Leisa: Hello, I’m Leisa Holland-Nelson and welcome to another edition of Women Mean Business, where we’re going to take you up close and personal with extraordinary women doing extraordinary things. My guest today is Nory Angel, Executive Director and CEO of SER–Jobs for Progress. Nory, welcome to Women Mean Business.

Nory: Thank you, Leisa.

Leisa: I’m betting when you were growing up you never dreamed you would be the CEO and Executive Director of a big non-profit; helping people get jobs all over the city of Houston.

Nory: You are correct.

Leisa: How did you do this?

Nory: You know I kind of landed on it, on one hand. I majored in French in college, which was not necessarily going to lead me down to many paths.

Leisa: Especially not in the East End.

Nory: Right. And so I landed a job in HR, and it was kind of a tough work environment. And one day I had an epiphany that if had to work that hard, I wanted my work to matter. And so I left that job and found a job in a non-profit, and that’s what started me on this path.

Leisa: So, how many non-profits did you work with before you found SER?

Nory: SER was the first one.

Leisa: So you’ve been here–

Nory: No, I did leave and went on and did workforce development for other agencies before I came back to SER twelve years ago.

Leisa: I know we’re talking about your path, but I’m real interested in workforce development. I think it’s a real buzzword these days, so I was just wondering, now that you’ve become a workforce development queen, if you have any thoughts on the use of workforce development and how important those words have become.

Nory: Yeah, it’s amazing. I’m in this business at the right time and, to me, it’s always the right time because either companies are looking for qualified workers, or qualified workers are looking for good companies. So, in my work it’s always in demand. So it’s interesting that everyone is paying attention now to upskills and middle skilled jobs, and the aging labor force, and so we have a wonderful, a crisis, on one hand, which means we really have an opportunity to prepare people for these great jobs.

Leisa: And here you are.

Nory: And here we are.

Leisa: Thank you. There you have it, another extraordinary woman doing extraordinary things. I’m Leisa Holland-Nelson, President and co-founder of ContentActive, Houston’s leading web and mobile technology company. You can find me at contentactive.com or follow me on Twitter @lhnelson. We’ll be back again next week with another edition of Women Mean Business.