Van Ton-Quinlivan, CEO of Futuro Health, discusses her approach to addressing the shortage of critical allied health workers — the 65% of the healthcare workforce including medical assistants, phlebotomists, and technicians. Drawing from her experience leading California's Community College system and founding Futuro Health in 2020, Ton-Quinlivan explains how her organization has trained over 10,000 adults through a debt-free model that integrates 40 education partners with data-driven coaching and wraparound support. The conversation examines broader lessons about adult learner success, including why live coaching proved more valuable than debt-free education in scholar testimonials, how essential skills curriculum with digital badges builds confidence for adults re-entering education, and why scaling such a model required building an ecosystem rather than becoming an accredited institution. Ton-Quinlivan emphasizes that workforce development requires staying the course with aligned money, metrics, and data to embed innovation into organizational DNA.

Transcript

Julian Alssid: Welcome to the Work Forces Podcast. I'm Julian Alssid.

Kaitlin LeMoine: And I'm Kaitlin LeMoine, and we speak with innovators who are shaping the future of work and learning.

Julian Alssid: Together, we unpack the complex elements of workforce and career preparation and offer practical solutions that can be scaled and sustained.

Kaitlin LeMoine: This podcast is an outgrowth of our Work Forces consulting practice through weekly discussions, we seek to share the trends and themes we see in our work and amplify impactful efforts happening in higher education industry and workforce development all across the country. We are grateful to Lumina Foundation for its past support during the initial development and launch of this podcast, and invite future sponsors of this effort. Please check out our workforces podcast website to learn more. And so with that, let's dive in.

Welcome back. You know Julian, our conversations on the podcast and in our consulting work are often about tackling workforce development challenges at scale. It's challenging just to design and implement effective workforce development initiatives, let alone scale them.

Julian Alssid: Absolutely Kaitlin, inevitably, these initiatives require collaboration and commitment from employers, educators, public sector leaders, community partners, and learners alike. Needless to say, this is a tall order to pull off in a single community or region, and exponentially more complex when we talk about working across regions.

Kaitlin LeMoine: And our guest today has a unique perspective on how to go about making this complex work happen with a career that spans the private, public and nonprofit sectors. She's gone from leading a massive higher education system to founding a nimble, innovative startup in 2020 that has since trained and supported over 10,000 adults across the US as they completed credentials and qualifications for Allied Health careers. Her work is a powerful example of how to effectively prepare untapped talent for career success.

Julian Alssid: Our guest is the legendary Van Ton-Quinlivan, chief executive officer of Futuro Health. I joke. I've known Van for many years, and she really has been a true standout in the field. And she's a nationally recognized leader in workforce development. She was formerly executive chancellor of the California Community Colleges and currently serves as an appointee to the California Health Workforce Education and Training Council. She's the author of Workforce RX and host of a podcast by the same name, promoting agile, multicultural solutions for employers, educators, and workers. Van has been named one of the top 50 women leaders in healthcare, and she holds an MBA and a master's in education policy from Stanford University. We are so excited to have you on the podcast, Van, and thanks so much for joining us.

Van Ton-Quinlivan: Oh, I'm so delighted to be here, Julian and Kaitlin, to be amongst leaders who are also thinking and trying to solve big problems in the area of education and workforce development.

Kaitlin LeMoine: We really appreciate you joining us for this conversation today, and look forward to kicking it off with hearing a little bit more about your background and what led you to your current work. Julian gave a bit of a bio there, but would love to hear more from you.

Van Ton-Quinlivan: You know my expertise in workforce development. I got my chops doing it in the private sector with a company of 20,000 men and women, where I brought them from having no opinion in workforce development to being an industry recognized national, national best practice. And then I went into the higher education system with the California Community College driving the workforce mission where, you know, I started in sort of the worst of days where we had about 100 million made available for career technical education program, and by the time that I serve, finished my two terms, it went from 100 million to 200 million, to 700 million to over a billion dollars. And so faced a big quandary when, when I was approached by Kaiser Permanente and its partners after stepping off from the community colleges, they said, geez, for two years, we've been wrestling with how to grow the next generation of allied health workers. And allied refers to the 65% of the healthcare workforce that we know we all need those volumes in our backyard. So you know, they're the emergency medical technicians that come when we have an accident, the medical assistant that checks you in, or the x-ray tech or the lab tech. So a lot of the technicians that are trained through credentials and less than a four year degree, they are the allied health workers. And right now you know, 75% of healthcare facilities report that they have workforce pains in this area. So when Kaiser Permanente and their partners approached me, I had to look in the mirror and really just reflect on the level of risk and how scary it is to go from running a billion dollar system to now going into a startup environment, and what if it didn't work. I think we all have these qualities when we make big career decisions. Fortunately, I had friends that reminded me of my early days, which was that, you know, I'm first generation who came from Vietnam through the war and education opportunity was made available to me, and I feel very grateful for that, and and I do feel the the role that I had with the community colleges was a pay it forward role where, and this role is also paying for the opportunity that I had to others. And so with that realization, I was able to overcome my own internal self doubt, and said, you know, really, for many of us who are on the innovation side, it's like, if it's not us, then then who? And so I'm glad to be bringing a lot of the best practices learned from the private sector, the public sector and into the nonprofit sector infant or health, to see which combinations of best practices can really get the untapped adult learners to be able to get their credentials and qualifications for that first or next healthcare career.

Julian Alssid: So looking at the untapped adult worker population and allied health careers, can you speak a little more to the problems that you're seeking to solve related to that population? And really, how does the Futuro Health model work.

Van Ton-Quinlivan: Right now the labor market is having its adjustments with all the federal cuts. So I'm going to put that aside for the moment, because the macro, the macro context. The bigger problem is that we have an aging nation. And when you go over age 65 for example, all of us will consume more health care, which means that you're going to need more caregivers, right? And roughly, you know, 30, 40ish years ago, there were 12 working adults available for every one person over age of 65, Today it's roughly seven. And in about, you know, a little over a decade from now, it's going to be 4. So we have a shrinking adult population that is available to get in to compete for all the roles, much less the roles that are in care. So that is sort of the macro trend, and why we should be thinking about this space as well as other spaces. Now, when it comes to the individual adults themselves. You may be wondering, well, what's the problem for them? I mean, given this big need, well, we did four focus groups, including one that was in all Spanish, to learn what were the difficulties. And of course, you know, the first thing that came up was, of course, the theme of flexibility in the delivery, right? The second was, aside from cost, is the navigation, the navigation. So even if you knew you wanted to become a medical assistant, the path to go from here to there was not obvious. And so the noisiest of the options tended to be your private, proprietary option, which then led to the problem of three, which is even for those in the focus group who made it into healthcare careers at these entry level steps, they were so laden by debt, they were just stuck at the bottom rung. So we had considered all of that in the mix in order to create a path to getting credentials and qualification. Because you know, both of you know that healthcare is one industry that if you don't even have the qualifications, you can't even get the interview, right. It's highly credentialed compared to other industries. So that was sort of a good problem space to figure out how to apply the best practices of workforce development and see if we can design a way that could work for adults, or to be able to transition adults into the qualification and credentials they needed.

Kaitlin LeMoine: I'm just curious to learn a little bit more. It seems like you have a heavily networked approach in this work. How do you go about building out this model with your many partners?

Van Ton-Quinlivan: Workforce development is a team sport, not an individual sport. So it's like, how do you wrap the ecosystem into and fold the ecosystem in a way that, you know, everybody can do what they do best? So when we initially started, you know, many of the healthcare employers, of course, this sort of happened right at the beginning of the pandemic, their impression was, nobody wants to get into healthcare, right? People were not interested in healthcare, so we activated a set of partners and provided them tools that were heavily tied into the data science, our data science acumen to go out and scout and recruit, to take advantage of healthcare workers, to scout and recruit communities, friends and family networks. And it turned out that it was absolutely a myth that people were not interested in healthcare roles. They were interested, they just couldn't figure out how to navigate through. And so we even during the pandemic, when enrollment was declining, I know at the California Community Colleges, it was as severe as like, 20% decline in enrollment. Year upon year, we were able to hit all of our enrollment numbers to bring adults back in. So, you know, it's the gal who is the security guard in the hospital. She's one of our Scholars. So she became a Futuro Health Scholar after taking care of her mother, who had cancer, and coming to the realization that she potentially could be a caregiver and like to be in service of others. And then she found a Futuro Health flier, and we were able to get her phlebotomist credential. I know she moved from security guard into a role that was in caregiving. It's really how do you break into healthcare when you're sitting on the sidelines.

Julian Alssid: Putting on your pre Futuro Health hat for a moment when you were dealing with the all the workforce development of the system, interested to hear what you're learning through the development and growth of Futuro Health that can be applied across industries. We were starting with some big numbers. So for example, in California alone, the need was for 500,000 more allied health workers. To begin looking at that, it's a design problem. We had the option with the capital we were given by the health system, we had the option of becoming an accredited institution ourselves. But we said, My goodness, how are we going to solve a 500,000 person problem by growing cohorts of 25, 25, 25, 25 right? I mean, it's a scaled dilemma. So we changed the way we looked at and I said, Well, how do we begin designing at 1000, 2000, 3000 and a time in order to begin tackling this dilemma? And so our approach Julian was, let's build the ecosystem of education partners, and now we have roughly 40 education partners whom we integrate into the student experience. And so our data science tells us, and our coaching tells us what is the best match in terms of which institution, which program, is mapped to the learner. The key, though, this is the key. The key is whether the education institution has the data exchange capability with us, because most of our partners, education partners, exchange data with us on a daily basis, right? So we know, we know where the scholar is, where we needed to intervene. And because we're shepherding their entire journey, and thanks to sponsorships from employers and state agencies, you know, they're coming out debt free as a result of going through this journey. So it's really important for us to not only provide the wraparound that is the live touch throughout their entire journey, but there's the technical education program, of course, vetted, curated based on industry demand. So we have 40 education providers. And everywhere we expand, we source, and vet and integrate new education providers. And then the last part, which is really interesting, is how we have leveraged an essential skills slash soft skill curriculum as the way to effectively onboard adults. And this is interesting itself. We had tried onboarding adults, because before we unlocked the full scholarship, which is fairly expensive to us, could they take two academic courses, like anatomy or physiology, for example. It turns out that that didn't actually predict their success so much as they're confident, building their confidence to re enter education. And so that's, that's one area we're super proud that we unlocked some some experimentation and it has worked.

Kaitlin LeMoine: So building on that last example, actually, Van, I'm curious taking a step back on this. I mean you're drawing from many years in this field, and many experiences across public, private sector, given what we're seeing, you know, with respect to economic shifts and technological shifts, and you know, thinking about how we best support learning for adults, what do you believe? Or what are you seeing in some of the best practices around how we support learning in this in the context of a skills based economy where there's just so much shift and change happening.

Van Ton-Quinlivan: I know you've had speakers talk about the skills based economy and the importance of credentials, and I'm just going to translate it to what we have experienced with our Futuro Health Scholars. And these are 1000s and 1000s of them, right? And what's so interesting is, even though they have gone through the Futuro Health experience debt free, they never talk about, oh, thank you, thank you so much for for you know, the that we came through debt free, they actually talk about those moments when they were going to stop, those moments they were going to quit, those moments that were really hard, and it was the live coaching that carried them through those moments of hardship. So when it comes to the question, for example, should AI replace coaching? We have so far decided that our population that we're working with, and it's 90% culturally diverse, with about roughly 50% linguistic diversity, very important for healthcare, because it begets trust. We have decided that the live coaching that is essential for the learners right now, so the AI, your applications of AI, improvement on the data can all be on the back end, but that is what the Scholars have valued way more than other things that we thought would be more important. The other thing Kaitlin that we saw was, you know, we have this unique curriculum called Human Touch Healthcare, which is focused. I mentioned that focus on the essential skills and soft skills, and they're all instructed by seasoned healthcare workers who can put it into context. And as they finish each of those modules, you know, they earn a badge, a digital badge, and the pride in which these adults take in being able to post these badges and have the acknowledgement it may be that the positive reinforcement is very critical to building the confidence of many adults who are sitting on the sidelines of learning right now. So I think in the broader context, as we think about the shrinking K 12, and where do we find and how do we tap into adults that maybe not participating or we need to upskill them, the success coaching, making the journey simpler, of course, figuring out the costs, but also, like, how do you, how do you continue to have the positive reinforcement throughout? I mean, these, these are not, these are not things that have been sufficiently designed into traditional education systems, but it helps us all.

Kaitlin LeMoine: Absolutely right? Those interim milestones of success, right, that don't just come when you finish the course, but like those moments along the way that provide that continual what you're saying, positive reinforcement and the acknowledgement, like, yes, you have done this, keep going.

Van Ton-Quinlivan: I can is really important. I mean, most of us waited until the earning of our degree in order to get that reinforcement, but right? I think when we're dealing with these, the non-traditional learners that are now becoming more standard, we just have to rethink how we structure their experience.

Julian Alssid: Well, and you're sort of leading right into what I was thinking, which is, as we watch this world unfold economically and demographically, and in terms of education, and what that means, and the choices folks are making about how to advance their education and careers, what do you see as the as the biggest challenges, both in healthcare and even beyond, for the, you know, for the people who are this band of partners that are coming together to try to, you know, advance, help people advance their careers and grow the economy.

Van Ton-Quinlivan: You know Julian, I wonder if you see that we're going to need to be more fluid with our education processes and systems because of how many different ways people are tapping into education, and yet we want them. We know that, Jeff Strohl over there, just issued a report called Falling Behind: How Skills Shortages Threaten Future Jobs, and he says that there's going to be a need to add additional 5.25 million workers with post secondary credentials, of which 4.5 million is a bachelors and above, and this is during the time period of 2024 to 2032. The bachelor's and above is getting very, very expensive these days, right? And then there's a lot of skepticism. So how we get people to partake in the education process and how to convert it over to the degree pathway, is super important. So you know, the prior learning credit, all the transcripting that your guests are talking about. The hard barriers between education and who provides it is likely going to soften over the future.

Kaitlin LeMoine: Well, and yeah, you said, it also makes me think about even, like, the technical systems behind how this happens, right? Like, how do we make sure that we have the back end software and ability to say, Okay? Like, how do we make this credential portable? How do we know that we know what it means here will mean the same thing somewhere else, right? I mean, there's just so much at play there around making, I guess, the translation of these credentials clearer, especially as people want to, you know, either stack credentials into a bachelor's degree or transfer credits into a bachelor's degree. So much work needed in that space.

Van Ton-Quinlivan: Talking about scale, right, back when I was with the California Community College Chancellor's Office, is the question of, do you all your grantees? Are they all on Excel spreadsheets, right? And so what we did was we said, Okay, we're going to provide common systems and then for workforce outcomes, instead of having the grantees and the faculty and the administrators spend all all their time trying to hunt and pack and trying to find outcomes data. So we begin to automate some of those processes so that they're not talking about, where's the data they're talking about, ooh, what does the data say? So I think that will continue to be a long journey for us to evolve, especially big systems.

Julian Alssid: I'm wondering then, given your experience in and now, with working with many different systems and providers, are you seeing more of a flexibility? Is it beginning to happen? I mean, are systems adapting to more than they have in the past? I mean, this has been a story we've had, you know, discussed, we've all talked about again and again, and it's, it's hard for systems to change, but, you know, it's going to have to happen one way or another, is kind of what I hear. So the question is, is it? Is it happening?

Van Ton-Quinlivan: Oh, I think you probably have seen more examples of organ rejections than you've seen examples of organ ingestion, right? Maybe that's a bad analogy, but I think it brings up the question of, how do you introduce change, like, how do you have big systems try out and experiment things? And so I remember a day when digital badges. Do you remember the early days of digital badges, and everybody thought, you are just crazy to even think about what, what a concept. So I remember redoing a grant, existing funds, redoing a grant, and saying, Whoever wins this grant, you will be also experimenting with digital badges and this grant, the winner has to involve at least 10 colleges. And the reason why is that, when you design a solution for 10 colleges, it can't be just fine tuned for just your one college. It's thinking about scale. And so that was an example where it was originated in one grant with 10 colleges, and then the next grant was about getting it to 20 colleges, and then it went to about 60. By the time I left, it was like 80 something colleges had adopted the same trial and error, and it's now many, many moons later, it's sort of part of the DNA of a system and how students progress and how they see I think you've heard of the Career Mapper, and it's been integrated to multiple tiers of higher education, not just one. So I think as we think about all the different technologies, a big question in change management, it's how do we begin to seed some experimentation so that a system can become familiar, and then that adoption widens.

Kaitlin LeMoine: I think you were going in this direction very naturally in this conversation. But Bon we always like to add, given that the podcast is called Work Forces, we always like to ask about how our listeners can be forces. And so as we start to wind out our conversation today, what practical steps can our audience take to become forces in supporting learners and employers alike at this increasingly complex moment and intersection of work and learning?

Van Ton-Quinlivan: The biggest lesson I've learned throughout my various careers is that intentionality really matters. Right? It matters, because there are so many parties that need to come to the table in order to make a workforce program successful. There's intentionality such that any funding that you have doesn't manifest just as a one time thing. But there is sort of an echoing and ongoing learning that's incorporated back into the DNA of the organization. So, you know, I used to say that it's not just about money coming through, but it's monies, metrics, and data, they all have to be aligned for the behavior of our institutions to be where we want them to be, and that requires us to stay the course. So I know you have a big audience of higher education and workforce practitioners and leaders out there who are doing really important things. And so I just encourage folks, as they're introducing innovation, to stay the course. Because it does take time, and it does take staying the course in order for an innovation to have traction.

Julian Alssid: Very sage advice, and sounds like you know you're proving the very, the very notion. As we wind this down, we'd like to ask our guests: How can our listeners learn more and continue to follow your work?

Van Ton-Quinlivan: I would invite them to come to our website, which is futurohealth.org and subscribe to our newsletter. And you know, we were, last year, we were featured at the World Health Organization. I just came back from the G7 Canada, where we shared some of our best practices. And what are the implications for growing for example, the problem gambling, workforce, mental and mental and behavioral health. So there's a lot of good things that we're doing because we have the sort of the platform to be able to experiment, which could be harder in other environments. So welcome others to learn along with us, but also share ideas with us.

Kaitlin LeMoine: Great well. Thank you for sharing your ideas with us today and for allowing us to learn along with you in this conversation. And really appreciate you taking the time to meet with us today. It's a great pleasure.

Van Ton-Quinlivan: Kaitlin and Julian, thank you.

Julian Alssid: Thank you so much Van.

Kaitlin LeMoine: We hope you enjoyed today's conversation, and appreciate you tuning in to Work Forces. Thank you to our listeners and guests for their ongoing support and a special thanks to our producer, Dustin Ramsdell. If you're interested in sponsoring the podcast, or want to check out more episodes, please visit workforces dot info, forward, slash podcast. You can also find workforces wherever you regularly listen to your favorite podcast. If you enjoyed this episode, please subscribe, like and share it with your colleagues and friends, and if you're interested in learning more about workforces consulting, please visit workforces dot info forward, slash consulting for more details about our multi service practice.