[MUSIC] There are concerns about the rise of robotics and automation, and what that means for the future of the workforce.

>> Experts say impacts will be uneven.

Some key factors include geography and race, but perhaps the most important determinant, education.

>> Education is the key, but that doesn't just mean a college degree.

>> We are now in the age of different types of learning.

>> Millions of GenXers and Baby Boomers are remaining in the workforce longer and contributing more.

How can they keep up with this rapidly changing economy?

>> How are older workers going to adapt?

And how do we make sure that we're getting the best out of them?

[MUSIC] So, my good news is that I have a film crew following me today.

>> [LAUGH] >> So I was selected with two other people to do a cross country tour.

>> And we're gonna travel from coast to coast.

>> We get to go and interview other people and be inspired by their story.

>> We're actually travelling in this big, green RV.

And we're the ones driving.

We have to be trained to drive it.

We're living in it.

Everything.

>> 40 foot, I'm a little nervous.

>> Listen, all you got to do is this.

>> I'm very excited about it, I'm honored.

>> We'll be talking to people who transition from one career to the next.

And who didn't come to their profession with a typical four year degree.

>> The one thing that we have in common is we all feel kind of stuck.

And we're trying to find our path.

[MUSIC] I've spent 30 years training in breeding prairie horses and managing different ranches.

When I stopped doing that, I thought something would magically present itself to me and so I figured I would continue doing things in the horse industry until that happened.

And somehow, 15 years passed like that and I'm still bending and braiding the manes for the show horse customers.

Though while I'm grateful for that work, I am definitely ready for a change.

[MUSIC] I love to work with my hands.

I love to work with the animals.

And as a single parent, the motivation has been to provide for them, but they know this woman that knows how to survive.

They don't know this woman that knows how to live.

[MUSIC] Sorry.

[MUSIC] >> I don't feel like I'm super-relevant technologically and I don't even know that I wanna be.

Because my interest doesn't lie in computers, it's more hands on, milk a goat, swing a hammer, set a fence post.

I feel like just in a transition period where my kids see that what I do isn't fulfilling to me.

I've been involved in social activism and more involved in helping people and found more fulfilment there.

But yet, I haven't figured out how that pays the bills.

Now, with everything being so virtual and automated, it just feels like I'm destined to be obsolete.

[MUSIC] [MUSIC] I'm retired from the Navy.

And right now I'm currently working for Lyft.

It's a lot more flexible than getting a real job.

While I'm driving, I found that it's more efficient to think about what you wanna accomplish.

The goals you have in life.

You gotta make the most of it.

[MUSIC] At 18, I finished high school on a whim and went straight into the Navy.

And I shipped out in two weeks from the time I signed the contract.

It was probably the best decision I ever made.

I did submarines for four years and then I was released to the service fleet.

At that point I took orders to a seal team as a support tech.

I deployed to Iraq twice with them.

I was gonna get out after a couple of years, but I didn't know what I wanted to do, so I kinda just stayed serving the Navy for almost 17 years.

I was medically retired for depression.

I just tried to build something to transition into.

But I was kind of lost.

I came up with the idea for the app I'm working on.

And all my friends were, you gotta run with this.

That's when I decided that I wanted to design my own apps.

I'm hoping one day I can be a household name.

One of the biggest hurdles is that I have no experience in coding at all.

[MUSIC] So, I've been enrolled in school for three months.

I am struggling to be a full- time student.

I have to be able to support myself going on this trip.

I'm hoping that I can help other people discover, and also discover for myself what alternative educational paths are available to us.

[MUSIC] >> I'm a mother who is just radical about everything I do.

The words that I speak, they defy gravity and lift up soaring souls that were once bound by their feet.

See that's why I gotta be careful with the words that I speak, cuz they cannot only corrupt, but build up and cause victories on battlefields.

I think I'm driven by the things that hurt me the most in life.

I was raised with a father who was incarcerated all my life.

My brothers and my ex-husband and just recently, my son was incarcerated.

[MUSIC] I've always been a business person.

Owned a hair salon, I owned a independent living facility.

But, what I do now is outreach and community engagement.

I used to ride past this neighborhood on a bus and literally want to live in this neighborhood as a teenager.

It was beautiful.

And now, they're just so messed up.

So there's not even safe spaces in the community.

And so we come into spaces and communities like this and we do outreach to families to say what do they need.

When you're out there and you're finding solutions for people, but you don't know the solution for your own family, that hurts.

When I'm out there in the field every day, I have my son on my mind, I have my grandson, I have my daughter on my mind.

When it comes down to professional life right now, I have to focus on who I am and who I need to evolve to be.

I think the things that bother me is whether I will stay in the career path that I am in.

There was a prominent position available in the city for our public school system and I applied, and I didn't get it.

They let somebody else get it because she has a degree.

That was that moment when I was like yeah something needs to change.

Either I needed to get the degree or I need to find my own path without the degree, one or the other.

But, being a 40 year old going back to school is a lot.

You have a mortgage.

You have all these things.

So I'm hoping on this journey to open my eyes to some stuff.

Where do I go from here?

[MUSIC] So this is the first day of the road trip.

I'm very excited.

>> I'm a little nervous.

I think that getting on this road trip with strangers, it's gonna be challenging.

[INAUDIBLE] [MUSIC] >> Leaving your comfort zone to share your whole world with two people that you don't know nothing about, just coming on this trip was a risk.

>> We're gonna be doing these interviews that inspire us to make that change that we need to make.

Or to let us know that, if nothing else, other people have experienced these transitions like we are, and look where they are, and that we'll all be okay.

[LAUGH] [MUSIC] >> So we are going to see Gary Bolles.

He's basically a counselor for people who are transitioning from one career to the next.

>> Jeremy.

>> Jeremy Burdon.

>> Absolutely.

>> Nice to meet you.

>> Dana.

>> Dana.

>> [LAUGH] >> Can you tell us a little bit about yourself?

>> Absolutely, so please guys, please eat.

So I never really spent much time in college, so I just fell into doing a range of different jobs.

I think I counted, added up one point 27 different things that I did.

The lack of a college degree after a while became almost a symbol for me.

>> So you don't have a degree?

>> I don't have a degree in anything.

>> Wow.

>> Wow.

>> [LAUGH] You can let something like that have a deep affect on the way you think about yourself, or you can say, well, wait a minute, we all have a range of different skills.

We all have to continually adapt and do new things.

>> Yes, it sounds like the first step is self exploration.

>> Right, I talk a lot about the future of work and sort of what are the things that each of us care about.

Every person on the planet wants to find meaningful work that pays them enough to be able to have the lifestyle they want.

That's kind of it, that's like the basics, right?

I think for all of you what's similar is you're sort of in between.

It's like I did this thing and now I want to do this other thing.

That can happen at any point in your life.

[LAUGH] It can happen coming straight out of high school, and it can happen in your 70s or 80s.

Be okay to be in that moment.

It's a little scary, but it's also filled with a huge number of possibilities, right?

Cuz there's often a bunch of different paths you could take.

So the thing it turns out you need is permission from yourself to do new things.

You're not gonna get approval from society.

There is no, [LAUGH] one person to go to ask their approval.

It's more you have to feel that it's okay to take those risks.

>> Wow.

>> Certain amount of confidence in youth too though I have to say.

[LAUGH] I just remember feeling like invincible when you're young, and like where did that girl go?

[LAUGH] >> [LAUGH] >> What happened to her?

>> [LAUGH] I think she's still there.

[LAUGH] No, I know she's still there.

If you think about the challenges in our lives, an awful a lot of it is mindset.

Nobody is gonna solve this problem for you.

We can all learn to have agency.

It's just for some of us it's harder than others.

Be okay to be in that moment.

>> We'd like for you to go to the RV with us and we have a space we'd like for you to leave a quote or something.

>> Absolutely, I'm all in, let's do it.

[MUSIC] >> I think you've done this a couple of times.

>> Once or twice.

>> Right, right, right.

>> One of the 27 jobs I had when I was young was a cartoonist.

>> Okay.

>> Okay.

>> [LAUGH] Jeremy, I think you need to change the world one app at a time.

>> [LAUGH] >> Dana, I think you need to be sure to give yourself permission.

>> [APPLAUSE] >> And Benita, I feel absolutely positive you can break through any problem.

>> Aw, thank you.

>> You guys are gonna change the world, so we're looking forward to all the next stops and all the things you learn, the people you meet.

>> Yes, yes.

>> So I'm so excited for you guys.

>> Thank you.

>> You guys have a great time.

>> It's starting to get real real, right?

>> Second interview in less than 24 hours.

>> [LAUGH] >> Less than 24 hours, yeah.

Ernie Melendrez, he's been in and out of prison since age 13, now he's actually helping ex- felons.

So he's a training coordinator and job specialist at Friends Outside, Los Angeles County.

>> Ernie didn't follow the traditional college education path.

He started working on certifications that helped him get the job that he currently has.

>> I think about my family like my father was incarcerated all my life.

As a young daughter I would see my father probably like every two years, then he was right back in prison.

>> I'm formerly incarcerated.

I grew up on multi-generation, active gang family, and transitioned from the gang activity and incarceration.

Here at Friends Outside, what I try to do is help individuals like me reconnect with their families, to services.

I've been working with them on furthering their education, connecting them to things that they really wanna do in life.

I can totally say I was emotionally illiterate.

I didn't understand what I was feeling, I didn't know.

It was just hard on every level and I needed a lot of help.

And boy, did I find some amazing people.

>> People in the prisons or outside the prison?

>> Outside.

These people really helped me understand that I don't understand myself.

So they asked me to dig deeper.

They told me that, look at your life, where have you been?

I used as an excuse, it wasn't my fault, this was how I was brought up.

And he goes, really?

Even if you were influenced, you still had choice, and to stop using excuses.

And Friends Outside asked me to come and work for them.

My mentor he told me, go back to school Ernie.

If you don't go back to school, you're not gonna be able to compete in this field.

But being in a father's position, you start to look at how much money you're gonna be making and it doesn't add up for a normal family to go work on an associates, work on a bachelors.

So I started looking at certifications, some schooling that would help me on that level.

Lo and behold, here I am helping families on the same level that I was being helped.

>> What do you tell people to have the courage to not give up, to make their change, to not stay stuck, to not go back?

>> I look at each person and I tell them, enough has to be enough.

I look at emotional literacy as being one of the bigger keys in people's lives.

Because how do you learn to express yourself if you don't know what to express?

Or how you would even start to express these emotions that are tied up.

You've gotta ask yourself, what is it that you want?

[MUSIC] >> Sitting there with Ernie was like, to see hope.

[MUSIC] And to see that somebody made it.

Like if you can make it through this, I can too.

[MUSIC] >> Jeremy, where do you think we're going today?

>> I think we're headed towards Santa Fe.

[SOUND] no.

[LAUGH] Where might you have said you would like to go and see- >> The Grand Canyon.

No way, get out of here, I've gotta put my hiking shoes on for that.

We're going to the Grand Canyon.

I was excited all day.

[MUSIC] >> All right, let's do this.

Wow.

>> My god, this is, my god.

>> I know, right?

>> Wow.

[MUSIC] So excited.

>> [LAUGH] [MUSIC] >> Wow, it's your journey, Jeremy, we're following you.

I really didn't expect to be as emotional.

I just, I could feel it in the back of my throat.

I just needed to let go of something, just be free of something.

[MUSIC] >> When you look out at something like that nothing else matters, all your problems just disappear for the moment.

>> That's how we should look at it.

Take the essentials and cast everything else into the Grand Canyon.

>> I wanna let go of all the pain of the prison experiences I've had.

[MUSIC] I've carried so much weight in my life that I have, the thought about why my father wasn't there or why I had to marry somebody who was a felon.

And then just recently with my son going to jail.

Having my son be incarcerated again was like, wow, when does this stop?

But sitting in Ernie's room, that was my permission to move past the hurt of my father and the hurt of all of this.

Just breathing in fresh air and breathing out all the pain.

It was, wow, this is the perfect place.

[MUSIC] >> It was just all so symbolic of new beginnings.

>> This is probably the purest 30 minutes of my life.

It's really tough because for 35 years, I didn't feel anything.

Sometimes it's overwhelming.

Most of my military career, I just wore this mask, just a smile and everything was okay.

But it wasn't, it took me 12 years to get the help that I needed for my depression.

[MUSIC] And I knew that if I did go and get help that that was the end of my career.

[MUSIC] That was hard, that was really hard.

This last six months have been amazing.

Feeling things and learning who I really wanna be.

[MUSIC] >> Time to get dirty [LAUGH].

>> I'm Theo.

>> Nice to meet you, Theo.

>> I'm Bernita, how are you, Phil?

>> So this is your shop?

>> This is my shop.

>> Nice.

>> I'd never done pottery before, so I was pretty amped up and Theo was a really good instructor.

>> So we're just using our hands to twist the wheel counterclockwise, we're leaning on the clay a little bit, feeling the clay.

And letting your hands starts to move and so they slide upward vertically, moving from the- >> [LAUGH] My creation, you ain't over.

>> Good, I'm glad to hear you say that.

You can do something else with it.

That's like the true artist's journey.

You do have the luxury of being, hmm, that didn't work, let me try this other thing instead.

I would say a lot of my pieces start out with one idea and then evolve to a totally different idea.

Just like a plan B.

That's not something people tell you right away, when you're in junior high or high school, that you're gonna come up with a plan, but then you're probably gonna need to come up with another plan after that.

[MUSIC] >> Okay, this one's going to be a vase.

[MUSIC] >> Ooh, that's good, Jeremy.

You're good there.

Going really slow now.

I was a middle school Engllish teacher, so I was grading papers, having all these after school activities, and my life was dealing with people and dealing with kids and that was great.

But I always kind of knew there was that part of me that was not getting to evolve and grow, which was this more sort of contemplative, quiet, creative inner part.

I needed to really step away from that and be, I just wanna do what I wanna do.

>> So you kind of felt lost?

>> I did.

>> That's where we are, so don't worry about sounding confused or whatever.

>> We're all.

>> It's an intuitive thing, isn't it?

There's some part of you that's like, this isn't working.

>> Was it challenging opening your own business?

>> Yes, but fortunately I did not think about it very much before I did it.

Cuz if you think too much about it, it's very easy to get stuck.

At some point, for me, it was a leap.

And you don't have all the answers.

You don't know how it's gonna work out.

All you know is that you gotta do it, cuz you're gonna go nuts if you don't.

>> Speaking with Theo and learning the whole different perspective on creating and working with clay, if it wasn't coming out just how we thought, do we just either smash it down and start it again, or just scrap it off the wheel and put a whole new blob there.

And I think if we think of life more in those terms we won't get so uptight and caught up about our mistakes and our failures.

I think Theo really gave me permission to feel what I was feeling about my present employment.

There just came a time where it felt like it has run its course and it's time to do something else.

And hearing him say that, it was powerful.

[MUSIC] >> Here we go.

>> [LAUGH] How are you all doing?

>> Hey, how are you doing?

I'm Jeremy Burton.

>> Jeremy, nice to meet you.

>> Nice to meet you Ken.

>> Dana.

>> Hi Dana, nice to meet you.

>> Nice to meet you Ken.

>> Ken used to work in education.

About 10 years ago, he had a realization that made him transition from education to actually doing humanitarian work overseas.

>> So this is the water from Kibera.

Just rolling in in the streets and that is absolutely crystal clear after it goes through the filtration.

Safe water comes through, we flip it around.

Today, there will be 6,000 people die because they don't have safe drinking water, 5,000 of them are kids.

My goal is to end the world water crisis, to provide water to ever person that needs it, and we can do that.

It's accomplishable in our lifetime.

>> I am a single parent, trained horses for 30 years.

>> Wow.

>> And in recent years, I really have developed a heart for humanity.

I've been finding it difficult to figure out how to merge what I love to do with helping people into a career of sorts.

>> Well, you need to go with us.

We take volunteers with us all the time.

When you're ready to go to Africa, you let me know.

>> I'm ready.

>> Yeah, I would love to go, too.

>> My gosh.

>> I would love to.

>> So what caused you to transition over to Water is Life?

I was working with the Turkana people group up in the northern area of Kenya, South Sudan, and there was a little lady in the village that we were at.

She was holding than this little baby and I love kids.

So I'm monkeying around with him, he's laughing and cutting up.

He s about a year and a half old.

So through an interpreter, I'm asking questions and I, obviously, ask the most ridiculous question that you could ever ask a mom What's his name?

He said, well, he has no name.

He's not old enough.

>> Cuz they may not live.

>> One in five kids in Sub- Sahara Africa will die before they reach the age of five.

They don't even name them, they just call him blessing or boy.

And that was one of those turning points for me as I'm thinking about all of these things, it was obvious, I had to do something.

And so at that point, I've walked away from what I was doing and began to put things together to make a difference in the world.

And the rest is history, yeah.

>> So a question, when you were transitioning over do you have a degree to deal with water?

>> No, I'm dumber than a bag of hammers.

>> [LAUGH] >> But I have a lot of great people around me.

We've made a lot of mistakes along the way.

But you can't be afraid of that.

You learn from the mistakes, you grow from them and you change.

>> I'm always questioning, where do I fit?

It's not that I don't know what I want to do, it's that I want to do so much.

>> Yes, well all of us have different talents.

One of the ways that you can identify that is what are the things that make you tick?

What are those things that you feel good when you're doing them and all that and then what are those things that tick you off?

What is it that you pound the table over, that you stay up at night worried about?

Those are the things that you need to help make a difference in.

[MUSIC] Don't be afraid.

I think fear stops us from doing the things that we're passionate about for afraid of failure.

We're afraid of rejection.

Too many of us get so captivated by the fear that we are handicapped and we can't make that break.

Don't be afraid.

[MUSIC] >> The beginning of this trip, I didn't know how to see helping as something that you get paid for.

And I realize now that you can still be doing good work and still be compensated.

And I feel like with the people we've interviewed that I don't feel as bad about being old, like you're too old to be at this point in life trying to figure something out.

It's just a different stage.

>> I don't think the interviews have really given us, the this is how you do it.

It's given us fuel to think about our own process.

>> Let know know about this stuff, okay?

>> Such a pleasure.

>> Great to meet you today.

Thank you so much.

[MUSIC] >> Thinking back on the people we've talked to so far, and how much we gain from that does make the next half of this trip exciting.

>> The first half has already been this just whirlwind of all different type of experiences that I've never experienced.

So it's exciting.

>> Woo!

[LAUGH] [MUSIC] >> Bernida and Dana have been amazing, we've kind of formed this bond on the road.

They're really special people.

>> If all this has happened in 10 days, I'm anxious to see what's about to happen in this next 11 [MUSIC] >> Transitioning from the military into being a full time student, running a startup, it's a little challenging.

When I first decided that I wanted to go into the mobile app and the social media field, it was daunting.

I didn't really know where to start.

I didn£t have a good mentor, so I kinda just was using Google a lot.

I thought a couple times about maybe throwing in the towel.

I've been working on this for two and a half years.

There's a lot of unknowns.

We're going to interview Jerome Hardaway, who is the founder at Vets Who Code.

It's a non-profit that helps veterans learn computer programming in a 16 week free course.

>> Hey, Jeremy Burton.

What's up?

>> Excellent.

>> Dana Erickson.

>> Erickson.

Burton, [INAUDIBLE] >> I was medically retired in November of 2017.

And I'm in school full time now studying software engineering.

Can you talk a little bit about your transition from active duty to civilian life, and how difficult that was for you?

>> It sucked, it sucked.

Coming home and not having the right mental health support.

Not having the right transitional support when it comes to employment.

I was security forces.

Coming back home, like he said, be a cop or security guard.

Well, I don't want to be a cop security guard.

Well, it's either that or do nothing.

So they told me that you were, a, you're a veteran.

And b, you're going to college for software engineering.

>> Well, the thing about software engineering at the college I'm going to is it only teaches you one language, which that's kind of my dilemma right now.

Because not only do I want to design apps, I want to help build them.

So I wanna learn programming languages.

And I kinda feel trapped by my adviser because she was like, no, no.

You're too articulate to be a coder.

>> I have no idea what that means, too articulate to be a coder.

Articulate has nothing to do with it.

Just like how not being good at math, or being black, or being white, or being a veteran, that doesn't have anything to do about it.

In the end it's about discipline and tenacity.

Are you willing to accept the fact that you're going to spend the rest of your life learning?

Those are the things that matter more.

Because software engineering is hard.

I tell people all the time I am not a gifted programmer in the least.

The only difference between me and other people is that when I was just starting out I had the discipline to wake up at 4 o'clock in the morning and code from 4 to 7 AM and then go to work.

>> As a kid was computers or was any of that an interest?

>> Negative, when people hear me on podcasts or they see me speak, kids are like, you must have been into computer science or software engineering forever.

I was like, no, not the case.

You must have been super smart in the Air Force.

No, not the case.

When I tell them that story, and they know that, yo, I'm just like you.

I'm from a small town.

I'm from a town that's not tech friendly.

I'm a security forces troop that now works at a company that is the number seventh Internet property in the world.

No one would've saw that in me if they had put me in that little box.

Like, this is what you're capable of because we said so.

I come from a boxing background.

And there was a saying called, skills pay the bills.

People who are putting in that gym time, they're gonna have those skills to be able to get to that championship level.

It is an art of discipline, showing up doing and something even when you don't want to.

So start here you'll do like the big three HTML, CSS, JavaScript.

>> I definitely feel like I have more questions now then when I started.

>> Because I've realized that there's so much I can do and there's so many different places you can start.

In terms of a degree program, the plan was to pursue a four year Bachelors of Arts in Software Engineering.

But maybe I do Vets who code.

That's something that I have to figure out.

Where do I go after this trip?

What do I do?

[MUSIC] >> I hear people say that technology is the future.

That immediately starts to raise hair on my arms, feeling like if you don't have a passion for that, or you have a fear of technology or computers, that you're destined to be obsolete.

But at the same time, I know that there's other people like me.

[MUSIC] >> You got about four feet, three feet, two feet, get a little closer.

[LAUGH] Tell us we don't know nothing.

>> That's how it's done.

>> Take that now, Phil.

>> Today we're gonna see Tia Smedley.

She's a court mentor.

She works with Southern Word, which is a national non-profit serving over 7,500 youth.

Tia's a mom of three kids, and she transitioned to a new career.

I need to know how she did it.

>> While I was working at this call center I was getting emails about an organization looking for a poet mentor.

But we're looking for someone who has a four-year degree.

>> I had that at the time, okay.

Or you need at least 3 years teaching experience.

I dismissed it.

I wasn't qualified in my own mind, I didn't even have enough to say I'm just going to try but actually I have some qualifications and whatever you think I need to have that can be developed.

I literally had a break down on my job.

I can remember driving in different mornings and I would be crying on my way.

I knew I'm not living up to my potential, but three kids were barely breaking even.

What can we do?

>> As a mom, sometimes, I'm looking at people like I love you all.

But I need, like I need a break.

I just need to be free for a little while, just free for a little while, like without the guilt of who's gonna, who's gonna cater to the community.

>> Yeah.

>> Who's gonna cater to my family.

So how do you, I don't know, break past it?

>> I'll say this.

I choose to break past that to not allow myself to be defined by simply one thing.

>> Mom.

>> Mom.

I don't have to limit myself to that I went out and performed, and the gentleman who was the executive director of the organization, which is now called Southern Word.

I performed, then after the event was done, he said, you're the one everybody's been telling me about.

Before I knew it that next three months I was teaching in a high school.

A thing that I had continued to dismiss, dismiss, dismiss.

That's how small I was to me.

Can I ask you a question?

Why do you feel guilty taking time for you?

'Cause then I'd have to deal with me.

>> What's wrong with dealing with you?

>> I take responsibility for so much.

Like I wish I could just save everybody from pain.

Because I felt like- >> Can you control that?

Can you control that?

>> No, I can't.

>> Why are you picking up something that is too heavy for you?

You weren't built to be Atlas.

It will kill you.

You'll die trying.

And then, what's left of you [MUSIC] The thing we can give anybody on the planning is our best selves.

We don't escape the negative in our head.

It's something else that we have to overcome in our lives, something always they're telling you you can.

You're not enough.

What will you choose?

Will you choose to give ear to that more?

Or then to say no.

That does not have to be my narrative.

[MUSIC] >> When so many people look up to you, it's like how can I be weak in a moment like, I gotta be super woman.

I gotta be the survivor of everything.

And this was just something that helps me to know that it's okay to be real, it's okay to be human.

[MUSIC] Just realizing I need to take more time to really just step back and just be all about me deal with the whole I wanna say crap that come with Bernita.

This journey is like that stop.

Think about what do you need.

>> I think the thing that keeps me up most of the night is the fear of what if.

What if I go down the wrong path?

What if I'm not successful?

And that's hard.

I tried to keep things like that to myself and I'm still learning how to share that.

>> I'm still learning how to learn my guard down and be a person.

[MUSIC] >> I can honestly say my motivation it's never been financed.

You know I hear people say they want to make a certain amount by this time.

I think I maybe idealistically thought that will just come naturally when you're doing the right thing.

But I have no nest egg, no savings, nothing to fall back on.

I don't want to be a burden to my kids.

And not that they would ever complain about it but you just don't want that, so I have to figure it out.

[MUSIC] I'm from out here in Mingo County, West Virginia and I've worked in the coal mines for the better part of 20 years doing whatever I can to survive, you know what I mean?

>> Do you come from a line of coal miners?

>> Yeah, my family was a part of that.

They've been coal mining here since there have been coal mines.

I'm more or less just stuck.

I'm 45 years old and starting over, and don't really know where I'm going from here.

It scared me to death to go back to school, but I'm trying I'm doing it.

>> The history of Appalachia was as America's first frontier.

So people who live with really close communion with the landscape, and grew things, and made things, and were were really self- reliant.

But we became really, really dependent on one extractive industry which was coal.

Coal miners made a lot of money from with only a high school degree you could make 70 or $80,000 a year.

But then it's a boom and bust industry.

Our economy's got so messed up that we have some of the highest unemployment in the country.

>> What you just said, that£s one of the things that£s real similar to Detroit.

>> That£s an interesting parallel with Detroit, actually.

Sometimes Detroit gets a bad rap, right, in national media.

>> Yeah.

>> And Appalachia does too.

Right?

I mean, we£re the butt of a bunch of jokes.

>> Yeah.

>> The perception is we£re uneducated or we£re lazy or even that were violent.

And so it's created these insecurities here in Appalachia.

And yet, we have real problems that we have to, we can't put our head in the sand about.

So we have this opioid problem, and it is a real problem.

But it's not like Appalachian people have some strange disposition to wanna be drug addicts.

It's that hopelessness It's the lack of opportunity and not seeing the light at the end of the tunnel that leads to that.

And so we felt like we gotta do something about that, so we decided to be a direct job creator.

And we do that through on the job training, higher education and personal development.

We created companies that have payrolls and that put wages in people's bank accounts.

[MUSIC] We're asking Southern West Virginia to think differently.

[MUSIC] Wilburn, his first few months did not have a vehicle to get to work.

And so, he was riding a four wheeler over several mountains every morning.

He'd get up at 5 AM to make it to work on time at 7 AM.

40 something years old, going back to community college, Wilburn has that's what we mean by courage.

>> Let's just walk up through here and I'll show you what's going on.

So this is our solar, this is their training area.

And this, I'm a property manager, project manager.

Well, I worked in physical therapy for over eight years, but there was just something about it.

I needed to do something else.

So what's the next step?

You gotta get re-educated, you gotta give yourself a chance.

Through culture development you can get several certificates.

>> I'm a person who just feels like, i don't wanna go to college.

I'm 48 years old.

I have been through a lot.

I've owned two businesses, owned property, lost those but I'm trying to find a clear path.

>> 48, that's young.

Don't worry about that.

If you wanna go back to school, do it.

You may learn something you never dreamed.

You may go another direction you never dreamed you'd go.

With these 19,24 mentalities, sometimes you just get upset and you shut it down, but you see the guys and girls that are older just power through it because, well you've lost businesses in this test really [LAUGH] You know what I mean.

I can read this book and just get through this.

We can't sugar coat it.

Just go handle it.

That's my thing.

I'm tired of living someone else's dream.

It's my turn.

Quit fighting it.

Just go live it [LAUGH].

>> You can always change your outlook on life.

If you don't like the path that you're in it could go to something new, if you really try.

>> Following our interview with Luke he invited us to tail gate.

>> [APPLAUSE] >> I'm seriously considering moving to West Virginia.

>> There's a huge veteran group here that probably needs some help and some guidance, and that's an interesting possibility.

Instead of just school and a company, I can get involved with a community that I think needs help, and I want to be a part of that.

>> They have some of the same obstacles and issues that we have in some of our poorest communities in Detroit.

If they can address the issues, I can too.

West Virginia blew my mind.

[MUSIC] >> We're in Baltimore, Maryland to interview Joe Miller.

Before working for Potomac, Joe was working for a friend of his printing t-shirts in a small warehouse.

That wasn't working for him.

He applied for Potomac, worked the apprenticeship program there, and became a full-fledged engineer.

And now he's Director of Engineering.

>> I came aboard here, kinda started at the bottom.

Didn't know anything about this stuff, not very good with technology.

So I started kinda looking at what the engineers were doing and kinda asked some questions.

How you do that?

Just kinda sunk my teeth into everything.

>> So someone like me who was a fix-it person.

I love any tool.

I don't come from a tech background or have a big interest.

If any thing else have an aversion to computers and technology.

it doesn't sound like you have apprehension about computers or.

>> I wasn't good with computer.

I'm still not great with computers.

I've always worked with my hands, working with cars, lawn mowers.

I was always fixing stuff.

But I'm good with the stuff that I need to make this stuff work.

[MUSIC] >> People need to understand that when you want to get into engineering or something else, if it's something you're passionate about, there are many ways of going about it.

Not just the conventional college way.

You'll meet several people here that don't have degrees, that came straight out of high school, that are now engineers making salaries.

Lake engineers that are doing great things.

[MUSIC] >> All I could think about was, yes.

Dana see something that it's gonna make her like tech.

>> She told right.

Exactly.

>> I see tools.

[LAUGH].

>> That's the beauty of it.

>> I think everywhere else Dana was pushing back.

They're replacing us.

The computers gonna take us over.

It's gonna be iRobot and we all gonna die.

And I'm like, Dana.

>> I didn't see technology as a tool.

And I love tools.

[Laugh].

>> Love tools.

>> When she saw those computers were actually machines she saw possibility.

>> Such a pleasure.

>> Yeah.

>> You're an inspiration.

>> Good luck to you all.

>> [MUSIC] >> The last day we will be going to Washington, D.C. [MUSIC] And it is a little surreal, cuz now you start thinking about really, really honing in to what our next steps will be when we get back home.

We are going to talk to Nicole Isaac, the head of North American Policy for LinkedIn.

And this girl who comes from the Bronx, and sounds like she comes from some of the same ground I come from.

Before LinkedIn, Nicole served as Floor Counsel in the Senate, and became special assistant to President Obama.

>> Right now I think there's an over reliance on degrees and traditional forms of education.

However, there£s a trend where you£re seeing more and more companies move to the use of kinda ontraditional models of inclusion and bringing in the right talent.

People who may not have the same requisite degrees but have the skills.

>> More investing in people than degrees.

>> Exactly.

>> We just need to find the right people who are looking for you, and they are there.

I promise you, they are out there.

We are now in the age of different types of learning.

There are multiple ways in which you can access the skills needed for that job, so there's online learning, there's certificates.

It's life long learning.

People are really concerned as work is changing.

The future of work.

What jobs are going to change?

What displacement will happen?

We know that work is going to change.

I don't want you to discount or diminish in any way what you bring to the table.

I think a large part of it is just not giving up and being perserverant and being resilient.

[MUSIC] I don't even know how to explain how my thinking has shifted over these last 21 days.

Like wow, the world's so much bigger than what you think.

Yup, this is different.

>> I am.

>> [LAUGH] >> What the heck?

Would you put that dinosaur back.

I'm sure you took that off somebody's desk.

>> No, it was along the ledge [MUSIC] >> This 21 day road trip has been eye opening, life changing in so many ways.

[MUSIC] We packed so much into 21 days.

[MUSIC] >> Smile.

>> At the beginning of this trip, I was stuck in my old story.

And now I feel like a weight has been lifted.

I feel less alone in this big world.

Because I realize that I've learned that I do have resources.

I don't feel obsolete anymore I realize now that computers can be my friend.

>> Before the trip, I thought the only option available to me was a 4 year program.

But the thing that I learned most about education on this trip is there are so many different paths.

Even if you don't have, you know, a traditional 4 year degree.

I didn't know that there was all these options and eventually hopefully I get accepted into the program and they are getting good jobs.

Whether you are transitioning because you want to or because that's what life is giving you and you have to be happy about what you do.

[CROSSTALK].

I came to the trip to see what's available and network and am living the trip completely like changed.

I want to get out there and start kicking ass.

[MUSIC] >> After every interview, it felt like a door open or a door closed.

I thought when I first started this, I don't wanna go back to school.

But now I'm kinda of leaning towards going to school.

I think everybody have risks they need to take.

[MUSIC] When we make those little steps, it opens you up to be willing to take more.

I gotta take a leap.

[MUSIC] So the last day of the trip we'll be going to Busboys and Poets and I'll give them a brief overview of what I feel like I got on the trip.

So apparently, all of you nice people in this room like open mic poetry, and let me hear your say, yeah.

>> Yeah.

[LAUGH] >> Yeah, coming next to the microphone is Kramer.

>> [APPLAUSE] >> I'll be a little vulnerable, a little open up there.

So I hope they like what they hear.

>> That they didn't spare the extra bullets for his throat, for his new contracts, they're breached.

[MUSIC] >> I'm a product of my mother's faith and my father's last attempt to be faithful.

Grandmama said girl, you was born with a gift, now.

>> My friends wonder what is wrong with me.

>> Knowing the power of the spoken word and knowing Bernita's power, I was really excited to hear her share something that really we all had been a part of.

>> The people that we've talked to, it's always been this traveling path of you know what next, what next, what next?

Or even, no, I never could see myself in this path but it's a possibility.

>> The sum total of who you are, we really don't even know.

We're still getting to know the totality of who we are.

Who we're supposed to be.

Something absent of your fear.

Without all of that, who would you be?

[MUSIC] >> [APPLAUSE] >> All right, the last artist that has signed the open mic list.

This is Bernita Bradley!

>> [APPLAUSE] >> Woo!

>> I'm cliff hanging.

My grip is firm, as I seek my next path to those cliffs over there.

From this one, All I know is I have seen enough, and it's time for me to leap.

Free fall I climb each cliff, after all all mountains are useful, they've taken centuries to build.

I find beauty in this layers, sounds strange, don't it?

Especially when you have been told all your life that these mountains exists to prevent you from seeing what's on the other side.

But I can't worry about what's on the other side no more because it makes me stand still to long.

I will keep cliff-hanging and leaping from one edge to the next.

Cuz there's even beauty in my jump.

There are rivers down there and they paved their way to these mountains so surely we can to.

We've been afraid to soar, cause soaring means we open up.

Soaring means we trust.

[MUSIC] I've had my eyes on that landing over there for far too long now, and as you grasp it's beauty, you notice other people watching and seeking out paths to conquer this mountain.

Or maybe they're waiting on you to show them how free falling or taking leaps or cliff hanging or soaring is possible, and that they don't have to die here on top of these edges, on top of these mountain or at the bottom of this mountain, thank you.

>> [APPLAUSE] [MUSIC] [MUSIC] [MUSIC]