John LeTourneau recently took over as the new chair of the National Woods Board, and he is excited to propagate a successful training model developed in Colorado to benefit the entire U.S. woodworking industry. I was enthusiastic to chat with him on the Woodworking Network Podcast to discuss his background, the National Woods Board, and plans to battle the skills and workforce gaps that plague the woodworking industry.

Here is an edited version of our conversation.

 

Will Sampson: Can you explain what the National Woods Board is and what it’s trying to do? 

John LeTourneau: Absolutely. The National Woods Board, was assembled, about four years ago, around the end or the middle of the pandemic, and it had been boiling in the background for a number of years, but it, it’s primary function is to respond to the request or the need from industry as it relates to workforce and delivering workforce that are already trained and able to start in the woods industry immediately after leaving some kind of training program. 

Our mission is to change lives. We want to create that opportunity that allows for that transition, from a learning environment into an employment environment, and we want to do everything we can to support that, and we’re doing it based on the request from industry. 

WS: what’s your background? How did you get involved with the National Woods Board? 

JLT: I have a background, as an entrepreneur and built businesses for a number of years in my early career. But in the last 15 years, I’ve been doing, executive development. And as a result of that, I’ve also found that my superpowers are in, strategic planning and kind of vision. 

In the last, eight years, I’ve been working closely with manufacturing, and the manufacturing world has brought me into a bunch of really cool experiences, and specifically more in CTE which is Career Technical Education. 

That piece there got me to an interview or an opportunity to meet with a man by the name of Dean Matson, who was the founder of a project in Colorado Springs called The MiLL (the Manufacturing Industry Learning Lab), which teaches curriculum and students, in woodworking. 

I met with him and we instantly had  a really cool connection because Dean was looking for a way to scale this model that he has and bring it into more of a national setting.

WS: We hear a lot of talk these days about the skills gap in manufacturing and the trades. How big of a problem is it really, and where does it come from? 

JLT: It’s a big problem. In the woods industry, the challenge is aging, population. We’ve got folks that have been in this industry for a long time. And they’re aging out, and as they age out, we don’t have a reliable system in place to introduce younger people to the industry, and then train them and prepare them for careers. 

But there isn’t really, hasn’t been, a system that’s been designed to address the upcoming workforce or the workforce potential that could go into the industry. That is in essence, what the National Wood Board is doing. 

WS: I think that many educators, particularly in the public schools, have tried to steer young people away from manufacturing and the trades and into expensive four-year colleges. They thought all jobs in manufacturing are, I call it the 3Ds, dull, dirty, and dangerous. How can we change that? 

JLT: For the younger workforce, we need to expose them and give them opportunities to see these kind of jobs or these kind of careers in a different light because today’s modern manufacturing is not those 3Ds at all. 

Our manufacturers are changing the world and they have a direct impact on the benefit of people’s lives around the world. We’re showing young people how great these careers are, but then we’re also working with the school districts and even the influencers that are in kids’ lives to help them understand, a little bit more about the awareness. And we just have to be honest and clear that not everyone is destined for a four-year college. We’ve done a lot of work to really help school districts understand that. 

We’re proud of that, but the piece that is interesting too for the work that the National Woods Board is doing is that we don’t look at it just through that lens. We look at it through a more, a different systematic approach where we’re taking on the needs of industry, we’re taking on the needs of education, and we’re taking on the needs of just how individual employers even need to have folks coming forward. 

We look at it from a, like a three-legged stool. We have our core pillars that we believe are important in regards to how this needs to fit together systematically. The first industry pillar that we are talking about is industry involvement. And so the National Woods Board is using and establishing deeper relationships with key industry stakeholders to continue to build the recognition and the accreditation for students and teachers and school districts so that they understand that. 

The second one is the National Woods Board curriculum. We have a proprietary curriculum that we’ve developed, that fits inside of what we’re referring to as the National Woods Board’s education programming. This is a curriculum that was built by industry, for industry. We developed this curriculum in a manner where it can be scalable and transferable across the nation. 
The third pillar that I want to refer to is what we call a partnership with the Woodworking Career Alliance. We need to establish credentialing for the curriculum, so that credentialing can travel with the individual, and it helps set the bar for what is expected from employers. 

WS: I think of things like WoodLinks and various trade school programs that maybe were regionally successful, but none of them really got traction. What makes you think that the National Wood board effort can be different? 

JLT: I believe it can be different because of the way that we are going about this with the three-legged stool, and it’s a comprehensive approach that addresses the workforce needs, and it nails it like no one else has been able to nail it before. We can, we can actually set up a program like this anywhere in the nation.

Editor’s note: This interview is condensed from a podcast. You can listen to the full interview at woodworkingnetwork.com/podcasts. To learn more about the National Woods Board, visit nationalwoodsboard.org.