody out there who wants a job at a certain point where the rubber hits the road is getting a job. i'm wondering if you can talk a little bit about that piece of the puzzle that i know jvs is involved with to the point where somebody lands in a place, is

commuting to a job, getting a paycheck. how does that structure actually work at jvs? >> that's a really good question. we integrate that training and support throughout our program. it starts before the program starts. we talk with the employers about what does somebody need to get into a job, both the actual hard skills, do they need to be able to draw blood, room a patient all the way down to what should they say in an interview. what kind of attitude do they need to come in with. what do they need to say to land a job. we integrate that right alongside the harder skills and we bring employers in to the process at every step of the way. many of our programs are targeted at a specific employer and that employer is actually helping us select participants to the program. they inform the selection process, they let us know the kinds of folks they're looking for, what kind of skills that they're looking for and so we know once we bring people into a training program, they're well

set up because the employer has kind of bought in already to this 2k3group of people. throughout the training we're providing things like networking training, sitting down and writing a resume, how to apply online. once this program ends, they already have an offer of employment. they've shown what they can do on th he job. for those looking for work, they have access to a one-on-one job search, group workshops and a whole slew of services with how to practice skills and keep themselves current with practicing mock interviews, volunteering in the community, everything they need to land the job. once they land the job, we're touching base with folks to make sure they can be successful within the first 90 days, first

year of work. they can give us a call if they encounter problems. >> believe it or not, we have one minute left in our segment together. i know that jvs works so intensely across the spectrum of work. work is so complex from a person who needs a job to a skill set to employee -- employer who will hire and then the success of working and so i'm wondering if you can talk to us in just a concrete way who are the employers that jvs works with and maybe mention a program or two. >> sure. absolutely. so we work with a lot of employers in the bay area. some of our bigger name employers are kaiser-permanente. pacific medical foundation, cpmc, usmf. those are our larger hospital systems. we work with private practices, small community clinics and community clinic consortiums

which are successful. we want people to have a choice where to work and choose the environment and workplace that's right for them. we try to have a real variety of employer partnerships. >> wonderful. believe it or not, we're going to take a break and come back to this wonderful conversation with jvs in just a moment.

good morning and welcome back to "mosaic." we're in the middle of a conversation with jvs. we'll introduce you to geisha quan. welcome back, lisa and guy. >> thank you for having us. >> can you tell us about the

partnership kaiser p-permanente has with jvs? >> absolutely. we've been working for 2 1/2 years. it are the stayed with the need lisa identified with the hollowing out of the workforce. we would have many medical assistants who would take a job in san francisco but after six months or a year they would transfer to a location that was closer to their home. and so that caused churn and as you know, churn results in people not being as effective at their jobs and also is expensive because you're constantly training people. and i met abby snay who's the chief executive officer for jvs at a function and we started talking about the refresher program and in particular what i liked about it was we were able to help develop the curriculum. they worked with us and we could put pieces of it that are particular to kaiser-permanente into the curriculum which we

appreciated and they were going to recruit around san francisco and in san francisco in particular. the experiment was if we got people who lived nearby could we reduce the churn and develop the community in so many ways by providing jobs. when we provide jobs there's also health care and other things we can do by investing in the community. it was a win, win, win. i think we're on our fourth cohort of medical assistants. they're well trained. they know the clinical skills and soft skills of customer service. we teach them about our computer systems. it's working very, very well. >> kaiser-permanente i think people know has its origins in worker health, community health. >> correct. >> i know that that value has stuck with kaiser, certainly in the bay area.

so i'm wondering in terms of how you looked at what you call the churning and what lisa talked about about in shoring, that do you find if you tend to hire people in the community that the job keeps them anchored to the community? is that part of the vision of creating stability for the health care sector? >> absolutely. so far it's only been a couple years, but we have been tracking our numbers and there's definitely lower churn. people are staying and i also have to say that some of these well-trained medical assistants are some of our best medical assistants. we're very happy with it. >> lisa, can you talk a little bit about how people come into the city system? so if they come into a program that is directly linked to a job that may or may not land at kaiser or someplace else, how you educate people to the expectations, what they're really being trained to do and really what the job expectation

might be. >> of course. we do very targeted outreach for all of our career pathways programs and for a program like our partnership with kaiser, of course it helps immensely in our outreach that kaiser is such an attractive employer. kaiser has a reputation of being a great place to work, really stable so i think that draws people. we get sometimes 200, 300 applications to be in a training cohort of 20. there's a lot of interest. people understand and we set expectations from the beginning that what they're stepping into is a very robust training program that includes classroom training, a paid work experience but it is not a guarantee of employment at kaiser. so they understand that they have the opportunity to kind of prove themselves in that moment and if they don't get an opportunity at kaiser immediately after their

externship, they can apply and we will help them into our other fantastic employers. >> if somebody is interested in the health care sector programs, how do they make themselves available to jvs? >> they could go to our website. they could submit an intake form. >> guy, for kaiser itself, what are some of the positions they're looking for? >> right now, we're particularly focused on medical assistants. we are increasing the number of medical assistants we've been hiring over the last couple of years and find that it really helps the physician in providing great care. so that's the one that we're working with jvs on. certainly we have other positions as lvns, rns, other areas of administration. >> thank you so much. guy and lisa, believe it or not. we're going to take another quick break and come back to

"mosaic" in just a moment.

been a bit of a seesaw ride on the temperatures. we'll take a look ahead on what to expect monday. good morning and welcome back to owe mosaic." i'm ran by eric weis. we're here with lisa countryman, who's the chief strategic officer at jvs and joined by

nuria reyes. you went to the jvs refresher program? >> yes. >> jvs lets the community know what it's doing. can you talk more about how jvs lets the public know it's working. >> opportunities like this are an occasion to do that. our big event is strictly business, which is our annual luncheon. that's our big fundraising event of the year. it's really a celebration of the people who have benefitted from our programs and an opportunity to showcase our fantastic employer partnerships. nuria is going to be honored as one of our employees of the year at strictly business. >> congratulations. what brought you to jvs? >> i was struggling to find jobs. i had to step away from my medical job for a couple of

years so when i tried to reapply to jobs, it was really hard for me to find jobs. like as soon as the employers would see, oh, she's two years off of a job, they won't call me. they said, oh, we went in another direction. thank you for submitting the application. but they won't call me. and i was in this program that helps women who are single moms and they told me about jvs and i liked the -- well, i liked the opportunity they were giving me to do the externship which was one of the big catching parts of it and then also they gave me the opportunity to refresh my skills. i was a medical assistant but this was giving me time to prep myself before i actually went to job. but it became more than that. it became more than just a refreshment program for a little time. go ahead and find new way.

they helped me from teaching me how to do an interview to how to dress up to actually do the interview. they gave me the opportunity to do the externship at kaiser and gratefully i got hired at kaiser. >> so what is a medical assistant? >> a medical assistant is a person who helps the doctor in the back office. they -- like withholding the instruments, with prepping for procedures, rooming patients. most of the people that goes to the hospital, they have a contact with medical assistants. the first person they go, either they register them or they go and grab them and put them in their rooms so the doctor can see them. that's what our jobs are. >> the medical assistant, i'm just going to jump in, plays a really important role in influencing and setting the tone for the whole patient experience and so that's part of the reason

why the employer partners that we work like kaiser are so concerned about having medical assistants have a really, really deep grounding in patient communication and all of those soft skills, because they represent and stand in for the organization. >> you know, it reminds me, nuria, health care we all know is so complex and the complexity can also be in basically the way in which a patient arrives to a doctor's office. when they're waiting in the waiting room and then their name is called and they show up into the room and people at this point pickically are nervous. they're not there because they're well, they're there because they have a concern. i'm just wondering from your experience of your years as a medical assistant, how do you understand the ways in which people need to calm down? like are there certain ways in which people need to understand how to calm down so that they're more cogent for the doctor, they remember what to say to the

doctor, they are able to listen to what the doctor says? what are some of the things you've observed how people need to kind of get to a place to be calm once they get inside the office? >> i don't know if calm will be -- >> fair enough. >> -- like they will not be calm, but jvs actually taught me if you're calm yourself, if you present yourself with a calm manner, they will immediately calm down because most of the patients are not there because -- not in the hospital because they want to be in the hospital. like something is going on. something brought them there so they're stressed out. they have to take time out of their job. they have to take time off. some of them are in pain. so i remember one of my coaches or my teachers in jvs taught me, okay, never -- >> of all things, we have to stop. in a sentence can you say -- >> oh, yes. just breathe.

like if you as a medical assistant breathe calmly, the patient's going to respond to you calmly. >> you know what, i think it's a wonderful way to end our conversation about health care, which is just breathe and stay centered. thank you so much for being with us here on "mosaic." have a wonderful day.

live from the cbs bay area studios this is kpix5 news. live and streaming the bay breakers returns and we will take you live from the starting line. >> this is going to set us back decades. women need choices. >> the battle over abortion choice hits the streets with thousands protesting with a national day of action. and plus what this means for your paycheck. good morning sunday may 15th, i'm devin. and let's go have a look at the check of the weather. >> yes, a little fog aroundhe