MARQUETTE, Mich. (WZMQ) – It’s called the One UP Collaborative, a full day of networking and problem solving hosted by NMU.
The conference is a product of Upper Peninsula Michigan Works, The One UP collaborative unites leaders from business, education, healthcare, and community organizations. Event Coordinator, Megan Boddy explains how it works
“To try to put people in the right place, try to fulfill our talent pipelines, making sure that people have skills to do the jobs that are needed, and to make sure that our business owners have a talented pool to pull from when they’re looking for someone to fill their open jobs,” said Boddy.
Boddy admits there are challenges facing UP workers and the businesses that hire them.
“Housing is not very affordable. At this time, the housing inventory is pretty low. Transportation can also become a barrier, because we lack a lot of that public transportation. It just seems like there’s an overall lack of professional skills and higher-level abilities,” said Boddy
Their mission is to create demand-driven job training, secure competitive grant funding, and solve local workforce issues, all by speaking with one unified voice. Mark Massacotte, owner of L’Anse Manufacturing, says it starts with keeping people in the UP.
“We’ve got some unique capabilities here, where our job is to try to keep more people here, you know, what’s our biggest export in the UP?” he said. “Sometimes it might be people. And I think we can help combat that with businesses, creating jobs, the job of the 70s is not the job of 2025.”
