Sometimes the best way to show what you can do is to do it yourself.
For decades, Doyle McDonald has helped clients reframe debates, build coalitions, and change the narratives that shape public policy. In 2023, we decided to apply that same philosophy to a problem we believed nobody was solving correctly — and built the initiative ourselves.
The result is the CTE Science Alliance.
The reframe we built.
CTE is not a fallback. It is applied science — thermodynamics, fluid mechanics, metallurgy, electrochemistry, structural physics — practiced every day by the people building, powering, and maintaining America's infrastructure. Nobody had made that case systematically, with evidence, at scale, across industries.
We built an organization to do exactly that: a permanent, multi-industry alliance that maps the science inside CTE pathways, creates the tools leaders need to change the conversation locally, puts CTE students in elementary classrooms to teach what they know, and convenes the senior leaders who can move the needle nationally.
The problem we saw.
America has millions of unfilled skilled trades jobs and a generation of young people who don't see those jobs as serious, science-driven, or worth pursuing. The conventional response has been workforce development programs, recruitment campaigns, and policy initiatives — most of which have failed to move the needle because they never addressed the root cause.
The root cause is perception. And perception is a communications problem.
What it proves.
The CTE Science Alliance is not a side project. It is Doyle McDonald's philosophy in its purest form — a problem identified, a reframe developed, a coalition built, and a campaign launched. Everything we do for clients, applied to a challenge we chose to take on ourselves.
If you want to know what Doyle McDonald looks like when it has complete creative control and total conviction in the mission, this is it.
Learn more. Get involved.
The Alliance is currently recruiting Founding Partners from industries with skilled workforce pipeline challenges. If your organization is one of them — and if you understand that changing public perception is how you solve it long term — we would welcome the conversation.
