From KIPP to WorkTexas: How Mike Feinberg and Vanessa Ramirez Reunited to Transform Vocational Training

In a warehouse space at Gallery Furniture in north Houston, Mike Feinberg watches as students in safety goggles perfect their welding techniques. It’s a far cry from the fifth-grade classroom where he began his teaching career, but for Feinberg, it represents the culmination of decades of educational insights.

Thirty-two years after founding the nationally recognized Knowledge Is Power Program (KIPP), Feinberg has returned to his educational roots—but with a twist. Instead of focusing solely on college preparation, he’s now helping lead WorkTexas, a nonprofit vocational training program that gives students practical skills for immediate employment.

At his side is Vanessa Ramirez, once his fifth-grade student in KIPP’s inaugural class. Today, she’s his colleague and co-founder, bringing her experience in juvenile justice reform to their shared mission.

“It’s a unique experience for mentor and mentee, teacher and student to now be in a venture together,” Ramirez noted during a recent interview on The Balanced Voice podcast.

A Realization About College

WorkTexas emerged from a profound realization Feinberg had during his final years at KIPP. The charter school network had achieved an impressive milestone—50% of their alumni were graduating from college, far surpassing the 5-10% rate typical in the communities they served.

“Getting to 50% was a big deal,” Feinberg recalled on the podcast. “I remember celebrating it for about 15 seconds, then thinking, ‘Shoot. That’s half. What about the other half?'”

That question led to a deeper examination of student outcomes. Despite KIPP’s exclusive focus on college preparation, many alumni in the “other half” had found success in trades, military service, and entrepreneurship without completing college degrees.

“We had a bunch of alumni who wound up in the trades and they wound up in the military and they wound up being entrepreneurs, starting their own businesses, and they were doing just fine,” Feinberg explained.

Even among college graduates, success wasn’t universal. “We looked at our half that graduated from college and most of them doing just fine, but not all of them, not the ones that went $100,000 in debt for philosophy major,” he noted.

This insight led Feinberg to reconsider the prevailing “college for all” mentality that has dominated educational reform movements.

“College prep is a good thing… But college prep does not need to mean college for all,” he said. “This is where I think KIPP and Teach for America and the whole ed reform movement in the last 30 years has overshot the target.”

The Birth of WorkTexas

The opportunity to act on this insight came in 2020, when Houston businessman Jim “Mattress Mack” McIngvale approached Feinberg with a proposition. McIngvale, who had been KIPP’s very first funder 32 years earlier, wanted to repurpose retail space in his Gallery Furniture store for “greater good” initiatives, and the concept of a trade school emerged.

Feinberg immediately thought of Ramirez, who after graduating from Occidental College had returned to KIPP to help build what was then called the KIPP To College Department. She later transformed it to KIPP Through College, focusing on college completion rather than just enrollment. After roles in community development at KIPP and work with justice-involved youth through her nonprofit 8 Million Stories, Ramirez had joined the Harris County Juvenile Probation Department.

“The three of us started WorkTexas Training Center to start a trade high school and adult trade school,” Feinberg explained, with the goal of “bringing back trades into high school” while also offering evening programs for adults seeking better employment.

Today, WorkTexas offers training in multiple fields, including electrical work, welding, carpentry, auto tech, plumbing, HVAC, truck driving, and culinary arts. The program partners with over 148 employers to ensure training aligns with actual job market needs.

Beyond Technical Skills

What distinguishes WorkTexas from other vocational programs is its holistic approach. Feinberg and Ramirez recognized that technical proficiency alone wouldn’t guarantee employment success.

“The technical skills are about 30% of what the employers want,” Feinberg noted. “The other 70%, we have 148 employer partners in Houston right now, they all say the exact same thing… ‘What we really need is people who get to work on time. People who can work on a team.'”

This focus on soft skills reflects WorkTexas’ mission: “to help people get jobs, keep jobs, advancement careers,” Feinberg explained. “By definition, we don’t use the word training in our purpose or mission statement. We don’t want to fall in that trap.”

The program also addresses practical barriers to employment success, recognizing that many participants are “one flat tire away from disaster,” as Feinberg puts it. Through partnerships with organizations like the Houston Food Bank, Journey Through Life, and Wesley Community Center, WorkTexas helps students access resources for food, housing, transportation, and childcare.

Full Circle Partnership

For Ramirez, the partnership with her former teacher represents a full-circle journey. “Mike was instrumental in helping me access a great private high school education for close to free and then also supported my transition to college,” she recalled.

After gaining experience in consulting, education, and juvenile justice reform, Ramirez now directs Project Remix Ventures, which applies WorkTexas’ vocational training model to youth in the juvenile justice system.

“Mike said, ‘Mack just called and wants to repurpose 15,000 square feet of showroom space for the greater good and we want to leverage that workforce experience,'” Ramirez recounted. “Because of Mack and Mike, we really got to develop that proof of concept that has now transformed the juvenile justice system here locally.”

The success is measurable. While juvenile crime rates have risen in many areas, Ramirez reports a 93% average daily attendance rate among justice-involved youth in their program—an almost unheard-of figure in alternative education settings.

For Feinberg, this next chapter of his educational career feels like destiny. “The Lord works in mysterious ways,” he reflected. “We spent the first half of my career helping the first half go to and through college, and now we’re going to work on the other half.”