Ed Strong, CSW Consultant and former Senior Fellow, has deep workforce development experience in a range of areas. His relationship with CSW extends over 19 years and was preceded by 31 years at the U.S. Department of Labor. His current areas of interest include program evaluation of the workforce investment system. His work often centers on developing leading edge ideas for reinventing workforce delivery systems. He is currently serving as the strategic advisor and team member in a series of evaluation projects for the California Workforce Investment Board (CWDB). A major element of his current project work is helping to design and implement the evaluation of the American Job Centers in California. His evaluation work in California extends back several years. Previously he was the project manager for the evaluation of a consortium of 13 Detroit-area colleges that received a $15 million DOL grant to reform advanced manufacturing programs aimed at the automotive industry. He has led several other workforce evaluation projects, including serving as the lead workforce advisor to the WIA Gold Standard Evaluation.
Ed has had multiple year relationships with the Arizona Department of Employment Security and the Washington DC Department of Human Services, helping to develop a person-centric approach to social services. He is the author of “Reinventing One-Stop Career Centers” and co-author of “Reimaging Workforce Policy in the United States,” the lead chapter in the Heldrich Center book on Transforming Workforce Development Polices for the 21st Century. Ed has masters’ degrees in psychology and human resource management from Temple University and the University of Utah, respectively, and a bachelor’s in psychology from Alfred University. He attended the Center for Creative Leadership, the Federal Executive Institute, and has taught at the college level. He retired from the US Department of Labor in 2002, where he served as the Mid-Atlantic States Regional Administrator for the Employment and Training Administration.