We caught up with the brilliant and insightful Marthea L. Pitts, MSW a few weeks ago and have shared our conversation below.
Marthea L., looking forward to hearing all of your stories today. What’s the backstory behind how you came up with the idea for your business?
As a 3x award-winning workforce development career counselor and macro-focused (advocacy and program design) social worker, I became very intrigued with solving the deeply rooted equity issues I saw as a result of federal policy interpretation and implementation on the local level. Mainly because in 2017, the city I lived in, Tallahassee, Florida, was identified to be one of the most economically segregated cities in the nation. 2017 was the same year I was working on the frontlines as a workforce development career counselor in a regional workforce board. Finding this out years later explained why it was so hard for the career seekers I served to find and secure sufficient employment. The city of Tallahassee is a major college town that has three universities and colleges. What this meant for the career seekers I served was that job opportunities were seasonal and non-permanent. They would get hired in mass numbers when the semesters would begin and then laid off when the semesters ended. Which then caused the career seekers to have to reenter the federal safety net program I helped to administer. Life-long self-sufficiency became impossible for those in the program.
Moreover, it was commonplace for the same participant families to cycle in and out of the program generation after generation. After learning about the glaring differences in how the program was being administered in different regions in Florida. And how the differences in my region created more barriers than onramps for participants. I created a professional mission to create more equitable career pathway opportunities for underresourced populations and communities. After using the career planning and job search strategies and frameworks, I used to help career seekers in my city obtain employment. I landed a job as the Director of a Global Learning Pathway, where I was responsible for designing a career education pathway program for pregnant and parenting youth and adults worldwide. The program is still in existence to this day.
It was in that position that I realized that I could not change the world by myself and that I needed to find a way to help more master’s degree-level social workers get jobs like these. Jobs where they could use their valuable frontline experiences and education to secure larger-scale jobs. To help move the needle closer to change for their populations. So from there, The MSW Coach™ career education consulting firm was born. After doing some research, I learned that social workers struggled with finding jobs outside of case management and social service work. Moreover, they struggled with identifying, applying, and interviewing for macro jobs mainly because they are not taught much about the macro side of social work in their degree programs. So there was a significant need.
What sets me apart from other career coaches is that I am a true macro social worker. I have had several macro jobs, from Global Director, Workforce Development Policy Consultant, Higher Ed Researcher & Teaching Faculty, to my most recent position with one of the oldest Washington, DC-based think tanks in the country. Where I served as the Senior Program Specialist for Postsecondary and Workforce Success. In that role, I worked with national Mayors and their executive leadership teams to help them design equitable career pathway opportunities and work to address deeply rooted systems issues in their cities. Specifically through policy changes and collective impact approaches.
As always, we appreciate you sharing your insights and we’ve got a few more questions for you, but before we get to all of that can you take a minute to introduce yourself and give our readers some of your back background and context?
Marthea L. Pitts, MSW, is a 3x award-winning workforce development career counselor and macro-focused (program design and advocacy) social worker. She is a current Educational Leadership PhD student at the Florida A&M University.
Marthea’s social entrepreneurship journey was featured on LinkedIn News. She has partnered with national organizations such as the HBCU Career Center and the National Association of Social Workers (NASW).
Her commitment to challenging the status quo of economic development through career and education pathway design birthed The MSW Coach™.
As the founder and lead consultant of The MSW Coach™, she helps individuals design changemaking and mission-driven careers where they can move the needle closer to progress for the populations and issues they love most and thrive personally and professionally.
We’d love to hear the story of how you built up your social media audience?
Those that follow my work find me through organic marketing. I just show up and be Marthea. Authentically Marthea at all times. I purposely do not have a perfectly curated feed because that is not who I am. I am a collection of all of my experiences and the experiences of those I encounter. So my advice to new business owners is always be authentically you. It can be hard sometimes when you see what others are doing in the world but be true to you. Don’t ever comprise who you are. Your community will find you.
How do you keep in touch with clients and foster brand loyalty?
I keep in touch with former clients via email. As a career coach, I am committed to their professional growth and success. In order to help them through their macro career journey, I must stay in contact with them. Over the past several years, I have learned that just being me and being invested in their success has created The MSW Coach™ brand champions. They tell everyone they know about my services because they know I am committed to helping more changemakers get into the positions they deserve—jobs where they can scale their impact and reach.
Contact Info:
- Website: https://macroandpaid.com/
- Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/the_mswcoach/
- Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/themswcoach/
- Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/themswcoach/
- Twitter: https://twitter.com/themswcoach?lang=en
- Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/@themswcoach
- Yelp: N/A
- Other: martheapitts.com
Image Credits
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