How Community Engagement Is Closing Acadiana's Skills Gap

Industry Roundtable

How Community Engagement Is Closing Acadiana's Skills Gap

As South Louisiana’s regional economic development organization, One Acadiana (1A) has long worked with partners to strengthen the region’s education-to-workforce pipeline. When Maggi Bienvenu, Ed.D., joined 1A four years ago, she inherited a bold regional goal: 55 by 25, an initiative to raise educational attainment so that 55% of adults hold a degree or credential by 2025.

Bringing both an education and industry background to the role, she recognized a disconnect at the heart of the effort. “We’ve always been a highly trained state, but most of that training has been in-house,” she said. Outside those companies, it was harder to measure the skill level already present in the workforce.

That realization shaped 1A ConnectEd, an initiative launched in spring 2025 to strengthen ties between employers and educators through three pillars: hosting industry roundtables, linking educators with industry, and promoting hands-on work-based learning for students.

“When educators understand the jobs and industries shaping Acadiana’s economy, they are better equipped to help students connect what they are learning today to the opportunities available tomorrow,” according to 1A ConnectEd’s inaugural annual report.

A recurring challenge is language. Employers often cite “soft skills” as a top need, but Dr. Bienvenu noted the term means different things across industries. Sometimes employers ask schools to reinforce workplace behaviors that can vary widely in practice, such as expectations around phone use. 1A ConnectEd helps translate those expectations both ways, building what Bienvenu calls a shared language between industry and education.

One Acadiana’s quarterly Industry Roundtables focus on Acadiana’s target sectors: Healthcare, Information Technology, Manufacturing, and Skilled Trades. The roundtables put employers at the center, giving business leaders space to compare workforce needs, hiring challenges, training expectations, and strategies that are working. Educators and workforce partners listen, ask follow-up questions, and identify ways to better align programs and resources with employer needs.

“Almost the entire meeting was businesses sharing best practices,” Bienvenu said of the most recent roundtable. For One Acadiana, that shift is meaningful: over time, conversations have moved from identifying shared challenges to sharing strategies, surfacing regional needs, and creating partnerships that benefit Acadiana’s workforce ecosystem.

One success story: 1A’s first Healthcare Industry Roundtable sparked the idea for a respiratory therapy apprenticeship program, developed by Ochsner Lafayette General, LSU Eunice, and Acadiana Workforce Solutions.

Acadiana FAME is a more recent example of moving a known workforce need toward a regional solution. Earlier this year, One Acadiana received a $50,000 FAME Catalyst Grant from The Manufacturing Institute to support the launch of a local FAME chapter. The manufacturing apprenticeship will pair paid work experience with an associate degree pathway through South Louisiana Community College.

One of 1A ConnectEd’s signature activities is the summer workshop for educators, which brings employers into direct contact with teachers and counselors through site visits and candid conversations. Dr. Bienvenu said it is one of her favorite parts of the work because it empowers teachers with real examples, local connections, and practical information they can use to help students see what is possible close to home.

Educator site visit

Teachers of younger students will be increasingly important to developing the workforce pipeline, she added. With major regional opportunities such as SpaceX bringing new attention to workforce readiness, early exposure matters more than ever. Early exposure helps students discover what they want to do, what they don’t want to do, and why they don’t need to leave the region to launch a good-paying career.

Dr. Bienvenu sees 1A ConnectEd as a way to strengthen workforce efforts across Acadiana’s nine parishes. “I do love that we have created a framework,” she said. “It gives us a way to build on what’s working, respond to what employers are telling us, and help more students envision a successful future for themselves here.”