Executive Director

Nicholas Wyman is a workforce development and apprenticeship expert, speaker, and author who has fostered a workforce development model that uses mentoring to shape the thinking, attitude, abilities, and skills of people as they make the transition from school to work. Nicholas applies real-world solutions to the challenges companies face in finding skilled employees. A Winston-Churchill Memorial Fellow, Nicholas has completed in-depth research into school-to-work transitions and skilled careers. Nicholas is on the Advisory Board of the American Institute of Innovative Apprenticeship.

Vice-President – Special Projects and Operations

Deborah Williamson served as Director of Labor Relations at the New Mexico Department of Workforce Solutions, overseeing the Bureaus of Wage & Hour, Human Rights, Public Works, and Child Labor. She possesses a Ph.D. in sociology with an emphasis in crime and deviance, and a secondary area in education policy from the University of Kentucky. Author of numerous publications and grants, she is co-editor of Skilling Up: The Scope of Modern Apprenticeship released by the Urban Institute in November 2019.

Senior Consultant

Stephen F. Hamilton is Professor Emeritus of Human Development at Cornell University. His research and program development have been related to the transition to adulthood, apprenticeship and other work experience, community service learning, mentoring, and the use of research in practice. After retiring from Cornell, he served as Dean of the High Tech High Graduate School of Education in San Diego. Previously he taught at a vocational high school in Washington, DC. His degrees are from Swarthmore College and the Harvard Graduate School of Education.

Chief Operating Officer

Andrew is an education into employment specialist, with over two decades experience designing and implementing dynamic vocational training and workforce development programs for all ages – youth, young adults and transitioning mature workers. He has been an expert advisor and lead consultant on numerous projects involving leading Australian corporates, Fortune 500 companies, as well as Governments in the USA and Australia. Andrew has studied at the Harvard Kennedy School of Government and is a regular conference presenter. He was a keynote presenter at the International Network on Innovative Apprenticeship in the US.

Project Manager

Prior to joining the Institute for Workplace Skills and Innovation America, Jodi Paretta was an accomplished leader in the education field, mainly in Arizona. Jodi has been an elementary teacher, instructional coach, behavior specialist, counselor, and a school administrator. The majority of her career in education she worked in Title I schools, with a high population of diverse students with disabilities and low socioeconomic status. She has always been passionate about helping people and advocating for equality for all. Her degrees are from Winona State University and Northern Arizona University.