Jul 24, 2026 · 12 min · 11 segments
Recorded live at the 2026 Workforce Technology Conference in Monterey, California, this special episode of the **VOScast Podcast** features thought leaders from across workforce development…
Rusty BechtoldGuest
Evan BrennerHost
In your opinion, one or two trends in workforce development or reentry or just any of the industries that tie back to workforce development that are underrated or something that is maybe overlooked right now that should be maybe a little more looked at?
And also to set up for the listeners just to understand that, you know, back in the 1990s when I started, job reentry was not a thing.
That was not the mission of Corrections or Correctional Industries at the time.
So I have watched it grow over time and start to actually... now pay attention to the fact that, you know, our products that we were producing is not the products we were producing.
It was the individuals coming out of our process that's really what our goal was.
We had a means to the end that we needed to be doing work in order to get to the end, but we were misaligned and misguided until we finally figured out that the incarcerated people that we're working with as our product.
And we just had to change focus in regards to how to move that through the system so that we could create, you know, a documentation process of their skills, knowledge, and abilities, and then try to then take the next step of move that to the workforce.
It's not something where it's been a magic being to put in the ground and one night you wake up and it's there.
It's been a very long journey to change culture and society and employers, corrections, correctional industries, all the players that are in this business to figure that out.
And so you really just kind of have to stay, you know, like a rock and just keep going forward and saying this is important and this is why.
In your opinion, one or two trends in workforce development or reentry or just any of the industries that tie back to workforce development that are underrated or something that is maybe overlooked right now that should be maybe a little more looked at?
And also to set up for the listeners just to understand that, you know, back in the 1990s when I started, job reentry was not a thing.
That was not the mission of Corrections or Correctional Industries at the time.
So I have watched it grow over time and start to actually... now pay attention to the fact that, you know, our products that we were producing is not the products we were producing.
It was the individuals coming out of our process that's really what our goal was.
We had a means to the end that we needed to be doing work in order to get to the end, but we were misaligned and misguided until we finally figured out that the incarcerated people that we're working with as our product.
And we just had to change focus in regards to how to move that through the system so that we could create, you know, a documentation process of their skills, knowledge, and abilities, and then try to then take the next step of move that to the workforce.
It's not something where it's been a magic being to put in the ground and one night you wake up and it's there.
It's been a very long journey to change culture and society and employers, corrections, correctional industries, all the players that are in this business to figure that out.
And so you really just kind of have to stay, you know, like a rock and just keep going forward and saying this is important and this is why.
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