New Workforce Podcast Gives Quad-Cities Students a Glimpse of Many Careers
Melissa Pepper and Matt Rebro are a real piece of work, literally.
In their big jobs, they work with many local clients – she’s president of Total Solutions (which handles information technology, accounting,
An Augustana College alum, Melissa Pepper is president of Total Solutions.
payroll, marketing and human-resources functions for small to mid-sized businesses throughout the Quad-Cities), and he’s vice president of business development for Russell Construction (which helps build the entire region).
The super-friendly, unpretentious pair are also building something new on the air, and in the minds of many Q-C students, as hosts of the new podcast “A Real Piece of Work.”
Launched in early March, it’s a partnership with Junior Achievement of the Heartland (JA) and WVIK (90.3 FM), the Quad-Cities NPR station.
Rebro has volunteered for JA 20 years altogether, and is currently on the Q-C affiliate’s board.
A Luther College alum, Matt Rebro is vice president of business development for Russell.
“My mindset has always been – if we can help instill good values in the future workforce, they can go out and do good things, the impact of catching them at a grade-school, junior-high level I think is tremendous,” he said Wednesday. “As a business person, we need a good quality workforce, so it goes hand in hand.”
In 2019, Rebro joined the JA of the Heartland board. He had listened to other podcasts about workforce development, and wanted to start a local one.
“It just hit me in the face – maybe there’s an opportunity here, now that I’m on the JA board, to marry up and create an opportunity,” Rebro said. When he approached WVIK about it, they liked that it targeted a demographic (students) that they really didn’t serve before.
“Workforce development is an obviously important topic in any community. And we think this is a way we can help,” said Jared Johnson, WVIK’s director of development and community engagement, who helps produce many other local podcasts.
“But as an organization, we do not really have much history in serving youth and that is an area within which we can grow,” Jonson said. “So when we look at ‘LOVE Girls: The Podcast’ and ‘A Real Piece of Work,’ we see an opportunity to provide education and entertainment to a large segment of the Quad-Cities who would otherwise have no relationship with us. We are excited to join JA and LOVE Girls Magazine in these spaces and look forward to taking on more projects along these lines.”
The mission of JA is “to inspire and prepare young people to succeed in a global economy,” and thassume local Moline-based chapter serves more than 30,500 students in the Q-C, Dubuque, Muscatine, Burlington, Sauk Valley and Illinois Valley areas.
The new podcast is “in direct alignment with Junior Achievement’s mission of inspiring and preparing students to succeed in our global
The logo for “A Real Piece of Work” podcast.
economy. The opportunity to partner with WVIK and our co-hosts, Matt Rebro and Melissa Pepper, is a win-win for our students and community,” said Christy Kunz, vice president of education for Junior Achievement of the Heartland:
The podcast is targeted at junior high and high school students. The goal of “A Real Piece of Work” podcasts is to “educate and inspire our future workforce by making them aware of employment options available to them,” she said.
“The hope is that students will gain a wider knowledge of different career fields available to them,” Kunz said. The show (typically running 20 to 30 minutes each episode) features real people sharing real stories on how they found their passion and navigated their path to career success.
Rebro and Pepper “dig into personal and professional choices that led each featured guest to where they are today,” Kunz said. “The podcast introduces teens to careers they may or may not be familiar with and provides tips on finding the right career for them.”
“JA is always looking for unique ways to partner with educators and ultimately impact students in our community,” JA president/CEO Dougal Nelson said Wednesday. “The podcast offers a unique learning opportunity that meets the needs of students and educators who are focused on work and career readiness.”
No “one” way to career fulfillment
The podcast isn’t designed to help students choose a career, but simply present the array of options, and educate them on what it takes to prepare and get into that field. They have produced seven episodes so far.
Podcast hosts Melissa Pepper and Matt Rebro keep each episode to under 30 minutes.
“I think it’s meant to really open your horizons and not really be like, select this,” Pepper said. “It’s meant to go, this sounds interesting and help students say, ‘Wow, I didn’t even know those classes or skills or major was necessary for this job, and now I do, and I’m excited to continue exploring, not now I have to be on this track.”
Sometimes, society pressures students to pick a career too soon, she said.
“Eighteen years old is pretty young to be choosing your life, so instead how do we help shape them and help with the decision-making process and exploration process, so they know their options,” Pepper said. “Not necessarily so they know, I’m gonna be a physical therapist, which is a wonderful career, by the way.”
Growing up in Byron, Ill., she was going to be a physical therapist when she started at Augustana College, Rock Island, and said after taking chemistry classes for a year, she hated it.
“I don’t know what I knew about myself. My self-awareness was lacking,” Pepper said, ending up changing her major four times, earning a 2009 degree in communications and English.
“My parents were appalled by those choices, and maybe still are,” she said. “Obviously, the beauty of a liberal-arts college is you can do some of that exploration, but it would have been lovely too to have done some of that a little earlier, so that I
Brian Golinvaux works at Lillie’s Q in Chicago.
didn’t suffer through chemistry.”
Pepper has had a varied career, working for the Mississippi Valley Regional Blood Center, earning her MBA at University of Iowa, becoming the first marketing director for the Lane & Waterman law firm, and founding Lead(h)er, which provides mentors and networking for young professional women. She’s been Total Solutions president since January 2019.
Rebro’s father worked in IT for John Deere, and his mom was a Moline librarian.
“Too many people wake up 10 years post high school and say, I wish I would have,” he said. “I’m trying to avoid ‘I wish I woulda.’ I had two very educated parents and they sent me off to Luther College and said get a degree in accounting, and I’m like, why?”
Rebro said that wasn’t for him; he earned his 1994 degree in business management and pursued a different path in construction.
“I enjoy being able to have a small imprint on skylines and creating jobs, and economic development for communities,” he said of working for Russell.
Dr. Roberto Moreno works at Gentle Family Dentistry.
Rebro said an eye-opening podcast interview was Brian Golinvaux, an Assumption alum who worked in the media world a long time, and after age 40, decided to start a barbecue sauce business (Lillie’s Q in Chicago), as an entrepreneur.
“Keep this in the back of your mind, that you might have a passion and if it’s not in the short-term,
eventually pivot – there’s nothing wrong with that,” he said.
Some podcast guests did have a clarity of purpose early on, Pepper said, noting a dentist who went into his family business.
“Sometimes you know, and then we have our nurse – he worked for a manufacturing company for many years and recently got his nursing degree,” she said. “That is one of my favorite interviews, because he was born to be a nurse. He’s a late in life, getting that degree and doing that. I hope if you listen, I think you see that theme of, everyone’s road is different – but also how cool is it that all the folks we’ve interviewed are really passionate about what they do.
“We also had some big names, because we interviewed someone from Google,” Pepper said. “That’s pretty cool.”
Rebro nabbed that guest because he’s godfather to his son; he met him in Chicago and he lives in Oakland now. “Part of what we need to do as podcast hosts – with WVIK and JA – is promote,” Rebro said. “If a kid hears something that gets them inspired, the tech space is for them, and wants to know what it’s like to be at Google, that’s part of the promotion.”
Combining financial skill with a love of sports, could lead to a job as an accountant for the Green Bay Packers, he said as an example.
Rebro started volunteering with JA in classrooms in the mid-‘90s, had been with Russell in the late ‘90s and worked in Chicago for 17 years
Christy Kunz is vice president of education for Junior Achievement of the Heartland.
(teaching JA there as well), before rejoining Russell in 2017.
He worked for Pepper Construction in Chicago, which is owned by Melissa’s husband’s family (started by Dan Pepper’s great-grandfather).
“One hundred percent coincidence,” Melissa said, noting it focuses on commercial construction.
“Russell and Pepper ironically built the Figge Art Museum together,” Rebro said.
Melissa was a JA classroom volunteer in 2009, soon after graduating from Augustana, and has been a guest presenter over the years.
“I asked Dougal who would be an ideal co-host, and he said, what about this Melissa Pepper?” Rebro said. “That’s how it was – it was like a blind date that worked.”
They started planning with the Q-C NPR station last fall, began recording in February, and aired the first episode in early March. JA already has produced videos on careers from local and national speakers, available at https://jaheartland.org/ja-career-speakers-videos/.
“Our target audience is junior high and high school students,” Pepper said, noting they choose one local student for each episode to record a question for their guest.
A true Q-C partnership
With WVIK, the podcast uses a professional recording system called Zencastr, which has better audio than what you would get through Skype or Zoom, Johnson said. Zencastr has a video option “that allows the hosts and guests to see each other, which helps the conversation feel natural, but we don’t record that or use it,” he said.
Jared Johnson is director of development and community engagement for WVIK.
“Fresh Films, the national program currently housed at Augustana College, has been great with connecting us to interns able to assemble and edit the podcasts,” Johnson said. “They have done all the work needed to get these episodes ready to distribute.”
“We’ve also had some partnerships to help us find our guests – like the Moline Foundation, the Greater Quad Cities Hispanic Chamber, obviously VIK and JA, and then Matt knows everyone,” Pepper said. “He finds all these amazing guests and I just show up. I also have helped a little.
“It is awesome that Matt’s the driving force for the guests, but I will also think of someone,” Pepper said. “We’ve had some really fun guests on and we really get to have some good conversations.”
Katie Castillo-Wilson is founder and CEO of TapOnIt.
Recent guests included Katie Castillo-Wilson, founder and CEO of TapOnIt, a Q-C-based text promotional business that has grown to over 40 markets nationwide, and Brandon Nickerson, a registered nurse in the Neurology/Oncology Unit at Genesis Health System.
“At the end of the day, it’s a much better interview because Melissa’s there. I’d be too boring,” Rebro said. “It’s been a lot of fun to do.”
“We just want kids to walk away from it and say, ‘That’s exactly what I thought it was gonna be and I’m so happy that I’m going down this path,’ or says, ‘What? You’ve got to be that great at science to be a CSI investigator? Uh-unh, that’s not me,” Rebro said. “Great, that’s a win – they
One podcast guest was Garry Young of Google.
pivot and figure out something else.”
“It’s really fun and it’s not a ton of time,” Pepper said of doing the podcast. “Matt is so prepared, but for me, it’s popping in hot, two minutes before the interview, 23 minutes and then we’re off. It’s a really beautiful way to volunteer my time and whether or not I’m good at it or not, it allows me to give to JA, my time, in a way that’s using my strengths and skills. I think that’s really awesome.
“Isn’t that the perfect formula for giving?” she asked. “When you can give of your skills in a way that really helps an organization and makes you feel good. I can lend my voice to their microphone, to help with their mission.”
“I kept searching for the right committee to be involved with on the board,” Rebro said. “This is my big give as a board member, to help raise the awareness in this target audience.”
“A Real Piece of Work” is also a great collaboration among several area schools, businesses and nonprofits, they said.
The Matt and Melissa partnership is reinforced even further since Rebro’s wife – coincidentally named Melissa – for the past year and a half has run JA’s BizTown at JA World in downtown Davenport, and Pepper has a brother named Matt. Rebro has three kids (ages 13, 12 and 7) and Pepper has two (ages 6 and 2).
To hear podcast episodes, visit https://www.npr.org/podcasts/985158983/a-real-piece-of-work-a-jobs-podcast-for-young-people.
For of all WVIK’s podcasts, visit https://www.npr.org/podcasts/organizations/679.
