The Department of Commerce is sponsoring a technical assistance webinar targeted at strengthening business engagement and continuous improvement strategies for career pathway partnerships. Employers play a crucial role in the development of career pathway systems, helping communities align their education, economic development, and workforce priorities in specific sectors. Vermillion Advantage has a proven county-wide model that aligns these areas in the manufacturing sector, and in order to explain the value of the demand-driven approach to the business community, they are developing a series of guides aimed at five critical manufacturing positions. These guides lay out how talent pipeline strategies can be used to help manufacturing employers across the state find, grow, and hire talent in a smarter way. As your partnership builds a career pathway system for opportunity youth, it is crucial to contemplate what role employers will play and how that will be operationalized. This webinar can inform continuous improvement planning in preparing the WIOA Youth Career Pathways opportunity. Kim Kuchenbrod with Vermillion Advantage will discuss how these sector-based strategies have shifted the way that employers are able to provide some demand-driven solutions to their education and community partners and how these can be applied to specific programs designed for opportunity youth.