Marcia LaFemina Wins 2026 CT Workforce Champion Award

Marcia LaFemina has spent years running one of the country’s oldest lighting companies out of Fair Haven while simultaneously building a workforce training program that’s become a national model. On Friday, Gov. Ned Lamont decided that deserved some formal recognition.

Lamont announced LaFemina as the recipient of the 2026 Connecticut Workforce Champion Award, citing her dual role as president of Penn Globe and leader of MATCH, the Manufacturing Alliance for Community Training and Hire. The award recognizes her work expanding access to manufacturing careers for people who typically get screened out before they ever reach the factory floor.

“Marcia LaFemina represents the very best of Connecticut’s manufacturing leadership,” Lamont said in Friday’s announcement. “Through her work at Penn Globe and MATCH, she is preserving a proud legacy of American manufacturing while building modern, inclusive pathways into good-paying careers.”

Two Organizations, One Strategy

Penn Globe is one of the oldest lighting manufacturers in the country. Under LaFemina’s leadership, it’s continued to operate out of Fair Haven, a New Haven neighborhood that sits along the Quinnipiac River and has long been home to working-class families and recent immigrants. Not exactly where you’d expect a nationally recognized industrial operation to be putting down roots in 2026. But that’s the point.

MATCH grew out of the same logic. The program trains residents of Greater New Haven for careers in manufacturing, with a particular focus on people who face what workforce development professionals call “barriers to employment.” That’s a broad category. MATCH specifically targets women, parents, young adults, residents of color, returning citizens, and people who are unemployed or underemployed.

The training is bilingual. The scheduling is flexible. Participants get paid while they learn. MATCH also wraps in services most training programs skip entirely: transportation assistance, financial literacy instruction, and pathways to continued education. It’s not just a skills program. It’s closer to a whole support system.

A Model That Actually Works

What makes MATCH unusual is the financial structure. The program integrates contract manufacturing work with its training operations, then reinvests that revenue into the wraparound services. So the program pays for itself, at least in part, through actual production. That’s different from most workforce programs, which depend almost entirely on grants and government funding to stay alive.

Connecticut Chief Workforce Officer Kelli-Marie Vallieres called it proof that the investment model works. “She has created a model where industry, community, and training are fully aligned,” Vallieres said. “MATCH is proof that when we invest in people, we drive both economic growth and community impact.”

That alignment matters in a state that’s been trying to rebuild its manufacturing sector after decades of contraction. Connecticut still has a significant manufacturing base, particularly in aerospace and precision manufacturing in the central part of the state, but the workforce pipeline has been a persistent problem. Employers can’t find trained workers. Workers can’t break into industries with high credential requirements and little on-the-job training infrastructure. MATCH tries to solve both sides of that problem at once.

The New Haven Independent has covered LaFemina’s work with Penn Globe and MATCH extensively, and its reporting shows how the program has evolved into something well beyond a local job-training initiative.

Why This Matters Beyond New Haven

Fair Haven isn’t a neighborhood that typically generates state-level proclamations. It’s a dense, working-class section of New Haven with high concentrations of Latino families, a significant immigrant population, and real economic pressure. Median incomes there bear no resemblance to what you’d find in Westport or Simsbury.

LaFemina built something in that community that the state is now holding up as a template. Governor Lamont’s proclamation specifically highlights her ability to “bridge industry leadership with community impact,” and to show how employers can play a central role in building a more inclusive economy.

The Connecticut Department of Labor has emphasized workforce development as a priority in recent budget cycles, but the gap between policy and effective programming has often been wide. MATCH is one of the few initiatives that seems to have actually closed that gap in a measurable way.

For residents and employers across the state watching how Connecticut handles its workforce shortage, what LaFemina has built in Fair Haven is worth paying attention to. The question now is whether other manufacturers will follow the model, or whether MATCH stays a celebrated exception rather than the start of something broader.