In 2011, the mayor launched the “College to Careers” (C2C) program, a joint initiative between the City Colleges of Chicago (CCC) and local industry, including insurance. The goal is to help close the skills gap, provide students with exposure to real-world job requirements, and produce graduates who can go on to employment or a four-year program.

Insurance is big business in Chicago and Illinois. A 2012 study by the Katie School of Insurance and Financial Services at Illinois State University finds that the industry employs more than 141,000 and contributes 4.2% of the state's gross domestic product—higher than construction, transportation, and information.

Chicago's community colleges, with seven schools and 115,000 students, have low tuition and open enrollment, making them attractive to a diverse demographic of inner-city students. But the system's graduation rates have hovered around 7%, and post-grad career paths have been faint.

Emanuel saw the CCC system as a perfect incubator for laser-specific job training for the city's six industry sectors, including insurance, that generate 80% of local job growth.

His plan was to turn each of the seven City Colleges into centers of excellence targeted to specific industries such as healthcare, TDL, and culinary. Harold Washington College, the largest in the system with more than 15,000 students, would be the center for business, professional services and entrepreneurship, including insurance.

Emanuel began approaching insurance leaders in 2012 for input on curricula based on each company's specific job requirements. Corporate partners included Aon, Allstate, Country Financial, Kemper, Willis and Zurich.

The insurance pathway courses at Harold Washington officially launched last August with three classes, says Paul Thompson, dean of the C2C program. Today, there are four classes: sales mamagement, business processes, business communicatino, and special topics in technology, focusing on advanced Excel and PowerPoint.

These were designed based on input from human resources departments on what skills were needed for entry-level jobs, says John Atkinson, managing director at Willis Group Holdings. “The mayor wanted us to provide input and support the initiative, and to provide the opportunity to interview potential job seekers and provide internships, so we were thrilled to do it,” he says.

Community college involvement is nothing new for Atkinson. He serves on the board of directors of the One Million Degrees (OMD) program, a non-profit Chicago organization that empowers low-income, highly motivated community college students to succeed in school, work and life. Willis has been involved in the program for the past five years, providing mentoring and academic support services.

Key to C2C's success is internships. Willis is participating in an upcoming job fair at Harold Washington and Atkinson is interested to seeing how the first crop of students with insurance courses under their belts will work out for internships.

Aon, which like Willis has been involved in C2C since its inception, hired six interns from Harold Washington last summer, extended continuing internships to four of them, and hired two in part-time permanent positions, says Aaron Olson, Aon's vice president, global head of talent engagement.

Although it partners with four-year colleges, universities and apprenticeship programs around the world, involvement at the community college level is a first for Aon. “We're interested in getting involved wherever we can find a school that's interested in partnering,” Olson says. “The opportunity to help in Chicago was very much in line with our overall view of how we work with places to find the best talent.”

One of Aon's permanent hires is Carmen Hines, a Harold Washington general studies grad who got her “first experience learning about insurance or a Fortune 500 company” at an educational forum at the college last summer. (Aon hired a second Harold Washington intern, a Polish native, to work in its offices in Krakow.)

After the presentation, Hines approached Olson to ask about available jobs and internships at Aon. The conversation led her to a summer internship at the brokerage, where among other projects, she worked on a student survey for a master's program that Aon sponsors at a school in Israel. The project gave Hines the idea to develop her own survey to gauge the experiences of Aon's more than 100 interns nationwide. She created and distributed the survey, to which 85% responded. The results provide a clear picture of the intern experience at Aon and were distributed throughout the company.

Along with her job at Aon, Hines is also continuing her education at Northwestern University, majoring in communications studies and minoring in psychology. Although she's not sure if she'll stay in insurance, she sees a future at Aon because “I love the company and I'm happy with my alignment here.”

Hines says she would “absolutely” recommend insurance as a career path for her peers. “There are a lot of misconceptions about insurance,” she says. “You don't necessarily need a finance or other specific background. I graduated with a general studies degree and I'm able to take everything I've learned and apply it to the job. I would definitely tell anyone to give it a shot.”

So far, 60 students at Harold Washington have taken at least one of the four insurance business courses, Thompson says. At first, it was a tough sell: “One of the challenges we have in marketing to our students is that they all have this perception that insurance is just Allstate, State Farm, Met Life, or the creepy guy in the kitchen trying to sell their parents life insurance they don't need,” he says. But as success stories like Carmen Hines' get around, Thompson expects to see more student interest in insurance as a career path.

To keep the ball rolling, Harold Washington has recently entered into a relationship with the Katie School of Insurance, looking at ways to market the C2C program to students, which in turn will create a pipeline of potential students to the Katie School.

CCC's commitment to practical career paths has already seen results: graduation rates, which once hovered in the single digits, are expected to hit about 13% this year, Thompson says.

All of these elements make C2C a win-win-win—for students, the school, and for industry. “The quality of the opportunities that students are exposed to are incredible, especially the internships and full-time placement,” Thompson says. “These are life-changing experiences for our students.”

Carmen Hines is a perfect example. A product of Chicago's magnet schools, including the prestigious Whitney Young, she attended Eastern Illinois University after graduating high school because it was the most affordable for her mother, who works as a nurse. When her mother could no longer afford to pay tuition, Carmen was forced to quit school and go to work. She found Harold Washington because it was affordable, close to her job, and a practical way for her to continue her education. Her performance there landed her on the dean's list, led to the internship and job at Aon, and ultimately to acceptance and a scholarship at Northwestern.