I returned from the American Association of Community Colleges’ (AACC) annual Workforce Development Institute (WDI) feeling excited about the leaders of today’s community colleges. Dr. DeRionne Pollard, the new president and CEO of AACC, and the first woman to hold that role in the organization’s 105-year history, is not managing a transition. She’s poised to lead a reckoning.
As a first-generation college graduate who has served as president at Montgomery College (Maryland), Las Positas College (California) and Nevada State University, Pollard brings decades of hands-on institutional leadership to the national stage. She used her keynote at WDI to make one thing painfully clear: the community college sector is running out of time to get its story straight.
Her keynote was the kind of speech that doesn’t just inform you. It reframes everything you thought you knew about where community colleges sit in the American workforce story. If you weren’t in that room, you need to catch up — fast.
China has 1.4 billion people. The United States has roughly 350 million to 400 million. Pollard laid out a thought experiment that I haven’t been able to shake: if China educated one-third of its workforce — just one-third — the United States would have to educate everyone to keep pace. It’s basic arithmetic, but the importance of the work being done at community colleges cannot be overstated. This comparison should make every higher education professional in this country uncomfortable, and then immediately purposeful.
Here’s what Pollard made unmistakably clear. The community college sector is the fastest path to building an educated, AI-enabled workforce. Not one of the fastest, the fastest.
What needs to happen?
Pollard’s central message wasn’t complicated, it was urgent. Community colleges must reconnect with the message of value; they’ve spent decades apologizing for what they are instead of owning what they do. That changes now — or it should.
Owning the value proposition isn’t enough. Pollard pushed the sector toward something harder, something that requires a fundamental shift in how they operate. She called for community colleges to function as an ecosystem.
Shared goals, shared accountability and shared outcomes.
Institutions, employers, workforce partners, all aligned, all measuring the same things, all moving at the same speed. That means deeper relationships, not transactional ones. Real partnerships are built on mutual investment, mutual data and mutual skin in the game. Pollard didn’t just talk about the need for deeper relationships between community colleges and employers. She showed the room what those relationships look like when they’re real. She cited companies that have made significant, sustained investments in community colleges, including Lowe’s, CVS, Siemens and Lockheed Martin. These weren’t small gestures; they are strategic commitments from organizations that understand that community colleges are where their next workforce comes from.
Here’s what’s important about that list. It’s not a coincidence that those companies span retail, healthcare, manufacturing and defense. The list represents a cross-sector signal that the corporate world is watching community with growing interest in what’s already working at scale. The question isn’t whether employers want to partner, the question is whether community colleges are telling their stories loud enough — and with enough data — to make those partnerships undeniable.
Language matters
One of the sharpest moments in Pollard’s speech was deceptively simple. She said: stop calling it “the trades.” Instead, call it what it is — professional work, professional pathways, and professional careers. These aren’t simple word changes; they are a strategic reframing to prevent the further decline of value perception.
The moment we use the word “trades,” we’ve already lost the narrative battle. We’ve told the students, the parents, the employers and the public that community colleges are a lesser option. Pollard is drawing a line in the sand and asking her colleagues to do the same. The language we use is the story we tell, and the story being told is limiting.
Pollard said something that rang true in a room full of higher education professionals: the concept of time must change. Employers don’t think in semesters, and students don’t think in semesters. Only we do, and that rigidity is costing us. Pollard was honest about the gaps. There is still real confusion and uncertainty across the sector about workforce development more broadly, and Workforce Pell grants are at the center of the confusion.
Most importantly, community colleges must tell stories of student need at scale. To truly tell the story of community colleges, the life-changing stories of students and their families must take front and center. When leaders become master storytellers, they can change the perception of everyone around them. Community colleges are uniquely positioned to deliver for students wanting workforce pathways. The story is there; it has to be told – loudly.
‘Resilience is designed, not inherited’
That was Pollard’s line, and it might be the most important sentence spoken at the conference. It connects directly to the work AACC has already begun; its “Resilient by Design” report, released just months into Pollard’s tenure, calls on community colleges to reimagine long-term planning in the face of demographic shifts, economic realignment and accelerating technology.
Pollard isn’t just writing reports about resilience. She’s encouraging that the sector builds it — intentionally, structurally, and right now.
Dr. DeRionne Pollard didn’t come to AACC to manage the status quo. She came to move it with data, with urgency and with a vision that places community colleges squarely at the center of America’s workforce future. The sector has the assets, the partnerships are forming, and the corporate investment is real. What may be missing is the collective will to move as fast as the moment demands. Resilience is designed; it’s time to start designing it.
