Danielle Goldman joins the podcast to discuss how she helps growing companies connect with in-demand, highly skilled immigrant workers. Through Open Avenues Foundation, Goldman “opens avenues” for the United States to welcome foreign-born innovators and entrepreneurs. Tune in to discover how a well-timed H-1B visa is responsible for a technology that many businesses and families have relied upon during the COVID-19 crisis.
Transcript
Denzil Mohammed: I’m Denzil Mohammed, and this is JobMakers.
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Denzil Mohammed: I know, we’re all “Zoomed” out. A year and a half of Zoom classes and meetings and interviews has definitely taken its toll. But ultimately, aren’t we incredibly grateful and lucky to have had this technology in the first place? For our kids, our jobs, our health care, even to see family members we couldn’t visit? But do you know why we were so lucky to have Zoom? Because after getting rejected for a visa eight times, the U.S. finally allowed Eric Yuan from China, Zoom’s founder, to come and stay in the U.S. For Danielle Goldman, co-founder and executive director of the Open Avenues Foundation in Boston, Yuan is an important example of why the U.S. needs to retain the high skill, foreign-born students and workers who benefit from a U.S. higher education. The Open Avenues Foundation developed a unique model that affords high-growth companies and start-ups the chance to retain the talent they need through cap-exempt H1-B visas, no matter where they come from, in highly competitive industries where talent is scarce. This grows our workforce to the benefit of American workers. And, as we saw with Zoom, can create indispensable innovation when we need it most, as you learn in this week’s JobMakers.
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Denzil Mohammed: Danielle Goldman, thank you for joining us on JobMakers.
Danielle Goldman: Thanks so much for having me, Denzil.
Denzil Mohammed: Tell us a little bit about the Open Avenues Foundation.
Danielle Goldman: Open Avenues is a non-profit based here in Massachusetts. We were started in 2018 at the height of the Trump administration and everything that was going on with migrant families being separated at the border. I was actually working as a consultant at the time, not in anything immigration related, but I grew up with an immigration attorney as a father and it was a huge part of my life, and so my father and I actually co-founded Open Avenues to change the narrative about immigrants and demonstrate the value of foreign nationals in the United States. We felt like that was a really important story to tell in that moment. Open Avenues is a non-profit that’s actually education-focused, and we are working to demonstrate that foreign nationals can actually train the future workforce. So Open Avenues is a workforce development program, we are really excited about the fellowship that we run and I’m sure we’ll dive into that a bit more in a few minutes, but ultimately, we’re showcasing that foreign nationals in the U.S. are very talented individuals who are working at high-growth companies and can also create jobs for U.S. workers.
Denzil Mohammed: Explain to me that very important point of the value of foreign-born high-skilled workers to the U.S. as a whole.
Danielle Goldman: Open Avenues partners with high-growth companies typically in STEM fields, but we also work with companies in finance and business. Our companies are coming to us. Typically we work with HR professionals who are managing talent acquisition and trying to find ways to fill their talent gaps at the companies and we are a solution for them to retain foreign talent. Our global talent fellowship is a visa solution, it’s a leadership development solution for these foreign nationals, and when I talk to HR representatives the reason why they’re willing to invest right now in foreign talent and nominate them for our global talent fellowship program is because there are talent challenges at these growing companies. They have tens to hundreds of job openings in these technical STEM fields, and even if they don’t have job openings, sometimes they’ve just identified a really extraordinary candidate from outside of the United States. I think one of the things I’ve learned is that people and talent are not just numbers. They’re not just seats that are filled. Companies are looking for the best of the best and when they find them, they will do anything to have them stay in the U.S. and help them grow their companies, and sometimes those individuals are foreign nationals and they need to find ways as an employer to ensure that that those individuals can continue to help them grow their companies.
Denzil Mohammed: You talk about how the challenges of finding talent, the challenges of retaining talent, depending on where they come from, is extraordinary when it comes to our immigration system. Could you just give us a sense of what this work visa is like and how it poses a challenge to companies?
Danielle Goldman: Yeah. It’s really important to understand that our country’s top work visa, the most popular work visa, is called the H-1B, and it is built upon a randomized lottery system. We have hundreds of thousands of international students in the United States right now who are graduating from U.S. universities, they are educated by U.S. professors, they intern at U.S. companies and they’re getting a U.S. education. And when they graduate they are given practical training, optional practical training, from the U.S. government, and that’s one short opportunity they have. And after they finish their practical training the number one, and really for many people the only pathway they have, is to enter into this randomized lottery system which is capped at 85,000 individuals per year. So we’re looking at hundreds of thousands of individuals finishing O.P.T. (optional practical training) every year after receiving a U.S. education and then having to enter a randomized lottery. And hundreds of thousands of individuals are getting shut out. And the only option for some of those individuals is to go home, and that is really challenging and frustrating for companies who have invested in hiring those individuals for a few years during their O.P.T, and it’s really frustrating for the foreign nationals who have received this U.S. education and are willing to invest their talent into U.S. companies. It doesn’t really make sense from that perspective. There are a few organizations that are exempt from this lottery system, they’re called “cap exempt organizations,” and that’s what Open Avenues is. We’re a non-profit that is affiliated with the universities and we are exempt from this cap.
Denzil Mohammed: That’s a really good explanation. You know getting that U.S. education, paying into U.S. universities as an international student, is so much more than in-state tuition. First of all, it’s a lifeline for many schools, and having that talent, growing that talent, and then shutting them out seems to not make a lot of sense. The H-1B has been a very contentious issue for many years I know, but the fact is shutting out talent really is not going to benefit the U.S. and that just seems to be a no-brainer. Tell us a little bit about how your program works, the nuts and bolts of it, and where that inspiration came from.
Danielle Goldman: Sure. So as I started to mention, there are few organizations that are exempt from this H-1B lottery system. Congress deemed these types of institutions exempt because Congress knows the value that these organizations can provide to U.S. society. The four types of organizations are universities, non-profit research institutions, government research institutions, and non-profits that are affiliated or partnered with universities. And Open Avenues is a non-profit that is affiliated with universities. So Open Avenues is a 501(c)(3) nonprofit, we actually go into affiliation and sign partnership agreements with our university partners around the United States, and what we do is we’ve built a fellowship program where we’re able to hire global talent who are working at high-growth companies who have been shut out of this lottery system and we are able to hire them for five hours per week of part-time work. And during that time we have them placed at our university partners and they launch career development and STEM education projects for students to train in those fields, get experiential learning and prepare to enter that future workforce. We call this the Global Talent Fellowship because our fellows are international individuals working at high-growth companies. In terms of inspiration, all of this again stems from our mission to demonstrate the value of foreign talent. My co-founder Jeff has a long history of innovation within immigration, he’s very entrepreneurial in the space, he started the Global Entrepreneur in Residence (“GEIR”) program with Governor Deval Patrick back in 2016, which also leverages the cap-exempt H-1B portion of immigration law with universities. And the GEIR program does the same model for universities and is open to founders. Open Avenues Foundation has built a program that leverages the cap exempt H-1B visa but helps mid- to senior-level employees who are critical to the growth of companies stay here in the United States through our fellowship.
Denzil Mohammed: And might I remind our listeners that Zoom was founded by an immigrant, a high-skilled immigrant.
Danielle Goldman: [laughs] Very important point.
Denzil Mohammed: There is a narrative out there that a foreign-trained, foreign-born worker comes in and gets a job, that’s one less job for Americans. Anyone who studies economics knows that the economy is far more complex than that. I want to learn more about some of your fellows and some of their stories. Explain to me, and explain to our listeners, how this benefits the U.S.
Danielle Goldman: Our fellows range from founders of companies, some are mid- to senior-level employees at companies, all of them are owning projects, owning products and building out teams. When they grow their product at a company, or when they conduct their research at a company, what ultimately happens is there is a demand for more talent to support what they develop. It happens with our mid-level scientists who are working at therapeutic companies and developing new technologies or new therapies where their research ultimately leads to more jobs being created. It happens when our founders are able to stay in the United States and ultimately build their companies here and hire talent. So I can tell you through the stories of our fellows, but that’s what ultimately happens, economics aside this is literally happening on the ground in front of me, I have the picture in my head of what is happening, and Open Avenues continues to try to share these stories of the successes of when our fellows stay in the United States, what they are able to build for their companies, which translates to new jobs. And on the other side of what we do, our fellows are training U.S. students to go into their field, so we are also showing that when foreign nationals stay in the United States they are able to contribute to the growth of U.S. students and open jobs for these students. Our fellows are thrilled to contribute to U.S. society and say, ‘we love to be here in the United States, we feel lucky to be growing careers here, and we want to give back.’ They want to ensure that U.S. students at community colleges and technical institutions, these are the schools we’re partnered with by the way, that the students who are from underrepresented communities, from the middle of the country, that those individuals who might not have been exposed to some of these high-growth companies yet are connected through our fellows to these hiring companies. And that is really important for the economic growth in the United States.
Denzil Mohammed: You talk about immigrants as job-makers, that’s such a unique thing to say!
Danielle Goldman: [laughs]
Denzil Mohammed: Immigrants are twice as likely to start a business, we know that they are the ones who are driving the growth of mainstream businesses. If we did not have immigrants we would not have the Pfizer or Moderna vaccines, they both had immigrant founders. Tell us another story, as you intimated a moment ago, this idea of these foreign-trained people who study here wanting to give back. That’s a narrative we don’t hear a lot about, either.
Danielle Goldman: Yeah it’s true, we definitely know that that’s the sentiment. You don’t learn about that sentiment of giving back, necessarily, from news articles, right, but when you talk to immigrants and you have conversations with these individuals, these individuals really appreciate the opportunities that they are given in the United States and I find from my conversations that it actually is really exciting for them to be able to also contribute here. It’s how people feel included, by giving back to society and by doing more for others, you actually feel like you are part of that society and not a stranger or on the outside. So our foreign talent love to be part of this of this fellowship and it’s absolutely one of the benefits that foreign talent get when they participate, is that inclusion. And companies know that, that’s part of why companies want their foreign nationals to participate in our program, because it is a major benefit for them.
Danielle Goldman: Regarding some of our stories, we have an amazing cohort of talent. First of all, the companies we partner with are really exciting. I encourage anyone who’s listening to go to our website and take a look, at bottom of our home page we have the 30 logos from our partner companies that are linked to their websites, and we’re just so excited by the growing partnerships. Our partners are working across STEM fields, we are looking for high-growth companies that are focused on some of our biggest challenges in the United States and are also innovating and creating new technologies. We have startup companies that are working on micro-bakeries because COVID really changed the way that we eat, and they’re driven by robots which is just really cool and innovative. We have fellows that are working on cancer therapies for pharmaceutical companies, we have bioinformatics fellows working on A.I. to address precision medicine and questions in precision medicine. One of my favorite stories is from during COVID. We had a fellow working at a company based in Cambridge, it was a company out of MIT Media Lab, it was a 3D printing company and they were able to print materials that were going to be used across industries. One of the industries that they wanted to use these materials for was the medical device industry, but they hadn’t really tapped into the market yet. And then COVID hit, and they had the machines built they had the software ready to go, and what they did was they ended up printing testing swabs, and they started to 3D print these testing swabs. And our fellow was the second employee at this company and led all of the software behind this. He was from Germany, hadn’t won the H-1B lottery, and was going to have to go home. He would have been printing those testing swabs but he would have been doing it somewhere else, because he’s such a brilliant human, and we were so excited to learn that this company, with Yannick our fellow on board, was able to pivot and address something that was so critical to the medical industry at the time and to the United States. And so that was just one story I love about what can happen when these minds and these individuals, this talent, are in the United States and are working for U.S. companies here. Our fellow led projects related to developing the software behind the 3D printing machines with our with our students at our university partners, so he was doing his awesome work and then also letting students know about this awesome work and training them to potentially do that work in the future. And that’s the beauty of this program, it’s not just about the foreign nationals working for these high growth companies, it’s also about them enlightening and empowering students to also solve some of these pressing challenges for the United States.
Denzil Mohammed: Finally Danielle, if you had to succinctly make the case to the American public that high-skill workers who may have been born elsewhere are a net benefit to us, that their presence here is an asset to the country, to American workers, how would you frame that narrative?
Danielle Goldman: The fact that Open Avenues Foundation needs to exist tells us that there is a problem within our current immigration system. It is not helping companies reach the level of talent they need, and retain the talent they need, to thrive. That is a huge problem for the growth of our economy. We need to empower companies to ultimately have the talent they need to grow to their optimal potential, and we’re not there right now. So, foreign nationals are filling these gaps, and more importantly they’re not just filling these gaps, they’re creating new gaps. Foreign nationals, as we talked about, are filling current gaps at U.S. companies that ultimately leads to new growth and new creation of new departments. It’s not a zero-sum game and we need to stop looking at it that way. We need to look at what happens over time through data points. Open Avenues is creating new data points that we can ultimately look at. When our foreign nationals are staying in the United States they are creating new jobs for our U.S. university partners and the students there, so that’s really exciting for us to be able to demonstrate. And ultimately, I’m going to have a much better answer for you, Denzil, because all of the data that we’re collecting is going to change this narrative and be able to show this succinctly, and I’m really excited that in the next few years we’re going to have a lot more data about what our fellows have been able to achieve and how many U.S. students have been placed at these companies.
Denzil Mohammed: And you’re barely three years old as an organization. Danielle Goldman from the Open Avenues Foundation, thank you so much for joining us on JobMakers, it was a real pleasure to be enlightened on the kind of work that you’re doing and how important it is to America.
Danielle Goldman: Denzil thanks so much for having me, it was a really important conversation, and I am thrilled to have it.
Denzil Mohammed: JobMakers is a weekly podcast about immigrant entrepreneurship and contribution produced by Pioneer Institute, a think tank in Boston, and The Immigrant Learning Center of Massachusetts, the not-for-profit that gives immigrants a voice. Thank you so much for joining us for this week’s fascinating discussion on how immigrant talent makes a better U.S. if you know someone we should talk to, email Denzil at denzil@jobmakerspodcast.org. Leave us a review on your favorite streaming service, too. I’m Denzil Mohammed, join us next Thursday at noon for another JobMakers.