How do you pitch giving back as good business? And how do you make a financial services company care—really care—about making a dent in early childhood education, an issue that doesn’t show up anywhere on the balance sheet? These were the questions that the leaders of the PNC Foundation had to answer if PNC was going to play a huge role in improving early childhood education in the communities they serve. The research was clear and irrefutable. The benefits of quality early childhood education are not only social, but economic, with a benefit as high as $16 for every dollar invested. And today’s preschoolers are tomorrow’s workforce.

Chambers of Commerce across the country have a unique challenge - to protect and promote the local business community and support their needs as they face the nation's workforce challenges. The New Braunfels Chamber in Texas reflects on what worked for them over the past year of actively working to build a community system that would solve for some of those challenges and gives us four lessons learned in the progress.

Throughout the day’s conversations, several major issues were acknowledged and summit participants and attendees discussed their current and future plans to work together to tackle these challenges. Where the morning portion of the summit centered on the challenges experienced and identified by government and military officials, the afternoon session addressed how all sectors share similar challenges in the talent marketplace and how many corporate solutions could be applied to inspire real change for the military and our veterans.

The need for quality talent is so great that those who excel at unlearning, learning, and reinventing themselves have a higher probability of success for overcoming common biases including race, gender, age, and academic background. Finding employees and candidates who have the ability and initiative to constantly reinvent themselves is the goal of every company today, though it isn’t easy.