Elisa Cafferata Resigns As Director of Nevada Department of Employment, Training and Rehabilitation

NEVADA – Elisa Cafferata, Director of the Nevada Department of Employment, Training, and Rehabilitation (DETR), resigned on Wednesday.

Cafferata’s departure is effective on January 2, 2023, according to the release. She said,

Serving the state of Nevada as the Director of DETR has truly been an honor and a privilege. I joined the team at the height of the pandemic, and I have been impressed with the level of service and dedication of the DETR staff every single day. I am grateful to Governor Sisolak for this opportunity to lead.
According to DETR, Cafferata was appointed as the Acting Director on August 6, 2020 and has been leading the department throughout the pandemic. Governor Steve Sisolak appointed her as the permanent Director of DETR on January 26, 2021.

DETR had a backlog of over 750,000 initial claims for Pandemic Unemployment Assistance benefits and over 800,000 first claims for normal unemployment benefits when Cafferata began.

The backlog was removed, and solutions to the difficulties were begun, thanks to Cafferata’s leadership and the Strike Force’s major improvement recommendations:

DETR cleared the backlog and provided the advantages that Nevadans required.

DETR has given out over $12 billion in unemployment insurance benefits to over 600,000 Nevadans over the previous two and a half years.
Over $2 million in fraudulent payments were avoided thanks to fraud protection procedures.
Customer service, corporate operations, and employee training have all been improved.

The US Department of Labor approved a $4,562,000 Unemployment Insurance (UI) Equity Grant for DETR to help ensure that all eligible workers have equal access to unemployment insurance. This award will be used to fund seven projects, including language translation, the addition of American sign language, instructional videos, an artificial intelligence assistant for self-service jobless claims, adjudication staff, and ADA remediation.
In 2021, Nevada was one of the first states to receive support from the United States Labor Department’s specialist “Tiger Teams” of national experts to improve system operations.
The upgrading of unemployment insurance is well underway.

DETR gained final approval for the $72 million upgrade contract with FAST at the December Board of Examiners meeting.
Cafferata formerly served as Deputy Administrator at the Division of Welfare and Support Services, where she oversaw support programs such as Child Support Enforcement, Fraud Prevention, and Quality Control. She has a Bachelor of Communication degree from Mills College in Oakland, California, and a Master of Business Administration degree from the University of Nevada, Reno.

Credits: My News 4