REGIONAL CAREER NETWORKSREGIONAL CAREER NETWORKSA Regional Career Network is a locally coordinated system of nonprofits, educators, and companies that moves people into careers, with sector-specific pathways like CNC, Welding, or Maritime deployed based on regional demand.
The model, in one sentence.Start here
Pick your partner type below to see what a Regional Career Network does for you, the part you play in it, and how to start one in your region.
Bring the people who need careers, and the wraparound support that keeps them moving forward.
Deliver the skill training that makes a career seeker ready to be hired.
Open tours, interviews, and apprenticeships that turn training into hires.
Bring the resources, networks, and introductions a region needs, and get written into the grants where your service helps.
Looking for a career for yourself? Start with the CNC Career Guide →
How it works
A career seeker moves through each organization step by step, so the path is clear: Get Informed, Get Trained, Get Hired. Support Partners grow the region around them. Each partner type can also apply for grants the others cannot, so a Regional Career Network keeps every partner aligned and the region goes after every pool as one team.
Participants, and the wraparound support that keeps them moving forward.
The skill training that makes a career seeker ready to be hired.
Tours, interviews, and apprenticeships. The company decides who it hires.
Resources, networks, and introductions that help the region's partners win grants.
Meet the founder
Daniel Wierman came from a manufacturing family but never went into the trade. A shop owner who had known him for years, and simply liked him, asked him to help find and keep CNC operators. His best hire, top of the class, quit within six weeks. That one question, why a young person with every reason to stay still could not see a future, started everything.
The answer came on a shop floor. A young man in quality control looked at a stack of certifications he had earned and said, "Bro, I barely graduated high school." The career pathway gave him hope and a future he could see. From there the model took shape: stitch a region's nonprofits, educators, and companies into one network built around the career seeker.
The same network that moves one person into a career is also what makes an entire region able to win grant after grant.
"It gave him hope and a vision for the future. That is what a career pathway is."
Hear the whole story
Daniel tells it in his own words on Manufacturing an American Century, hosted by Matt Bogoshian.
How the Regional Career Network in San Bernardino stacked one grant on the next.
Every region would love to win grant after grant. Almost none can, because every workforce grant has two gates. The first is who you are: most funding pools only accept certain kinds of organizations as the applicant, so a single organization can only reach the pools its own type opens. The second is what you do: each grant asks for specific people, in a specific sector and region, with specific results. A Regional Career Network clears both. Each partner type opens pools the others cannot, the partner who fits leads each grant with the others committed under signed agreements, and together they can deliver what the grant asks for. The infrastructure stays standing between grants, so each new grant builds on the last one. Here is how it played out.
Supported the STEM Lab. The region needed a training space of its own that stays open when a program ends.
Formed a Registered Apprenticeship with Technical Employment Training. The lab needed to lead to a career, so the training was tied to a credential the state recognizes and a job with a local company.
Certified the instructors. For the pathway to outlast any single grant, the region had to be able to teach it without us in the room.
Each new grant builds on the lab, apprenticeship, and instructors already in place.
See how consortium grant stacking works for your organization →
Now the same play is spreading.
San Bernardino proved it. The model is now building or being explored in four more regions, and the grants keep coming: over $1.95 million won so far.
Active · Building · Exploring
One network in action
The first Regional Career Networks run advanced manufacturing pathways under CNC Career Network. The CNC Career Guide gives every career seeker one clear path through the region's own partners, and gives partner staff a tool that already holds the expertise and the connections.
CNC Career Network is how a region's nonprofits, educators, and companies become one advanced manufacturing pathway a funder can say yes to. The CNC Career Guide is the tool that carries a career seeker through it.
Any partner can start one: a nonprofit, an educator, a company, or a support partner. If you want to work with your region's partners to win grants for real careers, apply to join the Coalition. We build the network with you and go after the grants that fund it together. We bring the sector and the story of your region's partners into the grant, with your writer or for you.
We take on a limited number of new regions each year, so each one is built to last.
Apply to Join the CoalitionA short application, then pick a time to meet with DanielFree tools
See the grants your region can win from your own point of view first, then the partners around you who would win them with you. Free account, read for your role.
For nonprofits · For educators · For companies · For support partners
We read the workforce reports shaping our field and pull out the ideas that can help your region win grants. Every report stays in a library you can come back to.
New takes soonOne clear path for a career seeker: Get Informed, Get Trained, Get Hired, through your region's own partners.
Open the Guide →