MakerUSA

MakerUSA will train and place Program Managers (PMs) at partner Innovation Sites. PMs will be full-time MakerUSA staff on 12-18 month, renewable contracts. The model is designed to support multi-year retention of PMs, and thereby create a long-term career pathway. Program Managers will be managed by the Innovation Sites, while receiving ongoing training, professional development, and strategy support from MakerUSA. Program Managers may be individuals who are recent graduates, mid-career professionals or individuals transitioning into another career. The PM role is designed to be flexible based on the needs of the Innovation Site and community. 

There will be three types of Program Managers. Each type will receive unique training and support from experts in the fields of maker-centered learning, entrepreneurship, ecosystem development and project-management. PMs will also continually learn and share with their peers through a national community of practice.

Higher Ed Maker Program Builder

PMs will focus on expanding and/or creating new higher ed-based makerspaces and other maker programming. This could include:

• Supporting efforts to make existing makerspaces more inclusive and connected to the community, including through K-12 school partnerships
• Designing new makerspaces and/or other making programming, including student maker challenges
• Connecting local businesses in new ways to a higher ed-based makerspace
  
  

Student Career Pathway Builder

PMs will focus on supporting individual college student makers on their workforce entry and/or entrepreneurship pathway. This could include:

• Providing guidance to student makers on resources for additional entrepreneurship training and support, including on new business formation, incubator and accelerator programs, intellectual property, college courses, and mentorship programs
• Partnering with local employers to create stronger pathways for student makers to local industry, including through apprenticeship programs
• Supporting student entrepreneurs in the development and growth of their businesses locally, including navigating from prototype to small-batch to large volume manufacturing 

Innovation Ecosystem Builder

PMs will focus on strengthening partnerships across a community’s maker, higher ed, entrepreneurship, and/or manufacturing ecosystems. This could include: 

• Managing a working group among organizations that comprise maker and entrepreneurship ecosystems to better connect resources and career pathways
• Increasing the capacity of professional and/or community makerspaces to support their makers on entrepreneurship pathways, including through new partnership formation
• Expanding small batch and advanced manufacturing ecosystems’ networks
• Building the capacity of public offices to support their local making community 

Through the LOI, interested organizations can select the Program Manager type(s) that could best align with their goals. MakerUSA staff are also available to answer any questions, discuss your institution’s unique goals and recommend a Program Manager structure that can best support your community prior to LOI submission.

MakerUSA believes that the most powerful way to address our most pressing societal challenges is through the support of community-led innovation and equitable entrepreneurship. Maker-centered learning is an essential input to these outcomes. Many colleges and universities are investing in maker-centered learning as a vehicle to drive innovation and student career pathways. In 2015, there were approximately 150 makerspaces on college campuses. Today there are more than 500. Yet, there is often limited human capacity to support these spaces and even more limited talent to support the individual student makers on their own unique career pathways.

A community college may have a state-of-the-art new makerspace, but limited capacity to engage high-school students in the facility, and thereby create stronger enrollment pathways to their institution. A local makerspace may have engaged makers creating new designs, but limited capacity to guide those makers on resources and supports to turn their concepts into new businesses. 

Meanwhile, research reveals that the most important factor in determining whether a young person becomes an inventor is not skill or interest. It is the wealth of their parents, followed by race and gender. Economists estimate that if women, minorities, and children from low-income families became inventors at the same rate as men from high-income families, innovation in the United States would quadruple.¹ Systemic barriers driven by income, race, gender and geography continue to impede social mobility and our economic competitiveness. 

At MakerUSA, we know there is unique human talent needed to support existing community assets and programs that are striving to advance local making. We believe we need to strengthen maker ecosystems in ways that support local collaboration and equitable access. And, critically, we need to overlap burgeoning maker ecosystems with entrepreneurship and manufacturing ecosystems and networks, thereby creating equitable, innovation ecosystems.

1.  Chetty et all (2018). Who Becomes an Inventor in America?
http://www.equality-of-opportunity.org/assets/documents/inventors_paper.pdf  
Innovation in the U.S. could quadruple if women, minorities, and children from low-income families became inventors at the same rate as men from high-income families. Children born into the richest 1 percent of society are 10 times more likely to be inventors than those born into the bottom 50 percent. White children are 3x more likely to become inventors than black children.