Greater New Haven

Well, as you heard in our introduction, uh, these, uh, next couple of segments are gonna be focusing on a couple of programs, uh, in Greater New Haven that are, uh, uniquely, uh, seeking to develop, uh, young workforce candidates for our Connecticut manufacturing sector.

I was so pleased to, uh, make the acquaintance of Eric Murray, the chief operating officer for MATCH, which is the Manufacturing and Technical Community Hub of New Haven, uh, when, uh, we were together at the recent 2026 Connecticut Manufacturing Innovation Forum.

And, uh, I was thrilled to hear how MATCH is truly innovating to bring, uh, some of, uh, our, our m- most valued potential workforce members, um, back into, uh, Connecticut's manufacturing workforce.

All right.

Well, uh, welcome, Eric, to the program.

Uh, it was great to meet you at the Innovation Forum, and I was, uh, thrilled to hear about, uh, this program that you're heading up in Greater New Haven.

So, uh, let's talk a little bit about you and, uh, help our listeners get to know you a little bit better, uh, and then we'll get into the conversation about, uh, what brought you to be, uh, the COO of MATCH.

Great.

And thanks again for being on the program.

Well, as you heard in our introduction, these next couple of segments are going to be focusing on a couple of programs in Greater New Haven that are uniquely seeking to develop young workforce candidates for our Connecticut manufacturing sector.

I was so pleased to make the acquaintance of Eric Murray, the chief operating officer for MATCH, which is the manufacturing and technical community hub of New Haven, when we were together at the recent 2026 Connecticut Manufacturing Innovation Forum.

And I was thrilled to hear how Match is truly innovating to bring some of our most valued potential workforce members back into Connecticut's manufacturing workforce.

All right.

Well, welcome, Eric, to the program.

It was great to meet you at the Innovation Forum, and I was thrilled to hear about this program that you're heading up in Greater New Haven.

So let's talk a little bit about you and help our listeners get to know you a little bit better, and then we'll get into the conversation about what brought you to be the COO of Match.

People who have a hard time finding healthcare 'cause of our broken system, and something terrible doesn't happen to them, they actually get the care they need because of a great project that's under the radar in New Haven called Project Access New Haven.

And today, as they're about to celebrate their 16th anniversary championing access to medical care in Greater New Haven, we're gonna try to bring them out into more public view today.

So I'd like to introduce you folks to our guests today.

Stacy Anne Walker is the executive director of Project Access New Haven.

Project Access was founded by providers-

Okay

... community providers, who had a deep, um, love and appreciation for the Greater New Haven area, who constantly saw the disparities in the community.

And so they were able to connect with other providers who had the same and felt the same, um, passion for ensuring that vulnerable individuals re- receive the access to healthcare they need.

But our goals are so much broader.

Our goal is to, when we talk about wanting to build the community power of immigrant and refugee women, what we're talking about is wanting to kind of facilitate this community being able to over time affect change in their community, meaning New Haven, Greater New Haven, where our participants live, being able to organize and come together and have strong interpersonal ties and strong feeling of self-confidence and agency to be able to change some real material injustices that affect their lives and all, you know, poor and working class people in the U.S. and in this area.

And so for us, what success looks like over time, I think, is one component of community power is having, like I mentioned, a group of people who truly care about each other, who might not have otherwise gotten a chance to meet or build relationships.

So at Havenly, we work with women from all over the world who speak different languages.