Diving deeper into trauma and toxic stress with white paper co-author Mo McKenna

New white paper provides a call-to-action for building resilience 

It’s an unfortunate truth that trauma and stress are today an all-too-common part of everyday life — for students, for workforce participants and for the staff members who support each group. In this environment, we found it imperative to write a new white paper: From Crisis to Resilience: Addressing Trauma and Toxic Stress in Workforce Development. 

By partnering with our peers at Corporation for a Skilled Workforce (CSW), our hope was to offer a greater understanding of the complex challenges and provide actionable trauma-informed, healing-centered solutions — adding to the conversation with insights and actionable steps that can be used right now. This blog is written by Mo McKenna, associate vice president of partner success at InsideTrack and co-author of the just-released white paper, to shed more light on the “why” behind this project.

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A catalyst for change: Coaching veterans to overcome obstacles

When I started working as a coach at InsideTrack in late 2010, the country was only beginning its recovery from the Great Recession. The unemployment rate was still sitting stubbornly above 9%, millions of homeowners were underwater on their mortgages, and foreclosures continued to make headlines. I was assigned to work on our partnership with Brandman University (now UMass Global), a nonprofit university in California focused on adult learners that offered evening, hybrid and fully online courses. My job was to coach students as they enrolled in college and started their classes, with a goal of helping them get off to a strong start. Brandman also specialized in serving military-connected students and veterans, so my early days at InsideTrack became a crash course in learning about the U.S. military — everything from acronyms and Post-9/11 GI Bill policies to the crucial skills needed to work with service members and their families. 

It was an unequivocally terrible time to return from war. I was working with service members who had done three, four, five or more active-duty tours in Iraq and Afghanistan. These people had sacrificed so much for our country. They had lost friends, some had become disabled, many were suffering with post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) — and now they were returning home to no jobs and no prospects. 

Fortunately, the Post-9/11 GI Bill included a monthly housing allowance for full-time students. So even if there weren't job opportunities, these veterans could provide housing for themselves and their families by enrolling in college. Unfortunately, many of the veterans I supported had enlisted because they never liked school — so going to college after the service was never their Plan A. But the job market was dire, and they needed money for housing, so Plan B it was! 

Because I was working with veterans, my coach training included learning about how to work with people who have PTSD. I was a good student, and I kept a running list on my desk of things that would come up in conversations with the students I worked with:

• Send next steps via email after a phone meeting — PTSD causes issues with declarative memory
• Narrate what is going to happen during the meeting to reduce uncertainty — uncertainty can be perceived as a threat
• Legitimize the student’s feeling that the classroom isn’t safe and create a plan that increases their feeling of safety — hypervigilance is normal for those who have seen active duty

I found that the coaching work I did with veterans was some of the most rewarding work I had ever done. I believe that I positively impacted many of their lives — I got to coach many of these students through the challenges and excitements that come with enrolling in school — but I know that they left a huge impact on me and my career. I became committed to contributing to learning and work environments that would create space for people and all their human complexity — systems where the human resources were equipped to offer holistic support, and the processes and policies didn’t cause additional stress. 

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Shining a spotlight on trauma-informed approaches for support

Nearly a decade and a half later, I am still actively working on trauma-informed coaching skills at InsideTrack. The foundations of the skills are the same, but what has shifted is the context in which we apply them. We now use trauma-informed and healing-centered engagement skills with everyone we work with, not just veterans. 

Interest in this topic was already rapidly growing when the pandemic hit, bringing mental and emotional well-being to the forefront. Nowhere has that been more evident than in the areas of workforce development and education.

Indeed, who could have lived the past few years and not have some history of trauma? And in an era where individuals are balancing their mental and emotional well-being with the many demands of everyday life, what person wouldn’t benefit from an email with the next steps following the phone meeting?

Today, all of our coaches and all of our partners engaged with us on professional development receive basic training on trauma-informed and healing-centered engagement skills. And we offer advanced tracks for people working in spaces where chronic and persistent trauma are prevalent. 

In the lead up to, and in the writing of, From Crisis to Resilience: Addressing Trauma and Toxic Stress in Workforce Development and Education Systems, I had the opportunity to talk to practitioners engaged in the public workforce system, high schools and colleges. These conversations reinforced the importance of this work: there are so many human beings who want to show up and provide a safe and empathetic place for others to learn, grow and discover their passion in life; we just need to equip them with the tools. 

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From crisis to resilience: Coming full circle

As someone who has spent years working with learners impacted by trauma and toxic stress, and now as someone who supports workforce development organizations as they do the same, I have seen firsthand the value that coaching — and InsideTrack’s proven coaching methodology specifically — can bring to workforce participants, learners and the staff members who serve them. 

It's clear that the need for easy-to-implement frameworks and resources to address this nationwide issue is greater than ever, and is one of the key reasons I was proud to co-author this white paper. Through the power of coaching, our work creates opportunity, facilitates economic and social mobility, advances equity, and enhances well-being. While all are part of our holistic coaching methodology, that last one is a strength that’s near and dear to my heart. Addressing mental, physical and emotional well-being — for workforce participants and students, along with the staff members who support them — is crucial to helping individuals and organizations not only succeed, but thrive. 

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Mo McKenna is an accomplished professional in the field of workforce development with a strong focus on partnership building and program design. As an Associate Vice President of Partner Success at InsideTrack, Mo develops strategic partnerships with workforce development organizations, education and training providers, and employers. She is passionate about leveraging trauma-informed and healing-centered coaching methodologies to break down barriers and provide individuals with education and career support to achieve economic mobility. 

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