Workforce Development

KEY STAFF

At JBS, we orchestrate the talent and expertise of our nearly 300 staff members to create high-quality, on-time results to meet our clients’ project needs. We work in harmony with our clients, synchronizing technology with staff knowledge and experience to produce solutions tailored to the workforce development challenges our clients face. Our workforce development staff has extensive experience providing specialized workforce development TA and training to Federal, State, local, and nonprofit entities and includes Marilyn Silver, Ph.D.; Steve Kornblatt, M.A., M.B.A.; Barbara Derwart, M.A.; Mike Dymmel; and Susan Gabbard, Ph.D.

Marilyn Silver, Ph.D., has more than 30 years’ experience designing, implementing, managing, and evaluating complex, high-profile, multiorganizational projects for government, business associations, and higher education. Dr. Silver has served as Project Director for four separate O*NET TA contracts. Over the past 17 years, by designing, coordinating, reviewing, tracking, and monitoring project activities, she has helped guide the national O*NET effort. Working in close collaboration with ETA’s national office staff and with its grantees, other contractors, consultants, and technical experts, as well as with other business and government program staff, Dr. Silver has helped lead this massive project to its current success. By assigning her project staff, consultants, and subcontractor employees to appropriate tasks and providing overall direction she has adhered to all contract budgets and timelines and ensured excellence in all contract deliverables. Dr. Silver is also certified as a Senior Professional in Human Resources (SPHR).

Steve Kornblatt, M.A., M.B.A., has more than 30 years’ experience in managing, evaluating, planning, and administering workforce and DOL programs. He has extensive experience at the Federal, State, and local levels, as well as in the private sector in the areas of executive and project management, program planning, technical research, policy analysis, management consulting, business development, training and training development, marketing, systems analysis, and computer system specifications design. Mr. Kornblatt’s most recent experiences have been with the O*NET project at DOL, workforce development projects with SAMHSA, and computerized assessment and career development software for Workforce Investment Boards (WIBs) and the offender and ex-offender populations. In support of the ETA Federal Project Officer, he has coordinated technical experts and consultants; analyzed and written on relevant issues, options, and impacts; and developed user-oriented products. Mr. Kornblatt facilitated O*NET product dissemination and utilization; made presentations, demonstrations, and briefings; and promoted collaborations with related workforce development initiatives including One-Stops, the H-1B initiative, WIBs, ETA’s E-tools program, and non-DOL agencies such as the Social Security Administration and organizations in the disability community. Mr. Kornblatt is a Certified Workforce Development Professional (CWDP) and is a subject matter expert for the National Association of Workforce Development Professionals (NAWDP) in developing a national certification test.

Barbara Derwart, M.A., is a senior member of the team providing TA to the O*NET Skills team in the DOL’s ETA division, Office of Workforce Investment. Ms. Derwart has extensive experience and expertise in occupational and educational data collection and classification systems. Most recently she has been assisting ETA on the development of industry competency models. During her career, Ms. Derwart has worked with application developers and members of the workforce investment system advising in the use of workforce information for economic development, program planning, and career decisionmaking. She is an experienced trainer with a master’s degree from the University of Maryland, Baltimore County, in instructional systems development. Her undergraduate degree in psychology is reflected in her people management skills and organizational process. Ms. Derwart has combined her education and experience to bring the needs of the user community to the forefront when providing training and TA.

Mike Dymmel has more than 30 years’ experience with government, organized labor, and the private sector in project management and administration, program planning and development, economic/technical research, and policy analysis on government, industry, labor-management relations and human resource/workforce development issues. As Senior Analyst on DOL’s O*NET team, Mr. Dymmel helps coordinate multiple resources and activities in the development of O*NET, provides outreach and awareness building in the workforce development community, and leads activities to document uses and users of O*NET. Specific areas of expertise include workforce development and investment issues and opportunities; occupational information content development, sources, and uses; occupational classification systems and uses; disability/accessibility issues; technological change—human resource impacts and economic implications; and Web site design and development.

Susan Gabbard, Ph.D., is a national expert on conducting research and evaluation with multicultural, multilingual, low-literate, migrant, low-income, and other difficult-to-study populations. Dr. Gabbard has served as a Project Director of large Federal contracts involving survey research, program evaluation, and evaluation TA at Aguirre since 1988. She has an exemplary record of developing and implementing innovative designs involving ethnically appropriate techniques to obtain high-quality research and evaluation data on difficult-to-study populations. She is proficient in the design and implementation of both quantitative and qualitative research. She has served as both an external evaluator conducting formative and summative evaluations as well as an internal evaluator using empowerment and utilization-focused techniques including the provision of evaluation TA.

Currently, she is the Director of Title 1 Part C Performance Reports for ED and DOL’s NAWS and is completing the design of the Evaluation of Migrant Head Start for DHHS. Her previous work includes directing the CNCS’s Task Order contract for Evaluation Services as well as the Census Bureau’s Minority Focused and Special Populations Research and the Assessment of Community and Participant Impacts of the AmeriCorps Grants Program for CNCS. She has experience conducting policy-related studies, and her work for both DOL and CNCS has been used for congressional reporting.