You recently became Foundation Executive Director for PTDA. What is your primary focus in that role? The prime focus is making the Industrial Careers Pathway initiative work. There are two pieces to that—one is generating the resources that allow that to be built in a way that’s sustainable, with the capacity to do things right. The other is the actual on the ground work—working to create and fill the pipeline of people who will be moving into, specifically, customer-service focused positions with distributors and manufacturers.

Describe the Industrial Careers Pathway program. What is the status of the program today? The PTDA Foundation has said, when we look out there and see where the industry’s needs are, there is a growing difficulty in filling sales and customer service positions. The missing piece is that [potential employees] need to be prepared for those jobs. The essence of the ICP is addressing that shortfall—between distributors’ need to fill those customer service positions and the availability of people.

We currently have eight sites, where we work with community colleges and a team of representatives from manufacturing and distribution to administer [associates degree programs in industrial distribution]. … But if you look at the purpose of ICP, it’s bigger than that. Our objective for 2008 is to have the “essentials of industrial distribution” course offered at each of our pilot sites in the fall. We are also in the negotiating stages of a contract with Tooling University to work on the essentials of industrial distribution curriculum in an online format. … We’ve learned that we can’t expand until we have the curriculum. If we’re going to go to an expansion mode, we’d better have consistency and continuity across these programs. So that’s our focus now.

The third piece is there’s such a lack of awareness among young people, their parents and others about the industry. There’s a perception that industrial jobs are not good jobs; so we have a huge awareness-building effort. We need to show them that [industrial distribution] is a good career … and that you can be prepared for these jobs with a two-year degree or even a certificate. So that’s a big piece we’ve just started working on. We’ve got to develop a North American awareness-building strategy.

The fourth piece is how do we talk about industrial distribution? What’s the case we make to all of those who are not us? Governments do not understand distribution. Foundations do not understand distribution. Chambers of commerce do not understand distribution. So we need to figure out how we talk concisely and compellingly about industrial distribution, the importance of industrial distribution in the supply chain, in the economy and in our global competitiveness. The real challenge is thinking about the “not us” audience in talking about industrial distribution.

What do you think are the greatest obstacles facing the industrial distribution community when it comes to educating, recruiting and training a new generation of workers? I don’t see us as having any debilitating obstacles in front of us. The obstacles are that you never have enough resources, etc. [On another level], we have a number of associations [in the industry]; industrial distribution is not one big monolithic thing. So, bringing the right folks to the table and then having them build an ownership stake [is key]—and I don’t see that as an obstacle, it’s just the work that must be done.

I have not talked with anybody who doesn’t agree that there’s a staffing issue in the industry and that it’s going to get worse. As long as we have that general agreement, then let’s engage and get to work on this. A challenge, not an obstacle, is that to this point the ICP has been seen, justifiably, as a PTDA Foundation initiative. Now we’re at the point where the [ICP] alliance partners [24 other industry associations] are being asked to step up and say, “Yes, this is our issue as well and we’re going to take an ownership stake.” The challenge is how does the PTDA Foundation feel about surrendering an ownership stake? And that’s OK. Our challenge is building critical mass—getting enough of the key industry associations to the table, taking that ownership stake.

What can companies do to support the ICP and industry education in general? Lots of things. The first is supporting the ICP initiative and saying to their association, “Yes, engage in this.” The second is how do they work at their community level to participate? It’s the outreach and awareness with the young people in their communities, but also with their chambers of commerce and elsewhere—it gets back to making the case for industrial distribution. The third is, provide internship or co-op programs at your company. Provide a scholarship for a course [at your local community college]. Do something in your community to connect with kids.

The ICP is sponsored by several other trade associations. What role do those groups play in the development of the program? They’re starting to play a larger role. This year we had seven associations make financial commitments [to the program]. We’re starting to have conference calls with them, and a number of the associations are thinking about how they can use their Web sites as communication vehicles for the program. [A Canadian group] convened a meeting with a couple of their partners to talk about taking this across Canada. So, it’s building. We’re going to meet for a working conference on the program in April. And we’re also creating an ICP steering committee—so that everyone has skin in the game.

On a personal note, is this your first experience with industrial distribution? If so, what do you think of it so far? I was with the United Way for 20 years, 15 of which I spent in Rockford, Ill., which is a manufacturing and distribution hub. So I’ve sat at the table with these folks and folks just like them. I love the dynamic between the profit and not-for-profit world. For the last several years I was in public policy and it’s a very different dynamic.

Distributors are really wonderful people and they have a deep commitment to the work that they do. When I sit in meetings with them and listen to them talk about the work they’re doing—they’re really engaged. I listen to them talking about the problem solving they’ve done and their connections with their customers and their constant need to be improving their business model—finding their unique value add and recognizing that as soon as they do the field will follow them and they’ll have to figure out their next value add.

[Industrial distribution] an interesting business, so, it’s been great fun.

Phyllis Russell is foundation executive director of the Power Transmission Distributors Assn., which has spearheaded the Industrial Careers Pathway program, an industry-focused workforce development project, www.industrialcareerspathway.org. She can be reached at prussell@ptda.org.