Milestones
Heldrich Center Through the Years
1997 – PRESENT
1997
The Center for Employment Policy and Workforce Development is founded by Carl Van Horn, Professor of Public Policy at the Bloustein School. The Center is initially financed by a donation and endowment from John J. Heldrich, retired senior executive at Johnson & Johnson.
1998
The Center is formally established by the Rutgers University Board of Governors and renamed the John J. Heldrich Center for Workforce Development in honor of John J. Heldrich, the first chair of its National Advisory Board.
William Tracy is appointed Executive Director. Aaron Fichtner begins as a Research Assistant and later becomes the Center’s Director of Research and Evaluation. Laurie Harrington is hired as a Research Intern and is currently the Center’s Executive Director.
The Center launches Work Trends — national surveys on critical workforce issues facing Americans and businesses — in partnership with the University of Connecticut’s survey research center.
1999
The America at Work lecture series, featuring presentations by scholars and business executives, debuts.
The New Jersey Consumer Report Card, an interactive directory of New Jersey training providers, is launched.
2000
The Center develops a five-year research plan for the U.S. Department of Labor, a project that the Heldrich Center would conduct two additional times.
2001
The Heldrich Center’s office and conference center in New Brunswick is funded by appropriations from New Jersey state government. Demolition begins on the property where it will be constructed.
2002
The September 11th Fund requests assistance from the Heldrich Center in designing an employment training program to help workers who lost jobs in lower Manhattan after the terrorist attacks of September 2001.
2003
Ground is broken for the Heldrich Center’s new building, part of a multi-use redevelopment project featuring a hotel, condominiums, and restaurants.
William Tracy retires. Kathy Krepcio is appointed Executive Director.
A Nation at Work: The Heldrich Guide to the American Workforce, co-authored by Carl Van Horn and Herb Schaffner, the Center’s first Director of Communications, is published by Rutgers University Press.
Work in America: An Encyclopedia of History, Policy, and Society, edited by Carl Van Horn and Herb Schaffner, is published by ABC-CLIO. The book offers 256 entries by 75 contributors that examine key events, concepts, institutions, and individuals in labor history.
2004
William M. Rodgers III joins the center’s faculty as Chief Economist and Professor of Public Policy at the Bloustein School.
The Heldrich Center launches NJNextStop, a career awareness website developed for high school students in New Jersey.
2005
The Center assists the U.S. Chamber of Commerce in developing recommendations on workforce topics for the White House Conference on Aging.
2006
The Heldrich Conversations series is launched, featuring one-on-one discussions between Heldrich Center researchers and distinguished scholars, executives, and authors on critical workforce and social issues.
2007
The Heldrich Center’s headquarters, featuring the Raritan River Conference Center, opens.
The Center receives a $3 million endowment from the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation.
The Center receives $6 million to support a five-year project to create the National Technical Assistance and Research Center to Promote Leadership for Increasing Employment and Economic Independence of Adults with Disabilities.
2008
The Heldrich Center assists the State of New Jersey with the development of DiscoverAbility NJ, a strategic plan to create a comprehensive employment system for individuals with disabilities.
2009
The Heldrich Center develops career awareness materials for the biotechnology industry. This analysis is followed by similar projects examining health care; transit; transportation, logistics, and distribution; and green jobs.
2010
The Center hosts the first in a series of annual forums on workforce diversity.
Work Trends begins a multi-year examination of the experiences of workers who lost jobs during the Great Recession. Cliff Zukin, Professor of Public Policy at the Bloustein School, co-directs the project with Carl Van Horn.
The Center hosts visiting scholars who conduct research and share their ideas and insights with Center faculty and researchers during their residence periods.
2011
The Heldrich Center and Kessler Foundation launch a joint series reporting research on employing people with disabilities.
William Mabe is appointed Director of Research and Evaluation. He started employment at the Center in 2003 as a Project Director.
2012
The Heldrich Center begins work to expand the Workforce Longitudinal Data System with support from the federal government.
2013
Working Scared (or Not at all): The Lost Decade, Great Recession, and Restoring the Shattered American Dream is published by Rowman & Littlefield. The book, written by Carl Van Horn, includes analyses from Work Trends surveys conducted from 1998 to 2012.
The Heldrich Center receives the American Association for Public Opinion Research’s Policy Impact Award for its groundbreaking Work Trends series exploring the devastating consequences of the Great Recession and the sobering realities of unemployment in the United States.
2014
The Heldrich Center, the Federal Reserve Bank of Atlanta, and the Federal Reserve Bank of Kansas City host an international conference on workforce development in New Brunswick, New Jersey.
John J. Heldrich passes away at the age of 88.
2015
Laurence Downes, now retired Chairman and CEO of New Jersey Resources, is appointed Chair of the Heldrich Center’s National Advisory Board.
The Heldrich Center launches the New Start Career Network, a program designed to assist long-term unemployed and underemployed older job seekers in New Jersey. The Philip and Tammy Murphy Family Foundation provides primary funding for the program, which runs for nearly seven years and assists over 6,000 members.
Transforming U.S. Workforce Development Policies for the 21st Century, an edited book with dozens of chapters written by the nation’s leading workforce development policy experts, is published. It is a collaboration of Heldrich Center and the Federal Reserve Banks of Atlanta and Kansas City.
The State of New Jersey engages the Center to provide data consultation and project management assistance in managing the grant responsibilities and activities of New Jersey’s federally funded P-20W State Longitudinal Data Systems project.
2016
The New Jersey Education to Earnings Data System is created. Its core mission is to create a single place where state education, postsecondary education, employment, and workforce longitudinal data are securely stored, and information made available to stakeholders and the public for analysis in order to inform the public and policymakers about the performance of educational and workforce initiatives.
2017
The Heldrich Center, the Federal Reserve System, the Ray Marshall Center at the Lyndon B. Johnson School at the University of Texas, and the W.E. Upjohn Institute for Employment Research organize a national conference on workforce development in Austin, Texas. The event is part of a project, Investing in America’s Workplace: Improving Outcomes for Workers and Employers, that results in a three-volume edited book in 2018.
2018
Sean Simone is appointed Director of Research and Evaluation at the Center.
2019
The Center collaborates with the New Jersey Office of Innovation on the development of the New Jersey Career Network, a free resource to help job seekers to navigate their careers.
2020
Due to the COVID-19 pandemic, the Heldrich Center launches Suddenly Virtual, a series of products about how the public workforce system responds to the pandemic and strategies for virtual services through remote teams.
The New Jersey Career Network creates an online job seeker community to connect job seekers with volunteer coaches and other job seekers.
2021
Todd Greene, Executive Director of WorkRise at the Urban Institute, becomes the Chair of the Center’s National Advisory Board after Laurence Downes retires from New Jersey Resources.
Following the success of Suddenly Virtual, the Center unveils a follow-up series of products titled, Strategically Virtual. The series offers guidance to the public workforce system on being more strategically virtual at the state and local levels.
2022
Andrea Hetling, a Professor of Public Policy at the Bloustein School, is appointed Associate Director of the Heldrich Center.
Kathy Krepcio retires. Kevin Dehmer, previously Assistant Commissioner and Chief Financial Officer of the New Jersey Department of Education, is appointed Executive Director.
The Heldrich Center begins a multi-year project to increase the Certified Home Health Aide workforce in New Jersey.
2023
The Heldrich Center celebrates its 25th anniversary with a series of events and the addition of numerous new projects.
Sean Simone returns to the U.S. Department of Education as Branch Chief for Longitudinal Studies.
The New Jersey Education to Earnings Data System is renamed the New Jersey Statewide Data System.
2024
Kevin Dehmer resigns as Executive Director after being appointed Acting Commissioner of the New Jersey Department of Education.
Laurie Harrington, who was hired as the Center’s first employee in 1998, is appointed Executive Director.
The Heldrich Center hosts a networking event for both former and current staff and students; over 60 people attend the reunion.
