Making Your Future Launch Event: DCS Marks Manufacturing Week with DCED Sec. Davin, County Exec. Fitzgerald

While our own John Denny tends to favor the snowy depths of January, the rest of us at the DCS office simply love the month of October.  It is, after all, the time for jackets, falling leaves, apple cider, and Halloween.

It’s also home to another yearly tradition (and an important one, at that): Pennsylvania Manufacturing Week.  And our friends and clients at Catalyst Connection know how to mark the occasion in style.

So this year, we were thrilled to be part of the official launch of Catalyst’s Making Your Future campaign on Monday, October 2, 2017 at HackPGH in Uptown – and even more thrilled to be joined by Pennsylvania Secretary of Community and Economic Development Dennis Davin and Allegheny County Executive Rich Fitzgerald to help kick off both the MYF campaign and Manufacturing Week itself.

For frequent readers of our newsletter, you may remember meeting the hosts of the Making Your Future video series, LaKeisha Wolf and Dan Francis, a few months back.  And you might remember that we’ve been working with Catalyst, as well as our friends at TrailBlaze Creative and Green Dot PR, to put together the overall Making Your Future campaign – an initiative that seeks to connect the “makers” in our region with manufacturing companies to encourage workforce development in the industry.

At the MYF launch event, Secretary Davin spoke about both the historical role of manufacturing as the cornerstone of Pennsylvania’s economy, as well as the rebirth of modern advanced manufacturing in our region.  And he laid out DCED and Governor Wolf’s Manufacturing PA initiative, a $12 million statewide partnership of Industrial Resource Centers (including Catalyst Connection), and seven research universities designed to accelerate the pace of advanced manufacturing technology and workforce development.

He was joined by County Executive Rich Fitzgerald, who talked about the link between the creative skills being shared in maker spaces like Hack Pittsburgh (including operating 3D Printers, laser cutters, CNC machines, welding stations, and more) and the needs of our manufacturers in Allegheny County and beyond.

Also speaking were Catalyst President and CEO Petra Mitchell, Catalyst Board Chair and DMI Companies President Ray Yeager, and HackPGH President Chad Elish.

If you want to see for yourself what Making Your Future is all about, check out their website and their video series.  And who knows – you might just realize that manufacturing is a good fit for you, too.