Since 2016, we've hosted more than 5,800 Kansas City students on our manufacturing floor, helped launch a career-readiness program in our own building, and put employees in classrooms for mock interviews, resume workshops, and mentoring. Serving this community is the oldest instinct in our company.
By making intentional choices about who we buy from, who we hire, and who we open our doors to, Holland 1916 works to reinforce economic growth and opportunity throughout the region.
Early exposure, mentorship, and career exploration drive our community engagement. Manufacturing careers today run from the production floor through engineering, IT, finance, sales, and human resources. By showing students those paths early, we help them picture a future in an industry that keeps changing.
“Business is the primary consumer of what educators are producing: students.
So we need to be involved in the process, and we have for too long been silent.”
To mark our 100th anniversary in 2016, we established the Math in Manufacturing program. Every Tuesday during the school year, 40 to 50 fourth and fifth graders visit our floor. They design a custom nameplate and follow it through production, then work alongside Holland employees on real problems (material costs, labor calculations, pricing) and see where math actually lands in a manufacturing career.
Since 2016, we have partnered with PREP-KC to bring fourth and fifth graders from underserved Kansas City schools onto our manufacturing floor to see real career possibilities. We host roughly 800 students a year, connecting math, engineering, and technology to work they could actually do.
In 2015, we helped launch the Northland Center for Advanced Professional Studies (Northland CAPS), providing our facility as a daily meeting space for students. Since then, we have hosted interns across multiple roles, many of whom return as paid summer employees after graduation.
We take part in the College & Career Readiness Continuum, which brings real-world work into the classroom. Our CFO served as Chairperson of the Design, Innovation, and Technology Pathway Advisory Board, and Holland employees volunteer for resume workshops, career fairs, mock interviews, job shadowing, and internships. We have mentored juniors at Winnetonka High School since 2022, work that earned Holland 1916 the Kauffman Foundation's Business Champion of the Year award in 2024.
