A new independent analysis reveals that Eastern Kentucky Concentrated Employment Program, Inc. (EKCEP), working alongside its nine Community Action partners, is delivering workforce results that significantly outperform those in some major metropolitan areas, attributing its success to a powerful and resilient organizational culture.
Completed by SummitWorX Solutions, an independent research and consulting firm based in Colorado Springs, CO, the white paper, titled “The EKCEP Phenomenon,” combines extensive data review, national comparisons, and a detailed cultural assessment of EKCEP’s staff and partner agencies. The findings conclude that EKCEP’s scale, resilience, and organizational culture set it apart as a national model for rural workforce development.
In Program Year 2024, EKCEP and its network of Community Action partners served 12,820 people across 23 counties. This work led to 3,332 job placements and helped 959 individuals earn new credentials—exceeding the annual goal by 152%. When measured per capita, the report notes, EKCEP’s service penetration is roughly five to six times larger than that of workforce boards in major cities like Dallas, Miami, and Seattle, despite facing far greater barriers like long commutes, near-zero public transit, and employer scarcity.
The report frames this performance within the broader context of Eastern Kentucky’s history as a significant hub of coal production followed by a steep decline in coal industry employment. The region has faced immense pressures of economic transition and repeated natural disasters that have forged a diamond: a tough, resilient, and high-value workforce system.
“This white paper validates what we’ve always known: the people of Eastern Kentucky are resilient, and our team at EKCEP and the workforce professionals on staff with our Community Action partners are incredibly dedicated,” said Becky Miller, EKCEP Executive Director. “This provides the ‘jeweler’s appraisal’ of our work, proving that the pressure our region has faced has created a diamond. We are immensely proud that our culture of turning adversity into opportunity has been recognized as a national model.”
The analysis points to EKCEP’s unique culture as the engine behind its success. It identifies the organization’s primary archetype as “the Alchemist”—a culture that transforms hardship into pathways of strength. This culture is credited with helping EKCEP sustain services through the collapse of the coal industry, the COVID-19 pandemic, and catastrophic flood events. In addition to these cultural strengths, EKCEP’s services in 2023-2024 contributed to a robust return on investment of $61.7 million in increased participant earnings and a projected $91.9 million in future state tax revenues.
“EKCEP’s performance is best assessed by the combination of scale, throughput, resilience, and the place-adjusted impact it sustains within a high-barrier operating environment,” the report states. It concludes that “EKCEP should be recognized as an exemplar of high-impact delivery under high barriers, and its cultural strengths … are central to that achievement.”