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Phaedra Leslie, VP of Diversity, Workforce Development, and Community Engagement - ALL Construction Group You wouldn’t know it today, but Phaedra Leslie didn’t set out to be a workforce development executive. The South Side native earned her bachelor’s degree in English and Mass Media. “Obviously, my degrees did not lead me here,” she laughs. Instead, she credits the time she spent as the Assistant to the Executive Director at Erie House, a social services nonprofit on the city’s West Side, with creating a path for where she is today. At Erie House, Leslie served primarily as the board liaison, and later as an academic liaison, but she says her boss encouraged her to take on increasing levels of responsibility. “I got motivated just by observing her as an Executive Director of a multimillion-dollar nonprofit organization,” she says. “I did a lot, and things just kept getting added to my title.”
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During her tenure, Leslie created a program to help women earn advanced degrees, her first foray into workforce development. She also earned a master’s degree in Organizational Management. It was then that Leslie decided it was time to take her talents to the private sector. She spent ten years at Target Group, creating economic opportunity initiatives for private development projects before moving on to Chicago Cook Workforce Partnership as the inaugural Director of Business Relations and Economic Development. Her experience helped the public workforce system create diversity initiatives with public entities like CTA and Illinois Tollway. And in September of this year, Leslie
