As Ohio celebrates In-Demand Jobs Week 2025 with the theme “Get in the Game – Take Charge of Our Future,” Butler Tech is proud to spotlight a student who is doing exactly that—Ariana Lewis, a senior from the D. Russel Lee campus, is not only shaping her own future but is helping revolutionize the way other students present themselves to the workforce.
When Ariana, a student in Butler Tech’s Business program, approached her instructor with a bold idea—to apply artificial intelligence to real-world career tools—she didn’t know it would lead to a paid internship with Butler Tech’s Workforce Services team and a district-wide innovation.
At the same time, the Workforce Services team had been dreaming up a new way to help students build resumes that reflect the full value of a career technical education. Ariana’s interests and talents couldn’t have aligned more perfectly.
Now, Ariana is leading the creation of an AI-powered resume builder for Butler Tech’s Career Connect platform. This tool will allow students to interact with an AI assistant that helps them generate customized, polished resumes, showcasing not just job skills, but experiences like career tech student organization involvement, work-based learning, certifications, and real-world training.
“This wasn’t the original pathway Ariana had envisioned,” shared her mentor, Laura Hicks, Career Strategist in Workforce Services, “but now she’s blazing a trail in tech and career development and paving the way for future students to showcase their strengths in powerful, personalized ways.”
Ariana’s story is one example of how the Workforce Services team is transforming career readiness from coordinating job placements and internships to building strategic partnerships with regional employers. The team ensures students have direct pipelines into in-demand, high-wage careers.
Through collaboration with local industries, Workforce Services supplements instructor-led efforts by maintaining and growing relationships with business partners. These partners not only hire Butler Tech students, they also help design the learning environments and inform curriculum through Business Advisory Councils at both the program and district level.
One major outcome of this collaboration is new, cutting-edge spaces like the Advanced Manufacturing Hub, the expanded Bioscience Center, and the Aviation Center in Middletown, all built in response to labor market needs and community input.
“We’re not just placing students in jobs—we’re investing in their futures and the future of our region,” shared Michael Berding, Butler Tech Career Strategist. “It’s about technical training, transferable skills, and giving students a real seat at the table.”
Butler Tech’s programs reach far beyond high school. In Adult Education, partnerships with public safety agencies like Fairfield Township are helping to grow the local workforce by training firefighters, paramedics, and police officers in exchange for tuition reimbursement, which is a powerful win-win for the community. Plus, partnerships like the one with Cleveland Cliffs lead to donations of state-of-the-art devices where firefighters simulate real-life scenarios using striking and prying tools to defeat the locking mechanisms of residential and commercial doors.
And for students in programs like welding, advanced manufacturing, and healthcare, Butler Tech continues to build capacity and remove barriers. Whether through new lab spaces, upgraded equipment funded by grants, or partnerships with apprenticeship programs and unions, the goal is clear: get more students into more careers, faster.
Even soft skills aren’t left behind. The EMPOWER Handshake Competition this year challenged students to practice their interview, pitch, and professional etiquette with real employers and district leaders, equipping them with the confidence to thrive in any industry.
Ariana Lewis may have started with an interest in business and technology, but thanks to Butler Tech’s responsive, real-world learning model, she now finds herself at the forefront of a project that will benefit thousands of students after her.
As Ohio celebrates In-Demand Jobs Week, Butler Tech celebrates students like Ariana—those who aren’t just preparing for the future. They’re building it.