Maggie Bienvenu is a Lafayette native and manager of workforce and policy initiatives for the Lafayette Chamber of Commerce and One Acadiana, a regional economic development organization for Acadiana’s nine parishes. She holds three degrees from the University of Louisiana at Lafayette, including a Master of Education and a Doctorate in Educational Leadership. She has worked as an associate educator in adult and special education classes in the Lafayette Parish School System and served as an adjunct professor at UL.
Bienvenu worked at Walt Disney World for nearly 10 years in roles including guest relations, resort operations and management, tours, and training and development. She is a 2012 graduate of Disney’s Emerging Leaders program. Before returning to Lafayette in 2015, she circumnavigated the globe on an eight-month “circuitous journey” that took her to 20 countries on three continents. She lives in downtown Lafayette with her husband, Rusty, and is proud to be a “bonus mom” to two amazing teenagers.
In your role at One Acadiana, what problems are you working to solve?
One of the biggest challenges in economic development is that businesses cannot survive without the talent they need. I can’t solve this problem alone, but I can help build the connections between education and industry.
My job is to figure out where the gaps are and fill in the gaps. There’s a lot of grey areas. Even in education curriculum, part of my job is to go out and talk to people to identify the gaps.
With the great relationships I have built in the education sector, I am able to directly introduce education programs to employers, and I am also working to help employers understand education issues and create programs that help students find better employment.
Your career path has been a bit of a curveball. How did your experience working at Disney help you decide to return home?
This is a job I never knew I had been training for my whole life, and the good thing is that the different experiences I have had help me see possible solutions from different angles.
Disney has an open attitude that encourages employees to explore. I had the opportunity to be a tour guide in Europe, a hotel concierge, a housekeeping manager, manage a hotel front desk, and many other things, sometimes all at the same time.
Employees can do multiple jobs at once. At one point I worked at the Disney Institute, occasionally working front desk shifts at the hotels, and one day a month I went to Disney University to welcome new cast members. This program really fulfilled my need to test out my “what ifs,” learn what I’m good at, and actually create a career path.
And then you decided to go home?
It’s like I’ve boomeranged back to Lafayette, and I advocate for students to have the experiences I had – the exposure to different challenges and career opportunities that will allow them to have a fulfilling career locally.
How has your experience at Disney changed you as an employee?
Working with people from all corners of the world and with all educational levels has changed me. Not only have I been able to serve people from all over the world, but I have also learned how to work with and sometimes lead people from different cultures and perspectives. I have learned a lot by looking at problems from different perspectives.
One of the biggest things I’ve learned is to listen and understand what the core of the problem is.
For example, a guest might be upset about something like cake in the park. Disney has taught me that what seems like a problem on the surface may not be the problem that needs to be solved.
There are people who are pinning all their hopes and dreams on having a magical experience. When things start to go wrong, money can’t fix it. Things might not get better unless they get creative, leverage their resources, and find different, novel ways to solve the problem.
If the problem was a cake failure, I could call the restaurant and ask if they could make a special dessert to make up for lost moments. Whatever the problem, I realized there are at least five ways to solve it. A lot of my work here is similar to this.
Sometimes the unconventional relationships I bring to the role come in handy.
Do you serve both businesses and educators?
And so do our students! I love that I fit into the very personal aspect of economic development. We want people to thrive here. As an organization that services businesses, we want our organization to thrive, but we also want our students to have the best path to success and happiness.
Have you had any epiphanies?
The most important thing is to understand how we operate as an ecosystem. For all the stakeholders in this pipeline, companies will think about what works for them. Schools will think about what programs people want and how to market their schools. Students will want the best opportunities.
We ask ourselves, “How can we contribute to the ecosystem as a whole?”
We bring together people from different industries to have regular conversations. They don’t normally talk to each other. Maybe they see themselves as competitors, or as talent pitted against each other. Maybe they think they have nothing in common. But we create a space where they can have real conversations.
One of the lightbulb moments for me happened during a conversation on an IT forum. One of the guys there ran a small company with around 10 employees. He said, “I need a big tech company here to find the talent I need. All my jobs are for mid-level talent. There are no jobs for entry-level techies.”
In a world where no one stays at the same company for 20 years, we need a strong system that can accommodate different people at different stages in their careers. We’re providing a forum for those conversations to happen. Education providers are there to listen. Then we can talk about how to meet those needs within the education system. It’s great to create a space where those conversations can happen.
Do you cater for all levels of education?
Yes, my job is a lifelong career, a second and third career. We want to provide multiple entry points for careers. Unemployment is at an all-time low, but people are out of the workforce. Right now, there aren’t enough job seekers in Louisiana to fill open positions, even when you factor in skill level mismatches and transportation issues.
We have to look at how to get people off the sidelines. A majority of those people are women who are caring for children and the elderly. You can’t get those people in unless you address the systemic problems. Acadiana needs better transportation because businesses need transportation so people can get to work. We need a better child care system, not just to get caregivers back into the workforce, but so the children themselves can have better careers in the future. It takes many pieces to build a strong economy. Our job is to advocate for solutions that make this the best place for businesses and people to thrive.