There are a variety of different businesses that are interlinked with Bridge-Ed, a program linked with Olentangy, each bringing their unique skills to the classrooms. They all have different opportunities for students in the career field including internships, apprenticeships, and real jobs.
MI Homes
“It is a home builder company where we build communities and homes. We were founded in Columbus over 47 years ago. And now we build in 17 markets around the country and are the 12th case builder in the country for single-family homes,” says Josh Barkan the representative of MI Homes.
“It is a commercial construction company, not single-family homes but schools and hospitals, as well as multifamily apartment complexes and things like that. It is the longest-running and largest commercial construction company in central Ohio, being 113 years old, ” says Jay Adena the representative for Elford Construction.
Ohio Health
“It is a nonprofit healthcare system with 14 to 15 hospitals and 200 ambulatory sites over 44 counties in Ohio hospitals, outpatient sites, physician offices, etc. I think that it’s probably true for all of us that you have a certain thing in your mind when you think about healthcare careers or construction. But there are so many other jobs within them, and I’ll speak for healthcare, there are so many things outside of a doctor, and nurses you can be in healthcare, and I bet that’s true for all of us that you have to get rid of the preconceived notion of what you think that company does and realize there’s a lot more to it than you would imagine, ” says Mindy Sandford the representative of Ohio Health.
She continues by explaining the opportunities provided at Ohio Health. “We’ve just started hiring 16 and up and so we’ve got some rules where people can work at OhioHealth in certain roles at age 16. And then we also do the shadowing but I think the key thing for us is once you graduate if you do end up going to school, higher education, and more ProHealth you can qualify for tuition reimbursement, and that’s big so that you can end up getting a degree with little to no out of pocket,” says Sandford.
Accenture
“It is a global consulting and technology company and is the fourth largest company in the world by number of employees. We sell clients healthcare, construction, manufacturing, automobiles, products, and incubating public services,” says Anand Sekaran the representative of Accenture.
He continues by explaining the opportunities provided with Accenture. “If you’re from a high school perspective, we have students come in, we have apprenticeship programs or Co-Op programs. They engage directly like our associates, as well. We want people to understand, especially students to understand what the full experience would be. As you’re starting a full-time career we want you to get that experience as a student so that you understand it’s significant early on before you commit. Apprenticeship is a more you know, a very structured program. So if a student chooses to go for an associate degree program, which is a two-year program, a year and a half into it, we open up opportunities for repetition after a decision. What that means is its 12-month structure program and then they are deployed on the actual project. It’s not only just training, coaching, and mentorship, but students are also doing the actual work. You would experience day in and day out what the life of an IT engineer would look like and what team dynamics look like. Also when students successfully graduate from a program there are opportunities to become full-time employees of extension,” says Sekaran.
Honda
“It is a company you probably know for our cars, but we do more than that, we do power products, generators, and engines as well. It’s been in Ohio for over 40 years and we have five manufacturing plants in the state of Ohio. And we will also be opening our battery plant at the end of this month in Ohio. So it is a big manufacturing footprint in Ohio and I’m proud of the work we do here,” says Meredith Reffey, the representative of Honda.
She continues by explaining the opportunities for mentorship. “We want somebody who has sensibility, who wants to engage with the company, and who wants to see it succeed. We’re having kind of our second founding of the electric vehicle. So it’s really exciting. We are putting a lot of effort and attention into that right now. So we want people who are excited to be in that space,” says Reffey.