Like so many cities in the U.S., Chicago is a place where many struggle to make ends meet. In 2018, the city raised its minimum wage to $12 per hour - that’s around $1,600 per month. In some parts of the country, this might be considered a decent wage. In Chicago, where the average cost of a studio apartment is between $800-1,000 per month (before utilities), it is hard for people of all ages to make a decent living, even though it’s close to twice the National minimum wage of $7.25.
Yet, in some communities, this situation is made infinitely more complicated by a lack of access to jobs or job training and other factors. Schools are underfunded and overwhelmed. Programs that teach valuable skills get cut. Even basic STEM programs lack resources they need, causing some students’ essential, “soft” skills, skills crucial in life as well as the workplace, to go unnurtured. More than that, the personal lives of people in these neighborhoods are wracked by random and targeted acts of violence and other crimes, creating an environment where it can seem hard, or even trivial, to focus on things like school and job training - especially when there are no jobs to train for.
Rising to the challenge of addressing these problems is BSD Industries, a company in Chicago’s South Side that offers free, hands-on training for students looking for extra education.
Seeking higher education or specialized job training can be intimidating, especially for those who grew up going through school systems that lacked the resources to give them what they need. BSD Industries isn’t simply about teaching CAD or the basics of automation - it’s about showing their students that, even if you grew up in an underserved environment, that alone doesn’t define what you are capable of. That’s why “BSD” stands for “Building Self-Determination.”
BSD Industries is structured as a low-profit company. This means that although the company does profit off of its business, the fact that it gives a significant portion of its earnings to charitable organizations and community programs in Chicago’s underserved neighborhoods means that it depends on donations and corporate sponsorships to pay for its overhead. First and foremost is the Arthur M. Brazier Foundation, named for the father of Dr. Byron Brazier, the current head of the foundation. BSD has successfully attracted investment from several other high-profile organizations, including the University of Chicago, Google, the SAFER Foundation, the Chicago Housing Authority, Boeing, and even JP Morgan Chase & Co.
The organization is the brainchild of of Trista Bonds, a U.S. Army veteran with years of experience in robotics and education who currently serves as the company’s VP of Training and Manufacturing Operations, and Dr. Byron Brazier, the pastor of the Apostolic Church of God in Chicago’s Woodlawn neighborhood.
Before she was an executive of a company that makes its revenue changing lives for the better in Chicago, Bonds actually began her life on the West Coast.
Trista Bonds, from San Diego to Chicago
Bonds grew up in San Diego, California. Like many in her family, she served in the military. Bonds served in the U.S. Army for 8 years. After she left the military, Bonds studied electrical engineering at Tuskegee University. After she graduated, she went to work for Ford Motor Company, where she worked for a total of 7 years, eventually moving on to work at Pilkington Automotive Encapsulation, then finally, Elkay Manufacturing. That was when she fell in love with the city of Chicago. “I saw the lakefront - I thought, ‘that looks like a beach to me!’ The city was big - I’m from San Diego, which is a big city - and it was thriving, and I loved the diversity of the culture,” she said.
In her spare time, Bonds volunteered for Chicago Public Schools (CPS) teaching STEM courses. Her passion and talent for teaching did not go unnoticed. “While I was there, I was tapped on the shoulder by CPS to join as a certified career and tech ed teacher. I thought, ‘yeah, this is the right time.’ I was ready to pursue my passion. It was a perfect match,” she said.
Though Bonds excelled as a teacher, over time she realized that manufacturing and engineering jobs were changing, and the skills her students would need required something extra - something special.
Bonds became involved with the Arthur M. Brazier Foundation, an organization dedicated to community-building, through the Apostolic Church of God. She began planning with Dr. Brazier to create a new program, one that would teach members of underserved communities essential job skills, including robotics training. “Dr. Brazier gave me a call to the pulpit and said, ‘I have a plan. I want to build people instead of buildings.’ I took this proposal to him that I had written - I had visited Focus: HOPE in Detroit, and I was very impressed with what I saw there - they teach machining, maintenance type programming, though they didn’t at that particular time have robotics. I thought, ‘we can do that. We can have an adjusted curriculum and have a similar program in Chicago.’ I took it to Dr. Brazier, and he thought it was great.”
In the beginning, BSD was based out of the Apostolic Church of God. At that point Bonds taught all of the classes personally. BSD organized its students into “cohorts,” or groups of a maximum of 40 students who work and train as a cohesive unit. Cohorts then get split into classes of about 20 students, who attend classes and workshops based on what the instructors teaching them decide to focus on. This structure turned out to be highly effective. Even five years later, as BSD Industries has grown and improved, the company continues to structure its class sizes in this way.
Bonds began training her first cohort in 2013 with a sixteen-month training program using the church space. The feedback was extremely positive. Soon, students and organizers from BSD and the Brazier Foundation began asking for more and more skills and classes to be added onto the program. As word spread over time, more and more teachers signed up. Eventually, the organization secured funding to move to a 30,000 square foot facility in Cottage Grove Heights, near Chicago State University.
Bonds still regularly teaches technical classes for various cohorts. She also hosts workshops so her students can get extra practice using what they’ve learned. “I teach the robotics class. I also teach workshops to connect the dots.”
Building self-determination
According to Luana Greer, executive administrative assistant of BSD’s department of workforce development, training starts with recruitment. “Usually we have monthly informational sessions. We also send out fliers and correspondents to invite companies there. Karen [DeGrasse, workforce development manager] conducts the informational sessions and tells them about our program. She tells them, ‘if you’re interested, send us an email or give us a call and we’ll send you an application. Typically that’s the start of the whole process.”
For BSD Industries, everything begins with the essentials. “We have five levels of training,” Bonds told EA. “We have cohort sizes of 40 trainees in each cohort. We split that in half: we have one go to one class, and we have the other half go to a different class on a different day or at a different time. They have 2 hours of class and 2 hours of lab for 2 days a week when they are in the first 3 levels of training - the ‘Boost Camp,’ Level 1, and Level 2. When they get to Level 3 and Level 4 we extend that to 4 days per week, as opposed to just the 2 class days. But no matter what level they’re on, they both have colloquium on Friday, which is where we do workshops - building self workshops, workplace ready workshops like communication skills, we teach things like financial literacy, we do personal goal-setting, and other things like that, other related things.”
New trainees start off at a boot camp-style level of training, which BSD employees call “Boost Camp.” Here, they undergo professional development classes that help build basic yet essential skills. Once trainees graduate from this level, students aren’t done learning these things. Karen DeGrasse told EA that these workshops permeate the entire program. “[The students] get workforce development workshops that help prepare them for employment in the industry. That includes effective communication, manufacturing a resume, and interviewing. Towards the end of the program, before they graduate, they get mock interviews, as well as what we call ‘workplace success’; it starts with interviewing, and putting together a strategy, and then it talks about the first day on the job and what to expect, and then we move into ninety days on and beyond, and how to create a ladder, and how important it is to get in, do well, and advance to the next level.” These lessons on essential workplace skills are designed to ensure that no trainee graduates without them.
“Most of the people who get into the program either have been out of school for awhile, or are fresh out of school,” said Caroline Hooks, the organization’s technical training manager. “And if they’re fresh out of school, sometimes the school system fails at teaching them those skills.” Once trainees graduate “Boost Camp,” they move on to Level 1, which focuses on teaching 2D and 3D computer-aided drafting (CAD). “That, I would say is a skill in and of itself,” Bonds told EA. “It doesn’t necessarily relegate you to manufacturing - it applies to architecture, construction, R&D - anything where there is a designed product.” Students can also get certification by the National Occupational Competency Testing Institute (NOCTI) through BSD at this level.
Once students reach Level 2, they begin learning about industrial control systems, as well as essential skills to work as industrial maintenance technicians. Bonds said that this is where students really begin to dive in to the operation of circuit-controlled industrial machinery, though not necessarily that of robots...yet. “You don’t necessarily touch robots at this time,” she said. “You focus on what a machine is, how are they powered, what components they are made of, what do they do, how are they schematically drawn, and how circuits are created, which causes that machine to run and create its product. So they learn circuit design for industrial pneumatic, hydraulic control systems. Because those are the three primary energy sources that are used to fuel machinery.” Level 3 of the program focuses on automation controls programming, or how to automate components of a machine using a programmable controller.
Bonds explained that this is an extremely valuable skillset to have, since it can be applied to a broad range of roles and industries that manage the facets of everyday life in the U.S. and other developed nations, such as traffic lights, pumps and motors, and HVAC equipment. “We teach the process for managing automated equipment with software,” Bonds said. “It’s machine coding, essentially. And I think those skills also are not relegating you to manufacturing, but certainly have a strong presence in manufacturing.” Between these two levels, students gain the skills to obtain certification by the Manufacturing Skill Standards Council (MSSC) in maintenance awareness. Bonds said that, with the completion of Levels 2 and 3, trainees gain skills that make them qualified to work as automation programmers, production techs, or “very strong maintenance techs.”
Finally, in Level 4, trainees learn robotics programming, where they tie everything they have learned together and begin turning into bona fide robotics technicians. In Level 4, students learn how to assemble, install, program, maintain, and even instruct others on how to use robots. Bonds told EA that lessons in Level 4 are designed in such a way that, even if graduated students of BSD find themselves on a job site that uses robots different from what they’re used to, they can adapt quickly. “We teach the foundational information of robotics as well so they just have a concept they can translate into other brands of robots. For instance, we have Wittmann robots here - our tech was only trained on Fanuc, but he was able to translate that knowledge with the Wittmann robots.”
Demand for training at BSD Industries has been growing among not just independent students, but other manufacturing companies, too. “We do customized training for companies like Flex-N-Gate,” Bonds said. “We do ‘Intro to Manufacturing’ for one week, where they get a chance to learn about safety and other good workplace habits, like communication skills, conflict resolution, on-job training...we let them pick so they can get a chance to see if they can actually stand up for so many hours and work.”
BSD’s training program includes even more than specialized classes and hands-on, “earn and learn” education. It also includes job fairs, and visits from recruiters and other special guests. In addition to this, if students decide they want to continue their education at a college or university, they can easily transfer and build their experience further, because training at BSD Industries earns college credit for every technical level. According to Bonds, there are students who “dual-enroll,” or take classes at BSD Industries, as well as nearby colleges. This especially applies to Daly College, with whom BSD Industries has an articulation agreement. “Students who have decided to dual-enroll with BSD and as Daly College students, they have access to the TRIO options, other campus resources like tutoring.” BSD also offers English as a Second-Language (ESL) options, and other student resources and accommodations through partnerships with various organizations across Chicago and the U.S. Bonds told EA that these partnerships have been instrumental to the success of BSD Industries.
When the program began, she said, the organization was primarily working with members of a close-knit church community. When they moved to their new facilities and opened their services up to the greater Chicago area and beyond, they found that many of their students had issues that conflicted with their success. During the transition from the church to the new facility, she said, there was initially a decrease in the program’s success rate due to the increased quantity and nuance of factors impeding its students. These ranged from social and geographic issues such as having a “justice-involved” history to more severe ones; Bonds said that one of her best students had significant issues completing the program because they were grieving a family member who had been violently murdered.
That said, the program has adapted. Only a few months before I spoke to Bonds, she said a class had graduated in August with an 84% success rate. “The overall goal is to produce trainees who are qualified, confident, relevant, and essential at the companies they are working for.” Luana Greer said that even in the past year, the program has seen impressive development. “Our program is really improving - every day we’re getting more and more people that are interested in hiring our trainees, which is a great thing.”
Not a one-trick pony
As Bonds and I walked the factory floor, she told me, “we have two products - we produce plastic cutlery, and we also produce trained technicians!” In addition to the comprehensive training program, BSD Industries produces cutlery out of eco-friendly plastic resin. BSD supplies these products to a number of customers - primarily schools and hospitals. Or, as Bonds likes to say, “Eds and Meds.” Bonds told me that BSD keeps enough inventory to cover two to three orders’ worth of cutlery products per customer, in case they need more stock.
The facility contains a variety of different machines - two injection loading presses, chillers, automatic bagging machines and palletizers - and of course, lots of robot arms. Some are there purely for educational purposes, while others are essential to manufacturing its cutlery products. The facility uses a lot of equipment made by the Wittmann Battenfield, a European company that Bonds considers one of the strongest players in the injection molding industry. The Wittmann products BSD uses were easy to integrate, Bonds said. The company also offers online diagnostic support for their products, which Bonds said was a huge selling point for BSD.
When BSD Industries began manufacturing products, it was actually Dr. Byron Brazier of the Brazier foundation who decided to make plastic spoons and forks. “He [Dr. Brazier] actually chose the product,” Bonds said, “because I wanted to make anything we can inject plastic molding into...I felt it was the most flexible technology because as long as you switch the mold you can make different products with the same equipment which, as a manufacturer, I felt was a win-win. Also, we can use robots to take the product out of the equipment and tend to the equipment. I like plastics because it’s a closed-loop manufacturing process, and it’s a zero-waste process; we grind all of our waste material and repurpose it, and turn it into another spoon or fork.”
Bonds is committed to eco-friendliness. In fact, she wants to expand the company’s efforts, expanding BSD’s services by becoming a containment and recycling center for recycled plastics. “Seeing what we’re seeing with the trends with straws and other plastic elements that are just in the environment and are not being properly managed...making it so that they can be repurposed is another step that I know for sure Byron Brazier has an initiative...so we are looking to close the loop on how we can become more green as a plastics manufacturer.” This is a goal they are already building towards; currently, BSD is trying to hire more technicians and trainees so that the company can run machines to reprocess used plastic, so that it can either be used by BSD to produce cutlery, or sold to resin suppliers. The company is also considering hiring delivery drivers to pick up old containment units containing used plastics so that they can be reprocessed.
Since BSD Industries has been so successful providing quality job training to so many people, they should have no issue finding eager applicants to expand their operations. After all, the company’s technical training manager, Caroline Hooks, used to be a BSD trainee, too. Though she had a computer science degree, she said, “I was one of the first people who went through the program.” Now she trains the company’s trainers. It’s fitting that the company aspires to “close the loop” ecologically, regarding their manufacturing of plastics products - they also seem to be “closing the loop” of employment.