Kelly Henwood is the Special Projects Manager at San Diego Continuing Education (SDCE), the noncredit adult education institution of the San Diego Community College District (SDCCD). SDCE serves approximately forty thousand students annually providing no-cost adult education and career technical education courses within the City of San Diego. SDCE provides a crucial transitional pathway for adult learners into SDCCD’s three community colleges: City, Mesa and Miramar.
As the Special Projects Manager, Kelly assists to build greater connections between noncredit adult education and workforce development strategies. Kelly designed a program model to provide intensive supports for Opportunity Youth at SDCE and was successful at securing funding through the local workforce development board as well as leveraging existing funding and services of the adult education system. Kelly’s focus is also on grant management and supporting the alignment of multiple categorical funding streams with workforce system priorities for programs such as WIOA Title II: Adult Education Family Literacy Grant; Adult Education Block Grant (AEBG); Strong Workforce, and Department of Labor WIOA Title I Youth. Working across departments with key administrators, faculty and staff is an important aspect of her work, particularly for large system initiatives such as AEBG. AEBG is a new categorical funding stream administered by the California Community College Chancellors Office that has the intent to restructure of adult education services and improve coordination to better serve the needs of adult learners. SDCE is part of a rregional consortium along with San Diego Unified School District. Kelly brings over 20 years of experience in nonprofit and public organizations in San Diego, Southern Nevada, and Oregon, with particular focus on workforce and youth development. She has a proven track record of building programs, departments, and systems utilizing multiple funding sources. Her background demonstrates extensive work developing cross-system partnerships focused on underserved populations such as Opportunity Youth, particularly those who have dropped out of school, are in the juvenile justice system or part of the child welfare system. Kelly has directed the youth departments for local workforce boards in San Diego and Southern Nevada, and youth reentry programming at Second Chance in Southeastern San Diego. Kelly has a Master’s degree in Nonprofit Management and Leadership from the University Of San Diego, School Of Leadership and Education Studies (SOLES) and a Bachelor’s degree in Sociology from the University of Oregon. |