Education

August 18
 

ORA EXPO Education
11:30 - 12:30 PM MAXIMIZE YOUR FEDERAL PANDEMIC RELIEF - ERTC
With no further assistance for the hospitality business likely to come from Congress, how can you take full advantage of the remaining available federal COVID relief? During this don't-miss session, you'll learn about the Employee Retention Credit (ERC) and how the ORA is making it easy for Oklahoma restaurants to claim and collect tens of thousands of dollars in ERC cash.
Brought to you in partnership with Adesso. 
  
1:00 - 2:00 PMChallenges and Opportunities in Oklahoma's Workforce
Shelley Zumwalt, Director of the Oklahoma Employment Security Commission, will be joining ORA President & CEO James Leewright for a discussion about lessons learned while navigating the pandemic, what the state must do to optimize the workforce opportunities before us, OESC"s digital transformation that will change the way employers interact with the agency, and how Zumwalt approaches crisis leadership. 











 

Shelley Zumwalt
Director of the Oklahoma Employment Security Commission

Shelley Zumwalt started her state service almost a decade ago in an entry-level position as a budget analyst at the Office of State Finance, overseeing the Health and Human Services Cabinet. She has held many positions in the years since that start, including serving the Office of the Governor as Public Affairs Director and as Chief of Communications and Strategic Engagement for the Oklahoma Health Care Authority. Her most recent position before coming to OESC was as the Chief of Innovation for OMES, the agency that oversees the state’s technology services.Since joining OESC in late May 2020, Zumwalt has been overseeing a $50 million business process technology transformation, named BT40, which is transforming the agency and its 40-year-old manual processes and mainframe to vastly improve the claimant and employer experience when interacting with the agency.In addition to the BT40 transformation, Zumwalt has led the agency in paying out over $5 billion in federal and state
benefits during the pandemic, helped to drive down the unemployment rate that was at nearly 15% when she arrived in May of 2020, to 2.3%  with more citizens in the workforce than at any other time in state history at over 1.8 million. Zumwalt lives in Oklahoma City with her husband John and daughter Lilly. She enjoys running, reading and cherishes spending time with her family. She’s a member of several civic and professional organizations including Oklahoma City Rotary, the Young Presidents Organization and The Governor’s Interagency Council on Homelessness.