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Panels highlight small-business supports and mobile manufacturing training as paths to household resilience
Summary
Small-business advisors, SBDC leaders and an industry-led training center described a network of advisory services, grants and mobile technical training that panelists say helps entrepreneurs survive shocks and helps workers access higher-paying manufacturing jobs.
Multiple panels at the Assembly hearing emphasized the role of local support organizations and targeted workforce training in helping households and small businesses weather cost pressures.
Juliana Ramirez, owner of JR Bookkeeping and a volunteer instructor and mentor with local business support organizations, described how programs at Women's Economic Ventures (WEAV), SCORE, local Economic Development Collaborative SBDC centers and workforce development wage reimbursements enabled her firm to survive layoffs, start, hire and expand. Ramirez recounted receiving business advising, training and hire‑and‑train wage reimbursement that helped her scale; she now employs nine staff and mentors others.
Representatives of the California Association for Local Economic Development and the state's Small Business Development Center networks urged continued state support for outreach, technical assistance and capital access programs. The SBDC representative described a statewide network of five regional SBDC systems serving thousands of clients and providing capital‑access programs and training; between 2022 and 2024 the SBDCs reported hundreds of thousands of advising hours and tens of thousands of training attendees.
The committee also heard a detailed account of a mobile industrial training program operated by Volt Institute in the Central Valley. "We take the training to them," said Dave White, CEO of Opportunity Stanislaus and a Volt Institute founder, describing modular, mobile training equipment and short stackable credentials in industrial maintenance, PLCs and instrumentation. White said Volt's model produced a roughly 91% placement rate for graduates and that many graduates obtained jobs paying roughly $32 per hour or more, creating pathways to higher wages without student debt.
Panelists asked the committee for sustained state support for outreach funding, for programs that can reach nonemployer and microbusiness owners, and for stronger links between stackable industry credentials and higher education credit. Several committee members suggested exploring prior‑learning credit or other mechanisms to let short technical certificates count toward community college credentials.
The panels framed small-business advising and mobile, industry-led training as practical levers that state and local governments can scale quickly to improve household resilience while longer-term affordability reforms proceed.
