Workforce

It’s back! Following a four-month break, the award-winning Creators Wanted Live Tour hit Scottsdale, Arizona, this week as manufacturers gathered nearby for the NAM board meeting. The attendee response: pure excitement.

Having a blast: Hundreds of manufacturing leaders and teens from the Scottsdale Unified School District and Phoenix-area YMCA chapters attended the Creators Wanted tour stop.

• Students spent time “racing to the future” in the immersive mobile experience, exploring the information hubs and exhibits by FactoryFix, Benchmark and Thermo Fisher Scientific, meeting and chatting with Maryland Gov. Larry Hogan and more.

Welcome news: The mobile experience, a project of the NAM and its workforce development and education partner The Manufacturing Institute, shared some big news during its stop in Arizona: the president, CEO and owner of Creators Wanted sponsor Nephron Pharmaceuticals Corporation, Lou Kennedy, committed to contribute and raise $1 million for the member-driven initiative to inspire the next generation of manufacturers.

• In recognition of Kennedy’s exceptional leadership in manufacturing, the NAM presented her with the Manufacturing Icon Award.

Big impact: The tour stop in Scottsdale resulted in 25,000 new student, emerging-worker and career-mentor email subscribers—all individuals who will help manufacturers fill the talent pipeline.

CNBC coverage: Snap-on Incorporated Chairman and CEO and NAM Executive Committee member Nick Pinchuk went on “Squawk on the Street” Tuesday to talk about Creators Wanted and strengthening the supply chain. NAM President and CEO Jay Timmons talked to CNBC the same day.

• “One of the reasons I’m here with the National Association of Manufacturers is because right behind me is our initiative to help fill the skills gap in manufacturing,” Pinchuk said on the ground in Arizona. “One of the problems is [people] view manufacturing as something that other people’s kids do. Well, this mobile interactive unit right behind me is a big factor in that. … It tells you, ‘Boy, manufacturing is not dark, dumb and dirty, as some people think. It’s a cool place to be.’”
• Timmons told CNBC he sees more manufacturing returning to the U.S. from offshore—and that the industry will figure out how to overcome current challenges. “Manufacturers can rise to the solution,” he said. “We always do.”

Op-ed: Timmons penned an op-ed for The Arizona Republic in which he termed the next 10 years “a manufacturing decade.”

• Timmons wrote that for U.S. manufacturing to continue to make “game-changing advances that improve the quality of life for everybody,” Congress must move forward with pending “global competitiveness” legislation, restore “sensible [tax] incentives” that foster research and development and pass comprehensive immigration reform.

What’s next: Creators Wanted stops next in Freeport, Texas, beginning on April 25, presented by Dow. The campaign is also working to raise additional funding to sustain a fall tour in 2022.

Want to join Kennedy in broadening the reach of Creators Wanted? Email Creators Wanted Finance Director Barret Kedzior at [email protected].