Turn an ambitious agenda into a working plan
Boston’s Worker Empowerment Cabinet wanted summer youth employment to offer more jobs, better jobs, and a wider range of them. A new executive director, Allison Vernerey, was joining the Office of Youth Employment and Opportunity, and I was seconded from the Mayor’s Office to help turn that ambition into a plan.
The plan was practical: what it would take to get from where the department was to where it wanted to be. Allison and I looked at the programs, partners, funding, and operational constraints, and within six weeks we had identified roughly ten major projects the department needed that no one on staff had room to own.
We then divided the work among Allison, a full-time contractor, department staff, me, and partners. Allison would own the program long term, so from the start my job was to work myself out of one: help her navigate City Hall, coordinate resources, work through decisions, and build the pieces that would otherwise have sat on the backlog.
Improve the path from interest to a job
Build a better front door
Young people found summer jobs through an embedded Airtable list on the website that was rarely up to date. More than 100 partner organizations offered jobs through the program, and none of them had any way to keep their listings current.
I built a searchable web app that showed which opportunities were open and let each organization maintain its own listings. Working with the City’s branding and creative teams, we launched it as futureBOS, and rewrote the surrounding content so young people and families could understand how the program worked and what to do next.
Make the next steps easier
Finding a job was only part of it. Applications, onboarding, and work permits also decided whether a young person actually started work.
I worked on clearer instructions for each step, and with state counterparts on simplifying the work-permit process within existing law.
Turn a goal into a guarantee
The Mayor and the Cabinet Chief already wanted to keep growing the number of summer jobs. My contribution was the framing: call it a guarantee. If a young person did everything required to apply, the City would find them a job.
It sounded like it would need a lot more money. When we worked through it, most of the capacity already existed. What young people were missing was a clear promise that doing their part would lead to a job.
The Mayor announced a summer job guarantee for Boston Public Schools students in her 2024 State of the City address. The futureBOS Pledge describes that commitment and the employers supporting it.
Leave ownership with the department
futureBOS was the most visible thing I built, but most of the work was setting priorities, dividing responsibility, and supporting a new director through a fast-moving transition. By the time I stepped back, the plan and the tools belonged to the department.