Decision to Enroll for Services through LKLP JobSight Leads to Career in Healthcare Leadership for Dylon Baker

Just a few years ago, when he was 18 and a recent graduate from Buckhorn High School in Perry County, Dylon Baker hadn’t yet mapped out his career path. 

“I graduated high school in May of 2018 and had no clue what I wanted to do right then,” Baker says, though he adds that he wasn’t without a plan for long.  

Dylon Baker

Two years after earning his high school diploma, Baker, then 20 years old, became a system director for Appalachian Regional Healthcare (ARH). Just three short years later, in 2023, he was named Assistant Vice President of Workforce Initiatives for ARH, which operates 12 hospitals in Eastern Kentucky and two in southern West Virginia.

For Baker, it all started in 2018 when he signed up for career services through the LKLP Kentucky Career Center JobSight in Hazard. A partner in the Kentucky Career Center JobSight network of workforce centers, LKLP Community Action Council provides Workforce Innovation and Opportunity Act (WIOA) services in Knott, Leslie, Letcher, and Perry counties under contract with Eastern Kentucky Concentrated Employment Program (EKCEP). Those services include programs designed to prepare clients for jobs within their field of interest, and can including workplace training opportunities such as paid apprenticeships and internships.

Baker says he made the decision to enroll after learning about a paid internship opportunity within ARH’s human resources (HR) department. Having just graduated from high school at the time, he thought it might be a good way to make some money for the summer, so he signed up at LKLP and just seven days after turning 18 began the 480-hour internship.

“I was almost like an assistant, helping out in the file room,” he says. “But during that time, I was able to start kind of getting pulled into different conversations and kind of seeing what other folks in this department did. I was like, hey, it sounds kind of fun because I was working alongside the recruiters in the HR department.” 

Recruiters with ARH are responsible for coordinating interviews and filling job vacancies in the company, and the position includes a lot of community involvement, outreach, and engagement.  

“That’s something I’ve always enjoyed,” Baker adds. “I’m a huge people person.” 

Over the course of his enrollment for services at the LKLP JobSight, Baker says he became interested in pursuing a full-time job as a recruiter for ARH once he exited the internship. As it turned out, while there wasn’t a job immediately available, his supervisor at the time, Amy Gabbard, worked to create a new position at the company and offered it to him. 

By August of 2018, Baker had transitioned from an intern to a full-time recruiter for ARH, and by the next year he had earned his first promotion and accepted the position of System HR and Talent Manager and began overseeing recruitment for the company. In just under a year, he was promoted again and became the System Director of Talent Acquisition at just 20 years old.

All the while, Baker says he maintained a keen interest in the human resources field and learned as much as he could. He says ARH’s Chief People Officer Sonya Bergman also played a significant role in mentoring him along the way, and by this time he began to see the value that workforce development could bring from the employer perspective.  

“And so I started developing different programs, expanding externships, proposing new scholarship ideas, stipends and those types of things,” he says, adding that he also began getting involved in employee retention. 

In just a few years’ time, Baker says ARH’s recruitment efforts were extremely successful, and 2022 was a record-breaking year for the organization from a hiring standpoint, with 2023 on track to surpass it.

There existed an opportunity, Baker adds, for ARH to expand efforts to increase engagement in workforce, which led him to propose to ARH leadership the formalization of a new department for workforce initiatives, something that hadn't previously existed. By November 2023, he was appointed Assistant Vice President for Workforce Initiatives.  

“It’s been a crazy five and a half years,” he said of his career growth.

At just 23 years old, Baker is building a career that is not only self-sustaining, but one that can help support his family. And that was a journey that began with a singular decision to accept an opportunity as a recent high school graduate for a summer internship.

“It was that opportunity,” he says. “LKLP helped me bridge those relationships with ARH, which have ultimately been critical in my growth and successes here at the organization.” 

Working with LKLP’s staff at the JobSight was easy, he adds, and they made the process easier during the course of his enrollment, including ensuring access to supportive services such as transportation assistance and help with supplies as he began his college education, which culminated in 2023 as he earned his master’s degree in business administration.

“I think they went above and beyond to expose me to those other resources that I would have had no clue to even inquire about,” he says. “The overall process was easy.” 

And for others who may be in a similar situation and don’t yet know what they want to do as a career, Baker says looking into the career services available through the Kentucky Career Center JobSight locations across the region are a good place to start.  

“There’s a lot of opportunities out there, and a lot of those can be offered through the community action agencies,” he says. “When we talk about internships, there's so much value there because they're the perfect opportunity for someone who doesn’t know what they want to do. Like me, right? I had no clue what I wanted to do, really. But through the internship, I was able to find what I like, what my passion is and establish a very good career for myself. If you're in a position to where maybe you don't know what you want to do, but you're interested in learning more about something, go to those community action agencies, ask the questions, see what types of opportunities are out there.” 

If you’re interested in applying for career and employment services, visit jobsight.org/locations to find your nearest Kentucky Career Center JobSight and contact a career advisor to get started. 

EKCEP, a nonprofit workforce development agency headquartered in Hazard, Ky., serves the citizens of 23 Appalachian coalfield counties. The agency provides an array of workforce development services and operates the Kentucky Career Center JobSight network of workforce centers, which provide access to more than a dozen state and federal programs that offer employment and training assistance for jobseekers and employers all under one roof. Learn more about us at http://www.ekcep.org, http://www.jobsight.org and http://www.facebook.com/ekcep.