Claire Fiddian-Green is the President & CEO of the Richard M. Fairbanks Foundation. It is no secret that the U.S. struggles with a skills gap. According to a March 2018 report released by the U.S. Chamber of Commerce Foundation and Burning Glass Technologies, “surveys of employers routinely find that companies have difficulty finding skilled workers.” This national finding holds true in Indiana, which faces a gap in “middle skill” jobs – i.e., jobs that require more than a high school education but not necessarily a four-year college degree. There are many factors that contribute to our state’s skills gap, perhaps the most fundamental of which is that too many Hoosier […]

Claire Fiddian-Green is the President & CEO of the Richard M. Fairbanks Foundation. The 2018 America’s Health Rankings report was just released, and Indiana has slipped from 38th to 41st out of 50 states. According to the report: “States ranking least healthy are in the South with the exception of Indiana.” For the sake of the people of Indiana and the economic well-being of our state, we simply must do better. The primary root causes of Indiana’s poor ranking are clear: we rank among the worst in the U.S. for smoking (44th), infant mortality (43rd), cancer deaths (42nd), frequent mental distress (42nd), obesity (39th) and drug deaths (33rd). Another root cause: […]