Photo: Betsy Cohen, Executive Director of Mosaic Project

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Mosaic Project’s Betsy Cohen Featured In Ingrams’ Top 50

Executive Director of Mosaic is a noteworthy Missourian.

Reputable business and economic development magazine based out of Kansas City showcased their “Top 50 Missourians” earlier this month. Betsy Cohen, the Executive Director of St. Louis Mosaic Project, made the list. Read below for the glowing review of a pioneering St. Louisan from Ingrams:

Finding qualified people to fill jobs has been a recent nationwide problem in the U.S. economy over the last several years, and the St. Louis area is no different. The St. Louis Mosaic Project, and its executive director, Betsy Cohen, hope to change that by looking abroad. A Harvard Business School graduate and former marketing executive at Ralston Purina, Cohen has been in her role since 2013 and wants to make St. Louis the leading major metropolitan area in the country as a destination for immigrants by attracting more international talent through several programs. One of the goals is to add 25,000 foreign-born workers by 2025.

“We have to educate every day on the value that legal immigration brings in both high-skilled and low-skilled jobs,” Cohen said. “Our country cannot educate and train enough workers in the next five to 10 years to fill the open STEM jobs. In fact, in the St. Louis region, we have over 17,000 open STEM jobs right now of different levels for which we need legal work visas. And we need legal work visas for legal immigration in Missouri for low skilled jobs in agriculture, landscaping and tourism.” Cohen and Mosaic will certainly be busy trying to fill those gaps in the foreseeable future.