Kathy Conklin
For over 19 years, Kathy Conklin has been the Executive Director of the Saginaw County Business & Education Partnership, which is an entrepreneurial nonprofit organization. The Partnership is made up of leaders from business, education, and the community who are working together to increase academic achievement and employability skills within the region.
Kathy also serves as the Executive Director of the Great Lakes Bay Manufacturing Association whose primary purpose is to attract and develop skilled employees for job opportunities in manufacturing.
Kathy is a member of the Michigan’s National Career Readiness Advocates Board and Michigan’s Advanced Manufacturing Task Team. Locally she serves on the Saginaw County Chamber of Commerce Small Business Advisory Board, the Ezekiel Project Jobs Taskforce, the Women in Leadership Board, and the Regional Entrepreneurial Collaborative.
Kathy is a graduate of Leadership Saginaw, the 1000 Leaders Initiative, and the 2011 Great Lakes Bay Leadership Institute. In addition, she has earned certification as a Business Solutions Professional from Michigan State University. Kathy has been recognized for her leadership by the National Alliance of Business as the Education Professional of the Year and by the Zonta Club as the Women of the Year.
Kathy is a graduate of Saginaw Valley State University and is currently working on her Masters Degree in Quality Management from Eastern Michigan University.
Bill Guest
Bill Guest is the president and CEO of Metrics Reporting, a West Michigan based workforce development and information technology consulting firm. Bill is currently active in a variety of National Career Readiness Certificate initiatives. Most recently, he held the role of innovation champion for the West Michigan WIRED certificate initiative. In that role, Bill has worked to aggregate the hearts and minds of leaders throughout the state of Michigan around the NCRC as an alignment tool – as a way to deal effectively with the foundational skills gap that is prevalent in today’s workforce. As a result of this work, Michigan has become a leader in the nation in terms of certificates earned and has achieved extraordinary results with their innovative method of employer engagement. Over 500 Michigan organizations have signed a Letter of Commitment (LOC) to the certificate movement. All of these letters are posted on a public website so that employers can join their peers in the certificate movement. Further, the state is posed to jump ahead of all others with a dramatic increase in certificates this year. All high school juniors will take the three core WorkKeys assessments so that they each have the opportunity to earn a certificate. And, the state Workforce Investment Board, in June 2008, approved the NCRC as Michigan’s workforce credential. The NCRC will be launched throughout the workforce system this year.
Prior to co-founding Metrics Reporting in 2005, Bill was an international consultant, conference speaker, and practitioner on both innovation and corporate metrics. Bill taught and consulted extensively in the area of organizational performance measurement and improvement. He helped organizations to implement the right processes, tools, and measurements to support their performance improvement objectives. Bill utilized a crisp, clear, no nonsense approach to organizational performance improvement. He developed and implemented these techniques, with excellent results, during his 25 years of industry experience with various organizations in the roles of engineer, supervisor, engineering manager, vice president sales, general manager, executive vice president, and CEO.
Kevin Stotts
Kevin Stotts joined TALENT 2025 as President in July 2011. The organization is a CEO-led effort to create an integrated talent system to meet the needs of West Michigan’s employers. CEOs take a leadership role and act as an accountability partner in each segment of the talent supply chain. They convene working groups to facilitate collaboration and broker relationships to establish a shared commitment by employers, educators and stakeholders to drive improvement in key performance measures. TALENT 2025 is a process that illuminates performance gaps, evaluates solutions and advocates for leading practices to improve the talent development system.
Before that he served as Vice President of Community Programs with the Grand Rapids Area Chamber of Commerce for eight years where he directed the Center for Community Leadership (CCL) and launched HelloWestMichigan.com. Prior to this Kevin ran a statewide scholarship program and worked for the Michigan Republican Party and the Office of Governor John Engler.
Kevin is originally from the Detroit area and earned his bachelor's degree from James Madison College at Michigan State University. He serves on several non-profit boards and is an avid runner and cyclist. Kevin resides in Grand Rapids with his wife Stephanie and their three children Katie, Matt and Ben.