Regionalism : Featured Stories

A conversation with Julia Freeman and Hillary Rodgers of the Organizing Apprenticeship Program. Through its Education Equity Organizing Collaborative, the OAP has entered into a pathbreaking partnership with the State of Minnesota. Its goal: close the widely publicized "achievement gap" by making sure equal treatment of all students is state policy.

Nobody expected Central Corridor light-rail construction to be easy on the small businesses along the route. But now that the challenges of access and parking are hitting, business owners, the Saint Paul Area Chamber of Commerce and other local organizations are working to keep the Corridor as customer-friendly as possible.

Lars Leafblad, a principal in the Minneapolis executive search firm KeyStone Search, was dubbed "the most networked man in the Twin Cities" by Minnesota Business magazine last year. In the second of our Big Picture conversations about the future of our city and state, Leafblad acknowledges that we're good at cooperation and connection--but adds that we need a compelling new image of what we want to be and where we want to go.

There's a lot of excitement about "green jobs" and their potential to put America back to work. But defining what a green job actually is can be difficult, say some clued-in researchers in the state Department of Employment and Economic Development whose efforts have helped put Minnesota is in the forefront of the infant science of green-labor-market studies. A few real-world trends: there are many shades of green in the job market, the total number of certifiably green jobs in the state isn't large yet, and yet the potential for green-job growth is real.