IDAHO INFLUENCER:
Wendi Secrist
W
endi Secrist may not have started her career in workforce development, but she sure is a force to be reckoned with in the industry. She started out in health physics, and now she’s making a difference for Idahoans in economic development. Q: Tell us about your background. Where did you grow up and go to school? A: I spent my childhood moving around Idaho and Oregon (my dad was an air traffic controller). I graduated from high school in Klamath Falls and went to Oregon State University. I was quite the nerd, not certain whether I wanted to major in electrical engineering or nuclear engineering. I settled on radiation health physics, which may not have a ton of relevance to what I do today, but it provides an interesting story when I’m meeting with youth and talking about the many career options in front of them. I worked in health physics for a few years, then transitioned to real estate, then to property management for a small
business incubator, then to economic development. Q: You’ve worked in several state agencies, so what drew you to workforce development? A: I moved back to Idaho in 2003 and started working for the Idaho Department of Commerce. I had been working for a county economic development corporation in Wisconsin where I was involved in small business development, business retention, broadband and housing issues, and workforce attraction and development. We had a 1.9 percent unemployment rate. Employers were doing whatever they could to attract people, including bussing people into the county to work. I had the pleasure of working with a group of manufacturers to develop a project that would allow them to train their existing workforce for the skilled jobs they couldn’t hire for, creating entry-level openings for the ones still not connected to jobs. I ran the economic, rural, and community development divisions for commerce, and Idaho was having similar
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challenges with getting enough people trained for the jobs our employers were creating. From there, I went to work for the University of Idaho Boise Center. I helped develop new programs in the Treasure Valley. After that, I decided to try out the private sector and took a position as the Director of Government Solutions for ManpowerGroup. It was just at the end of the Great Recession and my job was to build bridges between the public workforce system and private employers to get people back to work. We ran subsidized employment programs for the long-term unemployed, so that they could gain work experience for their next job. We also ran the types of programs that you find in the Idaho job centers in other states. I was working remotely from Boise, managing a team of about 30 who were located all over the country. I traveled A LOT and decided that I wanted more time with my kiddos and to have an impact on Idaho versus projects in other states. I started working with Idaho Career Technical Education in 2014 and then transitioned to the Workforce Development Council in 2017 when it was moved to an independent agency under the Office of the Governor. I like to sum up my journey by saying that I’ve been involved in helping employers create jobs (economic development), been involved in preparing people for jobs (University of Idaho and Idaho Career & Technical Education), and actually had the pleasure of placing people in jobs in the private sector. I see the perspective of all sides when it comes to workforce
