Brenda Hellyer on Houston's Workforce Future: Biotech, AI & Cybersecurity

Well, we're excited to welcome to the studio today Dr. Brenda Hellyer, Chancellor of San Jacinto College, along with HBJ reporter Janet Miranda.

Well, Dr. Hellyer, we're very excited to have you in the studio today.

We have a lot of questions to get through, so I'm going to go ahead and get started.

Okay.

So the HPJ has done a lot of reporting on a number of the pharmaceutical companies like Eli Lilly, Bristol-Myers Squibb, and others coming to the Houston area.

I'm interested in hearing, you know, they're coming here because they know that a workforce will be ready for them when they get here.

So I'm interested in what kind of connections San Jacinto has made with companies like this and what are they telling you they need?

Well, we've really had a lot of conversations with Eli Lilly and with Bristol Myers also as they've been preparing.

And it's about preparing early, right? We're not going to wait until the facility is opening.

We are meeting with them now, learning about what are the needs, what are the technical training needs that you need, what are you looking for in the workforce.

And so we want to make sure we are going to train on the right equipment, that we've got the right skill sets that we have aligned with, And then what is that pipeline? And making sure that when they open the doors, that we have that workforce prepared for them.

We have training that they are very interested in.

We have the licensing for training that's from a company called NIBERT.

And that is the National Institute of Bioprocessing Research and Technology out of Ireland.

That is kind of the global standard for biomanufacturing training.

We have the only license in the southern part of the United States.

It is about aligning that training directly with what they need.

It's about being responsive.

The first thing we need to do is make sure we're listening and putting together the right credentials and the right pieces to meet their needs.

We've had those conversations about what are those skill sets? How do you build that into the curriculum? How do you build that into the pipeline? We are looking at not only the pathway for new people to get into the biomanufacturing industry, but also as they bring people from around the country here, which they're not looking at bringing many, but we do want to make sure how we are integrating what those requirements are.

So it's having those conversations early and really making sure they understand that we're here to serve them and figure out their needs.

Well, and I'm interested, you mentioned having those conversations early.

How early did the conversation start? Because I'm a bit intrigued by how, you know, when that process begins, when that first reach out takes place.

So

it kind of depends on how the whole thing, how everything's going with each company.