The new Oklahoma Talent Accelerator is an employer-led and performance-based take on job training, with a focus on high-demand roles in industries that are driving economic growth in the state. It also could be a model for federally backed workforce training.
The accelerator, which went live in February, received $6M from the U.S. Department of Labor. That award was part of the $86M Industry-Driven Skills Training Fund, which supports workforce projects across 14 states. The Trump administration says the experimental fund seeks to help fill “mortgage-paying jobs” across shipbuilding, AI, advanced manufacturing, and other critical industries.
Training under the grants is for recent hires or the upskilling of workers. Awards went to state workforce agencies, which were required to partner with employers in key industries to apply. Participating firms get partial, outcomes-based reimbursement of training costs on a per-employee basis.
The Oklahoma Employment Security Commission leads the state’s accelerator project, which is focused on aerospace and defense, advanced manufacturing, and AI infrastructure. Employers can offset up to 80% of their training costs through the initiative.
“It’s a people investment strategy,” says Trae Rahill, the commission’s CEO and a chief advisor to Kevin Stitt, the state’s Republican governor.
The goal for the accelerator is to expand worker access to employer-funded upskilling, to empower them to move forward in their careers and earn higher wages. The state project also seeks to help employers forge deeper relationships with job training providers, including community colleges.
“We want to be very ambitious in serving the ultimate outcomes of people in business,” Rahill says. “We’re performance focused, not compliance focused.”
Guild is helping to coordinate the project as a grant subrecipient. The workforce development company has expanded beyond corporate education benefits and now also works on public sector projects. For example, Guild has partnered with the City of Birmingham, Ala., and UAB Medicine on a healthcare training program that includes job placement assistance. The city received federal funding for that effort through the $500M Good Jobs Challenge from the Biden administration.
The public sector work is a direct extension of Guild’s model, says Zoe Barrett, who heads public sector partnerships for the company: “We’ve spent years helping to solve workforce transformation challenges for employers that span across state lines and manage a wide range of talent complexities.”
Barrett says the hurdles states face are remarkably similar.
“Just like employers, states are seeking better alignment between their workforce strategies and priority talent pathways,” she says, “which requires closer ties to learning institutions and the ability for those institutions to act nimbly.”
For the project in Oklahoma, Rahill says, the state wanted a strategy that looked across agencies and pulled in the many industry and education partners necessary to make it pay off for workers and employers.
“It’s about activating as many people as possible,” he says. “Employers are our most important customers.”
Rahill says Guild offered a proven track record of engaging company partners. “We are not as good at that as we’d like to think across government,” he says. “We wouldn’t have won that grant without Guild.”
The project seeks to train 700 workers. The grant will reimburse training of up to $12,500 per participant. Employers cover training costs up front and can later receive reimbursements tied to performance milestones.
Eligible training programs ideally should take less than two years to complete, for roles in supply chain and logistics, maintenance technicians, aviation management, operations, and engineering technologies. Flexibility is baked into the accelerator’s approach, with training that could range from short-term credential programs to apprenticeships.
“We don’t know what sector-specific employment is going to look like in five years,” says Rahill.
America Achieves helped Oklahoma land the $6M grant and is a strategic advisor for the project. The nonprofit has worked with dozens of communities around the country to design and secure roughly $250M in bipartisan economic and workforce development initiatives.
Jon Schnur, the group’s CEO, says the grant-backed Oklahoma accelerator is a powerful example of a public-private partnership. State workforce initiatives often fail to simultaneously expand access to good jobs and the talent supply for critical industries, he says. And a lack of employer engagement and skin in the game is a common challenge.
“Oklahoma is driving ambitious, performance-based solutions to address those problematic gaps,” says Schnur.
Rahill is confident that the capacity the state develops for the project will have long-lasting benefits, including for state agencies with purviews ranging from commerce to education to corrections.
The Kicker: “This is the one massive unlock project,” says Rahill. “It could be a cure-all for a lot of government institutions.”