For years, employers have warned that many college graduates arrive on the job without the leadership, communication and problem-solving skills companies say they need most.
At Paul Quinn College, President Michael Sorrell said that is not a gap students created on their own, but one higher education must help close with intentional, real world training.
On Friday, Toyota Motor North America set up a Leadership Lab on the historically Black college’s campus, turning a long afternoon into a series of fast-paced simulations and coaching sessions that were meant to feel more like work than a workshop.
The partnership highlights how large corporations are trying to build early pipelines at historically Black colleges and universities. Recent national surveys show nearly half of new graduates say they feel unprepared to apply for entry level roles, while hiring managers report ongoing gaps in teamwork, professionalism and critical thinking, according to event organizers.
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Students on Friday rotated through a team-based “Kaizen Challenge,” where they raced to redesign factory style workflows on miniature vehicles, and an “Experience Map” exercise that helped them turn their life stories into professional narratives for interviews and networking.
Sorrell called the lab a natural extension of Paul Quinn’s corporate work program, which requires students to take on paid, career-relevant roles as part of their education. Many Quinnites, he said, are first generation students from families that have worked shifts rather than salaried careers with built-in networks.
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“If you were working shifts, you do not have a 401(k), you probably do not have people talking to you about wealth creation. You are at a competitive disadvantage,” Sorrell said. “You need people. You need experiences that help you decode what college is.”
The Leadership Lab is one of those experiences. Sorrell described it as a way to “make the school small” inside a city sized job market, pairing the relatively small HBCU in southern Dallas with one of the largest employers in North Texas.
“You need a school like Paul Quinn which says we are not going to define you by your deficits, by what you do not have. We are going to define you by your possibilities, by the magnitude of your dreams,” he said. “What you are seeing in the Toyota Leadership Lab is the actualization of that philosophy.”
Building soft skills
Sorrell said companies are looking for people who can work in teams, show emotional intelligence and understand their obligations to others, skills that often get flattened into the phrase “soft skills.”
The Leadership Lab at Paul Quinn College included a team-based “Kaizen Challenge,” where participants raced to redesign factory style workflows on miniature vehicles on Friday, February 13, 2026. Toyota Motor North America Toyota Motor North America set up the Leadership Lab.
Toyota Motor North America
“You want to know that people have the ability to work well together. That is a soft skill. Emotional intelligence is a soft skill,” he said. “Do you understand when to ask for help? How are you in terms of your ability to engage with your peers?”
Throughout the afternoon, Toyota employees worked alongside Paul Quinn students, serving as coaches in simulation activities and at tables where students mapped out their experiences.
In the Kaizen Challenge, student teams took on a simple production line, identified bottlenecks and communication breakdowns, then reconfigured roles and processes between rounds as timers ticked and scoreboards updated. Organizers said the goal was to let students experience continuous improvement and collaboration under pressure rather than teach them manufacturing in detail.
In the Experience Map workshop, students listed jobs, family responsibilities, volunteer work and campus leadership roles that may not appear on a traditional resume. They practiced turning those experiences into short, concrete stories that answer common interview questions and show what they can do.
The Leadership Lab at Paul Quinn College included a team-based “Kaizen Challenge,” where participants raced to redesign factory style workflows on miniature vehicles on Friday, February 13, 2026. Toyota Motor North America Toyota Motor North America set up the Leadership Lab.
Toyota Motor North America
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D’Juan Rudolph, Toyota’s national manager of business and community engagement, said the company sees the lab as a way to bridge the gap between college and the corporate world.
“What they are learning is critical thinking and problem-solving skills. Technical skills can be taught, but if you are able to think critically and are able to problem solve, you can do anything,” Rudolph said.
“You can have all the experience in the world. You can have all the skills. If you are not able to articulate that and communicate that to employers, it is going to hurt your chances in the job market.”
Work as curriculum
Jeff Meade, founding director of the Center for Entrepreneurship at the college, said the partnership fits with the college’s broader attempt to treat work as a central part of the curriculum rather than something students figure out on their own.
The school, founded by the African Methodist Episcopal Church in 1872 to educate formerly enslaved Black people, has reinvented itself over the past decade as the nation’s first Urban Work College, tying academic credit to paid placements and community projects.
Meade said the Leadership Lab lines up with the college’s push for “experiential” and “venture-based learning” in his program.
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“I tell students, you are going to start something, you are going to figure out how to get a customer, you are going to figure out how much to charge that customer and make sure you charge them more than it costs you to make,” he said.
Many Paul Quinn students balance coursework with jobs and family obligations. Sorrell said programs like the Leadership Lab tell those students they are “seen” by employers who might otherwise feel distant.
“You are seen by a company like Toyota. You are loved by an institution like Paul Quinn enough for both entities to invest heavily in you,” he said. “It is hard for people to become things they have never seen. In this context, they are going to see who they can become, and that is powerful.”
For students, the day was also about confidence. Chase Brackens, a 28-year-old business administration senior with a concentration in entrepreneurship, said the experience reinforced how much communication matters when he thinks about interviews and leadership.
Students show off their jackets at a Leadership Lab brought to Paul Quinn College by Toyota Motor North America. Toyota has been partnered with Paul Quinn College since 2017 through philanthropic support and student-centered programming.
Toyota Motor North America
“For me, it is never really a difficult challenge or a really nervous experience speaking with people, because we are just people,” Brackens said. “At the end of the day, you have a story, I have a story, and when you communicate, you become a part of each other’s stories.”
Alana Rose Lankster, a 20-year-old liberal arts major with a concentration in communications, said she initially bristled at giving up a Friday afternoon to attend the lab. By the end of the event, she left seeing more clearly how her experiences and personality can translate into work.
“In college, you are not supposed to know it all. You are not going to know it all,” she said. “Being able to pivot is the most important thing in life, because we think we know what we want to do until you experience it.”
This reporting is part of the Future of North Texas, a community-funded journalism initiative supported by the Commit Partnership, Communities Foundation of Texas, The Dallas Foundation, the Dallas Mavericks, the Dallas Regional Chamber, Deedie Rose, Lisa and Charles Siegel, the McCune-Losinger Family Fund, The Meadows Foundation, the Perot Foundation, the United Way of Metropolitan Dallas and the University of Texas at Dallas. The News retains full editorial control of this coverage.
CORRECTION, 12:20 p.m., Feb. 17, 2026: An earlier version of this story misspelled the last name of Alana Rose Lankster.