About the Consortium
The Human Side of a Hard Transition
The Santa Noeta Consortium builds the research, design, and technology infrastructure that regional transitions depend on — the part that is ultimately about people.
What We Do
The Consortium is Santa Noeta’s professional development and workforce research organization. We design the systems, study what works, and build the human infrastructure that lets a region change without leaving its people behind. We work through three divisions — Santa Noeta Research, Santa Noeta Design & Performance Improvement, and Santa Noeta Innovations — which operate independently and in coordination, depending on what the problem requires.
Our approach starts with a discipline that is easy to state and hard to keep: understand the problem before proposing the solution. Research establishes what is actually happening; design builds the intervention that fits; innovation makes it scalable. None of the three leads with its own enthusiasm. All three answer to whether the work holds up when it meets real people in real conditions.
How the Consortium Began
When a regional coalition proposed the airport as the anchor for a zero-emission retraining initiative in 2018, the equipment question turned out to be the easy one. The hard question was the people: who would do the new work, how they’d be prepared for it, and whether a transition built on the valley’s water, land, and labor would actually share its gains with the communities who hold them.
The Consortium was established to own that question. Its founding premise — set by its Executive Director, Dr. Rowan Ashby, who convened the partners from a background in regional economic development rather than research, design, or technology — is plain: Santa Noeta’s communities do not lack capability. They lack infrastructure — the research, design, and technology systems that would let that capability express itself at scale. Building that infrastructure is the Consortium’s job, and keeping it pointed at the community’s problem rather than the Consortium’s is Ashby’s.
FlyForward, the airport retraining initiative, remains the Consortium’s primary engagement. It is funded through a regional coalition that includes the City of Santa Noeta, Santa Noeta County, and a federal workforce development grant, and it works in active partnership with Santa Noeta Unified School District and Santa Noeta College — the institutions that shape the talent pipeline the work depends on.
Our Values
What We Hold To
Research-Grounded
Evidence Before Action
We study what is actually happening before we recommend what should happen next. Research is not decoration for a decision already made.
Community-Centered
With, Not On
The valley’s communities hold genuine standing — over their water, land, labor, and data. We design with them and on their terms, never around them.
Equity-Focused
No One Left Behind
A transition that benefits everyone only counts if the people who have always been here share in its gains. That standard is the work, not a slogan beside it.
Where minds meet.