In the middle of the pandemic, an Orange County workplace expert introduced a pilot program in Southern California to help people with disabilities secure hands-on training for new jobs.
Three years later, that program — called Ready, Willing and ABLE — helped 100 people find apprenticeships in the healthcare sector, with many of them landing full-time positions.
Nicholas Wyman, the founder of the Aliso Viejo-based Institute for Workplace Skills and Innovation America where the apprenticeship program was incubated, played no small role in RWA’s success — which is expanding statewide.
His road to RWA was decades in the making. The high school dropout with dyslexia grew up in Melbourne, Australia. He found work as a chef, first at a resort and then at executive retreats for the the mining giant BHP, before enrolling at Harvard University.
Wyman’s IWSI America is partnering with the state’s Department of Rehabilitation again — as it did with the pilot — to place 600 apprentices into career jobs in fields including agriculture, advanced manufacturing, hospitality and tourism, information technology, renewable energy, traditional trades, and transportation and logistics.
“We are building a statewide infrastructure that empowers individuals with disabilities, equips employers with the skilled workforces they need, and strengthens the talent pipeline in key industries,” Wyman said.
Michael Harouni, a 29-year-old Fullerton resident who has high-functioning autism, started with RWA two years ago, learning about the program through a medical billing and coding course he took with the Healthcare Career College. The Paramount-based school offers certificates for budding entrepreneurs in massage therapy, and to those training to become ultrasound technicians, or nursing and medical assistants.
Harouni parlayed the certificate into an apprenticeship with Los Alamitos-based ACEF Enterprises, where today he works full-time processing medical bills, and phones insurance companies to update medical claims.
“It’s a good place to get experience,” he said of the $19-an-hour job with medical benefits. “There is a real sense of family here.”
The second phase of RWA is expanding to serve all of Southern California, the Bay Area, northern and central California.
There are some concerns about the program’s future funding status, especially with a weakening economy threatening RWA’s expansion.
Mark Erlichman, special adviser to the Department of Rehabilitation, said he’s cautiously optimistic the Trump administration won’t pull back more than $300 million set aside for California’s vocational rehabilitation budget — which has roughly $3 million earmarked for RWA.
“This is an unpacked talent pool that when businesses are looking for talent, they should absolutely take a look at people with disabilities. This is not a disability issue, not a social issue, or ‘Hey, hire someone with a disability,’ ” Erlichman said. “We hope employing people with disabilities crosses political lines. It’s common sense business, and it serves the needs of our economy.”
We asked Wyman about his work with IWSI America and his apprenticeship programs. His answers have been edited for clarity and length.
Q: What kinds of disabilities did the apprentices have who participated in the pilot program?
A: We had people with autism, several with cerebral palsy, and others who are either vision impaired or legally blind.
Q: Is the unemployment rate rising among people with disabilities?
A: It’s hard to track. One thing that happens when the economy tightens up, which it has right now, is a lot of companies take this short range view to workforce development, and they let go of entry level workers. And it’s not just retail, but also in hotels. There’s this thinking that they’ll let go of entry-level workers when times are tough, and when the economy picks up, we’ll just rehire these people and put them through a quick training session. That’s not the case at all.
I am certainly not seeing an economic boom right now. I’d say that a lot of employers I talk with are sitting on their hands. They want to see what’s going on with the economy, what’s going on with tariffs, what’s going on with this, what’s going on with that. I think with the uncertainty that’s around, employers aren’t out there saying this is the time to employ people.
(A labor force data report prepared by the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics found that the 2024 unemployment rate for people with a disability (7.5%) was nearly twice the rate of those without a disability, which is 3.8%.)
Q: Paint a picture of how serious of a situation there is in California with employers not hiring people with disabilities?
A: It’s a huge problem. There is no question. There are employers in advanced manufacturing working in assisting defense industries. They have jobs they can’t fill right now, and they can’t fill them because they’re trying to find someone who’s got the training to plug them into their particular processes.
Well, you might say, ‘Hang on, aren’t those jobs going to be taken over by AI (Artificial Intelligence)?’ No, they won’t be due to the dexterity skills required and the costs of building robotics. They need people.
Our program is in the process of being registered with the state of California, which takes a long time with the (Division of Apprenticeship Standards, or DAS, the state agency that administers California’s apprenticeship laws and sets standards for wages, hours, and skills in various trades.)
Q: Where are you finding people with disabilities to enroll in your program?
A: We work with the Department of Rehabilitation, and they have access to these case workers all over the state. They refer candidates to us.
Which came first, the chicken or the egg. We create the jobs first, because there’s no use taking on all these people and saying you want to do an apprenticeship. We need to get the jobs first.
We let our Department of Rehabilitation counselors know about the jobs. If we had some pharmacy technicians, for instance, we would work with CVS to place them in the following locations, and welcome people to apply from those regions.
Q: How many people are expressing interest in the program?
A: I’d say the interest for participant referrals is enormous. We had more candidates than we had slots and jobs. So my work right now is I spend time with my team, talking to employers, saying, ‘Hey, you’ve got this job. Here is how we can help?’
We are registered with the U.S. Department of Labor (DOL) as a apprenticeship sponsor — such as for technical trades, working in agriculture or customer service.
Because we are registered, we can speak with a specific retailer about us becoming an intermediary to begin a registration process for these apprentices. If they didn’t have an intermediary like us, they’d have to start a registration process with the government, which could take months to years. There’s a lot of red tape. It’s like peeling back layers of an onion.
In the pilot program, we didn’t have the registration process approved by the DOL, and we had a lot of employers who wanted to do it, but the registration process was daunting.
The economy is changing. I mean, imagine an employer committing to hire all of these people, and then something disrupts their industry. We’ve now set up our statewide program a process where employers don’t have to wait to hire apprentices. That was probably the biggest innovation from the pilot.
Q: Has the program launched statewide yet?
A: The program launched in late July, early August. So, we’ve not been at this for long. Right now, we’re building the employer phase. We’re reaching out to employers and letting them know a reason why they should get involved.
There are a lot of incentives that federal and state agencies offer employers to take on apprentices.
Times are tough. Employers are feeling the pinch, but with an aging workforce, you don’t want to be letting go of entry level workers. You want to be doubling down on training, not firing your entry level workers, because one thing we know about economies, is that they work in cycles. The economy is going to turn around, and when it does, a lot of these industries are going to be scrambling for workers.
Q: Where else has IWSI America established apprentices?
A: We helped set up an apprenticeship program to support people with Down Syndrome in Kansas. IWSI teamed up with the Kansas City Chiefs and Down Syndrome Innovations to create employment opportunities for people with Down Syndrome.
IWSI America also ran an apprenticeship program with the Interstate Renewable Energy Council, and worked on apprenticeship programs for the maritime industry and setting up a registered U.S. forestry apprenticeship program. (IWSI America and the U.S. Forest Service launched a new national forestry technician apprenticeship in late 2024 to address workforce gaps in forestry and public land management.)
About Nick Wyman
Age: 59
Title: Executive director of Institute for Workplace Skills and Innovation America
Degrees and honors: A master’s in Business Administration from Harvard Business School, studied at Harvard’s John F. Kennedy School of Government, and recently enrolled with the university’s medical school. He was named a Winston Churchill Fellow in 2012 for a project studying new approaches to engaging young Australians in skilled careers.
Employees: 20
Located: 120 Vantis Dr., Aliso Viejo
IWSI America founding: 2018
Author: Job U: How to find wealth and success by developing the skills companies need (Penguin, 2015), and Attract, Retain, Develop: Shaping a Skilled Workforce for the future (Fast Company Press, 2025)
Employers in Ready Willing and ABLE: California State Society of Opticians, Healthcare Career College, West Los Angeles College and the Uniquely Abled Academy.
