Michelle Kommer, North Dakota Department of Commerce, discusses why people need to shift their thinking about the traditional 4-year-college degree. What some of the modern-day pros and cons of a 2-year-degree and a 4-year-degree. Kommer believes a “40-year mindset needs to shift”.
She also , discusses a workforce study and how it impacts the Bakken oil field.
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Below is the raw, unedited transcript from our artificial intelligence translator.
Michelle Kommer
Michelle comber and my title is Labor Commissioner for the North Dakota Department of Labor and Human Rights and Executive Director of Job service. North Dakota, you're both of those things have two jobs.
Jason Spiess
Okay, so we hit the jackpot here because we get the labor commissioner, that's all I'm writing, I'm not continuing on with that rest. And then the Executive Director for
Michelle Kommer
Job Service, North
Jason Spiess
Dakota, Job Service, North Dakota and one of the things we're gonna be talking about is this new study that came out, um that reflects what's going on in the oil patch or it reflects what needs to be done out in the oil patch and then we'll kind of offshoot from there, but just kind of an overview, a little bit um, you know, not worn piece, but maybe a little bit more than an elevator pitch. What's this study all about? Sure.
Michelle Kommer
So what we have here is the result of many months of work of the workforce development council, which is the council that it's made up of 32 members, 21 from the private sector diverse in terms of geography and industry as well as representatives from organized labor. We have legislators on the council, we have elected officials from local government on the council and we also have state agency partners on the council and we've been working for a number of months, gathering
information through studies, data evidence, employers surveys stakeholder interviews, as much Information as we could consume to have a very deep and specific understanding of North Dakota's workforce needs and what we have today and and we submitted it to governor Burgum on October 24 is a report of recommendations that is the result of all that
work. I like to think of it as a conclusion in some ways of a chapter, but it's really just a milestone because of course what happens next is the important part of the story.
Jason Spiess
So is there a couple of top themes, trends, something that stood out as far as what is needed for the workforce or what needs to be done or something like
Michelle Kommer
that? Yeah, there sure is. So if we were to identify themes which we have in the report, which can be located on the Governor's website, there are five themes and one of them is the technical skills gap and I'd love to talk more about that if we have a chance to is the need for youth engagement and earlier and more diverse career exploration at an earlier age.
Third is the nursing and health care technician shortage in North Dakota. Fourth, support for people with barriers to employment. We have North Dakotans that aren't working while we have one of the lowest unemployment rates in the nation and the highest labor market participation rates. We do have folks in North Dakota today that aren't working and then fifth, um it's a numbers game, it's math and in some ways we like math because it adds up or it doesn't and in this case we
simply have more jobs in North Dakota than we have people and that doesn't even touch on whether they have the skills needed to do the work. It's a numbers game. We don't have enough people here to do the jobs we have open today and that we project that will have opened. So we need to have a strategy around that.
Jason Spiess
And one of the reasons why I think this is an important study and it relates to oil and gas is because oil and gas is one. I call them the kings of the economy. They just, they have such a economic engine going that in fact they're the only industry to produce a net gain of jobs the last 10 years, the mining industry, which is what oil and gas is considered in.
Um, so when I hear the technical skills gap, when I hear the nursing healthcare shortage um, these are things that are directly related to oil and gas, one of just donated, you know, a million dollars to help out the Watford City Hospital that shows you how much oil and gas considers healthcare and nursing the need. Um what's been going on in the world of fracking is technical and that world has changed in fact five years ago, we used to joke on this program and say these guys aren't
slinging chains anymore. These aren't the same oilfield workers, I heard Ron ness recently talked about how these are more office jobs. Now you mentioned you, you met with Ron ness and that actually is one of the reasons why this report came to be or it was influenced or Ron had an involvement with a different study or
Michelle Kommer
of
Jason Spiess
course
Michelle Kommer
as you just described, we know that this industry employs today over 60,000 people, maybe close to 70,000 and we know that number is going to be significantly bigger in the future. We also know from working with members of that industry, including Iran, that, as you just pointed out, the jobs that are coming to North Dakota today, in contrast to five years ago, our jobs that bring perm residents rather than transient residents.
Their jobs that require technical skills that that may support the idea that people bring their families here, which creates another set of challenges in terms of housing and education and infrastructure and so, you know, to the extent that we want to continue the growth and success of that industry in North Dakota, we have to be having this conversation. So I mean it was absolutely a driver, But you know, what we've learned over the last 11 months is that the oil and gas industry
is not the only industry that's suffering for trained and talented workforce. And so it is a key issue for our state is a key issue. Probably the number one issue for our continued economic success and our failure to address it is going to have consequences.
Jason Spiess
Well, I look at the technical side and I see, okay, we've got a lot more remote sensors now and we have a lot more algorithms and that sort of thing. Um, and then we're going to get into the U a. S. Part of life too. And that's going to be directly integrated into oil and gas. A number of different things from surveillance to pipeline detection to just going up and checking on top of buildings to make sure things are there.
So there's a lot of applications for it, but nds you play such a key role. North Dakota State University in the technical side of things was that it all addressed in your studies is that talked about how, you know, we've got one of the top universities for us and they're gaining on energy algorithms if you will. Um, is there a study or a plan or a discussion at all with N D S. U. And then also satisfying that workforce
Michelle Kommer
The report is a pretty deep discussion about the technical skills gap and what we mean when we say that is we have very purposefully re language what some people call a middle skills gap. You hear that across America frankly. And we learned that that was one of the initial challenges, right, is what parent strives for their child to have a middle skills job when in fact the jobs that you just spoke of and the jobs that were aware are available today and will be in the future are highly
too technical jobs. And what we looked at as part of this process is, What are the jobs today? What are they going to be tomorrow? Where in North Dakota do we have programs that satisfy those needs? Where are there gaps? And in in general what we learned from that is that you can't talk about workforce without talking about education. They're inextricably linked And that's where the theme came up um about needing to get into the school system earlier.
And we're talking the K-12 system and exposing kids to what opportunities are available to them, helping them understand what their skills, strengths, gifts, talents, aspirations, maybe in the context of these jobs that are available and then um taking into consideration that today and tomorrow. So, So I heard a statistic that 70% of kindergartners today will have jobs that don't exist today.
So what are we doing to train them in terms of not a particular job but to have skills that are translatable, critical thinking, problem solving, communication, um systems thinking and so two more directly answer your question, which I like to do. We didn't get into, you know what specific program is where and having a significant impact or success, but rather more generally how we're, we're going to address this
technical skills gap that exists today and make plans to support those programs to build those programs to acknowledge that they are an important part of the path forward.
Jason Spiess
Sounds like the way I interpreted that is that there's going to be a flushing out of what the educational core is going to be because how do you train somebody for a job that doesn't exist? Well, there's gotta be some sort of similarity, some sort of core that exists within all the jobs, whether it's math science, you know, that the stem and stem seems to be the direction right now, that is where we landed on, that will allow kids to have an opportunity to go a lot of different
directions. Um, what was I was gonna ask you about? Uh, one of the things that we've been talking about on this program for probably four years now, maybe five is the two year degree in a four year degree. Um, four or five years ago I, I said, you know, I don't think I want my kid to go to a four year school unless they were going to be an accountant, a lawyer, a doctor, which I understand as an eight year school, but you know, unless it's a specialized profession that you want to go do, I
don't know if I would do that, I would go get your CDL license, go get your, you know, artificial engineering training at the local tech school for a year, a year and a half. It just seemed like there was a renaissance opportunity for trade. Is that a technical, is that, is that, is that that would be health care too because of registered
nurses. Talk to me about your reaction to what I just told you about as a parent. I don't know if I want my kid going to a four year school unless he knows exactly what he wants to be
Michelle Kommer
well. I'm smiling as I listen to you because that is directly addressed here and I'm also smiling because we say kind of tongue in cheek, hey, all we need to do is change a 40 year old paradigm that says that you have to go to get a four year degree to get a good job and it's as much the parents, if not more, it's you and I, like you just said as it is the kids and helping them be away aware of what these opportunities are and then it's recognizing, um, the shift in the cost of education today
versus 10 or 12 or 15 years ago and that today, um, getting a general liberal arts degree can cause a child student to incur a fair amount of debt. Um, whereas a technical degree degree today, in many cases you can have paid for by an employer who's really aching for workforce, right? So you graduate with a technical degree. And just to be clear, these can be in the trades, but they can also be in healthcare there.
Many as we've learned through this process are highly technical jobs and you can graduate with no debt. You can walk out of school and I've heard story after stories, not just anecdotes but real stories here in North Dakota where you graduate with no debt your age 20 and you're making $50,000 60,000 dollars. Whereas with a four year general liberal arts degree, you may struggle to find that job and you may struggle to make $30,000 a year and you now have X amount of dollars in
student debt. So we're not trying to encourage or discourage for your degrees. That's not the message here. But we do want to raise Awareness for parents like you and I that there are the options and we want to make that known to our students to that. You know, the stereotype that has perpetuated in our entire country over the last course of the last 40 years is no longer true.
And to illustrate in my mind and I'm not the creative type. I like data analytics, math and science. But in my mind I picture a split screen and let's call it a YouTube video, not TV. And on each side you have, you know, on one side you have a young man who's standing in front of a nice house with a three car garage and a nice car other side of the screen.
Young woman, same exact scenario, right? And you start flashing up on the screen. Okay, so john went to get his four year degree graduated with $45,000 in debt. Here's this mortgage payment, here's his house payment. Here's the starting salary you get in the red pretty quick then start adding up savings that you're not saving for your retirement because of that scenario.
And on the other side the young woman's um went to a tech school has no debt, same house payment, same car payment. And then to cap it off, we watched him in our screen drive to his job in a suit and tie as a junior lender at a bank. And this is the paradigm that I have for my kids. Maybe you do too, Maybe others do. Right. Um And we watched her get in her car and drive to her job as a technician in a manufacturing plant.
Except the view blows up our stereotype of what that means. I've been to these plants, they're white and gleaming and clean. And she goes to work as a high tech welder in a room that looks more like a mainframe. I'm aging myself. But let's call it a computer a computer room. It looks more like Nasa. And that's the message that I think we really have to help our students receive.
That's what we have to help our parents. And I'm included in that in the course of the last 11 months. I have three kids, a senior in high school, junior in high school in 1/6 grader. And um I was preparing to do a speech. Um the title of, which was good jobs that pay without a B. A. Only because it rhymed, I meant all bachelors degrees and my husband came into the den and what do you do? And I told him I was doing and he kind of smirked and he said, so you'd be all right with the girls going to a
tech school. And it was the moment of, because at this point now I've done all this research. I understand the real life situation, the jobs available here, what they look like. I've been and visited many of these places where these jobs exist. And I gulped and I said absolutely, but that would not have been true had it not been so deeply immersed in this work and that's what we have to find a way to share with
Jason Spiess
Others. Well you said it right. It's a 40 year old mindset that needs to be changed. And I've had this conversation with multiple people over the past five years. The one that comes to mind is brian lash. He's the on target logistics. Um, they basically put housing in the oil patch, temporary housing. They did the olympics Halliburton's a client of theirs.
I mean that sort of thing and we would talk about how you're 20 years old, you're done with your education, you're making 50 to $70,000 a year. You're not adding more debt on like a college kid would like, I don't know they banned the credit cards from the college campuses or at least they tried but think of how many people they go to college, they get a credit card, the bar tabs, the dinners out the Mcdonald's breakfast sandwich the next morning, soak it all up, you put it all on your
credit card right? And so not only do have a student loan debt, do you have a credit card debt or you have you have a lot more of that type of debt but when you're 20 and you get you all of a sudden you're you're making 50 to 75 as a diesel mechanic or C. D. L. License, whatever you're in a world of responsibility so you're not bringing on that ancillary debt.
So we talk about that a little bit but then we talk about you know what after five years you have 50 to 100 grand saved up now you can go start a Subway now you can go start your art project store that you wanted to start up whatever your dream is and guess what? You always have a fall back. You have a fallback. And so these were and these are not only brian lash but several other oil and gas executives because they see it And their mindset has changed to where they would have you know 10 years
ago you probably would have said that you know you would have said no I want you to get a four year degree, that sort of thing, and and that actually would have been the right thing to say, but now there's options out there and you know, the trades didn't have the opportunity that they have now, I mean artificial intelligence has changed the trades and when you got energy using it and using
it and healthcare using it and everybody seemed to use it, let's talk about that health care for a second. Um what did your study find that was needed for health care? Sure.
Michelle Kommer
So we went into this knowing that there's been a nursing shortage for 25 years. So um you know, had we come out of this and said, hey there's a nursing shortage, we would have had a lot of people say thanks captain, obvious we knew that, right, and we did, but what's Yeah, yeah, but what's different about today's healthcare shortage is really two things and it has to do with the generational shift.
We've got a generation of, well every profession, but it's, it's hitting us hard in health care of nurses retiring, but simultaneously we are becoming greater users of healthcare as the baby boomer generation gets older. So when you look at, you know, um line graphs, you see that trend and it's making this shortage all the more critical and acute, not to mention, um it's particularly acute in rural North Dakota, but the one thing that we learned and not the one thing we learned a
lot of different things through this, but one thing that really stood out to us um was that even if we saw the nursing shortage in North Dakota, you still can't keep your emergency room open or your critical care hospital open if you don't have x ray technicians, if you don't have radiology technicians. And so the healthcare tech jobs really that became evident to us, thanks to all the folks that were involved in this, that we worked with an interview through this process, they
said, don't forget this, even if I solve this nursing problem, there are still these jobs well. And as you pointed out this point straight back to the technical skills gap right? Because a lot of those jobs are attainable with a two year degree and there we found to some extent, we compared the programs available in North Dakota to educate um in the areas where we have shortages and we do have some gaps there and that's when a level of detail that we've got to get in to say, hey, you know,
there may be an opportunity here to have a program to develop a program that meets this need. Um you know, with my kids being the ages they are, I would love for someone to be talking to them um in school about how there are these jobs open today, you will get one if you can enroll in this program and do well in the program and you may even get an employer to sponsor you through this um, you know, in this process, I have learned that that person needs to be me, but that avail that information
today, um you know, we need to as a system as a north Dakota system. It's one of our recommendations um, is to figure out how we can integrate this connection, make this connection between the jobs that are available, the programs that are available to educate people to do those jobs and how we make students, and we don't even want to limit it to students, frankly, this is a situation where people can go back and get educated in these jobs if they're underemployed, if they want to try
something different, but we have to draw that connection, we have to convene and um what I have found um is that there's a great appetite to do that. This isn't I haven't run into a scenario where there's a reluctance to collaborate on this. Um, I find great enthusiasm about collaborating on things like this, but it does take a structure to do that convening. And that's, you know, that's what this has really been all about.
Jason Spiess
One of the things that we did in the program a few weeks ago was we interviewed Patrick Burton Holy from new vera who's now at N. B. I. But
Michelle Kommer
okay,
Jason Spiess
so Okay, great. So the new vera um little thing that they have going on with the introducing the CDL licenses to high school kids I thought was brilliant. I thought it was absolutely brilliant and I would have been the first one to say, okay, this is this past, you know, the, are we bleeding private business into high school kids and that sort of thing.
But that's not what this is about at all. This is about the C. D. L. License and the opportunity that can come with that. And I really like that. I thought that was really smart and we talked to Daniel Stenberg and he said that if it goes well with this, they're gonna, or they're trying to bring in other industries to, to the high schools and that sort of thing.
And a lot of people don't realize that a lot of high school seniors take tech classes at the local colleges and things like that and this is where these changes are happening and I don't think a lot of people realize it. And like you brought up earlier, there's this 40 year old mindset that we have of education and I see how the oil and gas industry has really changed and shattered a lot of that perception.
Um, talk to me and we only got about five minutes left here, but talk to me about just what new vera is doing and where you see that going with under, under your oversight as you know labor commissioned job service north Dakota because I would imagine, you know, you probably want to keep an eye on
Michelle Kommer
it. Yeah, I mean the next step from here of course is to determine which of these recommendations should move forward into the execution stage. Some of them take no funding at all. They only take agreements, some of them take funding. Um, but to get back to your question, you know what Pat has done and I admire Pat a great deal. Um, he has taken a really innovative approach to his work for new vera and now FBI.
Um, and he thinks about recruiting and retention so far beyond the traditional or comm dimensional way that most people do. And I believe that he is actually really defining the future of what that needs to look like ricotta. And um, you know, he, like you pointed out in your example with the CDL bringing that into the high school, He's gone so far as to um introduce employees who are, who are, I would say at risk of not staying in North Dakota maybe from somewhere else came here for a
job not connected to the state. He's gone so far as to make community connections for those folks and just some really innovative things. And I think that employers have to be willing to think about the conventional recruiting and retention really differently. Like Pat is doing, employers also have to be thinking about, you pointed this out earlier.
Um, taking a look into those job requirements and saying, do we really need a four year degree? Can we cut that out? It was true and it remains true today that if we want to, we can use the 40 degree as a sorting mechanism, but in many cases it does nothing to ensure that that candidate is going to be better or worse at their job. So there are some states a little further out ahead of us in doing what we would call competency based hiring and throwing away all those traditional paradigms of
even how we hire people and think of how that's going to disrupt kind of this system as we know it. But um, you know, yeah, I the workforce Development council knows um that this report is just a milestone and we're all very interested in making sure that there's a mechanism that these recommendations get addressed and implemented and private sector may have a lot to do with that.
We hope that private sector does. We hope that oil and gas that we can partner with oil and gas and I look to oil and gas as being, as you pointed out, the innovators out ahead, willing to try new things and willing to invest and that's going to be really important. And now I feel like we have a road map. I don't know that we have had a comprehensive roadmap in the past.
I want to point out that this isn't a menu, it's not where we want to order the french fries and the deep fried pickles. The work that went into this, um, resulted in a set of recommendations that are interoperable. So in the nursing section, for example, if you picked out two and said, yeah, let's do these two. You will not solve the nursing and health care technician shortage.
You may make a dent, You may have picked the wrong too if you really wanted to make an impact. But how this was designed to be interoperable one affects the other if we do this and this. And so I think that's, it's a really important part of how this is red and how it moves ahead
Jason Spiess
quickly. So I know you've got a 1 30 here. I wanted to ask you about number five. I wanted to make sure we talked about that. The need for new in migration to North Dakota. Um, and it's a complex topic for one Western North Dakota's infrastructure can't handle a lot of new in migration and they're working on it with the sewers and pipes and, but a lot of those roads need to be redone because you know, they were not built For anything more than a couple of combines a year and now you've got
40,000 trucks driving on them. So, and those are real issues and they're being solved and the investment has been done. So the, in migration, you know, it's kind of a staggered thing that that's happening. Um, but There's competition like never before, never before North Dakota has its geographical challenges. It has its weather challenges and there's like this race right now in the world of fracking because you can remotely frack, so liberty oil for example, they got guys
that go to, go to work in San Antonio and then they go to their kid's soccer game at 5:00 at the end of the day as opposed to work in two weeks on two weeks off, like the old thing. So a lot of that's even changing. Um, and North Dakota's investing a lot of quality of life. And they saw that, you know, we got to make sure that we've got decent restaurants for people to go to, we got daycares for people, we have emergency services. Um, and on the flip side and I brought this up to Lynn helms, I said,
you know, if these jobs for lack of better words don't get filled by, you know, americans, I see the nice, nice man from Ghana taking this job or the person from Sweden that I always wanted to come to America and he's got the technical degree to do this. So statoil moves him over here, whatever the heck is. Um, there is a lot of competition, like never before for the, in migration of certain things. Talk to me about that a little bit. And, and, and also with the study,
Michelle Kommer
yeah, you bet. Well you just nailed it. I mean, and, and as we were talking about earlier, knowing what I know today versus a year ago. I sleep a lot less. And this is one of those points. That is very challenging for us. Today. We have less than 3% unemployment. Everybody knows the statistics for the first time this summer, our country had more job openings than people available to do the work.
Um, we have more than half of the states with unemployment under 4%. 5 years ago we had people coming to work in North Dakota that we're leaving. States that had 9% unemployment, 10% unemployment. That doesn't exist anymore. And as you just pointed out, I read about Oklahoma's oil activity and I thought, Oh no, because those were competing for those workers.
And on average it's a lot warmer in Oklahoma. Right. So the competition to say it's stiff is an understatement. Our state is behind um, when it comes to work for strategies to address that, you can go to any state that borders us and find technical education programs that you can go to for free with, you know, some differences amongst them with retention pieces, You come to school here for free and work here for three work here for three years and you'll have no loan loans to speak of,
You don't even need to live in South Dakota to take advantage of that program in South Dakota. North Dakota kids can go there and go to school for free, but I look at the need for New North Dakotans is really three things. They all start with R and one of them is retained students here, right? Um, so keep people here that it would have otherwise left, one is returning North Dakotans, Where can we encourage people to come back to North Dakota, That's what I did.
Um, people that are, you know, call myself a gen x or when I graduated from high school here in air quotes everybody left and then maybe 67 years later people came back because you know, family was here and you want to settle down, have kids enjoy our quality of life, but we have opportunity there to get people to come back to North Dakota. And then the, you know, the third are, is recruiting and I think we would all agree that that's probably harder right to get people that are not from
North Dakota to come here, but where, but where, I think we're doing some really good work and where I think there is great investment and can continue to be additional investment. Is this administration's main street initiative, right? Call it what you want. But it's about making attractive communities where people want to live in work attractive, affordable.
Um, and I think we have to pay attention to that because I'm from a small town. I love, I love where I grew up. Um, and you know, we have to be willing to invest in those communities to help our youth want to stay. And so it's not easy. It's complicated. But well, let me put that differently. I think with cooperation and coordination and recognition of what the challenges are, what we do great in North Dakota, what we do, maybe better than anywhere.
And what makes me excited about the job I have today and the potential is our ability to cooperate and get these things done. And I'm really excited about what I think is a pretty solid roadmap for what we need to do. And I really do look forward to what comes next. And I look forward to working really closely with leaders in oil and gas. And so to the extent that this interview gets me that opportunity, I'll be really grateful.
But no, I mean we will start to reach out and make connections and saying, how can we partner and and you know, talking about this report and saying, what do you think about this? What's your reaction? I mean, we engage the industry through the council in building this. So I don't think anything in here will be a surprise. But the next steps are now, what do we do and how can we work together on this? I
Jason Spiess
think gas can embrace it because this is what they've been preaching the last as long as I've been doing this, great to where I was. I thought it was kind of funny because you know, I'm speaking your language and I don't think you probably get that often at least in the state because of that 40 year old mindset and just kind of the way things are.
And you know, the other part about the oil and gas industry is, it's an industry now, it's not a boom bust cycle. Like it was before. I don't think people are quite understanding that when you're producing a million barrels a day at $30 oil, that's not a boom bust anymore. Um, it's, it's a good, it's an industry and yeah, there's some layoffs and there is that things that happened, but again, They were producing a million barrels a day when it was $30 oil.
So some people stayed in business and they still were producing those amount of barrels and anyway, so, um, just kind of summarize kind of in conclusion. Um, what do you want people to walk away from this study knowing and what do you see next? Yeah,
Michelle Kommer
Well, you know, the report is 19 pages long, but it's not all content. We've got some graphics and pictures. I want people to read report. Report. It really,
Jason Spiess
Really is like 30 to 50
Michelle Kommer
pages. It's really short, We call it a summary report because of course the devil's in the details right? And we do have those details ready to share and talk about with people who want to talk about it. And so we want to take this from a report, a summary report and recommendations to action plan. And so I want people to read the report and I want people to identify what's most important that people, Industries, business leaders because it's going to take all of us I guess is the
summary. I worked in the private sector for more than 20 years before I before I got this opportunity to serve the state that I love and I didn't expect the government to solve my problems. And that's not what we're suggesting. We're suggesting that we've done some great work to identify a roadmap to move forward, but it's going to take all of us working, together convening on common interests, willing to invest in good ideas, which is the key here, right?
Good strategic ideas and that's what gets me really excited. We have a lot of potential here and for what causes me to lose sleep. What keeps me enthusiastic and excited and really thrilled to be serving the state in this way is that I believe what differentiates North Dakota is just that it is our ability to rally around good ideas and get things done and I'm excited to be a part of that
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The Carbon Patch Kids are a Content Story Series targeted for Children of All Ages! In the world of the Carbon Patch Kids , all life matters and has a purpose. Even the bugs, slugs, weeds and voles.
The Carbon Patch Kids love adventures and playing together. This interaction often finds them encountering emotional experiences that can leave them confused, scared or even too excited to think clearly!
Often times, with the help of their companions, the Carbon Patch Kids can reach a solution to their struggle. Sometimes the Carbon Patch Kids have to reach down deep inside and believe in their own special gift in order to grow.
The caretakers of Carbon Patch Kids do their best to plant seeds in each of the Carbon Patch Kids so they can approach life’s problems with a non-aggressive, peaceful and neighborly solution.
Carbon Patch Kids live, work and play in The Industrial Forest.
Click here for The CarbonPatchKids’ website
Featured Music: Alma Cook
Click here for Alma Cook’s music website
Click here for Alma Cook’s day job – Cook Compliance Solutions
For guest, band or show topic requests, email studio@thecrudelife.com
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