Leadership giving people a voice: a video chat with Per Scholas

How does Per Scholas, an IT training and placement non-profit, give everyone in their organization a voice? Leadership communications expert Kelly Vandever set out to learn more about this inspiring organization in the latest episode of her bi-weekly videocast, Permission to Speak.

Permission to Speak focuses on the intersection of “leaders who want their people to have a voice, technology that facilitates connections, and results that serve an organization’s higher purpose.”

In this edition, Kelly Vandever speaks with three leaders from Jostle customer, Per Scholas: Kenneth Walker (Vice President of National Site Operations), Emalee Rodriguez (Talent and Internal Communications Manager), and Jerome Dazzell (Director, Information Systems). Each has a very different but equally human-focused leadership style. 

Per Scholas set out to decentralize and flatten their originally New-York based organizational structure. They wanted to enhance collaboration and build an unified culture across the organization’s multi-city offices. With solid commitment at the leadership level, Per Scholas used their new Jostle^® intranet to enable partnerships and communication that weren’t previously possible. Now, everyone on the team at Per Scholas has a voice. They have outstanding engagement levels to prove that their approach is working, too. We recently captured Per Scholas’ incredible story in an in-depth case study.

Kelly delves deeper into the leadership aspects of Per Scholas’ strategy to discover how they built a stronger, better organization with a clear vision to make a difference in people’s lives. With the help of their new intranet, Kenneth, Emalee, and Jerome have been able to empower and lead their employees on a more human level, which has yielded some pretty amazing results. Watch the video below to see Permission to Speak’s full interaction with these admirable leaders.

You can also see the interview here:

About Permission to Speak

Permission to Speak is a great resource for leaders of all kinds who want to improve their skills both interpersonally and professionally. Kelly Vandever interacts with her guests in a fun and casual way, giving her listeners practical advice and actionable tips on how to improve their organizations and better serve their customers.

About Per Scholas

Per Scholas is a national nonprofit that drives positive and proven social change in communities across the United States. Through rigorous and tuition-free technology training and professional development, they prepare motivated and curious adults who are unemployed or underemployed for successful careers as IT professionals, and create onramps to businesses in need of their talents. They provide their solutions in six cities across the country: Atlanta, GA; Greater Cincinnati, OH; Columbus, OH; Dallas, TX; the National Capital Region; and New York. To date, Per Scholas has trained 6,000 individuals, helping them build lasting, life changing skills and careers in technology.

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