When Jeff Benes and Bob Mackowiak started their own manufacturing company, Catalyst Manufacturing, after being laid off, they received training from Wake Tech Community College (WTCC) in both hard skills like operating equipment and soft skills like leadership and communication. This training helped Catalyst Manufacturing grow into a multimillion dollar company with facilities in North Carolina, New York, and Mexico employing 300 people. WTCC provides valuable workforce training to many companies in the region from small startups to large multinational corporations, helping to attract and retain high-tech industries to the area. As the economic landscape changes, WTCC adapts its training programs to meet emerging needs like bilingual medical training and retraining displaced workers

1. Wake Tech Training the Corporate Workforce
Business Leader Magazine (May 2008)
When Jeff Benes and Bob Mackowiak were laid off from a contract manufacturing
facility – along with about 400 other people – they decided to start their own company.
“The economy six years ago was not all that attractive in the Raleigh area,” says Benes,
who could not leave the area due to family obligations. While Benes and Mackowiak had
ample contract manufacturing skills, they did not have the general management skills
needed to run an entire company.
Enter Wake Tech Community College (WTCC), the state’s second largest community
college and the county’s premier workforce training institution. “We’ve had training at
Wake Tech for five years in both hard and soft skills,” Benes said.
The company the two men started six years ago, Catalyst Manufacturing, now has an
85,000-square-foot facility in Research Triangle Park; a 40,000-square-foot facility in
Endicott, N.Y., and a new facility in Mexico. The multimillion-dollar company employs
about 300 people.
“Training from WTCC was very critical. I’m not sure we’d be successful without it,”
Benes said. “When you are a startup, you don’t have a lot of money for training, so you
don’t do it. WTCC allowed us to grow and succeed and add depth as a company.”
He said the training Catalyst received from WTCC changed with its needs – beginning
with “hard skills” training on how to operate specialized pieces of equipment. As the
company grew and developed a more formal management and leadership structure, more
of the training dealt with soft skills, such as leadership, communications and
organizational skills. Eventually, more employees also needed basic computer skills.
“Even if free training was available from WTCC, but it was not valuable, we would not
have done it because it would have been a waste of time,” Benes said. “Time is very
important to us. We’re not going to waste our time on something just because it is
available.”
Catalyst Manufacturing is a typical WTCC success story. Others include Ford’s Fancy
Foods, makers of Bone Suckin’ Sauce. When the local mom-and-pop operation decided
to expand globally, it came to WTCC for help. Ford’s Fancy Foods now exports its
products to 26 different countries. Larger companies rely on WTCC as well, including
Fidelity Investments and Credit Suisse, each of which obtained WTCC training for more
than 400 employees over a two-year period.
“One of the real reasons they (industries) come to this area is that they know WTCC is
the premier institution for education for companies,” said Sam Strickland, WTCC vice
president for continuing education. “Workforce training through community colleges is
part of the incentives that the state works with in attracting business here. In discussions
with companies, it is always mentioned that we are here as a training tool for them.”

2. From the area’s very largest companies to its smallest startups, WTCC’s imprint on the
local economy is hard to miss. It is even providing hospitality and customer service
training for employees of the new Raleigh Convention Center.
WTCC is part of the larger N.C. Community College System, the foundation for
workforce training in the state since its inception following World War II. When the
system was founded, the challenge was to help displaced workers transition from an
agricultural to an industrial economy.
Demand has changed over time, but the tri-fold mission of the Community College
system has remained the same:
• Educating, training and retraining the workforce, including basic skills and
literacy education, occupational and pre-baccalaureate programs.
• Support for economic development through services to, and in partnership with,
business, industry and public/private colleges and universities.
• Services to communities and individuals that improve their quality of life.
Much of the demand for workforce training in the Triangle, the state’s high-tech hub, is
generated from the high-tech and life sciences sectors. According to the Research
Triangle Regional Partnership, almost half of the state’s high-tech employees work in the
13-county Research Triangle Region. Between 1990 and 2005, 66 percent of the state’s
new life sciences jobs were generated in the Triangle. Between 2005 and 2006, the life
sciences sector accounted for capital investments of more than $755 million and the
generation of more than 5,400 jobs. The electronics, data information and semiconductor
industries accounted for investments of $425 million and more than 4,900 jobs.
Much of the reason is the presence of the state’s premier research institutions – Duke
University, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and N.C. State University.
However, it is hard to overestimate the impact WTCC has had on recruiting and retaining
these industries. Strickland said there is also increasing demand from international
investing firms for training in such areas as accounting, financial management and
customer service.
Naturally, many of WTCC’s students are not sent via employers. Rather they are
individuals who either need to retool to remain in a current position, desire career
advancement, or are dealing with a recent layoff. The average age of continuing
education students is between 34-40, about 25 percent of whom already have bachelor’s
degrees or higher. Much of the school’s successful Basic Law Enforcement, Fire Services
and Department of Correction’s training are populated by students who are transitioning
from other careers. “In order to stay competitive today, you have to stay in school,”
Strickland says. “People are constantly coming back and retooling and learning newer
processes.”

3. Many former manufacturing workers are also taking advantage of WTCC’s lateral entry
program for new teachers. “The county has a big shortage of new teachers each year,”
Strickland says. “We help supply their demand for teachers.”
WTCC also helps meet the unique demands of specific population groups, such as the
need for bilingual medical and construction workers. For that reason, WTCC has created
special English as a Second Language coursework for both Certified Nursing Assistants
and electrical wiring contractors. “Spanish speakers are especially in demand in medical
fields due to the need to understand the physical and medical needs of the (Spanish-
speaking) patients who come in – and prevent misdiagnosis,” Strickland said.
Demand for courses waxes and wanes with the economy. As the economy slows down,
demand naturally goes up. “Anytime you are losing jobs, people are going to have to go
back and retrain,” Strickland says. “A lot of time as the economy gets worse, people
come back to train because they are looking for the next job. They take advantage of
available training, even though they probably had not thought about it when they had a
secure job.” Through it all, Strickland says, the key is flexibility. “We don’t know if the
high-tech jobs we create today will last for three to eight generations like they did in the
past.”