Anne Corriston may have the best job in town.

As local director for the John S. and James L. Knight Foundation, she gets to give away money to worthy causes.

In the past two years, the foundation has donated about $6.5 million to create programs at the Boys & Girls Clubs, the Workforce Alliance of South Central Kansas, Wichita State University and the Young Professionals of Wichita.

She is fascinated with the idea of breaking down the internal and external barriers that keep people from moving into high-achieving, high-income work.

Corriston has worked as a copywriter for Lida Advertising, worked in promotions for KAKE, Channel 10, and as development director for Hospice, the Wichita Children's Home and, most recently, Episcopal Social Services.

Corriston, 49, has two adult children who live in Wichita.

What is the Knight Foundation?

"In terms of assets, we are one of the leading foundations in the Unites States. The trustees decided after Jim Knight died to be active in the communities where they had owned newspapers at the time of his death.... That is why Wichita ended up being a beneficiary of the Knight brothers."

Knight had focused on early childhood education, but you decided that had sufficient attention. How did you pick work force development as the next area?

"One of the big issues two years ago was that we had all these great jobs in aviation and not enough people to fill them. Knowing the people that I do from the aviation industry, they were telling me that there are many cities that would like a piece of what we do — and to lose one of those companies would be just devastating, absolutely hurt everybody from dry cleaners to car sales. All across the spectrum it would hurt the economy. These are good jobs with good salaries and good benefits."

How do you decide what to fund?

"You have to have a sense of what exactly is our money going to do that wouldn't happen otherwise. That's a very, very significant question.... You really have to have your finger on where your investment can get the most leverage."

Have the layoffs in the aircraft industry changed your feelings about the need for work force development?

"With the layoffs, we are looking at a problem that is not as immediate, but the problem is that there will still be lots of people retiring, and we may not have a work force fully able to move in to replace them. It's still important for young people to see this as a career opportunity."

With aircraft down, is there some other industry to try?

"The people at the Knight Foundation asked me that in the summer of 2008 when I presented. They said 'What are you going to do if something happens to the aviation industry?' I thought, 'Ahh, it's doing so well, it's so prosperous. How could anything happen to it?' And then, of course, a few months later things started happening.

"But I said we also recognized that this is needed in the health care industry. And so we've had some discussions with the Work Force Alliance and working on creating this same kind of career ladder model in health care industry."

What do you mean by a career ladder?

"A career ladder means that within this industry or organization there is life-long learning. If you are willing to put in the time or learn some new skills you will have the opportunity for a more-difficult, better-paying job. That means a lot for people with low wages who are not able to take care of their families. It appeals to me to move someone from a day-to-day, hand-to-mouth existence to more of a mastery of their own life."

How do you do that?

"The system we are trying to create is first of all barrier removal. For some people, taking a class at night is not going to be possible if they can't get child care. And I think we've encountered situations where people just didn't have the money for tuition.... Sometimes it's something as simple as not having a car, and sometimes it's a work ethic problem."

How did you land this job?

"About five months before I knew this job was available, I thought it's great to write grants, but wouldn't it be good to give it away.... There are people giving away money to some very ineffective organizations, programs and people. You can tell a really great story about a person or program, but is it really having an impact.

"Well, I thought wouldn't this be cool, and I wrote up a job description and shared it with someone in the business, and they say, 'Great idea, but we're not looking for anybody.' But I have to believe that it sent some message out into the universe, because five months later there was this ad in The Wichita Eagle, and I got a phone call and they said, 'Get out your Sunday paper, the perfect job is there for you.' "