Jennifer Phillips
Jennifer Phillips joined the ICSPS team earlier this year as the Strategic Initiatives Coordinator. She assists, advises, and provides analysis to the Illinois Department of Commerce and Economic Opportunities Office of Employment and Training on initiatives such as work-based learning, apprenticeship, and accelerated credentials, including digital learning. She has 25 years of workforce development experience as a consultant and from when she worked for the Charles Stewart Mott and Joyce Foundations. She has lived in the Chicagoland area since 2000. Jennifer holds a master’s in Public Administration from the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor and is a married mom of three teenaged boys. Her active family enjoys paddle boarding on Lake Michigan, hiking, playing board games, and Legos. Jen appreciates how ICSPS positively impacts the Illinois workforce, especially during the pandemic. “The pandemic has been such an enormous challenge. By its very nature, it is disrupting workforce and education systems and forcing those systems to become even more agile and responsive to the needs of both workers/jobseekers and employers. I’m hopeful that workforce and education systems being better positioned to help fuel economic recovery becomes a silver lining from our COVID experience. The work I do at ICSPS and with our stakeholders is all about shining a spotlight on innovations and best practices to systematically improve economic mobility.”