Gulf Port, WWW Partner To Recruit Students

Joseph Powell didn’t set out to become an educator. However, as security manager at the Port of Pascagoula, he’s become an advocate for maritime workforce development—taking a program designed for large-group outreach and turning it into a classroom-level pipeline that has already helped place local high school graduates into maritime jobs.

Powell’s maritime and security career has been built on service and compliance, beginning close to home.

“I started off serving in the Coast Guard right after high school, actually here in Pascagoula,” Powell said. “I did four years there, and then I went to the Secret Service for four years.”

In 2007, he returned to the Gulf Coast region and joined Maritime Defense Strategy, a firm specializing in Coast Guard regulatory requirements and spill-response compliance. Over the next 15 years, Powell worked with operators across the inland river system—from the Mississippi and Ohio to the Tennessee-Tombigbee—building relationships with vessel operators, safety managers and hiring decision-makers.

That experience eventually brought him to one of his long-time clients.

“I had the opportunity to come over here to the Port of Pascagoula, who was one of my clients at the time,” Powell said. “I’ve been the port’s security manager now for over four years.”

For many ports, security operations remain largely “out of sight, out of mind.” Powell said his role quickly expanded beyond gates, credentials and compliance when new leadership challenged the port to become more visible in the community—and more intentional in helping fill the region’s growing maritime labor needs.

“One of the port directors when I first got here didn’t have outreach on the radar,” Powell said. “But when the new port director—Bo Etheridge at the time—came in, he tasked me with building an outreach program and suggested We Work the Waterways.”

Powell reached out in 2024, and the port hosted its first We Work the Waterways event in 2025. The initial results were strong, but Powell saw an immediate limitation with the traditional event model.

“We only got to [interact with] 200 kids out of the thousands that are actually here just in Jackson County, not to [mention] the [entire] Gulf Coast,” he said.

So, Powell and his team expanded the concept. Instead of relying only on a large, single-day event, they began taking the presentation into schools, working in small groups across multiple class periods to create a more personal, question-friendly environment.

“What I found is that putting 50 to 100 kids in a room and trying to discuss this with them, not everybody wants to sit there and ask questions or get engaged,” Powell said. “So it was more about that one-on-one experience, that small group thing, where they were able to ask more questions, and I was able to engage them a lot more.”

That approach started in late 2024 at Vancleave High School and quickly began delivering measurable outcomes. By using the We Work the Waterways materials as the foundation for a local “maritime awareness program,” Powell said the port has already helped move students directly into the workforce.

“We’ve been able to get six kids right now in the workforce based on the presentation that we give that is supplied by the We Work the Waterways program,” he said.

Those placements were possible, not only because of the program’s messaging, but also because of Powell’s relationships across the towing industry.

“I have friends in all those places—hiring managers and all,” Powell said. “I was able just to reach out to them and say, ‘Hey, listen, [these people] have an application in.’ And so, they went and hired them directly.”

The port’s education strategy earned national recognition last year, when the American Association of Port Authorities awarded Pascagoula its National Education Award for the program the port built from that We Work the Waterways foundation.

“The We Work the Waterways program was basically the catalyst that developed our maritime awareness program here at the port,” Powell said. “And last year for the American Association of Port Authorities, we actually won the National Education Award for our maritime awareness program that we have implemented here.”

Powell said the work matters because too many Gulf Coast students grow up surrounded by maritime commerce without ever being shown what it offers.

“We’re on the Gulf Coast, we’re a maritime community, and they’re not getting the information,” he said. “A lot of them say, ‘I didn’t know we had a port.’ When you explain to them what the port is, they don’t have a clue.”

In the classroom, Powell begins by asking students what they want to do in life, then connects those goals to maritime careers—showing that the industry needs far more than deckhands and pilots.

“A lot of times what I’ll do is I ask in the very beginning of class, I ask everybody what they want to do,” he said. “You want to be an accountant? Port Pascagoula has two accountants. You can be an accountant in the maritime industry. I want to be a nurse. I want to be a doctor. Well, do you know that every single cruise vessel out there has a doctor or a nurse on it?”

And for students unsure about college, Powell doesn’t shy away from talking about pay, advancement and stability—meeting teenagers where their decision-making actually lives.

“Who wants to go to college, and who doesn’t?” he said. “No, I don’t want to go to college. Well, straight out of high school, I’m going to have you making $58,000. Within six months of being out there on the water. Within a year you can be making 65 or 70, and then within two years you’re making 80. By 22, you can be making over $100,000 legally and living on your own.”

Today, outreach is a steady, structured investment. The port aims to reach all seven Jackson County high schools each year, while still hosting the larger We Work the Waterways event, bringing students from communities across the region to the port for hands-on exposure and industry interaction.

For Powell, the mission is straightforward: show students what’s in their own backyard and how quickly it can become a career.

“In the maritime industry, there’s thousands of jobs that need to be filled,” he said. “Now it’s a steady investment in the education of these kids.”