Faces of Workforce

Jonathan King was unemployed when he joined the Bank of America Merrill Lynch Career Center at the downtown library — one in a network of America’s Job Center of California (AJCC) sites — in August 2014. He had been laid

Situated behind another outlet mall next to the fence separating the United States and Mexico, the new San Diego Outlets at the Border (opened October 2014) is not immediately obvious from the main road. Once you find it, however, you

In 1999, Andrew S. Colunga retired from the U.S. Marine Corps after 22 years of service. His aviation background landed him a job at Boeing, but when the three-hour commute back and forth to Long Beach became too much, Colunga

Michael Cerdinio was a participant in SDWP’s CONNECT2Careers (C2C) youth employment program. Through C2C he was placed in an internship with Buster Biofuels, a green energy company that creates Green Initiatives for restaurants in San Diego by reclaiming their used

When the Burmese Army began making life difficult for his and nearby villages, Lian Thang knew he had to flee for his safety. In 2008, when Lian was 14, he left his home in Chin State in western Burma and

Chante Yuban Brookins was working as a preschool teacher when she lost her job. For the next two months, she took on the odd cleaning or babysitting job. For the rest of the following year Chante did not have luck

Ashley Rodriguez could have been a statistic. Using drugs between 13 and 15, she dropped out of school in 10th grade and became a single parent at 16.  Instead, two years later she joined Pathways to Success (P2S) — funded

Malcolm Charles understands his customers like few other servers can. “I’ve been homeless before,” shares Malcolm, who is currently working on a food truck that specializes in serving the homeless population. Malcolm was attending Diego Valley Charter School to study

Arlyne Rodriguez joined the YMCA San Diego’s Urban Teacher Fellows (UTF) program in 2013. UTF assists students who want to become future educators in underserved urban neighborhoods in San Diego. The program supports students while they are enrolled as a

Dr. Najwan Al Ani practiced medicine in Jordan and war-torn areas of Iraq for seven years before coming to the United States in 2010. She knew it would be a long process to achieve her dream of practicing medicine here