Latisha Bowman

I attribute my success to perseverance, staying organized, and being outgoing. Additionally, I have embraced continued education, which has been especially meaningful after overcoming personal challenges.

I would tell her to make sure the environment fits her versus her trying to fit the environment. I think it's very easy for people, especially for young Black women, to go into a corporate environment and have to dull themselves down, dull their power or their intelligence. If that isn't celebrated there, if it's not utilized there, then it's going to wear on your mental health later on, for sure. You need to find a place where your intelligence and power are celebrated and utilized, not somewhere you have to diminish yourself to fit in.

The biggest challenge is the demand versus the resources. There's a lot of candidates looking for employment, and we're flooded with people looking for jobs, but they're not necessarily work-ready. There are programs out there that promote work readiness courses and help build resumes, but their systems are outdated. For example, back in the day we were taught to send resumes in PDF form so no one can edit it, but now we know we can't do that because an applicant tracking system cannot read it - it has to be in a Word document. There are still people sticking to that old-school way of PDF. There are also people teaching that your resume has to stand out, and those not well-versed with the times think that means the layout has to be super fancy. But no, it needs to stand out with your words. Get to the point - I'm looking at your resume for all of 7 seconds. When people put lines and Excel boxes, when it's registering through an ATS system, it comes out really scrambled. I'm working with an MPS school right now trying to place all their students into internships for the summer, and I held a resume workshop teaching them all these new things because their initial drafted resumes are not usable. I explained that a plain resume tells the story of you, and that's what makes the difference - you're standing out on paper because you're selling yourself with words. Another challenge is the administration changes with WIOA and all the funding programs. I don't necessarily hate the structure - it's definitely promoting a lot more trades and pushing people to continue education, and I like that aspect. But smaller grants and funding such as those for bartending licenses and serve-safe management will end up getting weeded out.

I value humanity and respect for one another. I know that we don't have a toxic work environment here at Employ Milwaukee, but I will say that it's very siloed. It's very hard to get a team to collaborate and be cross-functional because they're like, well, this is my space, and this is what you do. But I think, okay, well, if I'm missing for a week because I plan on taking vacation, who's doing my job? When the workload is stressing - and we do have some pretty heavy workloads here - that's normally the commonality of someone exiting, the stress of the workload. It's because they're feeling that they can't share that workload. But I'll definitely share it with you if you have the time to sit and teach me. Just make a recording and send it to me. I believe in supporting each other and sharing the load with humanity and respect.