Tell us about your career dreams.

Are you a young person, or a parent of a young person, trying to figure out what to do after high school? 

Are you an adult who’d like to change careers but you’re not sure how, or you think the obstacles are too big to overcome? Or do you love the work you do but wish it paid enough to support your family? 

Are you an employer with big plans for your company, if you could just find workers with the right skills and training?

We want to hear from you as Wisconsin Watch launches a new beat. We’re calling it pathways to success, and it explores how schools and institutions are preparing people to find quality, family-sustaining jobs in Wisconsin’s current and future economy and how they could do better. In short, we’ll focus on the jobs people want and need, and what’s getting in their way.  

I’m Natalie Yahr, Wisconsin Watch’s first pathways to success reporter, and I’ve thought about this issue for more than a decade. Before this job, I spent about six years at the Cap Times, where I reported on the important jobs Wisconsin will most struggle to fill in the future, efforts of workers to organize and the obstacles they sometimes encounter when they do. For several years before that, I was a teacher and success coach for adult students seeking to get their high school equivalency diplomas, start new careers or just learn basic skills they’d missed. 

With this new beat, we aim to answer questions like why it’s often tricky for foreign-trained professionals to restart their careers in Wisconsin, what it would take to make some of the state’s fast-growing-but-low-paying jobs more sustainable and how are state and local governments investing in programs that prepare workers for changes in the economy. These are some initial questions we have, but to make this beat work, we need to hear yours.

Your suggestions and experiences will shape what we cover and how. Call or email me at ‪608-616-0752‬ or nyahr@wisconsinwatch.org, in English or Spanish.

I won’t be the only one covering this important beat for Wisconsin Watch.  We’re looking to hire an additional pathways reporter to specifically serve people in northeast Wisconsin, while I’ll explore issues that resonate statewide. I expect we’ll collaborate plenty. 

We’ll know we’re doing this reporting well if it helps people discover new opportunities or make informed choices about their careers. As we start publishing these stories, please let us know what you think.

Wisconsin Watch is a nonprofit, nonpartisan newsroom. Subscribe to our newsletters for original stories and our Friday news roundup.

What’s your dream job? Share your questions and perspectives about working in Wisconsin is a post from Wisconsin Watch, a non-profit investigative news site covering Wisconsin since 2009. Please consider making a contribution to support our journalism.