It’s been five years since Mississippi launched AccelerateMS, an office spearheading workforce development strategy and coordination amongst the state’s agencies, employers, educational institutions and community organizations. In that time, the state has raked in projects that continue to surpass one another as Mississippi’s largest capital investment in history.
How have billions in new or expanding high-tech and advanced manufacturing investments impacted AccelerateMS’ initial approach to tackling the state’s workforce needs? According to AccelerateMS Executive Director Dr. Courtney Taylor, “the short answer is, everything has changed.”
The basic ingredients remain the same — collaborative partners, targeted resources and industry expertise — although as expectations from the state’s industries shifted after COVID-19, AccelerateMS changed how the overall recipe is mixed. The greatest strategy to strengthening the organization’s impact has been contingent on listening.
“Companies aren’t asking for workforce advice anymore. They want people who can move fast, who can solve problems and help operationalize those solutions. That’s where we fit into some of this,” says Taylor. “The strategy for us has been more in the consultative space. You tell us what you think you need, we’re going to bring our experts in and we’re going to sit with you and figure it out.”
Quality Over Quantity
Rather than focusing on moving thousands of people through training programs with no guaranteed job placement, one of AccelerateMS’ most vital changes has been placing value on quality over quantity. This meant allocating more capital toward training fewer people, ensuring talent reach a viable career launching point once training is complete.
A mission to close skill gaps in priority occupation areas — including advanced manufacturing, construction, healthcare and information technology — led AccelerateMS and various state entities to collaborate on new initiatives such as the Mississippi Apprenticeship Accelerator (MAA) and Mississippi Reconnect.
MAA received $2 million in state funding, encouraging businesses to grow their own Registered Apprenticeship (RA) programs, while providing on-the-job training and education to an initial 600 apprentices. Participating businesses looking to create an RA program receive guidance from experts at the Mississippi Apprenticeship Program from conception until implementation.
Meanwhile, the first Mississippi Reconnect program award ($4.4 million) is allowing the Central Mississippi Planning and Development District (CMPDD) to provide free tuition and paid training to 900 eligible residents. Alongside CMPDD, Build Mississippi, Hinds Community College and Holmes Community College have been pursuing hands-on construction and advanced manufacturing skills training with local employers prepared to take on the fresh certified talent.
“The goal of Mississippi Reconnect was to say, if we have people that are underemployed or unemployed and their existing funding streams don’t work for them, we want to help you here,” says Taylor. “We want to find people who want to upskill and that’s a hard population to help because they’re actively working, need childcare or other barriers. That was another strategic change: We will pay you to come train.”
Where Partnerships Matter
One of the greatest demands from the state’s industries has been the need for higher-skilled workers across engineering and more advanced technical roles.
It led AccelerateMS to pursue partnership with Mississippi State University’s (MSU) Innovation, Design and Engineering Education Laboratory, which provides hands-on training and education that combines innovative research activities and industry partnerships. The university also became the lead institution for the Advancements in Manufacturing Upskilling Program (AiM UP), backed by funding from AccelerateMS, the U.S. Department of Defense and Department of Labor.
Aside from providing skills training to K-12 students on various aspects of automation and robotics, MSU engineers and local industry leaders train workers and community college instructors on how to operate the high-tech collaborative robots. Current AiM UP partners include East Mississippi Community College, Mississippi Gulf Coast Community College, Northeast Mississippi Community College and Hinds Community College.
“Also companies can go see this equipment. We have a lot of small companies that may not have the time or resources to fly elsewhere to access this,” says Taylor. “It allows companies to experience and train on those platforms without leaving the state, which elevates what our community colleges can do and how we operate.”
For major Mississippi employers such as Nissan, introducing the capabilities of their own expertise into K-12 schools is another way AccelerateMS is strengthening the impact of industry collaboration. Through Nissan’s Centers for Excellence initiative, the company has officially placed instructors in four school systems as of May 2026, looking to prepare students for manufacturing, engineering and maintenance roles. At Jackson Public Schools, Madison County Schools, Yazoo County Schools and Canton Public Schools, Nissan will provide early, hands-on skills training on equipment brought in from both AccelerateMS and Nissan. The goal is to begin targeted skills training that enables young talent to master basic skills faster, carving an avenue toward a high-quality career path.
In April 2026, Amazon Web Services’ (AWS) total investment into Mississippi-based digital infrastructure reached $25 billion, following news of an $11 billion expansion of its Madison County data center and $1 billion toward a new project in Clinton. Taylor shares that she doesn’t know life as an executive director without AWS, which expects to create over 2,000 jobs in the state. These roles span a variety of information infrastructure jobs, from construction and fiber-optic technicians to electricians.
“We’ve worked with them to design solutions with local partners to deliver training” via workforce development areas community colleges and universities, she says. “We were actually able to bring in teams from multiple counties, whereas a lot of times in the local government space they can only work in their county.”
In a little over two years since this partnership began, supported by the company’s own skills programs, AccelerateMS and AWS have been able to train over 6,500 residents.
Find Skilled Experts Statewide
Two years ago, when Amplify Cell Technologies — a joint venture between Accelera, Daimler Truck and PACCAR — announced a $1.9 billion battery cell facility in Marshall County, there was a shared sense of opportunity that arose for AccelerateMS.
At the time, the state had no customized training that would allow for the deployment of workforce professionals to work individually with companies and local partners to identify gaps, design solutions and accelerate implementation.
Nissan has a partnership with public schools in Central Mississippi to begin targeted skills training. Shown here is the Nissan Frontier, named in 2025 as the “Coolest Thing Made in Mississippi.”
Photo courtesy of Nissan
“We knew what was on the table in terms of what we’re going to be able to utilize for workforce training, so I immediately said, ‘Let’s go ahead and build out this talent solution side of the office,’ ” says AccelerateMS Director of Talent Solutions Trey Smith. “We went on to hire a training expert, a talent acquisition expert and since then, we’ve hired an instructional curriculum design expert.”
This expertise was deployed with Amplify Cell Technologies for the company to use at their leisure, in order to develop short term or long term talent acquisition and training. From employee preassessment to more than 5,000 hours of post-employment onboard training, AccelerateMS’ Talent Solutions team was able to deliver support that likely wouldn’t have happened on this scale or as quickly as the JV needed it to without it. Smith shares that Mississippi’s knack for delivering on speed-to-market goes beyond economic development opportunities as workforce is a key part of that initiative.
“It was a collaborative effort with a lot of people involved,” Smith says. “They were hiring their own training team and instructional design team but we were right there helping them do that, supplementing a lot of the work along the way.”
Now the established Talent Solutions team works directly on-site with companies to help build programs or connect them to the relevant vendors to support custom needs. The state’s diverse array of industries, from food and beverage and energy to aerospace and automotive, would make it seem difficult to formulate workforce strategies that work amongst all sectors. But Smith says that you’ll find a lot of commonalities across all of the state’s industries when you break it down.
“There’s a lot of overlap with core skills when you’re referring to any kind of maintenance. Equipment operation, maintenance technology requirements, precision measurement and quality control principles are the same across the board,” he says. “We’re very good at high volume foundational training but we can help build pathways for specialized skills.”
His team’s work with Amplify was a stepping stone to what Smith calls a “library” of training providers for specialized skills now available throughout the state. That resource bank allows AccelerateMS to jump in and supplement where local training providers may not be able to meet those needs, whether it be a lack of equipment or instructors, to provide talent solutions at the pace the employer needs.
“We’re trying to change the game. In that regard, we differentiate ourselves from other states,” says Smith. “Where we may not be able to do as much as other states, we want to be able to do these important things better.”
