It’s a thrill to see an idea come to life and make an impact.
Just ask NWKEICI Development Director Lucas Goddard. The foundation which serves 26 counties throughout the region focuses on bringing jobs and people to Northwest Kansas. A recent apprenticeship program with Goodland Tech, a local technology company based in the Sherman County community of Goodland, has not only done that, but surpassed expectations.
“Ultimately for EICI, one of our main tasks is population recruitment and retention,” Goddard said. “Our support of Goodland Tech was along those lines, but one of the additional things we weren’t exactly sure we would get is the quality of life impact that those jobs have had.”
The apprenticeship program with the support of NWKEICI allows individuals to complete training in blockchain technology and blockchain analytics. Since working together for more than a year, nine people who began training have been placed in jobs. And of those, eight have remained in the region. Best of all, is the earning power those who completed the apprenticeship now have.
“Through this program what NWKEICI is servicing, we have people in those communities who have been underemployed now benefitting,” he said. “They might have been making $22,000 to $28,000 annually, whereas now, they could be making $45,000 a year. Having that kind of usable income drastically improves someone’s quality of life.”
Twenty two total people have taken advantage of the opportunity and have either completed and been placed, or are currently in progress, including the nine aforementioned. The apprenticeship program embeds trainees in the Goodland Tech teams and shadow during that time as they begin to take on more responsibility and learn by doing, explained Ben Coumerilh, Goodland Tech co-founder.
Goodland Tech’s main client is blockchain security for CypherTrace, a subsidiary of MasterCard, which provides secure crypto currency transactions that happen across the globe. No matter the work, the clients see the value in the professionals trained through the program.
“When people complete our apprenticeship, our clients realize for every one person they can have in Silicon Valley, they can have two or three here,” he said. “It is a very big value add for our clients. The program has created a backdoor for these clients to open up offices in northwest Kansas for places otherwise.”
Goddard said the apprenticeship’s appeal outside of the region has been a welcome surprise as well.
“We’ve had some come from Northwest Kansas, as well as others from the Denver area, rural Nebraska, and Oklahoma,” he said. “We have an expansive recruitment effort that really brought people in for that program, and then we had some stay in Goodland, which has been really cool.”
Retaining employees in the region is also appealing to Goodland Tech’s clients.
“Our clients really enjoy our retention rates – out of almost 30 people we have here, we have probably only lost two over the last two years,” Coumerilh said. “In the tech field in Northern California, there’s always a greener pasture down the road. People here value rural lifestyle and are looking for good, sustainable income that allows them to live in a community they enjoy.”
Watching the program surpass its hopes finds NWKEICI officials continuing to seek similar opportunities.
“We are constantly looking to expand the apprenticeship program and provide more regional workforce,” he said.
“We want more apprenticeships that can reach these types of numbers in technology, manufacturing. We are absolutely looking to expand with other companies and organizations across our 26 counties.”
If your business is interested in working with NWKEICI, please contact Goddard at 785-874-5150 or lucas@nwkeici.org.
Those interested in the Goodland Tech apprenticeship program can reach out to the company for more information at https://goodland.tech/ or hello@goodland.tech
