From Nurse to Healthcare Apprenticeship Advocate: How Workforce Development Movement Started in South Dakota
Propelled Professionals Inc. exists because a nurse in Huron, South Dakota got tired of watching a problem go unsolved and decided to build the solution herself.
After finishing nursing school in 2014, Ashley Kingdon-Reese founded Independent Health Solutions in Huron, South Dakota. The mission was straightforward: provide quality in-home care for aging adults in a rural community that did not have enough of it. What was not straightforward was finding, training, and keeping the people needed to deliver that care consistently and well.
The workforce shortage in rural South Dakota healthcare is not abstract. It shows up in empty shifts, in patients who wait longer than they should, and in caregivers who want to do the work but have no structured way into the profession. Ashley saw it up close, and she started looking for a better way to solve it.
The Program That Made It Possible
StartTodaySD is South Dakota's Registered Apprenticeship program through the Department of Labor and Regulation. It provides the structure, the federal registration framework, and the funding mechanisms that allow South Dakota businesses to build earn-while-you-learn training programs for their workforce. When Ashley encountered it, she recognized immediately that it addressed exactly the problem she had been trying to solve.
In 2019, with startup funding support through StartTodaySD, Ashley launched a Home Health Mentor apprenticeship program through Independent Health Solutions. At a time when healthcare apprenticeships in South Dakota were still in their early stages, it was a meaningful commitment to a model that had not yet proven itself widely in the sector. The funding helped offset the startup costs that often keep small healthcare businesses from making that first move.
The results were not complicated to evaluate. Apprentices came in, trained on the job under experienced mentors, earned a paycheck while they learned, and stayed. They were not just filling a role. They were building a career inside an organization that had invested in them from day one.
Building on the results of the Home Health Mentor program, Ashley expanded her involvement within the StartTodaySD framework in 2022, adding a Behavioral Health Aide program and a Community Health Worker program. Each one addressed a real gap in South Dakota's healthcare workforce. Each one produced graduates who were credentialed, experienced, and committed to the communities they served.
When asked about the apprenticeship model during a 2023 state funding announcement, Ashley put it plainly: "There really are no downsides."
A Mission That Grew Into an Organization
What Ashley was building inside Independent Health Solutions began to look like something that could do more than solve one company's workforce problem. The structure, the relationships, the knowledge of how to navigate the registration process and build competency-based programs around real healthcare roles, all of it pointed toward a larger opportunity.
Propelled Professionals Inc. was founded as that opportunity. An occupational health and workforce development agency built on the belief that healthy communities start with healthy businesses, and healthy businesses start with people who are properly trained, fairly compensated, and genuinely supported in their work.
PPI's services span OSHA compliance, workplace safety, health screenings, drug testing, continuing education, and training certifications. But at the center of everything PPI does is workforce development through Registered Apprenticeship. It is not a side offering. It is the foundation the whole organization was built on.
In 2024, PPI was selected as South Dakota's Intermediary for Healthcare Apprenticeships through StartTodaySD. As the designated intermediary, PPI now sits between healthcare employers and the federal registration system, handling the complexity of program development, educational coordination, and compliance monitoring so that businesses of any size can access the StartTodaySD framework without getting buried in paperwork.
That same year, Ashley was named Entrepreneur in Residence at Dakota Wesleyan University's Kelley Center for Entrepreneurship. And Melissa Heath, PPI's Apprenticeship Program Administrator, was named Mentor of the Year by StartTodaySD, a recognition that speaks directly to the standard of mentorship PPI has brought to the programs it runs within the StartTodaySD system.
What Has Been Built
The apprenticeship programs PPI has developed and run through the StartTodaySD framework cover a wide range of healthcare roles, from Home Health Aide Specialist and Certified Nurse Aide to Community Health Worker, Behavioral Health Aide, Restorative Therapy Specialist, and Medical Billing and Coding, among others. Each program is competency-based, built around what a worker can actually do in a real healthcare setting, not just what they can recall in a classroom.
Every graduate earns a nationally recognized credential. Every employer who has sponsored a program has gained something harder to quantify but equally important: a team member trained their way, for their patients, in their community.
Ashley's own recognitions over the years, including the Goldman Sachs 10KSB Alumni Ambassador designation, the Pioneer in Nursing Award from the South Dakota Nurses Association, the 40 Under 40 Award, the Spirit of Dakota Award, and the She Award for Leadership, reflect a body of work that connects nursing, advocacy, entrepreneurship, and workforce development in a way that is genuinely uncommon. She serves as Government Relations Committee Chair for the South Dakota Nurses Association in her second elected term, and as SDCEO Advisory Board Chair, roles that keep her connected to the policy conversations shaping South Dakota's workforce future.
Where Things Stand Now
Earlier this year, Governor Rhoden signed Senate Bill 63 into law, establishing South Dakota as an official State Apprenticeship Agency. Program registration is now faster, local support is stronger, and the state has made a clear public commitment to expanding Registered Apprenticeship across every industry, including healthcare.
PPI was built for exactly this moment. Not because anyone planned it that way from the start, but because a nurse in Huron saw a problem, found a framework that could help solve it, kept showing up year after year, and earned a position within that framework that puts her organization at the center of healthcare apprenticeship in South Dakota.
That is what a decade of groundwork looks like. And that is what Propelled Professionals Inc. is.
📍 375 Dakota Ave S, Suite 101 Dakota Plaza, Huron, SD 57350 📞 605.554.3311 🌐 propelledpros.com
Propelled Professionals Inc. is a Registered Apprenticeship Intermediary through StartTodaySD, serving employers and workers across South Dakota.