Julie Parks is the Executive Director of Workforce Training and the Leslie Tassell M-TEC at Grand Rapids Community College (GRCC). She has over 20 years’ experience in workforce development.  Under her leadership, the GRCC, workforce team successfully trained over 20,198 individuals in 2018-19 and provided training for 437 companies in various sectors, with a student completion rate of 86% and a placement rate of 93%.  In addition, in 2019, GRCC was awarded six different grants for workforce training programs, many focused on low-income neighborhoods and skill trades, and holds a $6 million dollar U.S. Department of Labor America’s Promise Grant focusing on health pathways. She and her team won the 2019 League for Innovation, Innovation of the Year, for the creation of a Sterile Processing Apprenticeship, and were finalists for the 2019 Bellwether Award for community colleges for the public works academy; and received a national promising practice designation for medical assistant apprenticeships.