Work Forces
Seeking to optimize your organization for the future of work and learning? Join workforce and education strategists Julian Alssid and Kaitlin LeMoine as they speak with the innovators who are shaping the future of workforce and career preparation. Together, they will unpack the big problems these individuals are solving and discuss the strategies and tactics that really work. This bi-weekly show is for practitioners and policymakers looking for practical workforce and learning solutions that can be scaled and sustained.
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Work Forces Rewind: Haley Glover: Building Employer Upskilling Strategies
08/04/2026
Work Forces Rewind: Haley Glover: Building Employer Upskilling Strategies
Haley Glover, Senior Director of UpSkill America at the Aspen Institute, discusses how businesses can effectively upskill their workforce in an AI-driven economy. Drawing on her experience at Lumina Foundation, Amazon, and the Aspen Institute, Glover explains how upskilling has shifted from talent acquisition crisis management to strategic workforce planning focused on validated skills. She details findings from The Upskilling Playbook, emphasizing that successful AI adoption requires thoughtful, worker-focused training aligned with business strategy—not just technology purchases driven by peer pressure. The conversation also explores the All Learning Counts initiative, which advocates for recognizing skills regardless of where they were acquired, and new research on internship programs showing how companies find value through talent pipeline development, retention, and innovation from fresh thinking. Glover addresses distinct challenges facing small versus large employers and offers practical guidance for learners, educators, advocates, and employers to build resilient upskilling programs that withstand economic shocks. Transcript Julian Alssid: Welcome to the Work Forces podcast. I’m Julian Alssid. Kaitlin LeMoine: And I’m Kaitlin LeMoine, and we speak with innovators who are shaping the future of work and learning. Julian Alssid: Together, we unpack the complex elements of workforce and career preparation and offer practical solutions that can be scaled and sustained. Kaitlin LeMoine: This podcast is an outgrowth of our workforce consulting practice. Through weekly discussions, we seek to share the trends and themes we see in our work and amplify impactful efforts happening in higher education, industry, and workforce development all across the country. Julian Alssid: We are grateful to Lumina Foundation for its past support during the initial development and launch of this podcast, and invite future sponsors of this effort. Please check out our Work Forces podcast website to learn more. And so with that, let’s dive in. Julian Alssid: As we continue our summer break before returning with a new season later in August, we're revisiting our conversation with Haley Glover of UpSkill America. With AI reshaping jobs faster than most organizations can respond, and so much in flux around how we fund and support workforce development, this conversation feels more relevant than ever. Haley discusses how businesses can effectively upskill their workforce in an ever-changing, AI-driven economy, while recognizing this is an ongoing and unfolding conversation. We hope you enjoy it. Here's our episode with Haley Glover. Julian Alssid: Kaitlin, so much of the conversation around the future of work focuses on the what—what skills are needed, what jobs are disappearing. But the harder question, and the one that really determines success, is the how. How do businesses actually help their existing employees develop the skills they need to succeed in a changing economy? Kaitlin LeMoine: Absolutely. While we know the need for and importance of upskilling initiatives, actually building an effective system that helps workers grow and advance is a really complex undertaking for employers. Julian Alssid: Right. It's one thing to agree that upskilling is necessary; it's another to have a playbook that works for both the employee and the bottom line. To create that playbook, we need guidance from leaders who understand both the policy landscape and the operational reality of business. Kaitlin LeMoine: Exactly. We need that along with insight into researched best practices across industries. And luckily, today we’re joined by someone who brings that multi-sector perspective to the table. Today we’re speaking with Haley Glover, Senior Director of UpSkill America, a national initiative of the Aspen Institute Economic Opportunities Program. UpSkill America drives research and efforts that promote employer-led education and training to help workers advance and help businesses compete. Julian Alssid: Prior to this role, Haley was Senior Program Manager at Amazon, where she led college programming for the company’s Career Choice team. And before that, she served as a Strategy Director at Lumina Foundation—which is where we first met Haley—leading efforts to reduce racial disparities in credential attainment. Haley holds a bachelor's degree from Franklin College, a Master of Liberal Arts from St. John's College Graduate Institute, and an MPA from Syracuse University. Haley, welcome to Work Forces, we're thrilled to have you with us. Haley Glover: Thanks, guys. Good morning. Julian Alssid: Please tell us, in your own words, about your background and what led you to your role at Aspen Institute. Haley Glover: In the spirit of time, I will give you the short journey instead of the meandering one. But fun story: you mentioned I was at Lumina Foundation, and I was there for a very long time—about 11 and a half, 12 years. I not only led the work in my last four years at Lumina focusing on eliminating racial disparities and that kind of thing, I also led portfolios focused on what we called "employer mobilization," which in my glib moments I described as getting employers to do stuff. But it was really focused on understanding and motivating how employers can take their considerable resources, influence, and that unique positioning in employees' lives to mobilize toward the credential attainment mission. Back in 2015, when UpSkill started, I actually was one of the first funders of UpSkill at Aspen and helped try to kick that off back in the day. So my time with UpSkill started right at the beginning. Obviously, the initiative changed a lot over a decade, along with the economy, the workforce, and all of the things. But that is how I found myself here about three and a half years ago. This idea, this question about how employers can not only benefit from investment in skill development but create benefits for individuals, their companies, society, and our country—that has been a throughline of work that I’ve been doing for quite a long time. Between my past life as an educator, working in economic development, working in nonprofits, government, and philanthropy, as well as the private sector, that's been the river running through my work: trying to blend the streams and get more people to think very critically about how we leverage all of the power we need to get people the skills they need to thrive. Kaitlin LeMoine: Thank you for that overview and that story of how you got to where you are. I’m curious to know: how has the focus of your work through UpSkill America evolved over the last few years? You mentioned all the changes that are occurring—what do you see as the primary focus, and how do you see that shifting? Haley Glover: That is a fantastic question. I think there's a very simple answer, which is that the economy we're in in January 2026 is not the economy we were in when I came to UpSkill back in the summer of 2022. Three and a half years ago, employers were absolutely just falling over themselves to acquire and retain talent. The question of the time was: how do I find people with the right skills? How do I keep people with the right skills? How do I get the mass that I need in order to proceed? That is not the question now. Now, I think employers are really leaning into: what skills and competencies do I actually need to not only fill tasks and roles that I have right now, but to take me into the future? How do I not just retain talent, but retain the right talent in particular roles that are going to have strategic value for me going forward? How do I create robust pipelines that guarantee that I, as an employer, am not going to be wasting time, energy, and effort on the upfront acquisition? How do I build my workforce strategy muscles in order to understand with much more nuance and robustness this idea of what I'm going to need in the future? So, it's pivoted from a "fire on my front line right now" focus three or four years ago to a need to think much more critically about what's down the road and into the future. That’s been huge. From the work that UpSkill is doing, we’ve leaned more heavily into this idea of getting much more specific and intentional. With the addition of AI—which is both a positive in that it can help people do things with less time, energy, and effort, but also a complicator—you've got this skills validation issue. I just read a piece the other day about a $600 billion resume fraud issue, which is really asking the question about skills validation. We are trying to make sure that (1) we get people to understand and be recognized for the things that they know and are able to do, regardless of where they acquired them. We've been calling this movement "All Learning Counts" for a very long time. It is this idea that it shouldn't matter whether you attended the most prestigious elite institution or you gained your skills through work. If you've got the same skills, you should be competing in the same way. What we do right now is we conflate a lot of different things with being "better" at something instead of really understanding what people can really bring to the table. So this idea of skills validation has become a much more important part of our work because it addresses both sides of the coin: employers need validated skills, and people need to understand their own skill set. A lot of people will go through education programs, training programs, and work experiences and not develop what we call this metacognition of what they know. Knowing what you know and knowing what you're able to do can be a very powerful, empowering scenario for an individual. It can also be the thing that sets you apart in an interview or a process because you can say, "I know what I know, and here's how I know it, and here's what I did to show it." We’re also trying to really help the employer get specific about what skills they need and how to find them through this validated skills movement. So, we're much deeper into technology than I think we ever thought we would be, or that I ever wanted to be, frankly, because it is not my primary language. But it is the method that I think will ultimately produce the right kind of results for both people and the employers they work for. Julian Alssid: So Haley, I mentioned earlier in your intro that we need that playbook—how do you do it? You have produced a playbook: The Upskilling Playbook: AI Skill Development in the Workforce. Tell us about it. What are your findings? What have you learned, and what’s in that playbook? Haley Glover: Yeah. Well, so the playbook is not just that AI chapter, which was our latest addition, but essentially pulling together all of the things we've been learning, doing, hearing, and writing about for many years now. The idea is that companies are not necessarily encouraged or inclined to share the things that they're doing. In fact, a lot of companies will fight against that sharing because it's "secret sauce"—the thing that we do that creates our own special business value. So when we have the opportunity to share broadly—like "here's what's worked at one company," or "here are results from another company," or "here's a process that appears to work across multiple companies"—that's our bread-and-butter activity. We can shine lights on things and make these secretive or specialized processes much more visible for other people. That's a really positive thing. That's what the playbook is about. The AI Skill Development in the Workforce chapter was a call that we decided to put out within the last couple of months here. It was less about "here's how companies should approach AI." I don't know how companies should approach AI. That is very much a "them" decision—what vendors they use, how they embed it, all of those things. That is a them decision. What we've been observing, though—and you can see this if you read stuff and pay attention—is that a lot of companies are doing a sort of "silver bullet" kind of approach to their AI work. They’re saying, "Oh, if I just give this self-directed module and training on AI to all my people, it'll solve my problems." That’s, of course, not true. "If I just buy a tool, it'll all work." Also not true. "If I feel like I must invest as an employer in this thing..." Peer pressure never solved really anything. So, what we are calling for and what we really are observing in this moment is that AI—when it is accompanied by thoughtful, humane, and worker-focused training and opportunities—that works. Product acquisition, when it is solving a business problem and serving a discrete business purpose, that works. Don't just hop on board. And leadership and workforce planning that is really thinking about AI in service of future goals, in service of those broader strategies, that works too. None of the findings surprised me because we are always going to take a sort of human-first lens on all of our work. But what I hope we are starting to contribute is this idea that any product, technology, or process absent workforce strategy and workforce planning won't work as well as it could. You have to do the work of understanding what your workforce needs, who your workforce is, and how to best support them to be able to do the things that you want and need. And then to know with great precision, as much as possible—two years out, four years out, whatever—what they're going to need to do and how they're going to be doing it. It's when those things interconnect, powered by AI, that something magical can happen. Kaitlin LeMoine: Haley, it strikes me that I think one of the complicated things about this moment is that AI tools are emerging constantly, right? And there's this historic concept that strategy can take a while, and yet we're moving at this very fast pace. In your research and the conversations you’ve been having, how are people balancing that reality? When do you say, "You know what, we're going to commit to these tools for a little while because we feel they meet these business goals and this broader strategy," and when do you say, "You know what, let's try this instead"? It seems like a very tricky balancing act right now. Haley Glover: I think that's going to be a different question for every company and every industry, because it's a question of tolerance. What is your tolerance for risk, for experimentation, for all of those "what-ifs"? And then, what is your strategy for evaluation? What do you care about? It does sort of speak to some of the things that we wrote about in the piece where, you know, if your evaluation strategy is, "Well, I had X number of sign-ons," or "X modules completed," or "this many instances purchased," what does that tell you? And if that is the only thing you're really looking at, you're probably not going to be in a position to really effectively understand if it worked or if it changed anything. What you might see are downstream effects like morale is bad, or managers are getting way overloaded with things that are coming from both sides, or you don't have enough information to really effectively evaluate your contract renewal. There's a thousand things that can happen on the other side of "piloting" if you don't really understand why you're doing it. So, I'm not suggesting that companies are just willy-nilly running in and just buying stuff. And yet, I think what we do observe is that workforce strategy is the muscle that companies need to exercise that can make these things work better. Because like I said, if you do know why you're doing it, what you want out of it, and how you're going to measure the outcome you really want to see within your workforce and within your organization, then you can really understand how it's all coming together. So, that might be a bit of a lame answer, but I think it is the truth. We see a lot of experimentation with technology without necessarily complementary thought around the other side of it. Julian Alssid: To complicate it further, Haley, you look at companies large and small in your work, don’t you? So, can you speak a little bit—because that too brings a whole other world of issues—to how we compare Fortune 500s to more typically sized medium and smaller businesses? Can you speak to tech as it relates to the smaller ones? Haley Glover: The tech question is really very similar to other questions about evaluation and implementation of new processes and tools by industry size. Everything that we've found suggests that the things that we say "work" for large companies are sort of not relevant in many ways to small organizations for a lot of reasons. These will be obvious to you: if you've got an HR team that is HR and compliance and workforce and technology and also operating, that's too many hats for one human to wear and an environment in which decisions are made differently than when you've got a team working on each of those things. There's a capacity question, which is the biggest "duh" of them all: when somebody's wearing five hats, how in the world do they do another thing that can require a huge amount of compliance? This comes up a lot in apprenticeship: "Well, why if apprenticeship is such a great model, why doesn't it work for some people?" And that's because it requires a lot of work to really get the benefits of those programs. There's a cost thing: if your margins are low, you do not have extra resources to spend on doing the experimental and piloting work. You need ready-made solutions that are affordable or no-cost, and often you need support from organizations that are going to be wrapping around you and working with you—workforce boards, intermediaries, others. So there's multiple layers of why strategies and things that would work for very large companies just don't apply. And I do think, too, the risks for smaller organizations are higher because of margins, capacities, and otherwise. If you invest in a program or a technology and you're a small organization, that may be somebody you can't hire next year. That may be a contract you can't bid for. That may be something you can't purchase that you need. It's those kinds of really real challenges and real barriers that prevent us from saying unilaterally "employers should do this." It's always about context, about industry size, geography, and every other factor—which makes this work very challenging but, you know, we try to be attentive to it as much as we can. Kaitlin LeMoine: So Haley, you mentioned apprenticeships. I know you’ve been exploring work-based learning, internship programs, and the value of those in the workplace for employers and employees. Can you tell us some of what you've been learning as it pertains to that initiative? Haley Glover: Yeah, absolutely. And this is really exciting. We've got a piece coming out quite soon which I'm happy to share with you when it is released, but I'll give you a little sneak peek right now. Over the summer, we sort of were grappling with this issue of "business case," "value case." This is a truth, I think, for every question we have to ask of employers: we have to couch it in what value it provides to your organization. Altruism is not the motivating factor for the private sector. I think we all know that, but it can be harder, particularly for advocates, when you're thinking about why an employer might do something. So where we were taking a look is—we have a really great understanding. We did some ROI studies on tuition benefits back when I was at Lumina, and those are—I still use those all the time and they are used broadly in the field. We've got some interesting ROI information out of apprenticeship programs, though colleagues over at the Brookings Institution just released findings yesterday really showing that it's very, very hard to use ROI insights generally...
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Work Forces Rewind: Mitchell Stevens on Building a Learning Society
07/21/2026
Work Forces Rewind: Mitchell Stevens on Building a Learning Society
Mitchell Stevens, Professor of Education and Sociology at Stanford University and Co-Director of the Stanford Center on Longevity, discusses the urgent transition from a "schooled society" focused on credentials to a true "learning society" that recognizes and supports learning across the entire lifespan. Stevens explains how the traditional three-stage model of education, work, and retirement is becoming obsolete as Americans move toward 100-year lives amid rapid technological change brought by the Fourth Industrial Revolution. He argues that legacy school structures that are built for durability and stability cannot by themselves prepare people for ongoing adaptation, emphasizing instead that learning happens everywhere: at home, work, and play. The conversation explores how declining fertility rates mean societies must rely on older workers, requiring a fundamental reimagining of human capital investment beyond children and young adults. Stevens calls for new conversations about who is responsible for lifelong employability and offers practical guidance for parents, young people and voters alike. Transcript Kaitlin LeMoine: Welcome to the Work Forces Podcast. I'm Julian Alssid And I'm Kaitlin LeMoine, and we speak with innovators who are shaping the future of work and learning Julian Alssid: Together, we unpack the complex elements of workforce and career preparation and offer practical solutions that can be scaled and sustained. Kaitlin LeMoine: This podcast is an outgrowth of our Work Forces consulting practice. Through weekly discussions, we seek to share the trends and themes we see in our work and amplify impactful efforts happening in higher education industry and workforce development all across the country. We are grateful to Lumina Foundation for its past support during the initial development and launch of this podcast, and invite future sponsors of this effort, please check out our Work Forces podcast website to learn more. And so with that, let's dive in. Happy Summer! Julian and I are taking some time to recharge before launching our next podcast season. In the meantime, we’re excited to revisit two conversations from this past season that remain relevant and top of mind for us in our own work. Our first Work Forces “rewind” is our podcast conversation with Mitchell Stevens. During this conversation, Mitchell shared his work at the Stanford Center on Longevity and discussed the need for a transition from a "schooled society" focused on credentials to a "learning society" that supports learning across the entire lifespan. We hope you enjoy this discussion as much as we did, and we’ll be back with new episodes soon! Welcome back. You know, Julian, we spend a lot of time on this show talking about the future of work, but there is a massive variable in that equation that we don't discuss enough, the reality that we are all likely to live much longer lives and need to learn continuously along the way. Julian Alssid: It's so true. Kaitlin, we're moving toward what researchers call the 100 year life. The old three stage model where you learn in your 20s, work for 40 years, and then retire is rapidly becoming obsolete. We can't rely on a one and done dose of education, and need to fundamentally rethink how we access and engage in learning experiences across our lives. Kaitlin LeMoine: Exactly. We need to move from what our guest today calls a school society focused on credentials and early life education to a true learning society where learning is ongoing and achieved through many contexts over one's life. Our guest is leading the initiative to define what that society can look like, mapping out a future where learning work and leisure intersect throughout the entire lifespan. Julian Alssid: Our guest today is Mitchell Stevens, Professor of Education and Sociology at Stanford University. He convenes the Pathways Network and studies history, finance and politics of post secondary education in the United States and worldwide. Mitchell is the author of award winning studies on home education and selective admissions, and his most recent books are Remaking College: the Changing Ecology of Higher Education and Seeing the World: How US Universities Make Knowledge in the Global Era. Kaitlin LeMoine: Mitchell is also co director of the Stanford Center on Longevity, where he convenes the Learning Society initiative. This effort brings together leaders from various sectors to imagine a learning ecosystem that supports all of us across longer and multifaceted life. He's written scholarly articles for variety of academic journals and editorial for the Chronicle of Higher Education, Inside Higher Education, The New York Times, and The Washington Post. We are so thrilled to have you join us today. Mitchell, welcome to the workforces podcast. Mitchell Stevens: Thank you for having me. Julian Alssid: Yes Mitchell, welcome, and we've talked a little bit about your background, but we'd like to have you tell us about your background and what led you to co directing the Center on Longevity. Mitchell Stevens: I would say one of the formative experiences for me, intellectually, as is often the case for academics, was their doctoral work back in the 90s, I studied the home education movement and drove my multi-used car all over the Chicagoland suburbs to talk with men and women who were making, at the time, a very radical decision to remove their children from school and teach them at home. One of the big lessons that home schoolers taught me and now many others, is that the rhythms of conventional schooling that so many of us take for granted are highly demanding and often fairly rigid structures. They are not very flexible for the needs of particular people or even the rhythms of complicated lives. That's really what planted the seeds for what we're currently calling the limitations of a schooled society, one in which not only education and learning, but many social rewards, good jobs, social status, looks of approval from parents and grandparents, is really tied to educational credentials, and especially in the face of very dramatic and rapid changes in the character of work and technological change coming to question whether legacy school structures themselves are the best way to prepare people for ever more complicated futures. Kaitlin LeMoine: So there are many places to jump into based on that explanation. We appreciate, we appreciate you kind of giving a sense of what has led you to this work. I guess one place I'd love to take the conversation to start is we recognize, within the last year, your work on the Learning Society within the Center on Longevity has really taken off. We'd love to hear more about the goals of that initiative and what you've sought to accomplish this year, and where you're where you see it headed. Mitchell Stevens: How we get from home schooling to longevity, I guess, is the second half of that question that I elided the first time around. I came into the Stanford Center on Longevity, just as a professor at Stanford around 2017. Someone encouraged me to go because their assemblies were so good. I was in my mid 50s. I'd been at Stanford for just a couple of years, and I was, frankly, kind of blown away by the intellectual breadth of the conversations of that organization. First of all, we call it the Center on Longevity, not the Center on Aging, right? Aging is a frowny face, right? As in anti-aging and preventing aging and denying aging. Longevity is a strong net positive. It's a gift that the 20th century gave all of us. In fact, Laura Carstensen, the director of the Stanford Center on Longevity, likes to point out that lifespan grew in the 20th century more than it ever had in the entire previous centuries of human history combined. Very large change, say, additional 30 years of life over that decade, and it's happened very quickly. Societies and cultures have not had time to adapt to this gift. What have most societies done? In fact, all societies on earth at present, we parked those additional years in old age. Old age is the most expensive and arguably least fun part of the life course. It's when our bodies are most frail and when our minds are most fragile as well. So the goal of the Center on Longevity, and in fact, a global longevity movement, is to make functional adulthood as long as possible, keep old age short, but extend functional adulthood so that our minds and bodies can enjoy life and contribute to the well being of others for long, as long as we possibly can. And let's say also this is not the Silicon Valley live forever longevity. That's not really the game that the Center on Longevity is playing. We are trying to think about longevity as a civic gift that all of us should be able to enjoy, and in fact, that we need to be able to take advantage of, because also of declining fertility. Around the world, except for Sub Saharan Africa, are experiencing net declines in fertility. So that means that the men and women we're going to need to rely on for economic prosperity and civic health, are going to be older. They're going to be more mature, and so we need to sort of rethink pretty much all of our institutions in order to enable those older men and women to make the best contributions they can to their own lives, to their families, and to their societies. Another tie to the homeschooling movement, however, is that the longevity movement has developed a bunch of terms heuristics to make sense of transitions that we used to think were the sole purview of childhood. One of my colleagues refers to, for example, there's adolescence, but Barbara Waxman calls it middlessence. Middlessence is the transitions that adults make between different life stages. Michael Clinton argues that we don't retire, we should instead rewire, right, so the idea that longer lives require but also allow us to change our lives in fairly fundamental and substantial ways, to have multiple chapters in life that look and feel different from each other. So again, these are the sorts of conceptual tools that once you start to use them, it's really hard to it's hard to move backwards. Kaitlin LeMoine: Well, and it's interesting to think about that framing of how to rewire and think differently about these different stages, but without the formal structure of schooling, or without the formal like now I'm going from K 12 to higher ed, right? Like these, these formal moments in one's trajectory. I feel like it's a whole other experience to say, how do we rewire without those formal structures, and what does it look like to structure it for oneself? Mitchell Stevens: That's an excellent point. Kaitlin, I mean, one way to think about the American high school, you know, grades nine through 12, is it's an elaborate machine for enabling the transition from childhood to adulthood. And for relatively more privileged families, the four year college degree is another machine for transitioning from childhood to adulthood. One of the things that's happened with the fact of lengthening lifespans is we've made adolescence one ever longer, right? So demographers talk about a domain called emerging adulthood. There's a lot of cultural ambivalence about what it means to adult as a verb, right? And. I would argue, appropriately, an increasing questioning of, have we scaffolded the transition from childhood to adulthood in the right way? We have high school, then college, and now, sort of an increasing conversation about what the early 20s are like, for example. So while you're correct that, historically, we have created organizational machinery for managing those earlier transitions. It's not necessarily the case that I would want to, you know, mimic that infrastructure for late life, but it's also the case that, as you said, that we don't really have clear rituals for navigating these different transitions. Imagine how, I mean, think of how much psychotherapy is bought and sold. How many support groups and self help books are promulgated because people are looking for mechanisms to make sense of the kinds of transitions that we're talking about. Julian Alssid: Well, and so we're really, you know, we talk a lot about, and have for years and built a lot of our work around the notion of continuous learning and lifelong learning and and I'm really interested in speaking of terms, in examining the term you use learning society. And you know, how do you define it? What are the factors that are at play when we think about how we all learn? Mitchell Stevens: Yeah, so the Learning Society project grew out of a year long conversation at the intersection of the fact of lengthening lifespans and the revolutionary changes that AI and related technologies are bringing. There's an extraordinarily large conversation in the United States and globally now about how to prepare people for economic viability and flourishing in the wake of rapid technological change and questions about the extent to which legacy school models are the best way to do that. Very rarely does that conversation get leavened with questions about longevity in the life course. So we talk about the need for adaptability and resilience at work, but we don't talk about the fact that the adaptability and resilience at work that we're going to need from people is going to come from people in their 40s and 60s and 70s. We talk, for example, about how current versions of large language models are good at instrumental tasks but not good at wisdom. We talk almost never about the kinds of men and women in which wisdom is found, right? Wisdom typically resides in older workers, right, whereas flexibility is thought to reside in younger workers. So, you know, putting AI in the future of work discussions alongside the facts of longevity and declining fertility, we think, you know, the men and women, the scores of men and women who have been working with me on this issue, we think that that makes both conversations richer and more substantive. So that dialog is what produced the idea that Julian just mentioned, which was sort of a an overly simplistic, but nevertheless useful heuristic in which we contrast how Americans invested in human beings in the 20th century with how they might invest in human beings in the 21st. In the 20th century, Americans responded to two waves of massive technological change by building schools now during The second industrial revolution, which took place between the Civil War and World War I, Americans created universal mass schooling for children to enable the basic skills of literacy and numeracy that an increasingly industrialized society required in the so called Third Industrial Revolution, the transformations brought about by the semiconductor and the Internet, we massively expanded higher education. We created what the Clinton and Obama administrations called the knowledge economy, and we strongly advocated for post secondary education, aka college for as many people as possible. Those were very substantial investments, and they yielded very strong positive returns, economically, civically. Now we're in the Fourth Industrial Revolution. Schools will not save us this time. It's not the case that we can grow schools or fix schools in ways that will enable the kinds of flexibility and ongoing development that the 21st Century requires, why not? Schools are built for durability and stability. They're built to not change. That's why social scientists talk about chronic reform in education. You notice that we're constantly reforming school? Right? We're constantly fixing something that is presumed to be broken, that's in some ways because of the bureaucratic character of schools themselves. They're set up to be stable, right? And, again, those structures were very good for human capital development in the 20th century. By themselves, they are not going to be adequate vehicles for investing in human capital. Will they be essential civic assets? Yes, right, in some ways, we must organize the first decades of the life course around something like schools, because we oblige adults, we oblige mothers and fathers to go to work all day, right? So we're not going to live without school, right? But nor can we presume that schools, in their current form and by themselves are going to enable the kind of, you know, iterative development that the future needs. So in the past, for example, we, you know, extended what counted as good enough education first from from grade eight to grade 12 to grade 16. Well, do we add another six years to get people ready for the fourth industrial revolution? I don't think so, right? So one of the big goals of the learning society is to just remind people of things that they already know, which is that schools themselves are limiting organizational structures, and we're going to have to think in new ways. Hence, a move from schooling, which happens in bureaucratically organized structures called schools, leading to things called degrees, to something called learning, which happens everywhere, at home, at work, at school, at play, at worship, and that we need to think about ways in which we can fund, scaffold, incentivize, and reward learning wherever and whenever in the life course it transpires. Kaitlin LeMoine: And as you say that Mitchell, it also makes me think about building these skills fairly early on for learners to recognize when that learning is happening and be able to talk about it, call it out, reflect upon it, have it connect or build across either like you're saying formal learning environments or informal environment that we wouldn't call learning or school, but where that same, you know, a certain type of skill or body of knowledge is being explored and developed. It's and you know, it don't require like, it requires that explicit instruction to say, like, how do we build that awareness? How do we build for learners, the ability to say, okay, learning isn't only happening in this one structure called school, but everywhere. Mitchell Stevens: Well, one of the, I find, intellectually satisfying and refreshing parts of this dialog is that Americans have been in conversation about what the essential purposes and content of education should be for a very long time. So say, for example, that we presume that some degree of numeracy and literacy are essential components for economic well being and civic participation. Well, how much literacy and how much numeracy. Right question one. Two are literacy and numeracy enough? Answer, no, but then, but then? What else, right? So these are questions that the architects of early education thought a great deal about these are questions that have been wrestled with by Jean Jacques, Rousseau, John Dewey, Maria Montessori, John Holt, Ivan Illich, right. Is schooling for skills? Yes, is schooling for inculcating a certain kind of character or disposition toward knowledge? Yes. ]How much of one versus the other? We're never quite sure, right? And so what I like about that is that it reminds us that these questions about, you know, what it means to be an adequately educated human being is sort of constantly in flux, right? So that we should embrace this question for our time, you know, rather than see it as a sort of new obligation that has come to us by virtue of artificial intelligence, right? We've been here before, and we're going to be an ongoing dialog about it, even as the Fourth Industrial Revolution unfolds. What is also very satisfying I find about this conversation in the United States is that education and learning is a widely shared cultural value in American life. I always challenge my students. Can you think of any problem in contemporary American life that people do not think schooling or education can help mitigate or improve? And that is true across a broad political spectrum. Americans may disagree on who's responsible...
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Clare Bertrand: Shaping College Board's Role in Career-Connected Learning
07/07/2026
Clare Bertrand: Shaping College Board's Role in Career-Connected Learning
Clare Bertrand, Executive Director of Partnerships and Ecosystem Strategy at College Board, discusses how one of education's most recognized organizations is expanding its mission beyond college admissions to embrace career-connected learning as a core priority. Clare shares the story behind AP Career Kickstart, a new suite of courses co-designed with IBM, CompTIA, and Cisco that allows students to earn college credit and industry-recognized credentials before graduation, with the first two courses, AP Business with Personal Finance and AP Cybersecurity, launching nationally in fall 2026. The conversation explores how deep partnerships with chambers of commerce across 41 states have shaped the design of these courses, why employers are hungry for a trusted, nationally recognized signal of durable skills, and how College Board is thinking about scale in a way that honors local labor market context. Clare also reflects on the acquisition of Teamship, the role of intermediaries in connecting employers to schools, and what it will take for educators, employers, and policymakers to become true forces in expanding access to career-connected learning for all students. Transcript Julian Alssid: Welcome to the Work Forces Podcast. I'm Julian Alssid. Kaitlin LeMoine: And I'm Kaitlin LeMoine, and we speak with innovators who are shaping the future of work and learning. Julian Alssid: Together, we unpack the complex elements of workforce and career preparation and offer practical solutions that can be scaled and sustained. Kaitlin LeMoine: This podcast is an outgrowth of our Work Forces consulting practice. Through weekly discussions, we seek to share the trends and themes we see in our work and amplify impactful efforts happening in higher education, industry, and workforce development all across the country. We are grateful to Lumina Foundation for its past support during the initial development and launch of this podcast and invite future sponsors of this effort. Please check out our Work Forces Podcast website to learn more. And so with that, let's dive in. As we close out the academic year and take some time to reflect on the past year of our work at Work Forces, we're struck by a theme that keeps showing up across our work: the integration of academic and career preparation across learning experiences, from K-12 through higher education. Julian Alssid: That's right. Listeners may remember our recent conversation with Dan Gonzalez when his company, District C, was building project-based learning experiences that put students to work on real business problems. Since then, District C became part of College Board, an organization most of us associate with the SAT and Advanced Placement exams. That shift is part of a broader initiative asking what it means to prepare a student for both college and career, not as two separate tracks, but as one continuous throughline. Kaitlin LeMoine: Which brings us to our guest today. Clare Bertrand, Executive Director of Partnerships and Ecosystem Strategy at College Board, leads the chamber, intermediary, and philanthropic partnerships behind the development of AP Career Kickstart, a new suite of courses co-designed with IBM, CompTIA, and Cisco that lets students earn college credit and industry-recognized credentials before graduation. Before joining College Board, Clare was a senior leader at Jobs for the Future, where she helped build one of the field's first career navigation tech products. She also co-founded a neurodiversity intermediary focused on building more inclusive talent pipelines for higher-performing companies. Clare, welcome to Work Forces. We're so glad to have you with us on the podcast today. Clare Bertrand: Thank you so much. I'm glad to be here. And I love starting a conversation that references Dan Gonzalez and Teamship. Dan's one of my favorite people at College Board, and I'm so thrilled for Teamship to be part of our portfolio. So thank you for that. I'm just very excited to get into it. Julian Alssid: It was great to interview Dan, and the flow is obvious and will become more so as we have this conversation. So to kick us off, tell us in your own words about your background and the path that led you to your current role at College Board. Clare Bertrand: So as you mentioned, I was a senior leader at JFF before joining College Board. There I directed federal initiatives and innovation partnerships, and I launched a career and technical navigation product that was used by Job Corps and really focused on young people who were overage and undercredited in high school — what they used to call opportunity youth, but really students who are disconnected from education and the workforce. That role gave me a 360-degree view of the systems and actors that inform how students get to and through school and into the workplace as young adults. And as mentioned, I did co-found a talent intermediary focused on helping companies hire and retain neurodiverse individuals, working mainly with the cybersecurity industry. That experience helped me understand the gap between employer and worker expectations, which was very real in that work. When I came to College Board, I authored our career and partnership strategy to position College Board and its programs within the broader education and workforce ecosystem, to really help expand our reach to more students and ensure that we clear a path for students to thrive in whatever they choose to do after high school. So now I lead partnerships, and that really focuses on the launch of our AP Career Kickstart courses, which you all mentioned and we'll get into a little later. I'm in regular conversation with chambers of commerce, companies, schools, national and local intermediaries, and philanthropic partners. College Board is in new rooms and new conversations, and it's a really exciting time. And finally, I'll mention that my husband has been teaching in the classroom for 25 years, so that keeps me very grounded in the everyday world of teaching and learning. Kaitlin LeMoine: College Board has long been associated with traditional college prep and AP courses. I'd love to hear a little bit more about the decision to expand into career-connected learning with AP Career Kickstart as a core offering, and what's driving that. Clare Bertrand: It's very true — college is in our name. We've been working to help students get into college for over a hundred years. And to be clear, college is still the right choice for many students, but it isn't the path for all students. Given that we're a mission-driven nonprofit, we know that we can do better to reach more kids. Our CEO thinks of our mission in three ways: we want to help students feel that their work is relevant, especially the work they're doing in high school; expand our programs to reach more students; and ensure that all students are ready for the future of their choice — whether that's a four-year college, a two-year college, apprenticeship, or going straight to work. We really want them to be prepared for that. AP Career Kickstart lives at the center of all three. Advanced Placement, which has been around for seventy years, is a college-level course that confers college credit, and we save students about three billion dollars in tuition every year. I love that statistic. Our new AP Career Kickstart courses are built with AP's thoughtful design process — they're built with faculty and industry at the table, which is quite new for us, and are connected to in-demand occupations. Our first two courses launching this fall are AP Business with Personal Finance and AP Cybersecurity. We want students to have more choice, and we want to give employers stronger signals of readiness — the same thing we do for universities and colleges, but now at scale for career. So we're tackling both a skills gap issue and a validation gap. Students who have these skills sometimes can't articulate them, and employers aren't sure what signal to trust outside of degrees and certifications. College Board, we feel, is uniquely positioned to help fix this. We're already thinking of ourselves as a trusted validator of career readiness, and we believe we can provide the same signal for career that we've long provided for college readiness. Employers and industry are at the table, and the goal here is simple: at the end of the day, we want to end the artificial divide between students who are going to college and students who are going into careers. Students deserve both, and they're ready for both. A lot of our students work while they're in school, and students want to figure out what's right for them rather than be put on a very narrow path. Julian Alssid: Clare, you've spent a lot of time meeting with chambers of commerce across the country to help design AP Career Kickstart. What have you been hearing from them and their employer members, and how has that shaped what you're building? Clare Bertrand: You say "chambers of commerce" and you may have seen a big smile come across my face. I never in my career thought I'd love chambers of commerce so much. Even though I've been working in the education-to-workforce ecosystem for over twenty years, I'd actually never worked with chambers before. I've had the pleasure of overseeing an initiative with the US Chamber of Commerce, which has been a great partner for College Board. The US Chamber has actually endorsed both AP Business and AP Cybersecurity. The initiative we launched together is called Preparing Tomorrow's Workforce, and we invited chambers to help us prepare AP courses and be part of the Preparing Tomorrow's Workforce Coalition. Over 70 chambers in 41 states responded to support the courses and help us raise awareness across the country. Over the last 18 months or so I've been working with these chambers — listening to them, visiting them, presenting for them — and I've been really impressed by how embedded in their communities they are and how well they translate between education and business. They know the superintendents, they know the businesses, they know the state agencies. They're really an anchor, or what we'd call a backbone organization, across states. I've been so pleased to work with all of them and learn from them. At the dinners with employers that the US Chamber has set up for College Board, and in speaking with state and metro chambers, one thing we've heard over and over again is that employers struggle to identify early talent. There's really no trusted, nationally recognized signal for durable skills. We did a survey with the US Chamber of 500 hiring managers, and 80 to 90% said that high school students aren't ready for the workforce. But then 90% said they'd love for students to have a business course and some signal of the skills they're building. So we're listening to that and working with employers to get them at the table to help us build not just the two courses we have now, but the courses of the future for Advanced Placement. We have these continual conversations with employers about how they're working with education and higher education now, and how we can help them work better and bring in the early talent they know they need — with the right signals and understanding of what skills and knowledge students are coming through the door with. Through the Preparing Tomorrow's Workforce Coalition, we now have about 400 letters of support from employers, essentially saying these courses give students the right skills and this is a credential they can get behind. We've been really excited about that, and grateful to the US Chamber as well as state and metro chambers who've helped us better understand how to do this work in local contexts while also scaling it nationally. Kaitlin LeMoine: I'd love to dive into the design of these courses a little bit. As you're saying, Clare, it sounds like they're working at this intersection of employer need and faculty input. What has been the process of building them out? How do they look and feel? How much of the learning happens out in the community versus in the classroom? Clare Bertrand: These Advanced Placement courses are designed differently than Advanced Placement traditionally — and I say that with heavy air quotes, because we've been thinking differently about AP for a few years now, starting with AP Seminar, which looks very different from a traditional course like AP History. AP History is a great course, very rigorous, and built with faculty, looking first at data across the country: where should these courses be, what is needed in high school, and what do colleges think students need when entering college? We're applying that same design process to our AP career-connected courses. AP Seminar, for example, includes performance tasks, not just an exam. Students work in teams, doing research on topics they're interested in. That got us thinking about relevance for students. We saw students light up, and we saw students who had never taken an AP course before go into AP Seminar and say: I can do this, I'm an AP student. We wanted to see more of that. So we thought of AP Career Kickstart as a place where more students could enter into AP and get both industry skills and academic skills. Where we started was really looking at occupational data, which we hadn't done before — what is in demand in the labor market, and where are the gaps in what's happening in schools? For example, only about 2% of high schools have a cybersecurity course. There's plenty of computer science, which is excellent, but very few cybersecurity courses. So we built AP Career Kickstart: Cybersecurity to be responsive to what high schools need and what employers need, knowing that cybersecurity is a national security issue and there's tremendous need for talent. We designed it as a survey course to really invite students to understand cybersecurity and explore careers within it. We actually have two cybersecurity-related courses — Cybersecurity and Networking — and we've thought carefully about how students can explore careers in that space. One thing we're trying to do is push against the myth of cybersecurity as people in hoodies alone in a dark corner. Cybersecurity professionals work in healthcare, agriculture, on submarines. Whether you want to go directly to college, directly to career, or into the military, you need some cybersecurity knowledge, and it exists in every single industry. Similarly, with AP Business with Personal Finance, we wanted to integrate financial literacy into business because we want students to think about how they're going to make money and how they're going to manage it. We love that combination because we want students to have financial literacy, but sometimes financial literacy on its own makes a lot of assumptions about a student's situation and their family's situation. What we wanted to do was give students a business framework so they could take financial literacy and think about it in the context of building a business and thinking of themselves as a business person. That course also has case studies — we're using the Harvard Business School case study model — with 22 employer case studies, and we're inviting employers like McDonald's to submit new case studies as well. We also have competitions as part of AP Business. So there are work-based learning components, project-based learning components, and a real effort to connect students taking AP Career Kickstart to opportunities like internships and apprenticeships. We've got partnerships with CareerWise as part of that. We've been piloting a number of these courses the last couple of years, and they're launching nationally this fall in 2026. Kaitlin LeMoine: That's really exciting, and really interesting to hear how you're thinking about these fields that cut across sectors. Cybersecurity exists everywhere — it gives students a window into many different industries. And the integration of business acumen with personal finance just seems like such a natural combination and one that is incredibly needed. So exciting to hear about the direction you're taking this. Clare Bertrand: It's been really interesting when we talk to employers. I made the assumption that employers wouldn't care much about the financial literacy component of the course, which is a really integrated part — it's almost half of the course. I thought they'd want the business survey and the business skills. But actually, employers have been almost as enthusiastic, or more enthusiastic, about the financial literacy piece and the way it's woven into the business content. That's been delightful to hear. And if you look at the data, organizations like Starbucks are actually integrating financial literacy training into their learning and development programs because employees are struggling with it — they didn't get it in school. So we're really excited about the opportunity. Julian Alssid: As you scale this nationally, Clare — and I think you've begun to answer this — how do you maintain depth while also achieving broad reach? I know you've written about this quite thoughtfully, and I imagine meeting with chambers of all different sizes is one way you're navigating it. How are you thinking about that tension? Clare Bertrand: I think when we consider scale — and I've been doing national work and running initiatives with funders for quite a long time — scale can sometimes be used as a blunt instrument. If we reach a lot of kids, that must mean it's working. But that isn't necessarily true. What scale really needs is insight into local context. And I'm not the only one saying this — there are fantastic funders, initiatives, and a long history of organizations doing scale right. I just think we need to talk about it more explicitly and make sure we're designing for scale while first starting with local context, ensuring we're replicating quality and rigor in a way that can be customized for that local context. And that's where the chambers have really helped us. Every single labor market is a little different. Waco, Texas may be thinking about aviation. Des Moines has cybersecurity and a concentration of financial services headquarters. Orange County has data centers coming in. These chambers are thinking about all of those local realities. But when we think about AP Business with Personal Finance and AP Cybersecurity, they know that the course frameworks look the same in every single high school, and what the exam and credential signals to employers across the country is consistent. So we're thinking about how to use the way we've already scaled Advanced Placement and do that same thing for employers, for universities, and for both — making sure students have the same choices regardless of where they live. Because College Board has teams in every single state and digs in with districts to provide services and professional development to counselors — and now we have stakeholders at chambers of commerce, among employers and industry associations — we're really thinking about the whole ecosystem. And that's going to help us with scale, because we can hand something off and trust that partners on the ground are going to deliver the course framework and the assessment in a way that's meaningful for a student in Des Moines, Iowa, Waco, Texas, or Boston, Massachusetts — and that employers can trust it. We're really excited about thinking about scale differently, and testing how we can do this with our employer and industry partners, as well as schools and higher education. Kaitlin LeMoine: I can imagine this next phase must be very exciting, because you're going to see how this is implemented in practice across different contexts — where schools need additional support because they don't always have connections to community or business, and where employers are more or less naturally inclined to engage. It sounds like you're at a...
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Michael Herrera: Career-Connected Learning in Action
06/23/2026
Michael Herrera: Career-Connected Learning in Action
Michael Herrera, Ed.D., Executive Director of Upper Bucks County Technical School and Vice President of Region 1 on the national board of the Association for Career and Technical Education, discusses how high-quality career and technical education connects students' interests to real economic impact. Herrera shares striking results from his school's cooperative education program, including students earning over one million dollars through paid co-op experiences and 93% of participating students receiving full-time job offers from their co-op employers after graduation. He explains how the school’s relationships with more than 250 industry partners keep curriculum aligned with current and emerging fields. The conversation explores his distinctive approach to treating language as an economic asset, crediting students' bilingual abilities to open doors in healthcare, law enforcement, and manufacturing, as well as his work building employability skills alongside technical and academic instruction. Herrera makes the case that career-connected learning should be a right for every student, not the exception, and offers a vision for how educators, employers, and policymakers can work together to expand access to high-quality CTE nationwide. Transcript Julian Alssid: Welcome to the Work Forces podcast. I'm Julian Alssid. Kaitlin LeMoine: And I'm Kaitlin LeMoine, and we speak with innovators who are shaping the future of work and learning. Together, we unpack the complex elements of workforce and career preparation and offer practical solutions that can be scaled and sustained. This podcast is an outgrowth of our Work Forces consulting practice. Through weekly discussions, we seek to share the trends and themes we see in our work and amplify impactful efforts happening in higher education, industry, and workforce development all across the country. We are grateful to Lumina Foundation for its past support during the initial development and launch of this podcast and invite future sponsors of this effort. Please check out our Work Forces podcast website to learn more. And so with that, let's dive in. As we head into summer, we find ourselves reflecting on the school year that is winding down and anticipating the one that is right around the corner yet again. In so many of our conversations on this podcast and in our consulting work, we talk about workforce development and career readiness from the vantage points of higher education, employers, and training organizations. And today we're turning our attention to career and technical education programs in the K-12 space that are preparing young people for the world of work. Julian Alssid: That's right, Kaitlin. And it is striking how much innovation is happening at the individual school level, often quietly and without enough recognition. CTE has certainly come a long way from the vocational education of a generation ago. And today's most effective programs are building career pathways, embedding work-based learning, and meeting students where they are to open doors to economic mobility. Kaitlin LeMoine: And this brings us to our guest today. Michael Herrera is the executive director of Upper Bucks County Technical School in Pennsylvania and vice president of Region One on the national board of the Association for Career and Technical Education, or ACTE. He's a recognized leader in career-connected learning and has led initiatives that expand work-based learning, industry-recognized credentials, and employer-aligned pathways that open doors to economic mobility for high school students. Michael, welcome to Work Forces. We're so glad to have you here with us today. Michael Herrera: It's a privilege and honor. Thank you so much for having me here today. Julian Alssid: So Michael, to kick us off, please tell us about your background and your dual roles both as executive director of your CTE school and as vice president of Region One on the ACTE board. Michael Herrera: I'd be glad to. As mentioned, proud executive director of Upper Bucks County Technical School. I also proudly serve on the ACTE Region One Board of Directors for my Association for Career and Technical Education. I become increasingly passionate about career-connected learning because I see firsthand what happens when students understand what they're learning and how it connects to their future. Our theme is from interest to impact. Whether it's an industry credential, work-based learning experience, apprenticeship, college pathway, or an employment opportunity, students become far more engaged when learning has purpose. At UBCTS, we serve 900 students across 23 career pathways, technical programs, and our focus is helping students develop the skills, experiences, and confidence needed to thrive in a rapidly changing economy. Kaitlin LeMoine: And Michael, just a little bit more on your background, you've been at this work for some time, correct? You've been in this role for some time and leading this work for many years. Michael Herrera: I have over two decades in career and technical education. Kaitlin LeMoine: So drawing on your background, this experience, these many years in this space, when you think about career and technical education, what does high-quality career-connected learning look like in practice? And what role does on-the-job and work-based learning play in your model? You mentioned it in your intro here, but would love to hear you talk a little bit more about that and walk us through some examples. Michael Herrera: Let me work backwards. Our students left—we had a senior ceremony last week. Kaitlin LeMoine: Congratulations. Michael Herrera: Thank you. Our students earned over one million dollars through a nationally recognized school-to-work program. That's the impact. Our students worked over 67,000 hours just during the school day. It does not include nights and weekends, as that number will far exceed that. That's the power for me for career and technical education. We had 110 industry partners that shared, and 93% of our students were offered full-time employment. So all of our students left with industry-recognized credentials and they left with a lot of pride. There should be pride in the dignity of work right now in our society. I firmly believe that career and technical education builds stronger individuals, families, and communities. And that's the power of CTE and career-connected learning. It gives people hope. I believe that this provides socioeconomic mobility. Many of our students, whether they have an IEP or come from economically disadvantaged backgrounds, this opportunity gets them on an equal playing field. And it all starts with our interests. We use the term here at Upper Bucks, "ikigai"—purpose, passion. When, according to NPR, 68% of adults hate their job, that's a problem. We have a critical skills gap. So we like to really hope and instill what makes that student excited. What makes them go out, work those hours, and have that pride. And ikigai for us is what the world needs, what you love, what makes you money. When I started in Career Tech Ed years ago, we asked students, why do you go to school? And the answer was always to learn, which we are all lifelong learners, but without that purpose and that passion and that desire, that spark is not there. And what we do here at Upper Bucks in career-connected learning, we connect a student's education with the workforce. Julian Alssid: So just as a follow up, Michael, since students are coming in and may not have a whole lot of experience and knowledge about the workforce, how do you even introduce them to the different possibilities and begin to help them find areas they'd like to explore? Michael Herrera: We are bringing students in as early as first grade through our summer camps because our students have the experience, they have the skills and the aptitude, but may not necessarily have the interest. So exposing them to the benefits of what we offer, what the world needs, what's going to give them an opportunity to become stronger individuals and build stronger communities is just opening the doors, starting as first graders, working with our sending schools, helping them find their interests and their aptitudes is critical for us. At the same time, what we've really done was we did our best to communicate that. As you mentioned, vocational career and technical education can no longer be the best-kept secret. During COVID, when a lot of the world was shutting down, career and technical education accelerated. We are the frontline workers. We're the workers that are going to keep the economy growing. And it was at that time, in order to create a COVID safety plan, when we placed our students on our school-to-work program, we invited the parents, we invited the mentors, and we met at the businesses. That became our signing day. So what we've done is we've also put that on social media and shown the importance, no different than an athlete or any other type of signing day. And so we wanted to identify it, celebrate it, and then replicate it. We've grown since then, and now we place a banner: "We employ a UBCTS student". So when we talk about the return on investment with education and our community members are driving by over a hundred businesses that are hiring our students, they're seeing the firsthand knowledge of career and technical education. And they're seeing the partnership that we have with business and industry to help guide, build those stronger students and communities. Kaitlin LeMoine: Michael, you mentioned in discussing the recent graduation of some of your learners, your 110 industry partners. I would love to hear a little bit more. I mean, that's a lot of industry partners. Can you talk a little bit about how you've gone about building out those partnerships and what are different models through which learners engage with those industry partners? Michael Herrera: I think it's a partnership. We were a national finalist in the Career Z Challenge for many of those principles that I just mentioned. It's a partnership. So we have over 250 business and industry professionals that come in and help modernize our curriculum. So we're not only preparing students for the work today, but in the future, partnering with organizations like Aerium in terms of drones, aviation, and emergent industries. That's the difference in career and technical education is we're constantly adapting to meet current and future needs in the industry. We hold that relationship sacred in that there's an agreement, there's a partnership. So we work with business and industry, we tailor our curriculum to fit their needs. We do site visits once per month. We help communicate between the students and the school in our programs, ensuring success. So I really appreciate you bringing that up, Kaitlin. It's not by accident; it's with intention, it's with detail, and it's with relationships. We talked a little bit about our graduation, but one of the things that we're most proud about is at the end of the year with award ceremonies, having business and industry come in, celebrating that relationship, seeing students offered full-time jobs, apprenticeships, and scholarships. They're investing in the students and their future. And being able to share that and be a part of it is really, really meaningful to me. Julian Alssid: Yeah, that really comes through across the airwaves. So, one of the distinctive ideas that you've put out there is the idea of treating language as an economic asset for your students. And how does that lens kind of shape the way CTE programs should be designed, and what does it look like in practice? Michael Herrera: So I had an opportunity to visit an organization where there was a big movement with the Seal of Biliteracy. And we became involved as a career and technical school because we looked at it from a different lens. Language is an academic subject, but it's also a critical workplace skill. So our initiative using language as an economic asset, which we believe is critical to our thriving economies and national defense, we began to credential our students' ability. And about three years ago, I had an opportunity to sit on the stage at the Seal of Biliteracy summit. And I was on a stage with someone from the Children's Hospital of Philadelphia. And they mentioned approximately 120 languages spoken there, 20 full-time translators, and they just didn't have enough to fill that gap. So we came back to the school working with Language Testing International and ACTFL, and we began to credential our students' language ability. It started off with almost like a student find. It was really hard to identify what students had the superpower. And many of them didn't look at it as an asset. It was something that was not to the forefront. So imagine our student that's in healthcare who already has her CNA, going to get their RN, but is credentialed in one or two other areas, whether it's Spanish, Mandarin, or this year Turkish, and it was really a game changer for us. So we're very proud and we just believe that that opens doors; that's a credential that's needed. Kaitlin LeMoine: Well, and to value that really critical skill in a way that is, as you're saying, valuing it from the perspective of earning a credential, I feel like just further raises the impact. It's really interesting to hear you share more about that, Michael. Michael Herrera: And that was really interesting working with organizations like Digital Promise and Global, with a lot of the manufacturing coming back, this is a superpower. We know that many businesses are losing opportunities. So whether it's in dental, whether it's law enforcement, whether it's our students that are entering the military, it's a great way to be able to highlight that. And when we talk about global initiatives, we meet students where they are. We're credentialing their languages. We're giving them opportunities to become credentialed. We're giving them opportunities to hone their crafts in our technical schools. Here's a wonderful example: we're part of the NASA Hunch program. So our students are working on building parts in space. And our instructor had the students working on a new part. He wanted to make a model of it before developing and making those parts. And one of our students, it was a female student, went back to the instructor and stated, "I'm sorry, I can't make the model. I don't have all the dimensions." Well, through a lot of emails later, through NASA, she was right. So think about that impact and think about the importance of our underclassmen working on these real-world projects with credentials; think about the innovation, the manufacturing, where we are in this country, and the power of that. So those are just the opportunities that really separate us, and where you see the power of career-connected learning. Kaitlin LeMoine: So I guess drawing on that last example, as we think about how to further expand the power of that learning, what do you see as the changes that need to happen systemically to expand access to high-quality CTE programs? And where do you see the most promising opportunities emerging either through either of your roles or both of your worlds? Michael Herrera: I think we're at a critical age right now in education with the advent of AI, with the advent of our educational systems. Our model has been around for years and it's been developed. So I think really what we kind of take a look at is how do we expand that to all students? And I was working with Mark Perna, who's a national voice in career and technical education. And he cautioned me to say, "Michael, it's great for the role, the innovation you're doing with career and technical education, but how can we enhance that to career-connected learning to serve all students?" And that was great advice. So I think our model is we focus on employability, technical, academic—that has to be built in through all of our educational systems. There are some scary statistics with employability. And over the last two years, we've had a national gold medal winner and a bronze medal in that employability. So again, being able to be on the workplace, I believe, is an excellent social-emotional curriculum, and just being able to partner with that. But when we have and see some of the statistics, like 53% of recent grads struggle with eye contact, or the 50% with unreasonable compensation. As much as 15% of college graduates may be bringing a parent to the interview, we've got to really change the way our educational systems are working. So again: employability, technical, and academic. Our instructors are showing the value of academic integration through literacy, through math, because it's applied. And then obviously the technical skills. So we look at that. I'm a big believer in the school-to-work pipeline. 77% of college graduates felt they learned more after six months on the job than after the completion of their university degree. It's a scary statistic for me. Some statistics say 50% of students believe their college major will lead to a good job. So again, returning back to our themes: interests, impact, what the world needs, what makes you money, what makes you happy, how do we then replicate that and provide these opportunities for all students? Kaitlin LeMoine: Well, and how to navigate that framework across a lifespan too, right? I think that is currently one of the things I'm thinking a lot about is just the world is moving very quickly. And as you said, I think your connections to industry can help the coursework and assignments to remain relevant and pretty applied. But how do we all as people, as lifelong learners, navigate a framework where you're regularly reevaluating interest, passion, economic mobility, and bringing that together across a lifespan? Michael Herrera: And I think that's it. I've done a webinar with Dr. Alveda King; she's the niece of Dr. Martin Luther King. And we talked about career-connected learning being the new civil right. My dissertation in the past was content area literacy, and I still believe literacy is the key to economic prosperity, but I've expanded that recently and really believe in career-connected learning. Right now, Secretary McMahon is emphasizing workforce readiness, career pathways, work-based learning, industry-recognized credentials, and apprenticeships, like we talked about at the national level; these all align with what we believe in career and technical education, a strong alignment between not only education, but labor. When I started about 15, 20 years ago, believe it or not, apprenticeship did not count as a positive placement for students. It was all about college for all. And regardless of political affiliations, career and technical education from both sides of the political aisle, along with independents, community members are seeing the value and importance of that. One other area that I'd like to highlight is we're in a rural area. Our local EMS would have taken about 15 minutes just to get to the school, to come here. So one of the things that we've done was we built a substation for our EMS right at the school. We have 800 students. We're working with them to build EMS, fire, law enforcement, and a lot of the work that we're doing with drones. Our students are getting involved with it at the early stages. And again, that's just one example of how CTE builds stronger communities. Our students will be working alongside with them through ride-alongs. They'll come in, they work with our students. We're in hazardous industries right here; we're very fortunate, we have a strategic alignment with OSHA. But how great knowing is that we have that EMS substation right here in the front of our school partnering. And going back to the language, imagine that our students that are riding along have the ability to communicate, right, because we know...
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Laura DaVinci and Robert McGuire: The Career Readiness Imperative in Gateway Courses
06/09/2026
Laura DaVinci and Robert McGuire: The Career Readiness Imperative in Gateway Courses
Laura DaVinci, Director of Every Learner Everywhere, and Robert McGuire, managing editor and content strategist, discuss their new report, The Career Readiness Imperative in Gateway Courses, which makes the case that career readiness belongs at the start of a student's college experience, not the end. Drawing on interviews with 17 practitioners and a review of more than 40 white papers, they trace an emerging trend of colleges and universities embedding career readiness into introductory and general education courses rather than treating it as a capstone activity. The conversation explores why gateway courses represent a unique opportunity to reach every admitted student, how digital learning tools are enabling faculty to make career connections without redesigning their courses from scratch, and what a practical playbook looks like for both institutional leaders and classroom faculty. DaVinci and McGuire also highlight the NACE competencies as a ready-made bridge between academic objectives and employer expectations, and offer concrete strategies for building faculty momentum through learning communities, fellowships, and ambassador programs. Transcript Julian Alssid: Welcome to the Work Forces podcast. I'm Julian Alssid. Kaitlin LeMoine: And I'm Kaitlin LeMoine, and we speak with innovators who are shaping the future of work and learning. Julian Alssid: Together, we unpack the complex elements of workforce and career preparation and offer practical solutions that can be scaled and sustained. Kaitlin LeMoine: This podcast is an outgrowth of our Work Forces consulting practice. Through weekly discussions, we seek to share the trends and themes we see in our work and amplify impactful efforts happening in higher education, industry, and workforce development all across the country. We are grateful to Lumina Foundation for its past support during the initial development and launch of this podcast and invite future sponsors of this effort. Please check out our Work Forces podcast website to learn more. And so with that, let's dive in. Julian Alssid: Across all of the conversations we have on this podcast, and in our consulting work too, there is one challenge that keeps coming up in different forms. Historically, we have built a higher education system in which career readiness is treated as something that comes at the end: a capstone course, a final-semester internship, a credential layered on top of everything else. And in doing this, we have essentially been signaling to students: learn first, and then maybe we will talk about what any of this means for your career. Kaitlin LeMoine: That is so true. And what makes it particularly striking is that the courses where career readiness is most absent are often the very first ones students encounter on their learning journeys. General education and introductory courses are taken by virtually every college student, many in their first year. And while they are an almost universal touchpoint in higher education, they are often not designed with career readiness in mind. Julian Alssid: Which raises the question our guests today have spent real time trying to answer: what would it actually look like to change that? Not adding on career readiness, but genuinely embedding it, making the case that career readiness can and should happen in gateway courses, right from the very start of a student's college experience. Kaitlin LeMoine: And that is exactly what Laura DaVinci and Robert McGuire set out to research and discuss in their new report, The Career Readiness Imperative in Gateway Courses, published through Every Learner Everywhere. To provide a bit of background on our two guests: Laura has been with Every Learner Everywhere since its founding in 2018, and currently serves as its Director. She has dedicated her career to improving educational outcomes through innovative, technology-enhanced approaches, and has led complex, grant-funded programs across a wide range of partners and funders, including the Gates Foundation, the U.S. Department of Education, and the National Science Foundation, to name just a few. Julian Alssid: And Robert McGuire brings over 30 years of reporting on education, and has worked as an adjunct professor of composition and literary studies. His magazine and newspaper reporting has won multiple national and regional press awards. Through McGuire Editorial and Consulting, which he founded in 2013, Robert works with national nonprofits, colleges and universities, and education technology organizations to produce thought leadership that, as he puts it, is the ungoogleable: content that is genuinely derived from the work people are doing and moves conversations in new directions. Laura and Robert, welcome to Work Forces. We are delighted to have you both with us today. Laura DaVinci: Thank you very much. Robert McGuire: We're delighted to be here. Thank you. Kaitlin LeMoine: So, Laura, to get us started, please tell us a bit more about your background and Every Learner Everywhere — its origins, its structure, and what drives the work? Laura DaVinci: I'm the director of Every Learner Everywhere, and as you said in the bio, I come with a background of program development, grant management, and I've always been at the heart of nonprofit and higher education. I'm really committed to seeing students succeed, and with Every Learner, I could do that at the gateway course level. As Every Learner Everywhere, we're a network of partner organizations, and our mission is to partner with colleges and universities to harness digital learning technology in ways that drive innovation and improve outcomes for every learner. What makes us a little unusual is the network structure. WCET and WICHE, which stands for Western Interstate Commission for Higher Education, serve as our parent organizations, and around that, we've built a network of partners that includes groups like Achieving the Dream, the Association of Public and Land-grant Universities, the Online Learning Consortium, and many more. Each brings deep expertise in a different piece of the puzzle, whether that's pedagogy, technology, research, or professional development. And we bring that collective capacity directly to institutions. Our origins are rooted in a very specific student outcomes problem: many students start college, but they don't finish, and a lot of that attrition happens in the gateway and general education courses. That's where we've always been focused. We build capacity through three things: direct technical assistance, free resources, webinars and toolkits, and ongoing analysis of what's actually working in the field. This report is a great example of that third piece — taking a real question and putting evidence and practical guidance behind it. Julian Alssid: Great, thank you for that, Laura. And Robert, turning to you, can you tell us a bit more about your work as a content strategist in the higher ed and workforce development spaces? Robert McGuire: Thank you. Essentially, I'm a managing editor for thought leadership initiatives. I set up the storytelling machinery for organizations like Every Learner Everywhere who are trying to grow their audiences. My clients typically have a lot of raw data, research, insights, and stories, but all of that is locked up in the heads of their internal experts, employees, stakeholders, or partners. I help get that data and those stories out into the world where they can start to influence conversations in their field. I do that by setting up the editorial workflow, and I have a team of writers who help deliver all that content — or in cases where I get particularly energized, I take the lead on writing it myself, which is what happened with this report. The way my business relates to the topic at hand: about 13 years ago, when MOOCs were dominating the conversation about online learning, I got very interested in online learning and started to develop an expertise in education technology. My client base at that time started to include a lot of edtech startups. As your listeners probably know, education technology startups sell not just into K-12 and higher education, but also into major employers for their workforce development and talent learning initiatives. Working with those clients, I gained a better understanding of the continuum of learning from higher ed through workplace learning. Alongside those edtech startups, my client mix has grown to include nonprofits like CompTIA, EDUCAUSE, and Every Learner Everywhere — large membership-oriented or network nonprofits that are trying to be leading voices in their fields. I help them articulate that voice by setting up the strategy and running the editorial workflow. Julian Alssid: Robert, you recently published the report, The Career Readiness Imperative in Gateway Courses, which makes the case that career readiness can and should happen in introductory and general education courses, not just capstones. We would love to learn more about what led you to this area of inquiry and research. Robert McGuire: Well, what led me to it is that Every Learner said they were interested in doing more on the subject and asked if I had any ideas. I scoped it out, but I'll let Laura speak to why Every Learner particularly had an interest in doing more around career readiness. Laura DaVinci: We've worked with so many institutions of higher education, especially in the gateway courses, and the connection to career readiness has come up repeatedly. It comes straight out of the mission and values of Every Learner to center the student voice in our work. Across survey after survey, students say loud and clear that launching a professional career is their top priority — that's why they're coming to college. About 60% of enrolled students say expected job opportunities are a very important factor in their decision to enroll. We also know from learning science that making learning relevant is one of the most powerful teaching practices. Students are telling us the most relevant thing to them is how college connects to a career. It doesn't make sense to save that conversation for the last semester. You need to start with it and continue semester by semester. It will help with retention because students want to see themselves progressing toward their career, and it will keep them more engaged. "Meet students where they are" is something you hear constantly in higher ed — and where students literally are is in gateway courses. That's the one place you can reach 100% of admitted students. The data on career centers is telling: one study defined a frequent user as a student who visits the career center maybe six times across their entire college career, and only about 8% of all students meet that bar. Engagement with co-curricular programming stays stubbornly low, and honestly, that's rational behavior — students put their limited time where the incentives are, which is earning credits toward a degree. I'm not knocking career centers; they do incredible work. In fact, Tyton Partners' Listening to Learners study from 2025 found that students who participate in co-curricular programming report very high satisfaction. The work is excellent — the challenge is simply getting students through the door. So this has never been about replacing career centers. They're a central part of almost every initiative we feature in the report. It's about meeting students where they are in the classroom and using that to draw them toward the resources that are waiting for them. Robert McGuire: One thing I would add is that what we're discussing today is, to some degree, an extension of conversations you've already had on previous episodes of Work Forces. I was listening to the episode with Nisha Taylor, which aired about a year ago. She was someone I interviewed for the report, and in that episode she made many of the same arguments we make here about increasing collaboration between co-curricular programs and academic courses — in the context of internships. I kind of initiated work on this project with the question of what that would look like further upstream, in the gateway courses and first-semester experiences that often end up screening students rather than welcoming them. Kaitlin LeMoine: You're both already taking us in this direction, and I'd like to push the conversation a bit further. Your research process included a review of around 50 white papers and interviews with 17 or so stakeholders. Can you talk about some of the trends that emerged? As you said, Robert, aspects of this conversation have been happening for some time, but the world continues to change, and we'd love to hear an updated view of the findings. Robert McGuire: One major finding is that it is, in fact, a trend. We had a sense that the conversation about career readiness and incorporating it into academic programs was gaining volume, so I went out with an open-minded inquiry — is that actually the case, and if so, what does it look like? I can confirm that it is an emerging trend. A growing number of colleges and universities treat career readiness as a strategic priority, and a subset of those increasingly treat gateway courses as an essential part of building it. The report is organized in three parts, and Part II outlines eight high-level trends — I won't go through all of them, but I'll highlight one. I observed a range of activity that spans what you might imagine as a maturity model. I didn't find any existing maturity models in this space, so maybe that's the next project. But on one end, there are isolated, innovative faculty — maybe reaching a critical mass — who are doing this work on their own. On the other end, there are institution-wide initiatives involving many offices and stakeholders. Those comprehensive programs often try to scaffold career readiness across the program, doing what's developmentally appropriate at the right moment — just like critical thinking is a multi-touchpoint objective woven through a two- or four-year program rather than crammed into one course. The more sophisticated programs I spoke with had that scaffolding approach built into their strategy. So one of the major findings is that there's a continuum from what one source called "career-curious faculty" who are pioneering the work individually, to institution-wide strategies. That continuum speaks to where we are in the conversation. I'd say this is happening a lot, but not commonly — it's more of an emerging trend in its early stages. Laura DaVinci: What surprised me and genuinely inspired me was the creativity on the digital learning side, which is where Every Learner spends most of its attention. The lesson I took away is that it isn't about digitizing for its own sake — it's about taking what we already know works in good teaching and finding the digital tools that allow faculty to extend it. Because I'm a practical person who appreciates real examples, and faculty tend to run with examples, I'll share a few. Virtual job and interview simulations are often plug-and-play, so an intro chem or bio class can have students apply what they're learning to a real-world case without faculty building the scenario from scratch. Career readiness modules in the LMS are another — we found dozens of examples where a career center builds a menu of short modules and faculty pull the ones that fit. When done deliberately, a student can experience different modules across their four-semester general ed sequence. There are also curriculum alignment tools that help academic units surface where career competencies already live inside their syllabi. But my favorite, and the simplest, example is from Indiana University Indianapolis. Sydney Kadinger has students keep research logs during lab work. It's a very traditional assignment that builds information literacy and metacognition. It used to be paper and pencil; now it's Google Sheets or a Notion database. What makes it career-relevant is simply the questions she embeds in the log — a couple of prompts that raise students' awareness of how the course objectives connect to their durable professional skills. That captures the whole recipe: make the objectives transparent, make the competencies transparent, raise awareness of the connection, and give students practice articulating it. Julian Alssid: The report has a playbook, and it's divided into guidance for leaders and guidance for faculty. Robert, can you speak to what that guidance looks like for leaders to create the conditions to meaningfully integrate career readiness into general ed courses? And Laura has touched on it with examples, but what does it look like in the classroom when a faculty member embraces this work? Robert McGuire: We were careful to characterize this as an emerging playbook, not the playbook, because the conversation is still relatively early and I don't think we did enough research to identify one definitive right way. But in this emerging playbook, you can sum it up as a recipe with four steps. The first step is recognizing that a connection exists — that the objectives of a general education program typically do coincide with the broad, transferable, and durable skills employers say they value. A lot of faculty in higher ed assume there's some adversarial tension with employers, but there's almost no daylight between what a general liberal education program promises and what employers say they want. Recognizing that is step one. The second step is making that connection explicit — usually by crosswalking your program's objectives against a framework. Over 95% of the time, that framework is the NACE competencies, which you've featured many times on this podcast. A simple way to start: open a browser tab with your gateway course objectives, open another with the NACE career competencies, and set them side by side. The dotted-line connection becomes very clear. The third step is making that connection explicit for students by referring to it regularly and in context. One evidence-based teaching practice Every Learner promotes widely is transparent instruction — making clear to students the "why" behind a given assignment, starting with the syllabus. A simple adaptation is to make that bilingual: list both the course objectives and the NACE competencies side by side, so you're constantly helping students see how they're building both an academic identity that will help them succeed in their program and a professional identity. The fourth step is practice — giving students opportunities to articulate that connection for themselves. A specific example: a history professor at Washington State University uses a reflection activity, which is a low-stakes moment where students articulate their working process after a high-stakes assignment like a research paper. That kind of reflection builds metacognition, which is another well-established teaching practice. The adaptation he made was instead of having students write that reflective essay addressed to the professor, he had them address it to an imagined future employer. The student gets into the habit of code-switching between academic language and a future professional context. And the key point is that this does not challenge academic integrity — students are still doing the same traditional paper, the same lab report, the same problem set. The history professor doesn't need to become an expert in labor market trends, spend time in O*NET or BLS data, or build direct relationships with employers — all of that still rests with the career center. It's just finding small moments to step back and say: here is the reason we're doing this that's going to help you succeed in college, and here's the dotted-line connection to what employers value. Then follow that up with creative ways for students to practice articulating it. Kaitlin LeMoine: Robert, through these examples, you've illustrated...
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Miriam Altman-Reyes: Investing in AI-Driven Solutions for Economic Mobility
05/26/2026
Miriam Altman-Reyes: Investing in AI-Driven Solutions for Economic Mobility
Miriam Altman-Reyes, founding managing partner of Brass Ring Ventures, discusses her path from public school teacher to entrepreneur to venture capitalist, and how each chapter informs her current work leading a seed fund and growth studio focused on the future of work and learning. Drawing on her experience co-founding and selling Kinvolved to PowerSchool, Miriam explains how her team of exited operators supports early-stage founders across four investment themes: early success systems, operational efficiency, social capital development, and workforce upskilling and reskilling. The conversation explores how private capital can play a distinctive role in scaling AI-driven solutions for learners and workers, and why the defensibility of technology matters more than ever as larger players enter the education and workforce space. Miriam shares examples from her current portfolio and offers practical guidance for leaders navigating labor market shifts, emphasizing adaptability, mission alignment, and the enduring importance of human skills that AI cannot replace. Transcript Julian Alssid: Welcome to the Work Forces podcast. I'm Julian Alssid. Kaitlin LeMoine: And I'm Kaitlin LeMoine, and we speak with innovators who are shaping the future of work and learning. Julian Alssid: Together, we unpack the complex elements of workforce and career preparation and offer practical solutions that can be scaled and sustained. Kaitlin LeMoine: This podcast is an outgrowth of our workforces consulting practice. Through weekly discussions, we seek to share the trends and themes we see in our work and amplify impactful efforts happening in higher education, industry, and workforce development all across the country. We are grateful to Lumina Foundation for its past support during the initial development and launch of this podcast, and invite future sponsors of this effort. Please check out our Work Forces podcast website to learn more. And so with that, let's dive in. Kaitlin LeMoine: In our recent Work Forces episodes, we've looked at the future of work through different lenses, from the technical infrastructure of credentials to the institutional shifts happening at community colleges and national nonprofits. And today, we're continuing our focus on the innovators who are driving these changes by looking specifically at the role of investment in the work and learning ecosystem. Julian Alssid: While we often talk about policy and systemic shifts, it's equally important to understand how private capital and exited operators—or founders who have successfully built and sold their own companies—are identifying and scaling the next generation of solutions, particularly as artificial intelligence begins to fundamentally reshape how we prepare the workforce. Kaitlin LeMoine: And our guest today brings a unique perspective as both a successful entrepreneur and venture capitalist. Miriam Altman-Reyes is the founding managing partner of Brass Ring Ventures, an exited operator-led seed fund and growth studio. Miriam and her team focus on investing in AI-driven solutions that prepare learners and workers for a rapidly evolving labor market. Julian Alssid: Miriam is an expert in the industry who's experienced the full life cycle of a social impact startup. She was the co-founder and CEO of Kinvolved, which she led from its inception to a successful acquisition by PowerSchool in 2022. Her leadership has been recognized by many, including Forbes 30 Under 30 and the New York Times, and she maintains a deep commitment to driving economic mobility for underrepresented populations. Kaitlin LeMoine: Miriam, your path from being a public school teacher in New York City to leading a venture fund gives you an incredible perspective on how to best support innovators and solve for the challenges ahead across learning, work, and economic mobility. We are very excited to have you with us. Welcome to this podcast. Miriam Altman-Reyes: Thank you. I'm really thrilled to be here. Appreciate you having me. Julian Alssid: Yes, Miriam, welcome. And so we've talked a little bit about your background, but we'd love to hear in your own words about your journey—the path that led you to found and lead Brass Ring Ventures. Miriam Altman-Reyes: So, I moved to New York right out of college, almost 20 years ago—amazing to say, hard to believe—to initially start a career in education. I moved to the city to teach in a public high school through a program called Teach For America, where I witnessed firsthand many different challenges facing our education system. But the one that really stuck with me because it was just so foundational was student absenteeism. You know, kids who would miss school for a variety of reasons, but at the end of the day, you know, as, uh, as I think we all know, if, you know, you don't show up, it's very hard to be successful, um, in whatever it is you're trying to achieve. And I think of my time in the classroom as really kind of trying to understand some of the underlying challenges behind student absenteeism and the opportunities to solve for it. And I found, from an operational perspective, that there were really two parts of the challenge that I felt that eventually technology could help solve. One was that educators, administrators, parents, and students themselves didn't have access to data to really help understand what's going on and therefore inform interventions to solve the problems. And then, two, that those stakeholder groups were really not able to be in close and regular communication to help, ideally, even prevent absenteeism from happening in the first place, um, because of just a really broken communication sort of system between school and home. So I left the classroom having sort of thought of the challenge—I certainly witnessed the challenge, um, thought of some of the solution possibilities. I actually left the classroom thinking I was going to start a school as I entered into my graduate degree at NYU's Wagner School of Public Service. And in the first two weeks of the program ended up pivoting to starting an education technology company. And eventually that, uh, company offered a platform of multiple tools that did just what I just described, you know, providing more real-time access to data and facilitating two-way communication between school and home, really heavily focused on underserved populations where student absenteeism tends to be most profound. And so I led as one of the co-founders and the CEO of the business over the course of about eight years from, of course, idea through eventually our exit, as you mentioned, uh, in your earlier comments. Many different chapters along the way, but, um, you know, and lots of highs and lows, as with any entrepreneurial business. But maybe some of the highlights are that we, first of all, from an efficacy perspective, achieved positive results from three third-party efficacy studies that really showed that our solution did, in fact, work at reducing absenteeism, which therefore had impacts on short- and long-term academic gains, including graduation. Also, we became a profitable business, even though we did raise financing over the years from a number of different sources—from venture capital to debt financing to strategic sources, um, you know, grants and others. We did become profitable, um, before we were acquired. And we were a business that sold our software to arguably one of the hardest, uh, you know, buyers that exists, that's K-12 schools and districts across the US. And at the time of our acquisition, we had customers from small rural districts to New York City public schools across about half of US states. So it was a really great run, um, and super proud of the work that we did. I then stayed on at PowerSchool, who had acquired us, which then had recently gone public. We were their second acquisition as a publicly traded company, as primarily in the role of Vice President of Go-to-Market Strategy and Partnerships for their New Solutions Group, which essentially was spun up around the time of our own company's acquisition, with the goal being to help develop more, um, sort of organic growth to help offset a lot of the acquisition-related growth that PowerSchool, um, had become famous for over, you know, many years. Uh, and so I reported to the Chief Product Officer and worked on launching four products across the entire ecosystem of PowerSchool's, I think, maybe 25 to 30 products in total. So really got that much broader perspective after having been so specifically focused on building my own business and my own problem set for many years. And that was certainly, by, um, opportunity and also by design. But ultimately, I decided that I really wanted to be closer to the early stage, closer to the ground, and closer to the impact. And also had, you know, that entrepreneurial spirit in some ways never dies, and so I knew I wanted to start something, uh, new again. And so I left PowerSchool just about three years ago to start Brass Ring Ventures with the initial idea being that as a founder, you know, I had incredible mentors, advisors, and board members who were exited founders and operators in their own right, and they knew exactly the right time to provide support, how to provide support, how to push, um, and also how to let me sort of like lead and learn, um, as a first-time, uh, CEO. And I realized in talking with dozens of other founders that were earlier in their journey that that experience that I'd had was particularly unique. And I also was really fortunate that I had a team of exited operators and founders in my last business's executive team that wanted to work together again. And so we came back together as partners in Brass Ring Ventures, both the studio and now in the fund. Um, I'm sure we'll go into more, but that is a little bit of how I got to where I am today. Kaitlin LeMoine: What a cool and amazing story, and certainly can see how you draw upon so many of your lessons learned across your eight years, I think you said, in that kind of startup space. I'm curious—you started to speak more of the importance of having coaching or mentorship as you were designing, you know, a new venture. And so I'm curious to dig a little bit more there and talk about, you know, what specific challenges in the future of work and learning is Brass Ring Ventures looking to solve through both the investment strategy and also the growth studio? Miriam Altman-Reyes: So, over the, you know, last three years of working with several dozen companies at this point, into which we've invested in a handful and that number will continue to grow as we continue to have, uh, additional capital deployed through our fund, we've identified four core themes that we're, you know, looking to support both through the studio and then the studio really is a mechanism to feed into the investment fund, so they sort of go hand in hand. And so we invest across the life cycle of the learner, as we describe it, so everything from early childhood through K-12 age, learners through higher ed and sort of alternative pathways, uh, and even into workforce and adult learning. Um, so the idea being sort of helping people continue to improve and, you know, gain access to new opportunities in the professional, you know, um, and ultimately economic opportunity and mobility, um, which is sort of the overarching theme of what we're looking for in our fund from both an impact and a financial return perspective. So those four themes, um, sort of align to those age segments are: first, what we call early success systems. So those are technologies that are helping prepare our youngest citizens and and early learners for their first formal schooling experience, and or solutions that are helping parents and caregivers access quality, affordable childcare, which then in turn has a really important impact on workforce retention as well. Uh, there's lots of data and studies out there showing, particularly for women, um, but not exclusively women, that, uh, there's many people who are leaving the workforce because they're just finding that the the sort of cost trade-offs are not there, um, to kind of stay in the workforce. That's the first theme that we're investing in. Second are solutions that are really helping drive operational efficiency for some of these, you know, more institutional, bureaucratic institutions, like K-12, like higher education, even into sort of workforce corporate environments, helping these institutions do more with less, primarily leveraging AI, you know, in ways that really work for them and can drive more productivity and efficiency as budgets in some ways are getting, you know, shifted and constrained. Third are solutions that are more learner-focused that are helping learners develop what we call social capital skills, and that would encompass skills and tools that are helping people develop like emotional intelligence, um, social-emotional connectivity, communication skills, things like, uh, creative thinking, problem-solving, critical thinking. All these things that, you know, AI is not going to replace and arguably that the worker today and tomorrow needs to be even more adept in as AI becomes more of a solution to replace some of the rote skills that are, you know, existing, especially in entry-level or even mid-level jobs. And then fourth are solutions that are helping upskill and reskill both the current and the future workforce, um, which is very aligned to that third theme. So we're really excited, and again, these themes are both, uh, aligned to what we've seen as our, you know, working by working hands-on with companies in these different areas, but also really validated by the research much more broadly, uh, that shows that these are areas that are not only impactful to society as a whole as we're seeing these like major shifts and we're just at the tip of the iceberg, but also are going to drive, you know, a financial return, really kind of that doing well by doing good concept that I wholeheartedly believe in. Julian Alssid: Wow, that's a—that's a pretty broad mandate you've given yourself there, Miriam. So, given where you sit now as CEO and managing partner, what are some of the most exciting innovations that you're seeing in the early stage EdTech work and in and in the market more broadly? We'd love to hear some specific examples. Miriam Altman-Reyes: So, we just invested—our first fund investment in a company called Doowii, uh, which is basically pulling together data from many disparate systems and making it immediately actionable and sort of, um, uh, helping inform decisions both in the K-12 and higher ed institutional, for the institutional kind of buyer and user. So they fit nicely into that operational efficiency theme that I had mentioned is one that we're looking to invest in. Really, you know, interesting company, you know, have a number of partnerships that they developed early on, um, that really helped them drive growth and expansion, as well as working directly with schools and districts. And so, we think there's really high potential for Doowii, you know, and companies like that in the sector, and that's why we're excited to make our first investment in them. We're looking at a company as well that we're excited about that I probably can't name by name, but it may be illustrative of some of of what we're seeing, that is, um, developing, you know, similarly kind of AI, um, workflows and supports both training and upskilling, as well as like, (for example) financial management capabilities for small business owners. Um, small business, you know, represents more than half of our workforce and continues to grow, especially as again, sort of the corporate workforce is changing, and people are looking for different types of working dynamics and environments and opportunities. But a lot of, uh, a lot of small business owners are not necessarily like CFOs by background, right? Uh, and so there's a huge opportunity to help them really build bigger and more successful and sustainable businesses through leveraging tools like this, and then also help scale and upskill and reskill their employees, um, as well. So, those are a couple of examples. There's also a number of companies—one that I did an angel investment in, several others we're looking at that are more in like the social capital development space. So, there's a company called Hiveclass that basically has a sort of whole full spectrum solution for both mental and physical health and wellness for K-12 specifically as at least a starting point, which is really unique. There's a lot of kind of social-emotional development and mental health, uh, content and platforms that are available to K-12. There's less in the physical education space, but, you know, maybe some competitors. But there's really no one who's bringing these, the physical and the mental health together, which is again, really foundational. If you don't have your physical and mental health as a baseline, it's very hard for, you know, students to be successful in school and and therefore to build the habits that ensure that they're successful, you know, longer term as they become employees into the workforce. So, there are so many companies. I mean, I look at, you know, dozens of companies in a week, and sometimes even in a day. Um, but that gives you an idea of some that I think are really exciting in the market. Kaitlin LeMoine: So, you mentioned, Miriam, the impact of AI on your work and and how you're thinking more about, you know, what are the uniquely human skills that we can all help to build in a time and space where AI is perhaps doing the more rote work more readily? But but there are these unique human, human capabilities. Just curious to hear how your work has shifted even over the last few years around the technology piece of how you think about your investment strategy, because I would imagine there's some shifting that that happens and continues to happen. I'm sure across your work, but that's one area that, when you mentioned it, I was like, "Oh, let's talk more about that." Miriam Altman-Reyes: Absolutely. Yeah, it's a really exciting time, I think, you know. Certainly there's there's a level of uncertainty in times like like today's, but I think I'm extremely excited, you know, just thinking only in just the last three years of working with, several dozen companies, at this point, you know, even though we've, if we just start there, right? Since we started Brass Ring, I think, you know, the kinds of companies, um, the access to development of technology and like the ability to to invest in R&D with, you know, limited resources is so much broader than it used to be, at least to get kind of initial ideas developed and out the door. You don't need to hire a full engineering team at that stage, right? And then as now business continues to evolve and grow, you can get so much more out of a smaller engineering team today than you could even five years ago because these engineering teams themselves are using AI tools, for example, to help facilitate the development of the products that they're building. Which, of course, again, if we're talking about operational efficiency, it helps them, you know, do more in fewer hours than they ever could have done, you know, before without these kinds of tools. So, I think, you know, access to technical talent, um, at a reasonable price is definitely expanding. There's obviously the flip side where, you know, people are raising huge amounts of money in certain, you know, sectors and industries and investing tremendous amounts in technology development as well. If we're thinking really specifically about our sectors and sort of the stage businesses we're in, I think it's really like largely a really positive outcome we've seen. I think the flip side is that because it is so...
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Philip Weinberg: Scaling High-Impact Workforce Solutions
05/12/2026
Philip Weinberg: Scaling High-Impact Workforce Solutions
Philip Weinberg, President and CEO of STRIVE, discusses the organization's intensive, evidence-based model for workforce development. Drawing on his background in government and the private sector, Weinberg explains how STRIVE blends rigorous professional training with long-term "lifetime" coaching to help individuals facing significant systemic barriers move into family-sustaining career paths. The conversation explores STRIVE's rapid national expansion to 14 cities and its strategic approach to scaling without compromising quality, including the use of anchor employer partnerships to backward map training for high-demand sectors like healthcare, construction, and logistics. Weinberg emphasizes the necessity of ongoing coaching and social supports as the "secret sauce" for helping students thrive and discusses practical steps for building more inclusive talent pipelines. Transcript Julian Alssid: Welcome to the Work Forces podcast. I’m Julian Alssid. Kaitlin LeMoine: And I’m Kaitlin LeMoine, and we speak with innovators who are shaping the future of work and learning. Julian Alssid: Together, we unpack the complex elements of workforce and career preparation and offer practical solutions that can be scaled and sustained. Kaitlin LeMoine: This podcast is an outgrowth of our workforce's consulting practice. Through weekly discussions, we seek to share the trends and themes we see in our work and amplify impactful efforts happening in higher education, industry, and workforce development all across the country. We are grateful to Lumina Foundation for its past support during the initial development and launch of this podcast and invite future sponsors of this effort. Please check out our workforces podcast website to learn more. And so with that, let's dive in. Julian Alssid: Kaitlin, in so many of our recent conversations, we’ve discussed how workforce development has moved from being a fringe topic to a central economic imperative. Over the past few years, there’s been a real shift toward a skills-based ecosystem where the goal isn’t just a one-and-done credential, but creating sustainable, family-sustaining career paths. Kaitlin LeMoine: It’s true, Julian. And while the policy and tech landscapes are moving incredibly fast, we keep coming back to the importance of the human connection and social supports as the true secret sauce for helping students persist and thrive in this new economy. It’s not just about the technical training; it’s also about the foundational skills that allow learners to pivot and grow over a long-term career. Julian Alssid: Which is why we’re so thrilled to have our guest join us today. Phil Weinberg is a leader who’s been at the forefront of this work for years, proving that high-quality, intensive training can fundamentally change the trajectory of lives and communities. Kaitlin LeMoine: That’s right, and the breadth of his experience is what makes him such a powerful voice on this topic. Phil is the President and CEO of STRIVE, and his career has spanned the public, private, and nonprofit sectors. Before taking the helm at STRIVE in 2011, Phil was appointed by Mayor Michael Bloomberg as President of the New York City Workforce Investment Board, where he oversaw workforce development services for the nation’s largest workforce area. Julian Alssid: Phil’s journey also includes significant leadership in education reform and private sector experience at the management consulting firm Bain & Company. That range of experience is exactly what he’s used to lead STRIVE through a period of growth and renewal. Under Phil’s leadership, STRIVE has scaled to 14 cities, focusing on helping students facing significant systemic barriers across the workforce. Kaitlin LeMoine: STRIVE has become a model for how to blend rigorous professional training with the long-term coaching necessary to move people from entry-level jobs into sustained careers. We are so happy to have you with us today. Welcome to the Work Forces podcast, Phil. Phil Weinberg: Thank you. Really thrilled to be here. Thanks for having me. Kaitlin LeMoine: So, as we dive into the conversation today, Phil, we’d love to hear you tell us in your own words a bit more about your background and the journey really that led you to your role at STRIVE. Phil Weinberg: Like many people, my journey has not been a straight line. As you’ve described it, it’s been across multiple sectors: corporate, government, and now nonprofit. And I think like a lot of people, I entered the corporate sector thinking that was where the innovation was happening and if you wanted to do big things in social impact, that would be the platform to do so. And I had an early experience, my first time working in government in Chicago—and this was, to date myself, back in the 1990s during the sort of welfare-to-work reform era—and I had the incredible fortune to work with some audacious, courageous, visionary leaders within government working across sectors. For me, it really opened my eyes to what’s possible and the ability to do big things from government and across sectors. So, I once again found myself within city government, as you noted, working in the Bloomberg administration here in New York City, focused on helping uplift individuals and access career opportunities that could, in fact, change their lives and their families’ lives. Whether it was on the education reform side, as you noted earlier, or on the career pathways economic mobility side, my career has always been focused on the question of how do we help individuals gain opportunity, advance in their lives, and how do we create communities that are more just and more equitable? And so, I’m sitting in city government, I got a call from a recruiter, and it turned out that STRIVE—which at that point had been around for about 25 years—had been a leading workforce development nonprofit. Its CEO was transitioning, and they were looking for someone to lead STRIVE into the future. And so, I came up to visit the team, I stepped into a classroom, and I was totally blown away by the power and depth and quality and engagement of what I encountered. And so for me, I just imagined how powerful it could be to take that model, expand it in New York City, and ultimately to consider how we could scale that in partnership with additional communities around the country. So, that’s what landed me here at STRIVE. I am almost 15 years in and really grateful and energized to be part of this organization and part of this work, as you noted, in advancing economic mobility in communities nationally. Julian Alssid: So, STRIVE has grown and I guess serves about 2,000 students now, and you have a goal of serving 10,000 with support from your investors, like Blue Meridian and others. We heard you talk about using an evidence-based approach. So, how are you going to use an evidence-based approach to ensure that your really exponential expansion there doesn’t compromise the quality of outcomes? Phil Weinberg: Well, I appreciate the question. You’ve actually perfectly hit upon the real tension, I think, for any organization that’s considering taking a quality model and bringing it to scale. And so, I’d say that tension between quality, scale—I’d add a third component, which is the economics of scale—how to ensure that as you do grow and expand, that happens in a way that’s economically sustainable. And I’d say for us, the focus on quality as we scale is first and foremost rooted in our values. As an organization, what do you believe? What’s your true north? How do you ensure that you hold dear to those principles and those values and that all decisions really flow through that filter? More practically speaking, for us, it starts with having built an evidence-based model in partnership with our research partners at MDRC. So, building a comprehensive model that’s built on the best evidence—in our case, it’s predicated on the work-advance model. And so, ensuring that we are confident in the evidence base upon which our work is structured. Once we built that foundation, it then is incumbent on us as we grow to think about what elements of that model are essential to remain consistent across our communities we serve, and where do we see a need to be contextualized? In many cases, we see tremendous value and opportunity to contextualize the work that we do within our community partners—so, partnering with community colleges and other anchor institutions as a way to ensure that as STRIVE expands, we’re doing so in a way that is authentic and resonant within the communities we serve. Investing in infrastructure. So, clearly there is delivering great programming, but then there is as you scale, having the infrastructure to support scaling with quality. What does that look like? These are often the not-the-most-glamorous aspects of operating a nonprofit, but often some of the most essential. Having strong performance systems and financial systems and data systems; having the operational backbone; having the programmatic support tools to ensure that as you grow, the support system is in place to grow thoughtfully and with quality. And I guess the last thing I would say is really growing with an eye toward being a learning organization. That certainly is one of our values at STRIVE, which is we’ve got a deep history to draw upon. Over four decades of service, over 90,000 students served. While there is that very deep reservoir of history of practice, we also approach the work with a great deal of humility, which is: what are we learning? What is the labor market telling us? What are the kind of policy context changes telling us? And how do we as an organization adapt accordingly so we can maintain quality and focus even as we grow? So, not an easy feat, I won’t claim that we have sort of honed this, but we are certainly with a values-driven approach committed to that endeavor. Kaitlin LeMoine: So Phil, you’ve given us much to think about and dive into further during this conversation. I think one thing that, you know, would love to hear you talk a little bit more about are both the individuals you serve and also the programs you offer. So, we’d just love to hear a little bit more context there, especially as we think about, you know, like you’re saying, the complexities of bringing these programs to different geographies and settings. Phil Weinberg: Absolutely. So STRIVE serves individuals who are talented, motivated, eager to work, and oftentimes have just found themselves facing steep obstacles—often multiple obstacles. And so, we serve a broad range of individuals 18 and older, men and women. People often come to us unemployed, mostly on public assistance, often facing obstacles like food insecurity, housing insecurity. Our average age is about 30, so we have many parents or those who are supporting minors. And so, we recognize that our students come to us with lots of aspirations. They’ve oftentimes found themselves in a revolving cycle of dead-end jobs, and the question is how do they break through? And so, the model we built is really one that provides a platform to support those individuals in gaining the kind of habits and behaviors to succeed at work, and also the skills and credentials and supports to be able to enter entry-level positions that have good jobs, the opportunities for advancement, and to support them in accomplishing their goals. I guess the one other thing I would note is that among the obstacles our students face, nearly half our students have been impacted by the justice system—whether they’ve been direct incarcerated and returning from incarceration. And I’d say one thing we’ve done programmatically is really ensure that we are meeting our students where they are. So, we’ve over the last decade worked with real intention to ensure that we are focusing our programmatic model and our interventions exactly where our students need them most. So, we’ve got, to your question about what are our programs, we’ve got our flagship program, which is our career path program. It supports a wide range of students to build careers in the healthcare, construction, and logistics industries. Those for us have become real areas of expertise. But then we noticed that about a third of our students had been coming to us justice-impacted and from incarceration, and as a learning organization we asked ourselves, are we doing enough for this population? And with that, we engaged with kind of the leading thought partners we could find and built what we now call our Fresh Start program, which is designed for adults coming home from incarceration. For us, that’s just a recognition that those individuals are facing other obstacles—family reunification, search for housing—in ways that perhaps our general student population is not. And so, we’ve based on the work we’ve done at Rikers Island and with a number of correctional departments and partners, we’ve been honing and delivering this program for years and we’re now in the process of replicating this. We just launched it in Birmingham, Alabama, the first time outside of New York City. And I’d say the last thing I would say is that we also noticed about a third of our students were coming to us as young adults, 18 to 24 years old. We asked ourselves the same question: are we doing enough to support the successful outcomes as a data-driven, kind of evidence-based organization? And what we did is we decided to kind of completely revisit and interrogate our programming for these young folks. So, we invited in thought partners who specialize in positive youth development, our research partners at MDRC, and we reconstructed based on our core programmatic pillars a model that we now call our Future Leaders model, which is specifically designed for 18 to 24-year-olds. This is a model that’s probably been implemented in upwards of 15 to 20 communities serving thousands of young people across the country over the past decade. Julian Alssid: So, in your efforts, Phil, working with healthcare, construction, logistics, my understanding is that a key part of the model involves working with employers—sort of anchor employers—to map or backward-map capabilities into the programming. Can you speak about how that takes place? How do you keep current? You know, we do a lot of work building those bridges between education and training organizations and employers and it just feels like a constant process of trying to keep up. How do you do it and ensure long-term success? Phil Weinberg: Absolutely. I appreciate the terminology backward-map. In many cases, it feels like that is in fact the work that we’re doing. So, it started with a very intentional selection of the sectors within which we work. We work with a terrific group of thought partners to determine where do we see opportunities in the labor market where there are good jobs with good wages and conditions for good jobs and advancement potential where you do not need a post-secondary degree in order to get your foot in the door in order to be able to then advance? For us, that in fact led us to healthcare and to construction and to logistics. But there’s the concept, there’s the labor market data and what it tells us and where we think there’s opportunity, and then there’s what, as you were noting Julian, the real world tells us—our employer partners, where there’s actually demand and what the skill sets and competencies that graduates would need in order to be able to succeed and stand out and thrive in the workplace. So, for us, that starts with partnerships and listening closely to our employer partners. I’ll use healthcare as just a brief example, and I’ll use our kind of backyard, our flagship site in New York City and in the community of East Harlem. The largest hospital in East Harlem is called Mount Sinai, now part of Mount Sinai Health System. And they were trying to increase their community hiring and they were also trying to fill roles that they had found difficult to fill in their medical and billing system. So they reached out to STRIVE. This was not an area of expertise for us at the time but a real area of aspiration. This is over a decade ago, and we said we would love to co-create something with you. So we built a pilot, and the pilot was to serve a small group of 15 students to be able to access positions to operate those medical billing and scheduling systems. To fast-forward, it was a huge success because we started small, we co-created this in partnership with the human resources team—so, this was not a notion of doing something charitable or philanthropic; this was a notion of being a good community partner, a good community citizen as a hospital, and also trying to tap into untapped talent pipelines. I mention that example because that kernel, that seed that got planted really became the basis of a much broader-based partnership with that hospital system as they grew in a range of positions that are really positive entry points into healthcare careers—patient care positions, billing and coding positions, environmental positions, dietary transporters. The quality of those relationships, listening to our employer partners, understanding their pain points, understanding where they have hiring gaps... In fact, it was then in the pandemic when they said, you know what, we don’t need the positions that you’ve been partnering with us on, but we now need to transport equipment and supplies across our system. Can you help us? And so, we leaned into that opportunity and that helped us build out a robust logistics pathway within our health partnerships and also beyond. For us, it really is about rooting in the partnership, listening closely to the human resources teams. When we now engage with new communities about where and how STRIVE might be able to make a difference, those are always predicated on deep partnerships, mutually beneficial partnerships with anchor employers. I’ll just use the example of Ochsner Health in New Orleans, which has been a phenomenal partner of ours. I’d say the ingredients that make a partnership strong—and this is certainly true at Ochsner, it’s true at Mount Sinai and many of our hospital system and other employer partners across the country—one is they inform our training, so they’re co-creating with us the training and credentialing that’s going to be needed for someone to enter and then stand out in those roles. Two is they’re working with us on the recruitment process, so they’re not guaranteeing our students positions, our graduates, but they certainly are committing that if we’re producing quality graduates, that then there will be a pathway into their hiring system. Some of our hospital partners in fact have STRIVE listed on their dropdown menus for their hiring teams. And then I’d say lastly, just a really honest and candid partnership based on two-way communication: where is this working, where is this falling short, constantly iterating to ensure that we’re learning lessons together, we’re doing this in a way that is building strength and trust in the relationship and ultimately deepening partnerships and extending those into other domains. Kaitlin LeMoine: As you seek to expand and broaden your reach across states and regions, I’m wondering, do you also look at different industries as well? Because I can see, I mean, this is such an intensive process you’re talking about. So, are you thinking you’re going to focus in those three areas long-term, or do you also look to, you know, what are the emerging industries or areas of opportunity across different regions? Phil Weinberg: Absolutely. So, you must have been eavesdropping in our planning conversations. We’re going through some intensive planning. I’d say a couple things. One...
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Ian Roark on Integrating Academic and Workforce Learning
04/28/2026
Ian Roark on Integrating Academic and Workforce Learning
Ian Roark, Provost and Executive Vice Chancellor for Academic Affairs and Workforce Development at Pima Community College, discusses the institutional shift to merge academic affairs and workforce development into a single integrated system. Drawing on over 25 years of experience in education leadership, he explains how Pima is eliminating the traditional silos between credit and non-credit programs to create a cohesive educational model for all learners regardless of their point of entry. The conversation explores how the college uses an economic development lens to align legacy programs and new initiatives, such as specialized centers for excellence, with long term regional industry needs. Ian shares how Pima has supported the regional transition to an advanced manufacturing hub by integrating skills like optics and photonics into technical programs and expanding offerings in building construction, technology, and aviation. He highlights the importance of funding workforce development teams through general budgets rather than requiring them to generate their own revenue, which encourages deeper collaboration with academic faculty. Finally, he outlines how viewing workforce development as a paradigm rather than a series of programs enables community colleges to serve as the primary engine for regional economic mobility. Transcript Julian: Welcome to the Work Forces podcast. I’m Julian Alssid. Kaitlin: And I’m Kaitlin LeMoine, and we speak with innovators who are shaping the future of work and learning. Together, we unpack the complex elements of workforce and career preparation and offer practical solutions that can be scaled and sustained. This podcast is an outgrowth of our Work Forces consulting practice. Through weekly discussions, we seek to share the trends and themes we see in our work and amplify impactful efforts happening in higher ed, industry, and workforce development all across the country. We are grateful to Lumina Foundation for its past support during the initial development and launch of this podcast and invite future sponsors of this effort. Please check out our Work Forces podcast website to learn more. And so with that, let’s dive in. Kaitlin: In some of our more recent episodes, we have focused on the technical requirements for making credentials portable and transparent. While data standards and credential portability are essential to strengthening educational pathways for learners, many higher education institutions also still operate with an internal wall, so to speak, that separates credit programs from noncredit workforce development offerings. Julian: Yes, this separation can be difficult for learners to navigate. We often see degree programs and short term training operate with different funding structures and institutional goals. Breaking down these silos is an important priority for community college leaders. Kaitlin: And our guest today is leading institutional efforts to address these challenges. Ian Roark serves as the Provost and Executive Vice Chancellor for Academic Affairs and Workforce Development at Pima Community College. He brings over 25 years of experience in education to this role, spanning K12 leadership and community college administration. Julian: Under Ian’s leadership, Pima has been at the forefront of workforce innovation through the development of specialized centers for excellence and new models for apprenticeships and community college baccalaureate degrees. Ian also serves on a number of boards and committees at the local, state, and national levels. Notably, he was named to the Aspen Presidential Fellowship for Community College Excellence in 2019, called to serve on the Higher Learning Commission’s Credential Lab Innovation Design Team in 2024, and has advised numerous organizations, including New America and Education Design Lab. Kaitlin: At Pima, Ian is implementing a no wrong door strategy to ensure that every student has a direct path to economic mobility and higher wages regardless of where they begin their education. Welcome to the podcast, Ian. We are happy to have you here. Ian Roark: Great, thanks Julian and thanks Kaitlin. It’s a little embarrassing at times or humbling to hear a little bit of your biography read out loud, so I just want to start off by saying it’s an honor to serve Pima Community College and our southern Arizona community in this role. And none of those things would have ever happened if it weren't for the amazing work of the team that supports me, administrators as well as our amazing faculty and staff at the institution. And I’d like to give a special shout out to our chancellor, Dr. Jeff Nasse, to whom I report, as it was his idea to merge academic affairs and workforce development under this combined role as provost. And so really excited to speak with you and the audience around the journey that we've been on at Pima Community College for this past 11 years and counting. Kaitlin: Well, we can't wait to dive in with you on all of that today. Ian, to get us started, can you please tell us in your own words a little bit more about your background and the journey that led to your current role and work at Pima? Ian Roark: Yeah, sure. I like to start off by saying I’ve been in school since I entered kindergarten. I haven't worked in the private sector ever, although a lot of my work has engaged the private sector quite often, especially in the workforce development roles that I’ve held in the past. So it's, you know, interesting to spend your whole entire, you know, working life and school life in school, both in K12 and in higher ed as a student and as, you know, a staff member, faculty member, and now administrator. I sometimes, if I had to compare myself to like what is your specialty, I'm sort of a Swiss Army knife of education in ways. I started off as a music teacher, I have a music degree. I quickly went into getting certified in K12 to teach social sciences and I’ve taught everything from sociology to psychology to history to world, you know, world geography and world history. I did a lot of curriculum work in K12, really outlining entire scopes of sequences from kindergarten to seniors in high school on learning outcomes and how those could be assessed. Went into administration in K12 as a Career Tech director and I had campus principal oversight over a technical campus, so really got to do a lot of operational work in working with faculty and working with students. My first role in higher education was as Dean of Career and Technical Education at Odessa College in Odessa, Texas, and just would like to give another shout out to my sponsor, mentor, and friend, Dr. Greg Williams, who is still president at Odessa after all these years, who opened the door for community college work and really opened my eyes. And then the community college experience really just, I fell in love with it. He promised me that you'll never want to do anything else when you enter community college, you're going to want to stay here until you retire, and so far he's been right. Just what we do at the community college world. So I served as Dean and then Executive Dean at Odessa College. I entered came to Pima Community College in 2015. Then we were structured as six quasi-independent campuses, each with a president reporting to our then-chancellor Lee Lambert. I reported to one president, but I was the first matrix vice president, meaning the institution was rigidly structured around these campuses and the reporting lines at these campuses, and the intent all along was for my role and the team that I built to start working cross-functionally across all these campuses with deans and faculty to break down barriers and silos as it related to serving employers in our community and ensuring that our learners had pathways to upward mobility in key industry sectors. And so my role has evolved over all of these years. I was Vice President of Workforce Development, then became Vice President of Workforce Development and Strategic Partnerships, then Vice Chancellor of Workforce Development and Innovation, and then now this past year serving both as acting and now non-acting provost and executive vice chancellor. And really the journey all along has been pointed in the direction of what you outlined, which is breaking down these artificial barriers that in higher education we put up, right, these firewalls between credit and non-credit, between workforce programs and academic programs. These are things that we've constructed on our own, in part because we're incentivized by our accreditation systems, by our federal financial aid systems to do so, but also because it's fall, spring, summer, rinse, repeat. Higher education is a very, going back to my music roots, rhythmic, right? There's a rhythm that's always underlying the operations. And it goes back, as you know, to an agrarian calendar, to Carnegie units that are named after a prominent individual who literally created it just as a way for us to account for the time we spend doing things in higher education. So once those things are set, it's very hard for us to break it. But at Pima we're doing some really interesting and amazing work, not just because it's interesting and amazing, but because we have seen firsthand how eliminating these silos and breaking down these traditional firewalls is what's best for our students, what's best for our community, and ultimately allows us to fulfill our mission at Pima, which is to empower every learner for every goal every day. Julian: Well, it seems that the big firewall is the academic affairs and workforce development separation. And so Pima’s made this strategic decision to merge these worlds with you now at the helm of that effort. Can you speak with us a bit about the reasoning behind the shift and how it supports this idea of a no wrong door approach for learners? Ian Roark: Yeah, really right. So at the end of the day, whether a student is coming to Pima Community College for adult basic education where they want to earn their high school equivalency because perhaps they dropped out of high school or had circumstances that impacted that educational journey or put it to a stop, whether they're coming to us for non-credit workforce training, or as we're starting to refer to it as professional credit for upskilling and reskilling opportunities, or they're coming to us for a credit-bearing certificate or a degree in career and technical education, and/or still a primary mission of transfer—two-thirds of our students on any given year are coming here because they want to transfer and primarily to the University of Arizona, we are proud to partner with them of course here in Tucson—at the end of the day, they're not doing that because they want to earn college credit or get a certificate, they're doing these things, they're choosing Pima because of what's at the end of that educational journey, whichever door they enter. It’s because they know that whether it's earning a certificate, earning a degree, getting an industry-recognized credential, or completing the Arizona General Education Curriculum to transfer to one of our state universities, or earning a full transfer degree and then transferring, they're doing all of these things because they know at the end of that there's a better job opportunity. And so at the end of the day, it's really about workforce development whether we call it transfer, whether we call it workforce development, whether we call it career and technical education. Our students are seeking and earning these credentials because of what it does for them and their households, which is a better pathway to upward mobility. So we really need to start framing all of it as workforce development. It’s not this dichotomy that we have erected and then perpetuated. It really is workforce development for all of our students. And it’s great that our transfer students want to pursue transfer degrees. We want to ensure that they're making those choices though in a career context. And so a little bit of our work this past year has been working across academic affairs and in partnership with student affairs to look at what the first-year experience looks like for all of our learners. And so starting next year, we are having a more career-focused first-year experience and onboarding process for all of our students. And one of our strategic plan goals that's emerging out of our current strategic planning process is: what would it look like if every single learner at the college, whether they're a transfer student, even in a traditional area like psychology or economics or a STEM field like engineering, what would it look like if every single learner had an opportunity to have a work-based learning experience or an experiential experience tied to real-world application as part of their program of study? And that's kind of how we're approaching it. That could be the reality, especially when we start to think about the impact of artificial intelligence and things like XR or AR/VR technology—how can we even use those sorts of technologies to bring those real-world applications into the classroom if we can't physically tie every single student to an internship or a job shadow per se? So those are the things we're thinking about, already putting in place with respect to the first-year experience. And it's really an exciting time to see how, really across the college, faculty in particular are embracing this. I know that Julian knows one of my partners and a team member, the Assistant Vice Chancellor of Workforce Development, Amanda Abens. She's traveling with one of our journalism faculty in a transfer program to a journalism conference to talk about the unification of workforce development and the academic piece in this particular program of study. And so we're seeing people really embrace the idea that this is not a dichotomy. We are one family, one team focused on one mission, which is to better serve our students so that they can accomplish their college and career goals, whatever those may be, as long as they are tied to a pathway for upward mobility. Kaitlin: So to that point, the last point you just made, how are you working to ensure that the pathways that are set up lead to tangible outcomes like wage gains, while making it easier for students to stack those skills? Because I think what you said earlier about really all of this learning is workforce development in some ways, I think really resonates for us. I mean, we have talked about that, Julian, I feel like numerous times just about, at least at the high level of, man, it feels like now more than ever education is—the point is like, how do we think about how to develop talent and what does that look like? And how does it look like to develop the workforce of the future? And so when you said that, it really resonated with me. But I’m curious to hear a little bit more about what is your thinking behind building for those tangible outcomes. Ian Roark: Yeah, in the opening Julian mentioned the centers for excellence that are at our now five campuses at Pima Community College and we are seeking to open more. But we have over the past decade been opening these centers for excellence that are not only extraordinary physical locations of great magnitude with respect to career technical education and increased square footage, top-of-the-line state-of-the-art technology working with industry to develop our programs, but it’s also concentrating programs on a single geography so that faculty can co-create programs together aligned to business and industry. And we’ve done a lot of great work in the workforce development and technical education space, so we’ve started a lot of new programs with exactly what you said, Kaitlin, in mind, which is: what are the pathways that are aligned to the economic development priorities of our community and that lead to opportunities for increased wages and upward mobility? I won’t go through all of them, but I’ll talk about some of them. And I do want to put it in the context of the difference of workforce development in the here and now and workforce development with an economic development lens, because there is a difference. Workforce development here and now is really about our institution’s ability to respond to whatever request business and industry brings to us today. So my ability, my team’s ability to respond to whatever request, say you or Julian brought for Kaitlin as a potential employer, hypothetical employer in our community, is really based on whether or not we foresaw that request coming. So we can only respond with the capacity that we have now, which is based on past strategy. Our current strategy that is rooted in economic development means partnering not only with business and industry but business and industry associations, our economic development partners—for us that’s the Chamber of Southern Arizona, the economic development offices of Pima County and all of our surrounding municipalities, including Tucson, suburbs—and really learning about where community leadership, civic leadership wants Tucson and Pima County to be ten years from now, twenty years from now, and designing our programs with that mindset at the forefront. So pictured behind me is an example of that. That’s a over 100,000 square foot advanced manufacturing training center that was conceptualized in 2017 in partnership with business and industry, opened two years ago, and it was built under the prospect of: we are becoming an advanced manufacturing community. Ten years ago we weren't, we were a call center community. Now the predominant number of economic development leads that our partners bring to the community are in advanced manufacturing. And so we built this center not because it’s an awesome facility and has lots of cool things in it like robots and lasers and optics and all these things, it’s because we knew that’s where the civic leadership wanted the community to go, and now we have the ability to train at scale for any employer partner that either relocates or expands in our community. So that’s been the trajectory over the past decade. Areas like advanced manufacturing, IT cybersecurity, the new health profession center of excellence. But right now we also have a challenge, Kaitlin, which is we are over 50 years old, almost 55 years old as an institution, and we have a lot of legacy programs. We’re having to look at those, say, is this really the best way to offer this program to our learners? Is it really the best program for us to have? Is it really aligned to business and industry? So I’m sure like many listeners of this show, we have our program review processes that sort of answer those questions on a four-year cycle of program review for every program. But by merging academic affairs and workforce development, we have brought in all of the expertise of the workforce development team into the program review process to help the academic affairs professionals answer that question and do it together. Right? Previously that really wasn't the case. Academic affairs had its own process and workforce development over here, we were starting lots of new programs in partnership, but we really didn't have a role in assessing and validating all of the existing legacy programs. And so the unification of academic affairs and workforce development really allows for the opening of the door down to a very detailed and rigorous level of depth and engagement analyzing the outcomes of programs not only in the traditional context of persistence, retention, and completion, but labor market alignment. Is this credential actually what is required to get the job that this program purports to allow students to get? And is it really a good return on investment for the individual learner, their household, and the community...
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Audrey Ellis On AI and Higher Education Transformation
04/14/2026
Audrey Ellis On AI and Higher Education Transformation
Audrey Ellis, Founder and Principal of T3 Advisory, discusses the strategic and human-centered implementation of artificial intelligence across higher education. Drawing on extensive experience in college policy and institutional effectiveness, she explains how institutions can move from isolated experimentation to a comprehensive AI strategy that supports all learners. The conversation highlights findings from a national study titled AI for Institutional Transformation, which was conducted in partnership with Complete College America and funded by the Gates Foundation. Audrey describes artificial intelligence as an accelerator of existing institutional challenges, such as disorganized data and limited human capacity, while identifying specific opportunities for positive impact, including in the areas of student advising and financial aid. She introduces open practical tools for leaders, including an AI adoption rubric and a survey suite designed to capture feedback from students and staff. Audrey encourages leaders to take a proactive approach to AI use, emphasizing the importance of establishing clear rules to foster safe and effective experimentation. These efforts can lead to the automation of routine administrative work, allowing educators more time to build the human connections that support student success. Transcript Julian: Welcome to the Work Forces podcast. I’m Julian Alssid. Kaitlin: And I’m Kaitlin LeMoine, and we speak with innovators who are shaping the future of work and learning. Together, we unpack the complex elements of workforce and career preparation and offer practical solutions that can be scaled and sustained. This podcast is an outgrowth of our workforce's consulting practice through weekly discussions. We seek to share the trends and themes we see in our work and amplify impactful efforts happening in higher ed, industry, and workforce development all across the country. We are grateful to Lumina Foundation for its past support during the initial development and launch of this podcast and invite future sponsors of this effort. Please check out our Work Forces podcast website to learn more. And so with that, let’s dive in. Julian: Kaitlin, AI has become such a pervasive topic. It seems to make its way into every conversation we have on this podcast, on this planet, from skills validation to credential transparency to workforce development. But there is a conversation that we haven’t had in some time. How are colleges and universities approaching AI implementation? How are they approaching it not just in the classroom, but across the technical infrastructure that supports running these large complex institutions? Kaitlin: Yes, that is a critical question. We hear a lot about AI experimentation from faculty piloting tools to students using AI when studying or completing assignments, but less about the coordination and decision making challenges underneath it all. How do institutions move from pockets of experimentation to a holistic strategy? And how do they address the human capacity, governance structures, and academic considerations required to scale AI responsibly? Julian: Exactly. And that is where our guest today comes in. Audrey Ellis is the founder and principal of T3 Advisory, where she partners with higher education institutions on AI strategy, change management, and student centered process improvement. Her research focuses on AI adoption, institutional transformation, and addressing initiative fatigue in the higher ed. Audrey has co-authored numerous publications on AI and student success and frequently delivers keynotes and workshops on technology, equity, and education. Kaitlin: Audrey holds a doctor of management in community college policy and administration from the University of Maryland Global Campus, an MS Ed from the University of Pennsylvania, and a BA from Tufts University. Audrey brings both consulting and firsthand institutional experience leading effectiveness, strategic planning, and student success initiatives at community colleges. Welcome to Work Forces, Audrey. We are so glad to have you with us today. Audrey Ellis: Thanks. It’s great to be here. Julian: And though we gave a bit about your background, we would love to hear you tell us a bit more about who you are and the journey that led you to founding T3 Advisory. Audrey Ellis: It's an honor to be here and really excited to talk about this ubiquitous topic of AI in every industry, really. And I think that's what makes it interesting in higher ed, right, because we serve all the industries. So it not only is appearing there, but in how we make all of our decisions on campus these days. A little bit about me, I started T3 a little over three years ago. I am from New England, Massachusetts. We are focused on supporting institutions that are access oriented, so they really serve the vast majority of students in this country in their postsecondary experience, but that often don't get the same resources allocated to them as the elite or more well-funded institutions. So that looks like community colleges, minority serving institutions, and regional publics primarily. Especially because those institutions are making a tremendous amount of decisions that need to be made around AI and often with less resources than, you know, their peers at other institutions that we hear about more often in the news. So really trying to create more knowledge sharing among those access oriented institutions so we can all learn together right now, because I think we need to face the reality that we're all a little bit of a student when it comes to AI. Feel like every morning I'm starting a new course because the tool changes overnight, it seems. So back to basics every single day with Claude and ChatGPT, Gemini, starting new features every morning. Julian: Yeah, it is just dizzying, isn't it? Audrey Ellis: It sure is. Julian: So your organization recently released a national study examining AI implementation across colleges and universities. Would love to hear about the study and some of the biggest challenges that higher ed is facing. Audrey Ellis: Yeah, we conducted a national study called AI for Institutional Transformation. We were really generously funded by the Gates Foundation and we worked with Complete College America to conduct interviews with senior leaders at over 30 institutions across the country from that segment that I just described. Our goal was really to understand how institutional leaders are kind of navigating a dual path. So we have institutions both trying to figure out today, tomorrow, this semester, next semester, what does AI mean for us? But we also are trying to understand, you know, dream big, wave a magic wand, what does AI mean in three years or five years? With the exponential rate of change and that comes with opportunity, and so we wanted to understand kind of both sides of that conversation: policy, governance, practical changes, but then also really big picture what could AI mean for how we do work in higher ed. And so all of this work was considered public goods funded in their investment strategy at Gates. So that's really exciting because it means that everything that we have published is available to the field for free. So I appreciate you having us on. I just really want to make sure that institutions know that this body of research and all of the tools that we've developed are available and can be downloaded, repurposed, edited, modified today. So we'll be sure to share the link and hopefully you can share that out with the listeners, but really excited to kind of get into what we learned. Kaitlin: Yes, so please tell us a bit about, you know, what do you see as some of the biggest—I guess you could start at either end of the spectrum—what are some of the biggest challenges or the biggest opportunities? Why don’t you take us where you’d like to go first and then we can discuss the whole spectrum. Audrey Ellis: Sure. Let's start with the challenges. I think I'm a practical person and there's no doubt there's a lot of opportunity, but I think in order to be around to play with the opportunity, we have to figure out right now. So let's start there. We need to kind of, I think, what we've heard and what we've seen from the institutions that we've interviewed and studied is that very few institutions are taking a coordinated strategic approach to their AI adoption right now. So what that means is that kind of as you described in the intro, there are a tremendous amount of pilots and experimentation happening at institutions. And I feel pretty confident saying that probably every institution has at least a little bit of AI experimentation. I don't think that any institution could say they have no AI happening on campus anymore. But what that looks like at most institutions is a very decentralized, dispersed, kind of scattershot approach to AI adoption and AI innovation. Which isn't bad. So I'm not trying to suggest that institutions have made the wrong move so far, but that's come out of kind of a couple of steps that leaders have made that has led them to take this more decentralized approach. So we developed a rubric that helps institutional leaders think about kind of all the different decision areas or dimensions of AI adoption, everything from budget investments to mission alignment. All of those play a part. And when we saw our institutions that are kind of the most far ahead with their institutional transformation, they had addressed all of the different areas, whereas we saw that institutions, and really like around 80 percent of the institutions that we interviewed, are more in this scattershot area of implementation. And that's often happened because there's been a real focus on things like policy and academic integrity, which is certainly an important thing to consider, and I don't want to diminish the value of the conversation around academic integrity. But often it's led to kind of kicking the can down the road on any other decision making around AI. Like, we're going to stand up a committee or a task force and until they have the policy, we're doing AI, that box is checked, and we'll get there later. And what that's leading to is a growing divide between institutions who are taking this more strategic centralized approach around AI adoption where they're thinking, you know, what are the biggest strategic plays that I can make right now? Whether it's workflow efficiency or improving the student experience or kind of like winning back time that, you know, from an initiative fatigue standpoint, like our stakeholders on campus have been, you know, saying that they've been wearing multiple hats for decades with all of the reform and work that we do. So there's a lot of strategic opportunity here. But importantly, the divide is happening not only between decentralized and centralized or strategic adoption, but that is happening across kind of the resource lines of institutions. So those institutions that are more well resourced, which we used endowments as a proxy for resourced, those institutions that have those massive endowments are taking a centralized strategic approach and that gap is going to further widen if institutions don't figure out how to wrap their arms fully around their institutional strategy. A couple of other kind of big findings we saw is that, you know, staff are really not being considered in the training equation. You know, in higher ed, and I'm sure from your workforces angle this resonates, like we call ourselves the connector to the workforce, like we that is a huge part of our mission. But our institutions are also part of the workforce. Like, we employ so many people in our region. And we've actually often overlooked a really significant part of our own workforce in this moment when it comes to talking about AI skills and AI literacy. So we found that almost none of the institutions that we interviewed had intentional training for their staff. They were, you know, leveraging teaching and learning centers, professional development for faculty, but because there's often not a comparable center for staff, those folks were getting pretty overlooked in the training conversation. And that's just an example of the fact that AI is in a way just an accelerator of the existing inefficiencies and process challenges that we have at our institutions. And it's shining a new light on challenges that are not new. Whether that is, you know, trying to put dirty data into AI that has been dirty and causing inefficiencies or challenges with reporting for decades, but now AI is making you realize the data quality issue that you have, or whether it's that you don't have, you know, kind of standalone institutionalized professional development for your staff. There's just a number of existing challenges that AI is really illuminating right now. I’ll end it here with, like, the big risk is that our institutions are feeling the pressure of having to keep up. Like, they're not ignorant of this widening gap. And that puts them in a bit of a vulnerable position when it comes to their relationships with vendors who often bring really important expertise and solutions to campus. But without having kind of senior leaders’ arms wrapped around their strategy, it lends itself to a more impulsive vendor strategy that might not be thinking about the comprehensive picture that an institution needs to consider before they get into a long term contract. Julian: So it really is sort of, it sounds almost like it’s really surfacing just what we already know to be these huge issues and inequities and so on. So, what do you see as some of the bigger areas of opportunity? And I guess and I’m particularly interested—I’m interested in all the institutions—but particularly interested in the institutions that are more challenged. You know, we do a lot of work, for example, with community colleges and, you know, they just don’t have the resources and and and probably and are never going to. What are the opportunities for all institutions? Audrey Ellis: First let me just say that I don't mean to sound like doom and gloom. I realize I just ran through so many challenges only to just kind of paint the picture of the importance of taking a strategic approach. So I think in order to take advantage of the opportunities that AI can present, which I'll talk about in one second, I just want to make a plug for the resources that we've developed that are all public goods. So everything from toolkits, talking guides, facilitation resources, how to develop staff training around AI. All of those challenges I described have free resources to try to help institutional leaders wrap their arms around this. But I think that the opportunity is huge, right? Like, I having studied initiative fatigue for a long time can't tell you how many times I've heard faculty, staff, senior leaders say, "I would love to do more of this best practice you're teaching me about right now," whatever it be, like let's just take a faculty professional development about universal design in the syllabus or about memorizing your students’ first names so that they feel a greater sense of belonging. And then faculty say, "Yes, like you've sold me. This is a good practice. But exactly when am I supposed to fit this into my schedule? Like I have already am, you know, working late or traveling between campuses because I'm an adjunct or because I have to work multiple roles because I do work at an institution that's, you know, lower resourced and maybe doesn't pay as much." So I think there's a real opportunity to offload some of the transactional work to make more time for the human. Which is definitely like a different narrative than what you would get from, you know, maybe like the most recent Mission Impossible movies where it's like AI takeover, global domination, we're all going to be irrelevant in a few years. Which don't get me wrong, I'm not an AI evangelist and I'm not here to say like that AI is going to be the perfect solution and there's a lot of challenges that it brings outside of what we're discussing today. But I do think that, like, we have an opportunity to do more of the mission-driven human work that I at least when I worked on campus wanted to do more of. Like, I didn't, I know that the advisors that I used to work with would have rather spent more time talking to students than dragging and dropping courses in Banner or Degree Works. They would have rather had that time to say like, "Hey, you know, Julian, what do you want to be when you grow up? Why did you come to this college? What made that a decision for you?" But they were often faced with the reality of a long line of students out their door waiting for them and that student who needed to register, and so it became more transactional like, "Okay, let me just get make sure you get into these courses." The challenge is really significant though with that, like, we know that students often pick let's say the wrong major on their application. If we're rushing the conversation then around what classes they should get into and don't help them course correct, they might end up having excess credits in their first semester or not seeing a connection to the college and not being retained. Not to mention from a staff sense of belonging engagement standpoint, it starts to feel really repetitive and not like what you've signed up for. So I think there's a lot of opportunities there. That one gets me really excited. Kaitlin: It is really tricky, right, to think about the layers here around, like, you mentioned earlier the vendor relationships. And the fact that each of these vendors, right, are also innovating and experimenting with AI and embedding AI in their own tools, and then what does it look like to start to think about how to holistically integrate tech systems that are also kind of changing and evolving in this landscape? And as, right, as you started today's conversation and saying using that word ubiquitous, right? Like it's everywhere. So what does it look like to be kind of in the center of this changing landscape trying to utilize these tools effectively, but the tools are changing? Right, and I appreciate what you just said about almost like well what can we start with? Where can we, like, where can we focus our energy on the things that matter most like engaging with students effectively? And can we draw, like, lessons learned from there or can we can we draw, like, places to start from the core of what matters most around students and engagement? Audrey Ellis: Yeah, I think you're really getting at at the real crux though, which is like if we don't decide what we want to use AI for, vendors will decide what we use AI for. Because every vendor is adding AI. That is how they will stay relevant in this moment. If you already have technologies, which you undoubtedly do, we all use technology in our day to day. And you don't take an active stance in this conversation and in your procurement and in your strategy, you will ultimately become a passive consumer of how vendors have decided you should use AI. And so I think that that is why it is so important right now to pause and think about what do you value about your job? What value do you provide that technology cannot, which is substantial in my opinion. Like, humans should absolutely still be at the fore of education and the driver. So then, then where are the biggest opportunities to leverage AI? And that's something that institutions who are taking a scattershot approach are not benefiting. Like, that exercise is not benefiting those institutions. And what we found is when we conducted our interviews, we had this heat map, I guess, that we asked institutions to vote for both where they have seen AI, where they are using AI, like from an org chart standpoint, but then also where they thought AI...
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Dr. Joy Coates On Designing Systems for Economic Mobility
04/02/2026
Dr. Joy Coates On Designing Systems for Economic Mobility
Dr. Joy Coates, Managing Director of Post-Secondary Opportunity at Third Sector, discusses how to build systems that prioritize real-world results, such as higher wages and better careers, for all learners. Drawing on a 20-year career spanning business and government, she explains how to move beyond good intentions to actually change how public programs and budgets are used to support people navigating life transitions, including those returning home after incarceration or managing mental health challenges. The conversation explores how to make sure a worker's certifications and skills count wherever they go, putting more power into the hands of the individual rather than the institution. Dr. Joy discusses the Nexus Method, a practical approach she co-authored with Nick Beadle, that leverages the regulatory concept of "advanced standing" to bridge the gap between skills-first hiring and traditional registered apprenticeships. Using examples from states like Alabama and Massachusetts, she highlights how businesses in industries like manufacturing can find and keep talent by making small, strategic changes to their hiring rules, such as removing unnecessary degree requirements. Finally, she outlines the vital role of local community colleges in connecting people in the community to the careers of the future. Transcript Julian: Welcome to the Work Forces podcast. I’m Julian Alssid. Kaitlin: And I’m Kaitlin LeMoine, and we speak with innovators who are shaping the future of work and learning. Together, we unpack the complex elements of workforce and career preparation and offer practical solutions that can be scaled and sustained. Julian: Kaitlin, one of the recurring themes on this podcast lately has been the need for a credential system that is transparent and easy to navigate—one where the skills you earn in one place actually count in another. And we’ve talked quite a lot about this recently with folks like Scott Cheney from Credential Engine and Amber Garrison Duncan from C-BEN. Kaitlin: We have. And today we’re exploring additional strategies for moving from establishing the technical foundation to make these credentials portable to engaging different organizations and funding sources to build a credential landscape that puts these ideas into action for all learners. Julian: Exactly. And our guest today has spent her career making sure these systems actually work for everyone. Dr. Joy Coates is the Managing Director of Post-Secondary Opportunity at Third Sector. She specializes in taking different parts of our world—like schools, state agencies, colleges, employers—and helping them change how they use their resources so they can focus on what really matters: helping adult learners get into better careers. Kaitlin: Dr. Joy brings over 20 years of experience to this work, including senior roles at the Markle Foundation and the Tennessee Department of Education. She is also behind a new approach called the Nexus Method, which is really a practical way to bridge the gap between hiring based on skills and traditional apprenticeships. Julian: Welcome to Work Forces, Dr. Joy, and we’re thrilled to have you with us today. Dr. Joy Coates: Good morning! I'm so excited to be here with you both. Julian: Well, we've given a little bit of your background, but we'd love to hear you tell us about your background and the journey that led you to your work at Third Sector. Dr. Joy Coates: What’s wonderful about the experiences that I’m now having at Third Sector is it really was an opportunity—a culmination, if you will—of everything I’ve worked on for the past 20 years. Everything I've been fortunate enough to be in the room with as these key decisions are made in terms of education, economic development. So, a lot of my earlier work, when I was still in corporate even, I spent some time in investor relations for a real estate organization that was focused on what we were calling back then "triple bottom line," which meant the return on investor, green development, and then also the return for the community. As part of that work, I was over corporate social responsibility. So I was working with all these organizations around their compliance to make sure that women, vendors of color, and others who were underrepresented were actually getting these really lucrative development contracts in Boston. And that experience shaped me so much. And different board appointments I had as a result of that really helped me shift completely my focus into the nonprofit sector and really try to path in terms of constantly coming back to outcomes, constantly coming back to what outcomes and equity mean together. And so at Third Sector, we’re always thinking about that. We’re thinking about how everyone who has a seat in the ecosystem can not only be brought to the table, but roll that expertise up to the government so the government can make better decisions for their constituents and so that we can really see lasting systemic change in these critical areas. Kaitlin: I feel like that's a great segue. Could you tell us a little bit more about Third Sector and the work that you're doing currently? Dr. Joy Coates: So, I am the Managing Director of Post-Secondary Opportunity. Third Sector also has several other practice areas; we also have a practice area that focuses more deeply on workforce pathways on the policy side, things like WIOA and TANF and better using these dollars that already exist and having them repurposed to serve more people. We also have a behavioral health division, we have a diversion and re-entry division that supports folks coming back into the workplace and just really back into the general population after periods of incarceration or homelessness. And then we have an early childhood education practice area. And so I'm fortunate enough to be able to be in spaces with these folks and think through where all these critical intersections are. If you were thinking almost like wheels on a spoke, it's where are all the different pain points in the pipeline of a person’s existence, a person who’s moving in that cradle-to-career pathway, and then all the different stop outs. Where are places where people get off track? Are they getting off track because of a mental health issue, an incarceration issue, because education quality wasn't where it was supposed to be? And so at Third Sector, where we have this focus on outcomes-focused government and outcomes-focused contracting, it’s more of—we know and believe that folk want to do the right thing, especially in these different government agencies that are already so taxed. And what we like to do is plug in and help them get from intention to practice so that these things actually happen in the way that they hope and envision. Julian: So, with that focus on outcomes and building more equitable workforce systems, talk to us a little bit about the connection then between credential quality and portability. How do you build an ecosystem where credentials aren't just high quality, but where they can really be carried across different systems? Dr. Joy Coates: So, certainly the portability question isn’t necessarily new. In fact, it applies to folk, adult learners like myself—career adult learners who had a family and were working with different institutions of education depending on my schedule, my availability, and transparently what I could afford, right, in terms of different degree programs. And so when we think about the credential quality, what that really means is: what’s the bearing this credential has on my future? What is the dollars and cents bearing? If I get this credential, realistically, how much more do I stand to make so that I can take better care of my family? And the folk who help make that decision, one, are the institutions of higher ed and the training providers that design them, but also the employers who really control the receptivity of these credentials in the field. And so when we speak about portability, we’re really talking about how that information moves. From the learner who’s actually putting in the work to get the credential, to the training provider, and then to the employer, and of course in some cases CBOs who may be providing things like career coaching, things of that nature. How is this information flowing across all these stakeholders that will ultimately have some impact on someone’s economic future? But what’s important about the portability is we are looking specifically at ways to put the power of that portability into the hands of the learner, rather than them being at the mercy of multiple different standards of transferability. And we know that's a tall order, we understand, but we know we're also not the only ones in this work. And so we heard you mention Amber Garrison Duncan a moment ago from C-BEN, who is a fantastic partner of ours and we really love the work that they're doing. While we have our own ideas—and we'll get into that, the recent paper we released in a few minutes—we also are really about amplification in terms of impact. We want to have the right partners and really do our homework to understand, hey, there are things that are out there that are working, but maybe we've got some leverage points in government or with other partners that other folk may not have in the field and vice versa. So how much more could we do together if we lined up on all those things that we all bring to the respective table? Kaitlin: So, you recently co-authored a white paper—which may be the paper you just mentioned—on the Nexus Method. And so for our listeners, could you please explain that paper, the framework that you outlined, and specifically how using the concept of advanced standing can bridge the gap between skills-first hiring and registered apprenticeship? Dr. Joy Coates: So, again, not new concepts, but concepts we're really excited to dig in on. So, first of all, it'd be remiss if I did not mention our co-author on that piece, which is—who is Nick Beadle, who some of your listeners may know of or you may know of certainly. And certainly after being in federal government for a number of years and being a journalist and things of that nature, Nick and I crossed paths several times at Markle, where we were really thinking—he was running Good Jobs and I was thinking about skills-first hiring and scaling that and all the partners who needed to be at the table. And so for this paper, one of the things we're thinking about at Third Sector and that Nick has also been thinking about is: what does the next iteration of apprenticeships look like? As we think about things like different forms of financial aid is either going away entirely or being collapsed, and pathways being a bit more overwhelming for folk. Again, to my earlier point: what are the things we already have that work well? So when we talk about the Nexus Method, we're really talking about policies and regulations that are already in place, like advanced standing and other things of that nature. Already, if we use them properly, they enable us to accelerate someone's career pathway in an existing framework. So if we're talking about a registered apprenticeship and the skills-first hiring practice of thinking about what experiences is this person coming in the door with that really ought to truncate that apprenticeship length in some way, right, just like you would do with credit for prior learning? So the advanced standing on apprenticeships, up until very recently—as recently as about a week and a half ago—had a cap. There was only so much advanced standing you could get. Now that cap has been lifted. So when we zoom back into what we're saying in the report is, if we take the best of skills-first hiring and the best of apprenticeship, we now have a more holistic way to customize how folk are able to advance their careers with these critical tools. And then the skills-first hiring practices—we call them practices because it's not just about recruitment and hiring. It's also about retention and how you set up within your organization your own structure for how somebody is able to move within your organization and ascend based on what they've already brought in the door, your ability to codify those skills against what your organization needs, and then your ability to kind of evolve, let their skills evolve in an organic yet targeted way throughout the life of the organization. So there's a way for you to codify those practices. And so when we were documenting this in the paper and pulling in language that we've heard from employers, including transparently some of their pushback on these pieces, it's employers and other stakeholders—but certainly we're talking about employers right now—employers want to do the right thing. Employers want talent. Employers want to have fair and equitable hiring practices that build a strong pipeline. The pushback comes from the noise in the field and the confusion over which strategies are the strategies and kind of being a little bit nervous about: I don't want to pilot this, it doesn't work, now it's affiliated with me. So what we're doing is taking existing research, one, for that grounding, existing policy so folk know that they don't have to recreate something, and then laying out an actual roadmap for how that works. So in follow up to the paper, we’ll be developing some guides on how employers can actually do this in practice. And also we'll both be at various conferences, ASU-GSV and things of that nature, where you'll be able to at least come by and say hi, or if we're presenting—we're not presenting at ASU, we'll just both be there. But at the places where we are presenting, we certainly hope that folk will come and just talk to us because we, you know, we want to share this information. We don't want to make it seem like, oh, you have to have this special criteria to do it. The criteria is really desire to open up your pipeline and make that pipeline viable. And so we're trying to offer something clear and cohesive that anybody can use, but also understand that you do need some guidance and you do need some practical support on how to make that work regardless of your industry. Julian: So where is it working? You say a lot of what you do is about amplification, and it’s—you’ve talked about the institutional level, you’ve talked a little bit about policy and with respect to the specific method you’ve written about with Nick Beadle, wondering too: is anyone doing this effectively? Dr. Joy Coates: In terms of the Nexus Method itself, it's a bit of a pilot; that's why we introduced the paper, we're inviting people to embark on this. Of course! But when we talk about apprenticeships, certainly, and you'll see like these pieces are working in places. So you see apprenticeships working very well in Massachusetts, Colorado, California; starting to see some of that evolution in Mississippi and Alabama. What we want to do is work with the states who have existing apprenticeship practices and existing employer flexibility around the skills-first hiring piece and begin to build cohorts where we can document the specific implementation of the intersection of these two practices. To our knowledge—I'm sure someone is doing it, but they're not calling it that, right? So we want to elevate, if they are doing it, call us, we want to talk to you. But if they're not doing it, we want to help them see that it actually wouldn't be as overwhelming as they think to do it. And so that's the excitement and energy that we're in right now: okay, we have something here. And we've had employers give us feedback directly on LinkedIn, commenting on our posts of "this is exactly the tension that we are wrestling with right now," especially in things like manufacturing and automotive. And so we know we can't do everything at once, so we would likely start in one of those two industries and begin to build and rapidly disseminate that evidence base so that others can adopt. Kaitlin: Building actually on that—what you're hearing from people, from employers around the articulation of the challenge and the need—what does it take to get that deep employer buy-in? Because as you said, right, it can be hard to commit to say like, let's try this pilot or let's try this newer approach. But what have you seen work in that respect, you know, where have you seen success in deep buy-in? Dr. Joy Coates: I think what works the best is doing your homework in advance to understand the industry. So for example, citing, you know, the Markle example when we were doing Rework America Alliance: we built these skills-first hiring kits with input that have subsequently been, you know, absorbed into JFF's portfolio on the skills space. Starting with the employer first to understand where their pain points are, trying to take as much of the burden off of the employer as you can from your space as a practitioner, but yet never losing sight of the fact that the employer is the one who actually has to do it, right? So you can do things like, you know, create a kit or download those hiring kits and use that with your employer that you're consulting with. You can actually host, you know, accelerator events, which Markle and JFF have done. Goodwill Easterseals in Minnesota has a large—I guess now the fourth year that they've been running these accelerators for employers. And what they do is they basically have engaged employers who are willing to give some of their time—not more than three hours, because we're talking about sometimes director, exec, and above level of folk who are coming—getting these folk in a room with other employers in a space that feels relevant yet non-hyper-competitive so they can talk about these real-world problems, know they're not the only one, know they're not being vilified, and then walk them through the steps it will take while also bringing in case studies of other employers who have done it. So it's building the trust, building the credibility, and at the same time being clear about the ease of replicability is really what the things that we see that work the best and that have had the most staying power in the coming up on a decade or so now since we've been engaging with employers in this work. Julian: So what is sort of the biggest "aha" moment for employers when they kind of see that this is working? Dr. Joy Coates: What I have seen as one of the biggest ahas is it actually doesn't take as long as they think it will is the first piece. And the other piece is they don't have to redo every single HR practice that they have; they just need to tweak the ones that they have to make them a little bit more flexible, right? So when you think about something like removing a degree requirement—certainly that's not applicable for every job; some jobs have degree requirements, like doctors, nurses, things of that nature because of the technical training that you need. But when we talk about hiring, promoting, and expanding roles and opportunities based on merit, everybody has that kind of baked into the way they do business just transparently. It's good business, you want to keep your people. So what I think that we see the light bulb go off with employers is when they realize, okay, I'm not doing everything wrong, but there are one or two places where I could potentially see exponential increase in retention and productivity if I made and committed to these specific changes. And we see relief. We don't see, you know, we don't see this regret of, oh my gosh, why didn't I do it 20 years ago, because people are really very much in the now. Everybody's under pressure with the current economy and things of that nature. We really don't have time to lament what could have been. You know, the thing that's the most active and most salient is folk realizing, okay, there is a...
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Work Forces Rewind: Amber Garrison Duncan: Advancing Competency-Based Education
03/17/2026
Work Forces Rewind: Amber Garrison Duncan: Advancing Competency-Based Education
Amber Garrison Duncan, Executive Vice President and Chief Operating Officer of the Competency-Based Education Network (C-BEN), discusses the evolution of competency-based education from seven pioneering institutions in 2013 to over 600 institutions and 1,000 programs today. Drawing from her experience assessing co-curricular learning outcomes in traditional higher education and later as a grantmaker at Lumina Foundation, Garrison Duncan explains how CBE restores the promise of economic mobility by focusing on mastery of skills rather than seat time. She details C-BEN's systems-level work through initiatives like the Center for Skills and the Partnership for Skills Validation, which build consensus across K-12, higher education, and employers on quality standards for skills assessment and validation. The conversation explores how policy shifts like Workforce Pell and state-level innovations in Alabama, Arkansas, and Texas are accelerating the movement toward skills-based credentials, financial aid, and talent management systems. Garrison Duncan emphasizes the urgency of iterative innovation, comparing the current moment to the iPhone era where institutions must test and adapt quickly rather than waiting for lengthy pilot programs, and offers practical guidance for institutions to begin their CBE journey using C-BEN's Quality Framework while building authentic connections between learning outcomes and employer needs. Transcript Julian Alssid: Welcome to the Work Forces Podcast. I'm Julian Alssid. Kaitlin LeMoine: And I'm Kaitlin LeMoine, and we speak with innovators who are shaping the future of work and learning. Julian Alssid: Together, we unpack the complex elements of workforce and career preparation and offer practical solutions that can be scaled and sustained. Kaitlin LeMoine: This podcast is an outgrowth of our Work Forces Consulting practice. Through weekly discussions, we seek to share the trends and themes we see in our work and amplify impactful efforts happening in higher education industry and workforce development all across the country. We are grateful to Lumina Foundation for its past support during the initial development and launch of this podcast, and invite future sponsors of this effort, please check out our workforces podcast website to learn more. And so with that, let's dive in. Julian: Today, we are sharing a Work Forces Rewind of our interview with Amber Garrison Duncan, Executive Vice President and COO of the Competency-Based Education Network, or C-BEN. We decided to revisit this conversation following C-BEN’s recent release of "Governing Talent Marketplaces: A Guide for State Leaders" which C-BEN developed in partnership with the National Governor’s Association. This is a milestone for C-BEN, providing a roadmap for how states can build the governance and data systems necessary to make skills-based hiring a reality. Amber has long been a leader in this space, and our podcast discussion explores the critical role competency-based education plays in creating more equitable pathways to opportunity. It felt like the perfect time to bring these insights back to the forefront. We will be back in two weeks with our next episode. For now, let’s go back to our conversation with Amber. Julian Alssid: You know, Kaitlin, it feels like just yesterday, but it was actually over a dozen years ago now that we were helping to launch College for America at Southern New Hampshire University, which was one of the very first competency-based education models. And back then CBE, it felt like a radical experiment, you know, trying to prove that demonstrating mastery of competencies and not seat time in a course was the key metric to helping people advance their education and careers. Kaitlin LeMoine: Yeah, it's true. And while it does feel like that was just yesterday, the competency based movement has come so far in so many years. While CBE is still viewed as an alternative, non traditional approach by some in the field of education and training, many institutions have and are continuing to holistically implement competency based models to go beyond the traditional credit hour and ensure a curricular emphasis on what learners can do with what they know, and as we think about the intersection of work and learning in which we're all operating, this movement has only been further strengthened as employers further focus on skills based hiring and learners seek to clearly communicate their skills and abilities in a competitive job market. Julian Alssid: Yes, and our guest today is with an organization that's been central to growing the CBE field, Amber Garrison Duncan is Executive Vice President and Chief Operating Officer of the Competency-Based Education Network, or C-BEN. In her role, Amber spearheads initiatives to strengthen collaboration between education and workforce partners with a focus on competency and skill taxonomies and quality assurance before C-BEN, Amber spent eight years as a grant maker at Lumina Foundation, focusing on higher education success. And in her early career, she served in numerous Student Affairs roles at the University of Oregon, Florida State University, the University of Michigan, Hope College, and Texas A&M University. Amber, we're so excited to welcome you to the podcast. Thanks so much for joining us. Amber Garrison Duncan: Well, thank you for having me. It's so exciting to think back to those early days and just also how far we've come. So it's a good moment to reflect. And so thank you for this opportunity. Kaitlin LeMoine: Well, thank you for joining us and for taking this moment in time to both reflect, and I guess maybe, you know, we'll spend a little time thinking about what's ahead as well. So I'm really glad to see you today for this conversation. Amber, and as we get started, we'd love to hear a little bit more about your background and what led you to your role at C-BEN, sure. Amber Garrison Duncan: Well, as you probably heard in my introduction, I had quite a bit of experience on a couple of campuses in higher ed, and are some of what I would call today our legacy institutions that have been around a long time and really are major leaders when you think about higher education. But in my experience there, I was doing assessment in the co-curriculum, and so I was not working in courses, and I was not working in time based measures. I was working on how students apply what they know and can do? How are they doing that and their co-curricular experiences or at work? And then at the University of Oregon, we were just getting to the point where saying, can we validate this and put it on a record for somebody? And so I was having that experience and also saw how hard it was to do, how much of a change it was to think about. Could people be learning outside of the four walls of this classroom, outside this desk, and where are they taking this knowledge? How would I know? And so from that just knew that also it was a lot of change, and was tired as a change maker, banging my head against the wall. So I said, Where else can I go? This is a systemic issue that, again, I worked at institutions across the country. Why is this so hard? And so then decided to pursue something that could support more of the system's change, and was lucky enough to be at Lumina for that which was a really transformative experience for me to see how the ecosystem is set up, why there's a lot of these incentives and barriers to change. And had the fortune to be leading a portfolio called Learning Infrastructure, and that was a portfolio focused on how we make sure that all high quality learning can count. And I learned there that the only way to maybe do that is, if we were to work in competencies and skills. Other countries around the world were figuring this out. We had to figure it out in the US. And luckily, there were seven institutions that said, Hey, we're already trying this Southern New Hampshire being one of those. And so C-BEN's origin story really is, how do we learn as quickly as possible from these seven institutions. Now that was back in 2013 when we were having that initial meeting and conversation. Today we have over 5000 members. There's no way to track fully and know how many CBE programs there are in the US, but we know there's well over 600 institutions that we know of, over 1000 programs. So it's kind of fascinating when we think about turning the ship in higher ed and how hard that is, and that in just 10 years time, we've gone from those early days to where we are now that really are proving out that CBE is a way to provide greater access. It's a way to ensure mastery, for that every learner gets the quality education and the skills they need. And then employers, again, are very much leaning forward to doing their skills based hiring by connecting with CBE programs. So that's like a quick evolution, and my history is just it's all tied up together in those two pieces. And so once I left Lumina, I just said, I really want to continue to be a part of this and continuing to help lead change. And so now I've been at C-BEN for four years, which, again, time flies, but a lot of really exciting progress to see and be a part of people's stories and watch our community grow. Julian Alssid: It is quite a quite a story, and you're right in the thick of it, Amber. And so looking back, you know, you mentioned the seven institutions initially. I'm pretty sure we were, we were one of them at College for America. Amber Garrison Duncan: You were the home of C-BEN at SNHU, yeah. Julian Alssid: Looking back, what are some of the key moments in the evolution of CBE since those early days that led to the growth we see today? Because it really is quite remarkable. Amber Garrison Duncan: It is, it is. Also a couple of things, I would say is we also like to remind folks that CBE, if we look at the theory and science of learning this, goes back 100 years. I mean, we all probably, if we came up through education, we're big fans of John Dewey and thinking about all this. And so it's, it's kind of interesting as like, the old ideas that have new ways of implementing and scaling. And I think that was always our problem, as you looked at the movement in the cities, that people really again, University Without Walls, and we're really trying to do this, but again, it's hard to do this without new tools. And our tools of the moment were not really there. And so early leaders, as technology started to be used in higher ed to say, Can we do this async? Can we do this in a more flexible way? Can we, you know, again, recognize what people already know and can do and move them on a personalized pathway, not treat everybody as a cohort and teach them all the same thing at the same time, right? So as we started to see that world move, I think that's where CBE started to take hold, and it was a lot of early online learning institutions saying, hey, let's try this thing out where, yeah, we've got this moving async, and we know we can kind of personalize this. But what if we did this instead of again based on time and a module that, again, it's based on as soon as you master and being able to lift that is, again, it's no small task. But certainly, I think early movers were trying to reach people that they hadn't been able to serve before. They were trying to make sure that, again, what they were asking people to perform and know and do was relevant. Had payoff for those individuals and those residents in the way that we all hope, that it led to family sustaining wages, that, to me, it was about restoring the promise of higher ed that we really are about economic mobility, and we needed to try something new to reach people in ways that we hadn't before. And so that, I think, has been, as I hear over and over those 600 institutions talking about why they're trying to do this is they're trying to reach people who just wouldn't have maybe come to us before, wouldn't have been able to have that learning. And again, they want to make sure that if I ask you to spend that one Pell Grant, you get, or that Workforce Pell piece, or that that's your one shot for a lot of people. And I want to make sure it's worth it to you, and that you get, again, that economic return, and so CBE really is the solution to provide that. Kaitlin LeMoine: So building off your last comment there Amber, just around, you know, Workforce Pell and where we're headed, right? I mean, we'd love to hear, you know, what are some of the pressing challenges that you see as institutions and organizations seek to work? Work in this complex landscape, and where are there opportunities, especially around, you know, building a skills based ecosystem that involves all these parties, and really not only involves them, but I guess, allows them to collaborate and work together effectively. Amber Garrison Duncan: You know, I think Workforce Pell is a is kind of a bellwether in the policy incentives and things that will start to shift to reward and make sure that we're paying for things that have, again, return on investments, whether that's, you know, we've been working deeply in Alabama and helping them shift their credentials of value onto what are the skills, not just the labor market demand signal and the but what are the actual skills people need, and how do we make sure those credentials are delivering on those skills, and we're paying for that, not just a completion so again, I think Workforce Pell is starting to lean that way. I think more of the accountability measures are going to be headed that way, and quality assurance being tied to that. So I think that's a huge lever for the work that we're doing, and why people can kind of land on this as a solution to answer that. But again, it comes with a lot of challenges. We are, I say we go everywhere skills go. But if you look at where skills go, it's all the proxies of time that are attached to that, so the credit hour and the just getting into the like, where do I go find a person's skills? Well, I've got to go into the LMS, and I've got to hack the course, and then I've got to hack the assessment platform and the la, la, la, la. And it's like, holy cow. So it's definitely not without challenge. And I do feel like, for the first time, we have again, the market has shifted, and people are starting to say we do need to pay attention to how hard that is. Oh, we do need to say again, should we rethink financial aid based on time and maybe have competency based measures? States again are starting to lead the way in that again Alabama, California. Folks are trying to think about new ways to pay for learning based on skills and competencies and not seat time. We're starting to see Arkansas. Just this morning. I was just reading. They were like, we're not going to call it non credit anymore. It's professional skills learning. And like, why do we again have everything attached to credit? Non credit and hours and time and again. I think that we'll continue to explore, but I do think that it also represents a revisioning of the social contract and thinking about how we pay for things as a society at a moment in time when everything feels very disrupted. But how do we have the forum and the space to talk about what that means, and again, disperse funds, or have policies or have employer engagement in these ways that we all feel comfortable with. And so that's where C-BEN, we're spending a lot of our time. How are we building consensus? How do we reshape a system and not replicate things of the past? As we were getting on, we were talking about, we now have an apprenticeship track at our conference, and we have K-12 coming. And I think now that we're starting to see all these innovators are coming up, looking up and saying, let's not build systems the way that we had them before that we don't like. Let's connect them, because people are trying to move between them. And how do we use skills and competencies to do that? And again, find new ways and new paths in this kind of reimagining using skills as the foundation. And that's what gets me too really excited, but that, again, it's a lot of challenge that we're going to have to face, because now we're talking about admissions policies, and we're talking about dual enrollment, we're talking about things that we have we thought we solved, and now we're figuring out we didn't quite solve them, and we'd like to do better. But that is, is, I think the challenge of where we go next is, how do we build together so that as we're innovating, we don't run past each other, or we don't change one side of the system and not the other. People still need that lifelong learning journey, and we've got to be able to again collaborate to do that. Julian Alssid: So it really is this big systemic issue, and it sounds like C-BEN has been spending quite a bit of time thinking about this and trying to build and scale solutions that cut across the education and employer landscape. You know, I will say, while I agree Workforce Pell's, you know, certainly a bellwether. You know, it's not going to be a lot of money. How do we get solutions that have the employers and educators working in new ways at scale. And what do you guys see being done to advance this? You know, like we want to hear about your, you know, your new Center for Skills and the Partnership for Skills Validation. Amber Garrison Duncan: Yes, Workforce Pell, it's going to be a small amount, but it is our first dip in something different, right, a little bit, but still tied to the credit hours, so we still have to figure that out. But baby steps, baby steps, it is, it's a baby step, it's a baby step, it is a big baby step. But I certainly, through the Center for Skills, as we are observing, again, this growth. We said, how do we get to the intersection? And so. That's where the Center for Skills really comes in and says, if we're really talking about not just skills, as in, like, what's the sentence that describes skills we're talking about, what are the new types of evidence we need to base these policy decisions on? If we're saying people should be awarded or recognized based on mastery and demonstration of skill, for award of a credential. But we're also seeing again, employers saying, I want to hire people based on that mastery. I want to pay them. We're seeing a couple weeks ago, I was at Walmart and they gathered a lot of their peers, from Home Depot to Best Buy, saying, how do we restructure our performance based talent management structures. How are we incentivizing people? How do we pay people? How do we provide recognition for their skills? That's a huge shift. Again, collectively, for all of us to be having that conversation. But again, we can't just say, What do I slap a label on, but what's the performance evidence? And that's where the Center for Skills is trying to say, let's have that conversation at the intersection of what assessment means at the end of the day, and that our perceptions and the ways that we've traditionally done assessment has to shift and change. All of us, you know, if we're older than 20, probably are used to standardized tests and multiple choice, and those are great knowledge tests. Those are things we know we can do with great rigor and validity and reliability. But what we're talking about now is a new world where things are based on demonstration of skill. It's what I know, it's what I can do. What are the different contexts I can do that in? So it's a much richer, nuanced conversation, and that means we have to have new assessment tools and new ways of understanding that and that we shouldn't, again, back to this concept of like we shouldn't go build those separate from each other. If we're trying to all use the same evidence, how do we agree? How to create that evidence? What does quality look like? So that's really what the Partnership for Skills Validation is driving that...
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Scott Cheney: Making Sense of the Credential Landscape
03/03/2026
Scott Cheney: Making Sense of the Credential Landscape
Scott Cheney, Chief Executive Officer of Credential Engine, discusses bringing transparency to a credential marketplace that has grown to over 1.85 million unique credentials representing $2.3-2.4 trillion annually—a tenth of the U.S. economy. Drawing on over 30 years at the intersection of workforce development and education, Cheney describes how the explosive growth in micro-credentials and digital badges creates navigation challenges for learners and employers. He explains Credential Engine's Credential Transparency Description Language (CTDL), a data format enabling disconnected systems to communicate like travel booking platforms do for airlines and hotels. The conversation explores state-level implementations in Arkansas, Alabama, Tennessee, Texas, and Florida, where credential registries help workers compare programs, costs, and outcomes, and innovative work with AACRAO to credential the skills of 40 million Americans with some college but no degree through verified digital badges. Cheney emphasizes that digitization empowers learners to own and share credentials rather than relying on paper transcripts, urging learners to request digital formats, educators to issue them proactively, and highlighting federal support for talent marketplaces that will transform credential navigation. Transcript Julian Alssid: Welcome to the Work Forces podcast. I'm Julian Alssid. Kaitlin LeMoine: And I'm Kaitlin LeMoine, and we speak with innovators who are shaping the future of work and learning. Julian Alssid: Together, we unpack the complex elements of workforce and career preparation and offer practical solutions that can be scaled and sustained. Kaitlin LeMoine: This podcast is an outgrowth of our workforce consulting practice. Through weekly discussions, we seek to share the trends and themes we see in our work and amplify impactful efforts happening in higher education, industry, and workforce development all across the country. We are grateful to Lumina Foundation for its past support during the initial development and launch of this podcast, and invite future sponsors of this effort. Please check out our Work Forces podcast website to learn more. And so with that, let's dive in. Julian Alssid: Kaitlin, we talk a lot on this podcast about skills-based hiring, competency-based education and helping learners translate what they know into career opportunities. But there's a fundamental infrastructure challenge underneath all of that. How do we actually make sense of the credential landscape? Kaitlin LeMoine: It's true. The ecosystem is incredibly fragmented. We have traditional degrees, certificates, badges, licenses, apprenticeships, and industry certifications. And those are just the formal credentials. Many of these systems don't effectively speak to one another and learners and employers alike struggle to understand what different credentials actually represent in terms of skills and competencies. Julian Alssid: Right. And it's not just about quantity, though the numbers are staggering. It's about transparency and comparability. If I earn a credential in cybersecurity from one provider, how does that compare to a similar sounding credential from another? What skills does it actually represent? And how do employers make sense of all this when they're trying to hire? Kaitlin LeMoine: And those types of questions bring us to our guest today. We're joined by Scott Cheney, Chief Executive Officer of Credential Engine, the organization working to bring transparency to the credentials marketplace. Scott has spent over 30 years at the intersection of workforce development, post-secondary education, and economic development. Before founding Credential Engine, he served as Policy Director for Workforce, Economic Development, and Pensions for Senator Patty Murray and the Senate Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions Committee. Prior to his work on Capitol Hill, Scott formed his own consulting firm working with states, companies, foundations, and think tanks on education, training, and employment issues. He has also held positions with the National Alliance of Business, the American Society for Training and Development, and the US Chamber of Commerce. Scott has also been involved in learner and worker mobility efforts globally, including serving on the Board of Directors of the Velocity Network Foundation and on the Strategic Advisory Committee of the Groningen Declaration Network. Julian Alssid: Scott, welcome to Work Forces, we're thrilled to have you with us today. Scott Cheney: Thank you very much. It's a pleasure to be here. Appreciate the opportunity. Kaitlin LeMoine: So as we dive in today, Scott, I know we gave your bio, but please tell us a bit more about your background and what led you to Credential Engine. Scott Cheney: Yeah, the background is not necessarily a clean line. So, you know, we talk about pathways, we talk about how do people find their way to certain places. I can't at all guarantee that any one thing led to my being here. Other than it just being a really different and unique opportunity to have an impact not just across the education and training ecosystem here in the United States, but to really think about how do we use and manage information about offerings across the globe. And how do we actually have better comparability, not just of a... to your example Julian, a certificate in one field by one provider, but a degree in the same field by a different provider and a certification. And then how do we do that when we're looking to support mobility of individuals across national lines. So it was a little different than anything I'd ever done because it's a very technical field, but it was very much in line with this interest in how do we improve education and workforce and training for people. To do it, it always got me very frustrated working in the Senate and then dealing with this very deconstructed ecosystem, we think along very artificial lines about education and training, right? We think about, oh, this is K-12. And then that's even primary and then secondary. And then you get into workforce and higher ed and we organize our thinking around largely federal funding streams, right? That's a higher ed, you know, kind of issue. That's a workforce issue. That's a Perkins issue. That's a, you know, Pell or a TANF issue. And people don't think that way. People think about what do I need next to get me the better job and to advance myself. And I don't care how it's funded, I don't care who offers it. I want to know it's going to be effective for me. And that's what this organization is really trying to dive into. Julian Alssid: So Scott, just recently you published your annual report, counting credentials, I guess counting credentials 2025. Um, which, which provides an update on the credential landscape. Please, if you will, share some of the findings of that report and particularly interested in hearing and knowing any surprises that emerged for you. Scott Cheney: Yeah. So we produced this one in 2025, the one that we did previous was in 2022. Um, it's a lot of work. We do it, we do it periodically. And, and one of the findings, the very top level finding is that we have available in the United States a little over 1.8 million unique credentials. So that is a staggeringly large number, but it would be helpful to just do a little bit of explanation about what's in there. First of all, when we use the term credential, oftentimes people think about a credential is one bucket of things and then there are degrees, right? We don't use the term credential that way. We use the term credential to mean anything that is intended to represent what you have earned and learned and can apply in some additional space. It could be further education. It could be employment. It could just be for self-satisfaction, right? That you're you're doing it because I'm a history buff and I'm not looking to be employed in history, but I went and took a degree or got a certificate in, you know, medieval history because I like it. And so when we think about it that way, and we think about also breaking down a history degree from West Texas is different than a history degree at the University of Washington is different than a history degree at Central Florida. And it's not because history is fundamentally different. It's because the unique sets of skills that you earn, the professors have different specialties. The marketplace into which you're going to use that credential might be different in each of those places. The costs are different, right? So we categorize each of those even though they're in the same field of study as separate credentials. So one is that we just count everything and we really want to help people understand. So it's a very large space. But the more interesting finding is that the growth in non-degree in the short-term credentials, and in fact, you can even get down to—and we're seeing more credentialing of single skills or small groupings of skills that are just what that individual needed, maybe because an employer said, we've got a new piece of equipment and I need you to go get these three additional skills to know how to run that equipment, and we're going to certify that you've got those skills and we're going to recognize that as a credential. And increasingly that's being done through things like digital badges, where you're not taking a full even a certificate program. You're earning those specific skills and once you've mastered them, they're being credentialized. So we're seeing this massive growth in very discrete skills gains and being issued as a credential and that's a lot of the growth we've seen. We were um, just over a million credentials in 2022. We did a much better count of these digital badges. And so the numbers now around 1.8 million. And it's offered by about 135,000 different providers. So credentials are being issued by any number of employers, of nonprofits, of museums, you know, traditional education sources. So it really is becoming a very democratized kind of ecosystem that we're in. And because we're doing a lot of this now as digital credentials, we're able to recognize learning as it's happening and empowering people with more information about their skills, their capabilities, than we've ever been able to do before. Kaitlin LeMoine: Scott, one thing I've been quite struck by reading the counting credentials 2025 report and then also just hearing you talk about, you know, sort of your kind of didn't expect to be in the technical element of this work. And I don't know if when you said technical, you also meant technological, but I'm struck by, you know, the need for data transparency in particular and how to build that foundation and that infrastructure. Especially as you said, right, like if you're comparing one type of program across institutions, how do we make sure that that all of this information speaks to one another, that we're all using the same information. You know, I loved the idea of um, in some of your writing you've talked about solid data, I like that acronym around structured open linked interoperable and durable. But just would love to hear more there because I think it's like it's a really complex and I think sometimes a hard space for people to really get their minds around including myself. Scott Cheney: So it is and it isn't, right? The education world has not really operated in this way. Uh, and honestly, the other number from our counting credentials report is we in this country spend somewhere around $2.3, $2.4 trillion a year on um, efforts to help people obtain credentials. Could be in what we spend in K-12. It could be what parents shell out in tuition for higher ed. It's, you know, federal, state and local funding. It's employers, you know, what they spend internally on their own training. And that is of a, I think we're at about a $21, $22 trillion economy right now. So it is a tenth of the entire economy. It's massive, right? And yet we don't really think in this sector around this idea of transparency and data interoperability. But for comparison, you would never assume that we could live without Expedia and Travelocity and Kayak. You would hop in your car and not use a a navigation tool, Apple Maps or Waze or something. But those can exist because those sectors have all agreed we're going to use a common data infrastructure. So that every airline, every hotel, every restaurant uses the same kind of data format. So that Expedia can reliably pull information and share it with you, that you're actually going to book a Marriott and it's actually going to be a king size bed, right? So what we're trying to do is the same thing for the education and training marketplace here in the country and then working to make this possible globally. And we do that through as as you pointed out, a data format that is structured, meaning that we know that this term means this thing. And if you publish a term, you're saying I am a Marriott or I am Ivy Tech. It's open and that's really important. We don't want this data to be closed off to public use. We don't want it to be owned and behind paywalls. This is a public good. We want this information to be open and accessible to anybody, anytime. It's linked. Again, linking, you go on the web right now, you can link between all these different things. The hyperlinks allow you to search and explore and that is just a modern data format. And so this information needs to be the same. Interoperable. So interoperability just means that if you say something is a credential of a PhD in psychology from Purdue and you take that information and you want to share it with the employer, that the employer can read that information and know that it's true in their system as it was true when Purdue published the information. So it's just a truth and that that consistency. And then durable is that it lasts. We can always find it. It's always going to be good. Whether you're talking about my degree that I earned in 1988 or information that's needed now as I'm looking for a new job. So that information is going to last. We happen to do that at Credential Engine using a data schema that we call the credential transparency description language. It is the data schema that we helped to create back when we were founded. And it is a solid data format. It does all those things that we described. It just happens to be the one and we developed it because nothing existed like it. There was no way to do this back when we founded the organization. So we were founded to create this data language. So when you think about it that way, and you think about oh, well of course I can use Waze to drive across town. Of course I can use Expedia to book a vacation. And then you say, why can't I compare and build a pathway for myself from high school through my own learning into community college onto a degree onto an industry certification? Because all that information sits in different repositories using different terms. And we're trying to change that. We're trying to bring all that information into a common language so that you can build your own pathway. I oftentimes say, we make it easier to book a vacation than we do to help you find your way through this credential landscape to get the right skills, to get a good job, to be able to afford the vacation. And that's just wrong. We need to make it easier to navigate your education and employment pathway than it is to book a vacation. Julian Alssid: Yeah, indeed. So bringing us back to the report for a moment, I'm really interested in, you know, I too was struck by that massive jump of crossing the million mark of digital badges and online certificates. And I guess I'm wondering, are we... from where you sit, are we how would you characterize this in relation to the traditional degrees? Are we are we are we at, are we approaching a tipping point of sorts? You know, are we, do you see, do you see these badges effectively, these badges and certs being stacked into broader programs? Is that happening yet? Scott Cheney: Yeah, so let's take a second and just clarify a few things. One, we don't actually know if from 2022 to 25 there was just a growth in the number of badges out there. We just were able to get a better count on the badges that exist. So it's quite possible that in 2022 there were actually, you know, that our number may have been one and a half million and it grew to 1.8. It may have been 1 point we don't have the longitudinal data on the badges. So I can't say for certain if it was growth. The second thing to understand about digital badges is that it's not just happening in the short-term arena. A lot of universities digitally badge their degrees, right? And so you're just a digital badge is a way of carrying the information. It's no longer having to go get the paper transcript and the paper degree and hanging it on your wall. It's being given to you in a digital format. And so digital badging is happening across the entire spectrum of education and training and all these different kind of credentials. It's just that you can create a digital badge and issue it very easily. And it can be done really easily for a short-term program. So we are seeing a real growth in digital badging and the digitization of this entire marketplace is fabulous. Right? It is a game changer unto itself because it means that I don't have to go pay $20 or $100 every time I need a copy of a transcript from the place I went to. I don't have to, you know, I can carry that information myself. I earned this degree. I earned this certificate. And the provider of that is awarding it to me. Maybe as paper. That's fine. I'll keep the paper. But you're issuing it to me in a digital format as well. And that digital format is then something I can own and it has a verification behind it, right? So it is empowering in ways that we've never been able to empower people before. So we strongly encourage every provider of every type of credential to move to a digital format, right? And that is a game changer. Because now we can also share that information more easily with potential employers. And employers can verify that Scott actually did earn these things from these providers. And you can change that whole dynamic of the interactions and the transactions that an individual can have and they can do it in a secure way. So we're really excited about that move to digitization and as I said before, it means that we can actually do a better job of capturing those discrete skills that are earned. You know, it could be as simple as, and I'm not saying that being a teacher is simple, but oftentimes you might get a principal observing a teacher and noticing that they had really, really good classroom management of a difficult situation. Right? That teacher didn't go back to school. That teacher displayed a set of skills in a classroom in front of a known authority who can then say to the teacher, hey, I'm going to issue you a digital badge because you handled that situation really, really well. And I have the authority and the ability to recognize your skills, to verify that you actually applied them and have them, and use them in a meaningful context. And I'm going to issue you a digital badge. It could be that simple. But that's a powerful thing for a teacher to be then be able to say that yeah, I was recognized and it was rewarded to me. It wasn't just the principal saying hey nice job in there and then forgetting that she said it to me or he said it to me a year later. No, I have proof of this. You saw my abilities to do this and it was issued so that is a game changer in so many ways. So this digitization is more than just one technical piece of it, it is an empowering piece for individuals everywhere. Kaitlin LeMoine: So Scott, as we've discussed, right, this work requires bringing a lot of people together to make these otherwise...
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Engineering the Future of Digital Learning with Tom Riendeau
02/17/2026
Engineering the Future of Digital Learning with Tom Riendeau
Tom Riendeau, Vice President of Workforce Learning and Skills at Magic EdTech, joins Work Forces to discuss the critical infrastructure powering the future of online education. While AI dominates the headlines, Riendeau argues that many organizations are still held back by "static" legacy content that fails to engage the modern learner. The conversation explores the operational reality of digital transformation, from improving student retention by streamlining the user experiences to using AI as a "smart assistant" for curriculum design. Riendeau emphasizes the importance of moving beyond transactional vendor relationships to find partners who can "see around corners," anticipating challenges like cybersecurity risks and accessibility compliance before they become crises. He offers practical advice for leaders on how to thread "durable skills" into technical training and build scalable learning ecosystems that truly support career advancement. Transcript Julian Alssid: Welcome to the Work Forces podcast. I’m Julian Alssid. Kaitlin LeMoine: And I’m Kaitlin LeMoine, and we speak with innovators who are shaping the future of work and learning. Julian Alssid: Together, we unpack the complex elements of workforce and career preparation and offer practical solutions that can be scaled and sustained. Kaitlin LeMoine: This podcast is an outgrowth of our workforce consulting practice. Through weekly discussions, we seek to share the trends and themes we see in our work and amplify impactful efforts happening in higher education, industry, and workforce development all across the country. We are grateful to Lumina Foundation for its past support during the initial development and launch of this podcast, and invite future sponsors of this effort. Please check out our Work Forces podcast website to learn more. And so with that, let’s dive in. Julian Alssid: Kaitlin, in so many of our recent podcast conversations, we have discussed AI and its impact on the future of work and learning. We are all grappling with where this new technology will take us and its long-term impacts on education and the workforce. However, we have spent less time exploring the very platforms and tools that support effective online learning at its core. Kaitlin LeMoine: Indeed. While online learning feels ubiquitous and like it has just “always been there,” many organizations still hold on to static content—PDFs, textbooks, traditional curricula—that simply wasn't built for today's digital-first, immersive learning environments. And other institutions have adopted advanced technology solutions, but find themselves challenged by how to most effectively integrate tools into one seamless platform or experience. Julian Alssid: To really modernize, you need partners who can engineer that transformation. It requires deep expertise in both learning design and software engineering, and you need teams that can build everything from custom platforms to AR simulations to fully accessible digital content at scale. Kaitlin LeMoine: Which brings us to our guest today. We're joined by Tom Riendeau, Vice President of Workforce Learning and Skills at Magic EdTech, a provider of AI-powered digital learning solutions. Tom has spent over 35 years driving enterprise growth at the intersection of learning, technology, and workforce transformation. He has served as a trusted partner to higher education institutions, career training providers, and EdTech companies, enabling them to reimagine their content. And we’re looking forward to speaking with him today! Tom, welcome to Work Forces. Tom Riendeau: Thank you so much. This is a terrific opportunity and I’m thrilled to be here. Kaitlin LeMoine: So Tom, to kick us off, please tell us a bit more about your background and what led you to your role at Magic EdTech. Tom Riendeau: Sure. You know, I have always been focused on education; that was the goal coming out of my undergraduate years. But I student taught and then said, I want to do something different. And I was very fortunate to get a job as an academic advisor at one of the first what we would call online universities in the early 1990s. And I had a really special moment there. I was an academic advisor to nursing students—and at that time that institution was set up to direct students to learning that already existed in their local communities and aggregate it into a college degree. I spent almost my entire day on the phone with students. And I was on the phone with a student who was pursuing her nursing degree, and she burst into tears on me. And she started to tell me about what was going on in her life and how if she didn’t finish her nursing degree by the summer, all of the disaster that would mean not only for her, but for her children, and how she was newly a single parent and all of the stress. So it wasn’t even an education conversation at that point; it was really about what’s going on in your life. And that thread has continued through my career. Now, it has a happy ending, which is why I like telling the story. I got her calmed down, we had a lot of conversations over the spring, she worked incredibly hard, and then at a graduation ceremony that summer, I saw her kids holding up their "Yay Mom" signs. And that stuck with me. So it was not planned, but I had an opportunity to join the academic publishing world through a partnership that school had—it was one of the largest academic publishers. And that sort of led into new opportunities to start to look at the early days of digital learning. And so the common theme, because of where I had started my career, each of my employers let me dive into career-focused education. They let me work with their customers who were delivering that education—whether they were career colleges, whether they were the extended campuses of traditional universities as they were getting into online, whether they were certification companies—but with that common theme of: how do you change a person's life? How do you help them advance their career? And what does that mean not only for them but for their families? And as you start to think about it, I started to realize the impact that I was having on entire communities as I was helping more and more students—far outside of my limited capabilities to teach English to some 12th graders who didn’t want to be there. And I say that cynically—I mean, with lots of love for what my parents accomplished as teachers and the lives that they changed. But really, I’m proud of all of that focus on working adults and their needs and seeing them not just as learners, but as human beings with families and communities. Julian Alssid: That’s a compelling story, Tom, and glad you’ve stuck with us. Very mission driven. So, you’ve worked now with different types of organizations, plied your trade. So what are the types of challenges that your clients face, and how have those changed or evolved over the years in this space? Tom Riendeau: Sure. So there's some constants even over those entire decades. And those constant challenges are helping clients understand their local business needs—making sure that the solutions that my employers were developing for them are developing for them match what's actually needed. And it may be directly for that company, of what they're trying to accomplish. But getting that match right rather than just building things in a vacuum has been a constant throughout the decades. The other piece of that is the constant is acknowledging that human face of the learner. So focusing in on what are the support systems? So are the businesses that are going to employ the learners, are they supporting and creating an environment where the learner can advance? Is there a family structure that supporting it? And that doesn't have to be a traditional family—it could be neighbors, friends, extended family—what's out there and helping find those folks who are going to be part of that support ecosystem. What’s started to change though is the student experience with technology. And that’s a relatively new evolution. I talked to one very large national career college provider, and I remember going to a conference of theirs, and they had done research where they found that they were losing slightly more than half of their students within the first three minutes of their online programs. That the student experience at the login point was so complex that students were just throwing their hands up and saying, "I can’t do this." And what a disaster that was for them from a business perspective, but also the human loss of, hey, here are all these learners who were excited enough to log in, to choose a program, to get ready, and that they were gone on Day One. I mean, that’s an absolute crisis. And that’s where a company like mine can really help in looking at that and thinking about, what’s the experience of that student? If they’ve got 20 minutes on their lunch hour, are we making this as easy as possible for them to get into your programs? Is everything opened up for them and seamless so that they can see the value right from the beginning? Because with a few minutes, things get in the way and it becomes easy to create excuses not to continue. And then of course, just within the last few years, some very welcome things. A renewed focus on durable skills—and you know, there are lots of terms that we're using for that, whether we mean soft skills (which is kind of an unfortunate term), but durable skills, life skills, socio-emotional skills—that sort of social intelligence that workers need to advance in their careers to move on to more leadership roles, to even to move into middle skill jobs, you need that basic skill set. And that’s been welcome because I don't think there's enough focus on that. It’s also... what’s changed is we’re now thinking about how can we actually integrate that into all aspects of the learning as opposed to having it be the thing you do for one session at the beginning and then we forget it. Like, how do we actually make that part threaded through all of the learning? I think is essential. And then I know, I’m sure I’m going to get lots of questions about this, but what’s just happened in the last year or two around AI and how that’s moving. But that’s, I’m sure, a whole separate conversation. Kaitlin LeMoine: It is a conversation unto itself! But I think that the changes you’ve raised are really fascinating, right? I mean, this focus on the student experience with tech—that it’s not just the curriculum that they’re engaged with, but also the whole... their whole experience with everything from enrolling, to logging into their first course, to, I would assume, interactions with their instructor or interactions with how they're assessed or graded. I mean those... it's kind of like that whole learner journey, so to speak. Tom Riendeau: I think it’s important to treat AI, to think of AI, as your assistant in it. It’s got to be a human-centered approach. But having a really smart assistant that can say things like, "Hey, did certification requirements require this particular learning objective? I don’t see it here. Did you mean to leave that out? And should that be part of this healthcare course you're building? Because that’s in every other course that we’re seeing out in the world." That helps you build stronger content for your learner so that you're not missing things. And those are the kind of mistakes that if you're doing it manually, everybody's going to make along the way. So you’ve essentially got a really powerful assistant that can make the learning tighter. But to your point, Kaitlin, yeah, exactly right. It allows for more creativity on your side because you're not worried about having missed something. Julian Alssid: So, Tom, we're interested in hearing what practical steps you can offer our listeners to help them become forces in effectively adopting digital learning solutions in this complex and ever-changing environment. Tom Riendeau: So I'll tell you what I tell my clients. I think it's really essential to have a partner that you can rely on that can do the things either faster or better that aren't your core skill sets. So that's one piece of it. But what's really critical is: Do you have a partner that is... that understands the true strategic initiative you're trying to solve for? So, one way that you could approach things is to say, "Here's a list of all the great things we do," and that's probably duplicated across lots of different companies. Where it becomes really powerful, though, is when that partner can help you see around corners, that can help you understand what you may not be seeing yourself. Okay, so it's a line item, you know you have to do the accessibility work, but does your partner understand why you need to do that? You need to do that because there are hidden costs to doing it wrong. First of all, there's a regulatory cost to doing it wrong, but more importantly, there's a human cost that you may not even see from the learners who don't succeed, who should have been using your products, should have been singing your praises, and if you want the kind of growth that you're looking for, this becomes essential. If you haven't considered, for example, cybersecurity, and you don't have a partner that's really looking at that, what are the hidden costs of that? Of not modernizing your system. Do you have an insurance company, for example? I mean, this is the kind of things that I mean by seeing around corners. What happens when your insurance company comes back to you and says, "Well, we're going to triple your cybersecurity insurance cost because you're using an old system that's not up to the task, and we're not willing to take on that risk for you without a dramatically higher premium." Seeing that before it becomes a crisis. Having a partner who's going to who really understands what you're trying to do, that's where you can see growth, as opposed to a service provider who comes in and says, "Tell me what to do and I'll do it for you quickly and disappear." You know, helping find those organizations that can add value from that first conversation and come in and say, "Okay, you want to talk about this particular problem that you're facing? Let me tell you where the industry is going. Let me tell you what value I can add to this conversation and create that partnership that's really going to give you the growth that you need." Kaitlin LeMoine: The value that comes from looking around the corner—I feel like, you know, there's so much to be said for that. And I feel like that's what we're all trying to do, right? Is to say, "Where are we now and where are we headed?" and "Who can we predict, so to speak?" Because we are certainly in a fast-moving, fast-paced landscape that is the future of work and learning. Tom Riendeau: You want... the ideal sales conversation, if you're on the buying side of that, should be this kind of a conversation. Where is the back and forth? What is your service provider bringing to the table? How are they responding to your questions? And I love those kind of conversations. I want a sales meeting where there's lots of vigorous back and forth and pushback. I love it when a customer is like, "Wait a minute, I don't want to do it that way. Why should I do it that way?" And you know, a lot of times they have a really good reason for doing things, but that's where you get the kind of true value as opposed to, you know, otherwise you'd just order it on Amazon and be done with it. And I think for workforce education, it's got to be much more vigorous than that. It really needs to be a true partner. Julian Alssid: These... It's such complex work. And as you've pointed out, touches on so many aspects of an organization and learning. And I feel like this is becoming like a love fest for contractors and consultants here. But, you know, like, this is why we get hired to do what we do too! It's like, sometimes it helps to have an outside look and partner that's just gonna kind of raise questions and see things in a different way. It's really, really—having been on both sides of the fence, as we all have—it's really difficult when you're in an institution to try to innovate. Tom Riendeau: Well, it's also, it's also a matter of understanding what you do well and what you don't do well, and where you need capacity. There's a lot of good reasons to say, "Hey, for us to hire up a team to do this, to learn this skill set that's kind of outside of what we do... by the time we start seeing a return on investment, that could be months and years." Whereas, hey, for a really effective solution, we can just outsource that and have somebody who's already done all of that work and done all of that investment who can come in and work with us and understand us and help us grow that much more quickly. So, it should be seen not as a cost line that disappears, but really as an investment in growth. And I think, you know, the right partner is part of your investment and growth strategy, not... not a line item that, that you know, you have to deal with. Kaitlin LeMoine: So, Tom, thank you for taking the time to join us today. As we wind down this conversation, how can our listeners learn more and continue to follow your work? Tom Riendeau: Absolutely. First of all, find me on LinkedIn. But please come to our website, and I'm sure we'll put that in the show notes, but www.magicedtech.com. I am trying to be at every workforce conference, so if you see me and recognize me, please walk up to me and say hello. I love having those conversations at events. But look for our website and for LinkedIn. We also have a fun Instagram account that my colleague Chiara is running that can give you some of the insight into our day-to-day and how we're... we're not just head down, but we're also having some fun on the side as well. Julian Alssid: Well, thanks so much for joining us today, Tom. Really appreciated the conversation. Tom Riendeau: An absolute pleasure and I thank you for your time as well. Kaitlin LeMoine: We hope you enjoyed today's conversation and appreciate you tuning in to Work Forces. Thank you to our listeners and guests for their ongoing support and a special thanks to our producer, Dustin Ramsdell. If you're interested in sponsoring the podcast or want to check out more episodes, please visit workforces.info/podcast. You can also find Work Forces wherever you regularly listen to your favorite podcasts. If you enjoyed this episode, please subscribe, like, and share it with your colleagues and friends. And if you're interested in learning more about Workforce Consulting, please visit workforces.info/consulting for more details about our multi-service practice.
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Haley Glover: Building Employer Upskilling Strategies
02/03/2026
Haley Glover: Building Employer Upskilling Strategies
Haley Glover, Senior Director of UpSkill America at the Aspen Institute, discusses how businesses can effectively upskill their workforce in an AI-driven economy. Drawing on her experience at Lumina Foundation, Amazon, and the Aspen Institute, Glover explains how upskilling has shifted from talent acquisition crisis management to strategic workforce planning focused on validated skills. She details findings from The Upskilling Playbook, emphasizing that successful AI adoption requires thoughtful, worker-focused training aligned with business strategy—not just technology purchases driven by peer pressure. The conversation also explores the All Learning Counts initiative, which advocates for recognizing skills regardless of where they were acquired, and new research on internship programs showing how companies find value through talent pipeline development, retention, and innovation from fresh thinking. Glover addresses distinct challenges facing small versus large employers and offers practical guidance for learners, educators, advocates, and employers to build resilient upskilling programs that withstand economic shocks. Transcript Julian Alssid: Welcome to the Work Forces podcast. I’m Julian Alssid. Kaitlin LeMoine: And I’m Kaitlin LeMoine, and we speak with innovators who are shaping the future of work and learning. Julian Alssid: Together, we unpack the complex elements of workforce and career preparation and offer practical solutions that can be scaled and sustained. Kaitlin LeMoine: This podcast is an outgrowth of our workforce consulting practice. Through weekly discussions, we seek to share the trends and themes we see in our work and amplify impactful efforts happening in higher education, industry, and workforce development all across the country. We are grateful to Lumina Foundation for its past support during the initial development and launch of this podcast, and invite future sponsors of this effort. Please check out our Work Forces podcast website to learn more. And so with that, let’s dive in. Julian Alssid: Kaitlin, so much of the conversation around the future of work focuses on the what—what skills are needed, what jobs are disappearing. But the harder question, and the one that really determines success, is the how. How do businesses actually help their existing employees develop the skills they need to succeed in a changing economy? Kaitlin LeMoine: Absolutely. While we know the need for and importance of upskilling initiatives, actually building an effective system that helps workers grow and advance is a really complex undertaking for employers. Julian Alssid: Right. It's one thing to agree that upskilling is necessary; it's another to have a playbook that works for both the employee and the bottom line. To create that playbook, we need guidance from leaders who understand both the policy landscape and the operational reality of business. Kaitlin LeMoine: Exactly. We need that along with insight into researched best practices across industries. And luckily, today we’re joined by someone who brings that multi-sector perspective to the table. Today we’re speaking with Haley Glover, Senior Director of UpSkill America, a national initiative of the Aspen Institute Economic Opportunities Program. UpSkill America drives research and efforts that promote employer-led education and training to help workers advance and help businesses compete. Julian Alssid: Prior to this role, Haley was Senior Program Manager at Amazon, where she led college programming for the company’s Career Choice team. And before that, she served as a Strategy Director at Lumina Foundation—which is where we first met Haley—leading efforts to reduce racial disparities in credential attainment. Haley holds a bachelor's degree from Franklin College, a Master of Liberal Arts from St. John's College Graduate Institute, and an MPA from Syracuse University. Haley, welcome to Work Forces, we're thrilled to have you with us. Haley Glover: Thanks, guys. Good morning. Julian Alssid: Please tell us, in your own words, about your background and what led you to your role at Aspen Institute. Haley Glover: In the spirit of time, I will give you the short journey instead of the meandering one. But fun story: you mentioned I was at Lumina Foundation, and I was there for a very long time—about 11 and a half, 12 years. I not only led the work in my last four years at Lumina focusing on eliminating racial disparities and that kind of thing, I also led portfolios focused on what we called "employer mobilization," which in my glib moments I described as getting employers to do stuff. But it was really focused on understanding and motivating how employers can take their considerable resources, influence, and that unique positioning in employees' lives to mobilize toward the credential attainment mission. Back in 2015, when UpSkill started, I actually was one of the first funders of UpSkill at Aspen and helped try to kick that off back in the day. So my time with UpSkill started right at the beginning. Obviously, the initiative changed a lot over a decade, along with the economy, the workforce, and all of the things. But that is how I found myself here about three and a half years ago. This idea, this question about how employers can not only benefit from investment in skill development but create benefits for individuals, their companies, society, and our country—that has been a throughline of work that I’ve been doing for quite a long time. Between my past life as an educator, working in economic development, working in nonprofits, government, and philanthropy, as well as the private sector, that's been the river running through my work: trying to blend the streams and get more people to think very critically about how we leverage all of the power we need to get people the skills they need to thrive. Kaitlin LeMoine: Thank you for that overview and that story of how you got to where you are. I’m curious to know: how has the focus of your work through UpSkill America evolved over the last few years? You mentioned all the changes that are occurring—what do you see as the primary focus, and how do you see that shifting? Haley Glover: That is a fantastic question. I think there's a very simple answer, which is that the economy we're in in January 2026 is not the economy we were in when I came to UpSkill back in the summer of 2022. Three and a half years ago, employers were absolutely just falling over themselves to acquire and retain talent. The question of the time was: how do I find people with the right skills? How do I keep people with the right skills? How do I get the mass that I need in order to proceed? That is not the question now. Now, I think employers are really leaning into: what skills and competencies do I actually need to not only fill tasks and roles that I have right now, but to take me into the future? How do I not just retain talent, but retain the right talent in particular roles that are going to have strategic value for me going forward? How do I create robust pipelines that guarantee that I, as an employer, am not going to be wasting time, energy, and effort on the upfront acquisition? How do I build my workforce strategy muscles in order to understand with much more nuance and robustness this idea of what I'm going to need in the future? So, it's pivoted from a "fire on my front line right now" focus three or four years ago to a need to think much more critically about what's down the road and into the future. That’s been huge. From the work that UpSkill is doing, we’ve leaned more heavily into this idea of getting much more specific and intentional. With the addition of AI—which is both a positive in that it can help people do things with less time, energy, and effort, but also a complicator—you've got this skills validation issue. I just read a piece the other day about a $600 billion resume fraud issue, which is really asking the question about skills validation. We are trying to make sure that (1) we get people to understand and be recognized for the things that they know and are able to do, regardless of where they acquired them. We've been calling this movement "All Learning Counts" for a very long time. It is this idea that it shouldn't matter whether you attended the most prestigious elite institution or you gained your skills through work. If you've got the same skills, you should be competing in the same way. What we do right now is we conflate a lot of different things with being "better" at something instead of really understanding what people can really bring to the table. So this idea of skills validation has become a much more important part of our work because it addresses both sides of the coin: employers need validated skills, and people need to understand their own skill set. A lot of people will go through education programs, training programs, and work experiences and not develop what we call this metacognition of what they know. Knowing what you know and knowing what you're able to do can be a very powerful, empowering scenario for an individual. It can also be the thing that sets you apart in an interview or a process because you can say, "I know what I know, and here's how I know it, and here's what I did to show it." We’re also trying to really help the employer get specific about what skills they need and how to find them through this validated skills movement. So, we're much deeper into technology than I think we ever thought we would be, or that I ever wanted to be, frankly, because it is not my primary language. But it is the method that I think will ultimately produce the right kind of results for both people and the employers they work for. Julian Alssid: So Haley, I mentioned earlier in your intro that we need that playbook—how do you do it? You have produced a playbook: The Upskilling Playbook: AI Skill Development in the Workforce. Tell us about it. What are your findings? What have you learned, and what’s in that playbook? Haley Glover: Yeah. Well, so the playbook is not just that AI chapter, which was our latest addition, but essentially pulling together all of the things we've been learning, doing, hearing, and writing about for many years now. The idea is that companies are not necessarily encouraged or inclined to share the things that they're doing. In fact, a lot of companies will fight against that sharing because it's "secret sauce"—the thing that we do that creates our own special business value. So when we have the opportunity to share broadly—like "here's what's worked at one company," or "here are results from another company," or "here's a process that appears to work across multiple companies"—that's our bread-and-butter activity. We can shine lights on things and make these secretive or specialized processes much more visible for other people. That's a really positive thing. That's what the playbook is about. The AI Skill Development in the Workforce chapter was a call that we decided to put out within the last couple of months here. It was less about "here's how companies should approach AI." I don't know how companies should approach AI. That is very much a "them" decision—what vendors they use, how they embed it, all of those things. That is a them decision. What we've been observing, though—and you can see this if you read stuff and pay attention—is that a lot of companies are doing a sort of "silver bullet" kind of approach to their AI work. They’re saying, "Oh, if I just give this self-directed module and training on AI to all my people, it'll solve my problems." That’s, of course, not true. "If I just buy a tool, it'll all work." Also not true. "If I feel like I must invest as an employer in this thing..." Peer pressure never solved really anything. So, what we are calling for and what we really are observing in this moment is that AI—when it is accompanied by thoughtful, humane, and worker-focused training and opportunities—that works. Product acquisition, when it is solving a business problem and serving a discrete business purpose, that works. Don't just hop on board. And leadership and workforce planning that is really thinking about AI in service of future goals, in service of those broader strategies, that works too. None of the findings surprised me because we are always going to take a sort of human-first lens on all of our work. But what I hope we are starting to contribute is this idea that any product, technology, or process absent workforce strategy and workforce planning won't work as well as it could. You have to do the work of understanding what your workforce needs, who your workforce is, and how to best support them to be able to do the things that you want and need. And then to know with great precision, as much as possible—two years out, four years out, whatever—what they're going to need to do and how they're going to be doing it. It's when those things interconnect, powered by AI, that something magical can happen. Kaitlin LeMoine: Haley, it strikes me that I think one of the complicated things about this moment is that AI tools are emerging constantly, right? And there's this historic concept that strategy can take a while, and yet we're moving at this very fast pace. In your research and the conversations you’ve been having, how are people balancing that reality? When do you say, "You know what, we're going to commit to these tools for a little while because we feel they meet these business goals and this broader strategy," and when do you say, "You know what, let's try this instead"? It seems like a very tricky balancing act right now. Haley Glover: I think that's going to be a different question for every company and every industry, because it's a question of tolerance. What is your tolerance for risk, for experimentation, for all of those "what-ifs"? And then, what is your strategy for evaluation? What do you care about? It does sort of speak to some of the things that we wrote about in the piece where, you know, if your evaluation strategy is, "Well, I had X number of sign-ons," or "X modules completed," or "this many instances purchased," what does that tell you? And if that is the only thing you're really looking at, you're probably not going to be in a position to really effectively understand if it worked or if it changed anything. What you might see are downstream effects like morale is bad, or managers are getting way overloaded with things that are coming from both sides, or you don't have enough information to really effectively evaluate your contract renewal. There's a thousand things that can happen on the other side of "piloting" if you don't really understand why you're doing it. So, I'm not suggesting that companies are just willy-nilly running in and just buying stuff. And yet, I think what we do observe is that workforce strategy is the muscle that companies need to exercise that can make these things work better. Because like I said, if you do know why you're doing it, what you want out of it, and how you're going to measure the outcome you really want to see within your workforce and within your organization, then you can really understand how it's all coming together. So, that might be a bit of a lame answer, but I think it is the truth. We see a lot of experimentation with technology without necessarily complementary thought around the other side of it. Julian Alssid: To complicate it further, Haley, you look at companies large and small in your work, don’t you? So, can you speak a little bit—because that too brings a whole other world of issues—to how we compare Fortune 500s to more typically sized medium and smaller businesses? Can you speak to tech as it relates to the smaller ones? Haley Glover: The tech question is really very similar to other questions about evaluation and implementation of new processes and tools by industry size. Everything that we've found suggests that the things that we say "work" for large companies are sort of not relevant in many ways to small organizations for a lot of reasons. These will be obvious to you: if you've got an HR team that is HR and compliance and workforce and technology and also operating, that's too many hats for one human to wear and an environment in which decisions are made differently than when you've got a team working on each of those things. There's a capacity question, which is the biggest "duh" of them all: when somebody's wearing five hats, how in the world do they do another thing that can require a huge amount of compliance? This comes up a lot in apprenticeship: "Well, why if apprenticeship is such a great model, why doesn't it work for some people?" And that's because it requires a lot of work to really get the benefits of those programs. There's a cost thing: if your margins are low, you do not have extra resources to spend on doing the experimental and piloting work. You need ready-made solutions that are affordable or no-cost, and often you need support from organizations that are going to be wrapping around you and working with you—workforce boards, intermediaries, others. So there's multiple layers of why strategies and things that would work for very large companies just don't apply. And I do think, too, the risks for smaller organizations are higher because of margins, capacities, and otherwise. If you invest in a program or a technology and you're a small organization, that may be somebody you can't hire next year. That may be a contract you can't bid for. That may be something you can't purchase that you need. It's those kinds of really real challenges and real barriers that prevent us from saying unilaterally "employers should do this." It's always about context, about industry size, geography, and every other factor—which makes this work very challenging but, you know, we try to be attentive to it as much as we can. Kaitlin LeMoine: So Haley, you mentioned apprenticeships. I know you’ve been exploring work-based learning, internship programs, and the value of those in the workplace for employers and employees. Can you tell us some of what you've been learning as it pertains to that initiative? Haley Glover: Yeah, absolutely. And this is really exciting. We've got a piece coming out quite soon which I'm happy to share with you when it is released, but I'll give you a little sneak peek right now. Over the summer, we sort of were grappling with this issue of "business case," "value case." This is a truth, I think, for every question we have to ask of employers: we have to couch it in what value it provides to your organization. Altruism is not the motivating factor for the private sector. I think we all know that, but it can be harder, particularly for advocates, when you're thinking about why an employer might do something. So where we were taking a look is—we have a really great understanding. We did some ROI studies on tuition benefits back when I was at Lumina, and those are—I still use those all the time and they are used broadly in the field. We've got some interesting ROI information out of apprenticeship programs, though colleagues over at the Brookings Institution just released findings yesterday really showing that it's very, very hard to use ROI insights generally because the applications are, like I was talking about, context matters so much. So you have to really be careful about understanding those. And then we were looking around for—we have a general understanding of why employers do internships. And we really understand that the demand for internships, based on work by NACE and others, is huge. Eight-some million students seeking internships; about half got them. And as we think about the situation we're in with impacts on entry-level talent from AI and automation and all of those other things, people have to get work experience in order to get jobs....
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David Adams: Aligning K-12 Education with Industry Needs
01/20/2026
David Adams: Aligning K-12 Education with Industry Needs
David Adams, CEO of The Urban Assembly, discusses why building the bridge between K-12 education and employment must start much earlier than post-secondary education, emphasizing that foundational human skills like self-management and social awareness require years of intentional practice. Drawing on his experience leading a network of 22 career-themed public schools serving over 9,000 students in New York City, Adams explains Urban Assembly's strategic evolution from building schools to developing scalable, relationship-based technology solutions that address systemic pain points in education. The conversation explores how Urban Assembly's tools automate information delivery while preserving human judgment and relationships at the heart of learning, achieving a 92.4% graduation rate across their network. Adams emphasizes the importance of posing real-world community problems to K-12 students to simultaneously foster citizenship and career readiness, offering practical strategies for educational leaders to incorporate social-emotional learning and data-informed career navigation to drive economic mobility. David Adams, CEO of The Urban Assembly, discusses why building the bridge between K-12 education and employment must start much earlier than post-secondary education, emphasizing that foundational human skills like self-management and social awareness require years of intentional practice. Drawing on his experience leading a network of 22 career-themed public schools serving over 9,000 students in New York City, Adams explains Urban Assembly's strategic evolution from building schools to developing scalable, relationship-based technology solutions that address systemic pain points in education. The conversation explores how Urban Assembly's tools automate information delivery while preserving human judgment and relationships at the heart of learning, achieving a 92.4% graduation rate across their network. Adams emphasizes the importance of posing real-world community problems to K-12 students to simultaneously foster citizenship and career readiness, offering practical strategies for educational leaders to incorporate social-emotional learning and data-informed career navigation to drive economic mobility. Transcript Julian Alssid: Welcome to the Work Forces podcast. I’m Julian Alssid. Kaitlin LeMoine: And I’m Kaitlin LeMoine, and we speak with innovators who are shaping the future of work and learning. Julian Alssid: Together, we unpack the complex elements of workforce and career preparation and offer practical solutions that can be scaled and sustained. Kaitlin LeMoine: This podcast is an outgrowth of our Work Forces consulting practice. Through weekly discussions, we seek to share the trends and themes we see in our work and amplify impactful efforts happening in higher education, industry, and workforce development all across the country. We are grateful to Lumina Foundation for its past support during the initial development and launch of this podcast and invite future sponsors of this effort. Please check out our Work Forces podcast website to learn more. And so with that, let’s dive in. Julian Alssid: A central theme of this podcast is the need to align our education systems with industry demand. And Kaitlin, you know, we’ve looked at this quite a bit through the lens of higher ed or workforce training, and lately, the conversation seems to keep shifting upstream. Kaitlin LeMoine: It really does. We are hearing more and more that if we wait until post-secondary education to build these bridges, we’re probably starting too late. There’s a growing consensus that we need to be doing this work of connecting education to potential careers much earlier in a learner’s journey. Julian Alssid: Exactly. And when the discussion turns to K-12, it takes on a very specific tenor. It’s not just about early technical training; it’s about foundational human skills—social-emotional learning, resilience, problem-solving—skills that employers tell us are critical for long-term success and take many years of practice to develop. Kaitlin LeMoine: That’s right, Julian. And to really understand how to do that effectively, we need to look to organizations that have been doing this work on the ground for some time, which brings us to today’s guest. We are speaking with David Adams, a leader who sits at the intersection of social-emotional learning and career readiness, creating public schools that actually bridge that gap. Julian Alssid: David is the Chief Executive Officer of the Urban Assembly, a nonprofit organization that creates and supports a network of 22 career-themed public schools in New York City. These schools serve over 9,000 students. The Urban Assembly is dedicated to advancing the social and economic mobility of students by improving public education. Kaitlin LeMoine: A nationally recognized leader in social-emotional learning, David previously served as the Senior Director of Social-Emotional Learning at the Urban Assembly, where he created the Resilient Scholars Program. David serves on the board of directors for EL, EAP, and formerly for the Collaborative for Academic, Social, and Emotional Learning. He also serves on numerous advisory boards, including Teach For America’s Social Emotional Learning Advisory Board. Recognized for his leadership and impact, David has received many honors and awards, including being named one of Crain's 40 Under 40 and receiving a citation from the Mayor of New York City. He is also the author of numerous scientific articles and book chapters on social-emotional learning. In addition to his contributions to education and research, David serves as a civil affairs officer in the Army Reserve and holds an M.Ed. in educational psychology from Fordham University. David, welcome to the Work Forces podcast. We are so thrilled you could join us today. David Adams: I’m so happy to be here today with you, Kaitlin and Julian, to talk about workforce, social-emotional learning, and AI. Julian Alssid: And we are so looking forward to this conversation, David. To kick us off, please tell us a bit about your background in your own words and what led you to your role at Urban Assembly. David Adams: Well, Julian, I’ve been married for about 15 years to my wife, Tamika. I’ve got two kids, Elijah and Isaiah, they’re 12 and 13. And I’m actually from New Jersey but have spent most of my time here in New York City. My focus has been on social-emotional learning because I’ve been really interested in this notion of what underlies academic and life success. And there are a set of skills that we call competencies—things like self-management or perspective-taking, social awareness—like the ability to understand your emotions—that actually end up predicting a lot of what we want young people to be able to thrive with when they graduate our schools here in New York, but also nationwide. So I came in and started working in special education in New York City as their Director of Social Emotional Learning in District 75. Prior to that, I was at Yale University doing some research in England thinking about implementation around emotional intelligence. Then I came to the Urban Assembly in 2017 as their Director of Social Emotional Learning, and I’ve been here ever since, thinking about how we can work with our schools to scale solutions that support student access and thriving across the country. Kaitlin LeMoine: Great. So, I guess as we dig deeper into the Urban Assembly, can you tell us the origin story of the organization and how the organization’s work has evolved over the years? It sounds like you’ve been there for many years, so I’m sure you have a very detailed perspective. David Adams: Well, the Urban Assembly was started in 1997 through our founder, Richard Kahan. And the Urban Assembly was founded in order to think about how intermediaries and public-private partnerships can support academic outcomes in New York City. So what had happened was that there was a prison being built in the Bronx, and some local community partners came together and said, "We don’t want more prisons in our neighborhoods, we want more schools." And so Richard worked with a young Meisha Porter and hired a young David Banks at the time to build a school to support young people’s development. And then, when the comprehensive high schools were being broken down in New York City and small schools were being built in their place, Urban Assembly built 22 of those schools, eight of them being career and technical education schools. Then by like 2017-18, where there was less of a focus on building schools, we started developing—moving from, as I say, "schools to tools." We started developing tools within our schools that could scale to solve challenges in instructional quality, post-secondary readiness and access, and of course, social-emotional learning and development. And those tools—the Resilient Scholars Program, Project Café, the Classroom Automated Feedback Environment, and Counselor GPT—are tools that are designed to support all students coming from the area of social-emotional learning, post-secondary readiness, and instructional quality. Julian Alssid: So you have a pretty rich body of work there, David. Tell us a bit about the successes that the Urban Assembly has experienced as an organization, and particularly as you think about the K-12 alignment to industry needs, and also the success rates in the past taken by Urban Assembly graduates. David Adams: Well, our graduation rate across our schools this year is about 92.4%, which we’re very proud of. We had one of our schools, the Urban Assembly Institute for Math and Science for Young Women, posting a 100% of their graduates last year—so 100% of their students graduated, we're very excited about that. And our students go on to success in the post-secondary context. Our job is not just to graduate our kids, but to think about how to ensure that they have that economic and social mobility that you mentioned. So, we’re actually building a new tool out and it’s called Counselor GPT. And this tool helps our students understand what the labor market is looking like in their local area, helps our students identify what credentials are related to economic and social mobility vis-à-vis getting that credential and being successful, and what the ROI or return on investment is on that credential. We see a lot of students who are pursuing post-secondary paths that don’t necessarily align to economic mobility. And so what we’re doing with Counselor GPT is we’re actually moving students from guessing to guidance. We're helping them think about what credential is necessary to get to the economic or social pathway they want to achieve vis-à-vis two-year degrees, four-year degrees, and certificates. One good example of this is a student—we were just looking at some of the output from this tool—and a student was like, "I didn’t realize how long it would take me to repay my college degree if I chose this major." And so we’re seeing students now really being a little bit more intentional about the decisions that they’re making. And it’s not to say that if you go to a difficult ROI degree, maybe something like art history, that you shouldn’t take it, but you should do it with an informed understanding of what it costs to pursue that degree and what the ROI is when you leave post-secondary institutions like college and beyond. So we're very excited about that tool. We're working with our schools now to pilot that. And the tool has actually been accepted as one of the 10 AI tools that are being piloted in New York City through the Chancellor's AI pilot initiative. Kaitlin LeMoine: Wow. That's awesome. Congratulations. David Adams: Thank you, Kaitlin. Kaitlin LeMoine: Yeah. So, would love to talk a little bit more about that tool and others. You mentioned this shift, right, from—I liked that concept—of "schools to tools" that can be used across schools and beyond these 22 schools. And I’m wondering, would love to hear a little bit more about some of the other tools that you’ve found great success with over time? And then also, how do you walk that line of what tools can be implemented asynchronously or with tech-based tools, and when do you need that human one-on-one connection? And how do you think about that? David Adams: So all of our tools are relationship-based. So the Counselor GPT tool, while it is a chat-based interface, it also is accompanied by a curriculum that a student could use in their classroom with their counselor or their advisory teacher so that they have the opportunity to not just talk to the bot, but talk to each other about what they’re learning about the post-secondary landscape. So we believe that learning happens through interactions, and we want to make sure that those interactions are with a wide variety of formats—whether that’s online with your chatbot friend, or whether that’s with your counselor thinking about how this conversation has informed what you want to do in a post-secondary context, or whether it’s your real-life friend like Julian or Kaitlin. And we just want to say, "Hey, did you know that X-ray technicians are an 18-month degree, but come out making 75 to 80,000 pretty quickly?" And that’s a conversation that we’re looking to have. Now, to your other question, we’re really excited about our other tool called the Classroom Automated Feedback Environment, or CAFE. And this tool is designed to reduce the cost for teacher feedback. So essentially we have a camera and a microphone, and a teacher videotapes themselves. And within one day, automatically get insights into things like: How many questions did they ask? How often did they ask questions? We have little video-based 10-second clips which show them their redirections, it shows them their summaries, it shows them their previews. And what we’re doing is building judgment and high-quality insights so that teachers can do what real athletes do every day, which is watch themselves play the game, reflect on what went well, and then tune the next play—or the next lesson plan—so that they’re more successful over time. And so we believe that by reducing the cost, we can increase the access, and that’s how we think about scaling from our schools to all schools. Now, the last thing you asked, Kaitlin, is: how do we make decisions? So, we have a strategic priority and it's called "Find Out What Works." And essentially what we do is we look at what we call generalizable problems in our schools. We say, what is a pain point? What's a time problem set? What's a resource problem set? What's an incentive problem set? Or what's a knowledge problem set in our schools that we're seeing that's constraining our school's ability to deliver the highest quality education to our students? Once we identify that problem set, we think about—is this a problem that our schools are facing, or is it a problem that all schools are facing? And we do that through research, conversation, and other ways of pursuing that. And once we identify that it's a problem for more than just our schools, then we start to think about, well, how might we solve this problem? So for Project CAFE, we recognized that getting teachers feedback is a problem set. Teachers need more feedback, more frequently. What's stopping teachers from getting that feedback? Well, it's time, but it's really, at the systems level, a resource—because time is expressed through money, right? You just don't have enough people giving that feedback. Once we realized this wasn't an Urban Assembly problem, we developed a solution against that, which is automating the observation techniques. And then we got that out to market and now it's being used in over nine states by 500 classrooms at the end of this year. Julian Alssid: David, one of the challenges that we hear about in schools is teachers are just so busy trying to get through the day with their core work. And interested to hear from you a bit about the sort of staff and professional development required to implement the tools. Like, what have you known? And also I'd say that a lot of our listeners are organizations that are, you know, EdTech types that are inventing tools that they're bringing out to try to save the world. You've been doing this for years. How do you make it work and work within the context of a teacher who is so burdened and under-resourced in so many ways? David Adams: So I think what makes Urban Assembly special is that we sit adjacent to our schools. We work with our principals, work with our teachers and our educators to really move from "what" problem sets to "how" problem sets. I think we have really deep expertise in how schools work, how schedules work, how high schools deliver on the promise of a high-quality public education. And so when we develop our tools, they’re developed by, with, and through our educators. And very sensitive to what it means to be a first-year teacher in New York City or somewhere else, or even a 15-year teacher. So the tools are—I'd like to think—are intuitive in a space that we are making a decision around how much analysis should be done by people and how much analysis should be done by technology. And my focus is really on leaving judgment to people, but automating information. In the case of Counselor GPT: what labor market trends are available in your area vis-à-vis credentials? Now your decision is how to use that information to make post-secondary decisions. That’s on the teacher, that’s on the student, that’s on the family, right? For CAFE, we’re actually not judging teaching; we are observing teaching and allowing the teacher to judge what they want to from those observations. So we don’t say "this is a good question" or "bad question." We say "this is an open-ended question" or "it's not an open-ended question." We don’t say "this is an effective redirection" or not. We say "this is a redirection," and you can decide how effective that was by watching your videotape and seeing how the students respond. So I think the professional development here is about teaching folks how to derive insights and judgments from the information that we’re providing, which is our goal. Our goal is not to get teachers to act like robots. Our goal is not to get students to always choose the most lucrative career. Our goal is to inform, to create judgment, so that we can improve outcomes for our schools across the country. Kaitlin LeMoine: Well, and it strikes me too—it’s a two-part model where some of what you’re trying to do for learners, you’re also looking to do for everyone. Like, we’re all humans, right? We’re all trying to figure out what technology can do and what humans can uniquely do. And so to have that experience for both learners and staff and figure out what that teaching and learning looks like across systems, I think is really fascinating and critical, right? Because it feels like teachers are then kind of in that position of being of continuously learning, and then applying that learning to how they're teaching their learners. David Adams: Absolutely. I use the example of student-teacher talk time, right? The goal of CAFE is not to increase teacher talk. The goal of that metric is to have teachers reflect on how they’re giving space to students to have discourse in their classroom to drive their learning. So the goal is not to beat the metric. The goal is to use the metric to inform your decision-making in your classroom. Same thing with Counselor GPT, right? The goal is not to all choose the career that is the highest ROI. The goal really is to reduce the mismatch between what is needed in the industry sector and what students are pursuing vis-à-vis their degree. And how employers indicate what is...
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Mitchell Stevens on Building a Learning Society
01/06/2026
Mitchell Stevens on Building a Learning Society
Mitchell Stevens, Professor of Education and Sociology at Stanford University and Co-Director of the Stanford Center on Longevity, discusses the urgent transition from a "schooled society" focused on credentials to a true "learning society" that recognizes and supports learning across the entire lifespan. Stevens explains how the traditional three-stage model of education, work, and retirement is becoming obsolete as Americans move toward 100-year lives amid rapid technological change brought by the Fourth Industrial Revolution. He argues that legacy school structures that are built for durability and stability cannot by themselves prepare people for ongoing adaptation, emphasizing instead that learning happens everywhere: at home, work, and play. The conversation explores how declining fertility rates mean societies must rely on older workers, requiring a fundamental reimagining of human capital investment beyond children and young adults. Stevens calls for new conversations about who is responsible for lifelong employability and offers practical guidance for parents, young people and voters alike. Transcript Kaitlin LeMoine: Welcome to the Work Forces Podcast. I'm Julian Alssid And I'm Kaitlin LeMoine, and we speak with innovators who are shaping the future of work and learning Julian Alssid: Together, we unpack the complex elements of workforce and career preparation and offer practical solutions that can be scaled and sustained. Kaitlin LeMoine: This podcast is an outgrowth of our Work Forces consulting practice. Through weekly discussions, we seek to share the trends and themes we see in our work and amplify impactful efforts happening in higher education industry and workforce development all across the country. We are grateful to Lumina Foundation for its past support during the initial development and launch of this podcast, and invite future sponsors of this effort, please check out our Work Forces podcast website to learn more. And so with that, let's dive in. Welcome back. You know, Julian, we spend a lot of time on this show talking about the future of work, but there is a massive variable in that equation that we don't discuss enough, the reality that we are all likely to live much longer lives and need to learn continuously along the way. Julian Alssid: It's so true. Kaitlin, we're moving toward what researchers call the 100 year life. The old three stage model where you learn in your 20s, work for 40 years, and then retire is rapidly becoming obsolete. We can't rely on a one and done dose of education, and need to fundamentally rethink how we access and engage in learning experiences across our lives. Kaitlin LeMoine: Exactly. We need to move from what our guest today calls a school society focused on credentials and early life education to a true learning society where learning is ongoing and achieved through many contexts over one's life. Our guest is leading the initiative to define what that society can look like, mapping out a future where learning work and leisure intersect throughout the entire lifespan. Julian Alssid: Our guest today is Mitchell Stevens, Professor of Education and Sociology at Stanford University. He convenes the Pathways Network and studies history, finance and politics of post secondary education in the United States and worldwide. Mitchell is the author of award winning studies on home education and selective admissions, and his most recent books are Remaking College: the Changing Ecology of Higher Education and Seeing the World: How US Universities Make Knowledge in the Global Era. Kaitlin LeMoine: Mitchell is also co director of the Stanford Center on Longevity, where he convenes the Learning Society initiative. This effort brings together leaders from various sectors to imagine a learning ecosystem that supports all of us across longer and multifaceted life. He's written scholarly articles for variety of academic journals and editorial for the Chronicle of Higher Education, Inside Higher Education, The New York Times, and The Washington Post. We are so thrilled to have you join us today. Mitchell, welcome to the workforces podcast. Mitchell Stevens: Thank you for having me. Julian Alssid: Yes Mitchell, welcome, and we've talked a little bit about your background, but we'd like to have you tell us about your background and what led you to co directing the Center on Longevity. Mitchell Stevens: I would say one of the formative experiences for me, intellectually, as is often the case for academics, was their doctoral work back in the 90s, I studied the home education movement and drove my multi-used car all over the Chicagoland suburbs to talk with men and women who were making, at the time, a very radical decision to remove their children from school and teach them at home. One of the big lessons that home schoolers taught me and now many others, is that the rhythms of conventional schooling that so many of us take for granted are highly demanding and often fairly rigid structures. They are not very flexible for the needs of particular people or even the rhythms of complicated lives. That's really what planted the seeds for what we're currently calling the limitations of a schooled society, one in which not only education and learning, but many social rewards, good jobs, social status, looks of approval from parents and grandparents, is really tied to educational credentials, and especially in the face of very dramatic and rapid changes in the character of work and technological change coming to question whether legacy school structures themselves are the best way to prepare people for ever more complicated futures. Kaitlin LeMoine: So there are many places to jump into based on that explanation. We appreciate, we appreciate you kind of giving a sense of what has led you to this work. I guess one place I'd love to take the conversation to start is we recognize, within the last year, your work on the Learning Society within the Center on Longevity has really taken off. We'd love to hear more about the goals of that initiative and what you've sought to accomplish this year, and where you're where you see it headed. Mitchell Stevens: How we get from home schooling to longevity, I guess, is the second half of that question that I elided the first time around. I came into the Stanford Center on Longevity, just as a professor at Stanford around 2017. Someone encouraged me to go because their assemblies were so good. I was in my mid 50s. I'd been at Stanford for just a couple of years, and I was, frankly, kind of blown away by the intellectual breadth of the conversations of that organization. First of all, we call it the Center on Longevity, not the Center on Aging, right? Aging is a frowny face, right? As in anti-aging and preventing aging and denying aging. Longevity is a strong net positive. It's a gift that the 20th century gave all of us. In fact, Laura Carstensen, the director of the Stanford Center on Longevity, likes to point out that lifespan grew in the 20th century more than it ever had in the entire previous centuries of human history combined. Very large change, say, additional 30 years of life over that decade, and it's happened very quickly. Societies and cultures have not had time to adapt to this gift. What have most societies done? In fact, all societies on earth at present, we parked those additional years in old age. Old age is the most expensive and arguably least fun part of the life course. It's when our bodies are most frail and when our minds are most fragile as well. So the goal of the Center on Longevity, and in fact, a global longevity movement, is to make functional adulthood as long as possible, keep old age short, but extend functional adulthood so that our minds and bodies can enjoy life and contribute to the well being of others for long, as long as we possibly can. And let's say also this is not the Silicon Valley live forever longevity. That's not really the game that the Center on Longevity is playing. We are trying to think about longevity as a civic gift that all of us should be able to enjoy, and in fact, that we need to be able to take advantage of, because also of declining fertility. Around the world, except for Sub Saharan Africa, are experiencing net declines in fertility. So that means that the men and women we're going to need to rely on for economic prosperity and civic health, are going to be older. They're going to be more mature, and so we need to sort of rethink pretty much all of our institutions in order to enable those older men and women to make the best contributions they can to their own lives, to their families, and to their societies. Another tie to the homeschooling movement, however, is that the longevity movement has developed a bunch of terms heuristics to make sense of transitions that we used to think were the sole purview of childhood. One of my colleagues refers to, for example, there's adolescence, but Barbara Waxman calls it middlessence. Middlessence is the transitions that adults make between different life stages. Michael Clinton argues that we don't retire, we should instead rewire, right, so the idea that longer lives require but also allow us to change our lives in fairly fundamental and substantial ways, to have multiple chapters in life that look and feel different from each other. So again, these are the sorts of conceptual tools that once you start to use them, it's really hard to it's hard to move backwards, Kaitlin LeMoine: Well, and it's interesting to think about that framing of how to rewire and think differently about these different stages, but without the formal structure of schooling, or without the formal like now I'm going from K 12 to higher ed, right? Like these, these formal moments in one's trajectory. I feel like it's a whole other experience to say, how do we rewire without those formal structures, and what does it look like to structure it for oneself? Mitchell Stevens: That's an excellent point. Kaitlin, I mean, one way to think about the American high school, you know, grades nine through 12, is it's an elaborate machine for enabling the transition from childhood to adulthood. And for relatively more privileged families, the four year college degree is another machine for transitioning from childhood to adulthood. One of the things that's happened with the fact of lengthening lifespans is we've made adolescence one ever longer, right? So demographers talk about a domain called emerging adulthood. There's a lot of cultural ambivalence about what it means to adult as a verb, right? And. I would argue, appropriately, an increasing questioning of, have we scaffolded the transition from childhood to adulthood in the right way? We have high school, then college, and now, sort of an increasing conversation about what the early 20s are like, for example. So while you're correct that, historically, we have created organizational machinery for managing those earlier transitions. It's not necessarily the case that I would want to, you know, mimic that infrastructure for late life, but it's also the case that, as you said, that we don't really have clear rituals for navigating these different transitions. Imagine how, I mean, think of how much psychotherapy is bought and sold. How many support groups and self help books are promulgated because people are looking for mechanisms to make sense of the kinds of transitions that we're talking about Julian Alssid: Well, and so we're really, you know, we talk a lot about, and have for years and built a lot of our work around the notion of continuous learning and lifelong learning and and I'm really interested in speaking of terms, in examining the term you use learning society. And you know, how do you define it? What are the factors that are at play when we think about how we all learn? Mitchell Stevens: Yeah, so the Learning Society project grew out of a year long conversation at the intersection of the fact of lengthening lifespans and the revolutionary changes that AI and related technologies are bringing. There's an extraordinarily large conversation in the United States and globally now about how to prepare people for economic viability and flourishing in the wake of rapid technological change and questions about the extent to which legacy school models are the best way to do that. Very rarely does that conversation get leavened with questions about longevity in the life course. So we talk about the need for adaptability and resilience at work, but we don't talk about the fact that the adaptability and resilience at work that we're going to need from people is going to come from people in their 40s and 60s and 70s. We talk, for example, about how current versions of large language models are good at instrumental tasks but not good at wisdom. We talk almost never about the kinds of men and women in which wisdom is found, right? Wisdom typically resides in older workers, right, whereas flexibility is thought to reside in younger workers. So, you know, putting AI in the future of work discussions alongside the facts of longevity and declining fertility, we think, you know, the men and women, the scores of men and women who have been working with me on this issue, we think that that makes both conversations richer and more substantive. So that dialog is what produced the idea that Julian just mentioned, which was sort of a an overly simplistic, but nevertheless useful heuristic in which we contrast how Americans invested in human beings in the 20th century with how they might invest in human beings in the 21st. In the 20th century, Americans responded to two waves of massive technological change by building schools now during The second industrial revolution, which took place between the Civil War and World War I, Americans created universal mass schooling for children to enable the basic skills of literacy and numeracy that an increasingly industrialized society required in the so called Third Industrial Revolution, the transformations brought about by the semiconductor and the Internet, we massively expanded higher education. We created what the Clinton and Obama administrations called the knowledge economy, and we strongly advocated for post secondary education, aka college for as many people as possible. Those were very substantial investments, and they yielded very strong positive returns, economically, civically. Now we're in the Fourth Industrial Revolution. Schools will not save us this time. It's not the case that we can grow schools or fix schools in ways that will enable the kinds of flexibility and ongoing development that the 21st Century requires, why not? Schools are built for durability and stability. They're built to not change. That's why social scientists talk about chronic reform in education. You notice that we're constantly reforming school? Right? We're constantly fixing something that is presumed to be broken, that's in some ways because of the bureaucratic character of schools themselves. They're set up to be stable, right? And, again, those structures were very good for human capital development in the 20th century. By themselves, they are not going to be adequate vehicles for investing in human capital. Will they be essential civic assets? Yes, right, in some ways, we must organize the first decades of the life course around something like schools, because we oblige adults, we oblige mothers and fathers to go to work all day, right? So we're not going to live without school, right? But nor can we presume that schools, in their current form and by themselves are going to enable the kind of, you know, iterative development that the future needs. So in the past, for example, we, you know, extended what counted as good enough education first from from grade eight to grade 12 to grade 16. Well, do we add another six years to get people ready for the fourth industrial revolution? I don't think so, right? So one of the big goals of the learning society is to just remind people of things that they already know, which is that schools themselves are limiting organizational structures, and we're going to have to think in new ways. Hence, a move from schooling, which happens in bureaucratically organized structures called schools, leading to things called degrees, to something called learning, which happens everywhere, at home, at work, at school, at play, at worship, and that we need to think about ways in which we can fund, scaffold, incentivize, and reward learning wherever and whenever in the life course it transpires. Kaitlin LeMoine: And as you say that Mitchell, it also makes me think about building these skills fairly early on for learners to recognize when that learning is happening and be able to talk about it, call it out, reflect upon it, have it connect or build across either like you're saying formal learning environments or informal environment that we wouldn't call learning or school, but where that same, you know, a certain type of skill or body of knowledge is being explored and developed. It's and you know, it don't require like, it requires that explicit instruction to say, like, how do we build that awareness? How do we build for learners, the ability to say, okay, learning isn't only happening in this one structure called school, but everywhere. Mitchell Stevens: Well, one of the, I find, intellectually satisfying and refreshing parts of this dialog is that Americans have been in conversation about what the essential purposes and content of education should be for a very long time. So say, for example, that we presume that some degree of numeracy and literacy are essential components for economic well being and civic participation. Well, how much literacy and how much numeracy. Right question one. Two are literacy and numeracy enough? Answer, no, but then, but then? What else, right? So these are questions that the architects of early education thought a great deal about these are questions that have been wrestled with by Jean Jacques, Rousseau, John Dewey, Maria Montessori, John Holt, Ivan Illich, right. Is schooling for skills? Yes, is schooling for inculcating a certain kind of character or disposition toward knowledge? Yes. ]How much of one versus the other? We're never quite sure, right? And so what I like about that is that it reminds us that these questions about, you know, what it means to be an adequately educated human being is sort of constantly in flux, right? So that we should embrace this question for our time, you know, rather than see it as a sort of new obligation that has come to us by virtue of artificial intelligence, right? We've been here before, and we're going to be an ongoing dialog about it, even as the Fourth Industrial Revolution unfolds. What is also very satisfying I find about this conversation in the United States is that education and learning is a widely shared cultural value in American life. I always challenge my students. Can you think of any problem in contemporary American life that people do not think schooling or education can help mitigate or improve? And that is true across a broad political spectrum. Americans may disagree on who's responsible for providing education. Whether, for example, the relative role of quote, government, unquote, versus, say, families or communities. But you'll be hard pressed to find a political or cultural constituency in the United States that does not think that more education and learning is generally a good thing. So we have a lot of faith in education and learning, and we actually have a lot of faith in schools, as long as those who are participating in them have some, you know, sense of involvement and participation. So one of the things we're trying to do with Learning Society is sort of take that positive, positive feeling that Americans have toward education and learning and directing it towards sort...
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Work Forces Rewind: Isaac Agbeshie-Noye: Bridging the Skills-First Gap
12/30/2025
Work Forces Rewind: Isaac Agbeshie-Noye: Bridging the Skills-First Gap
Isaac Agbeshie-Noye, Program Director for Widening Pathways to Work at the Society for Human Resource Management (SHRM) Foundation, addresses the critical gap between employers' intent to adopt skills-first hiring practices and actual implementation. Drawing from his background in higher education and workforce development, Agbeshie-Noye discusses the newly launched Center for a Skills First Future, designed specifically to support small and medium-sized businesses that employ half of all Americans but often lack the resources of large corporations to navigate hiring transformation. He explores the striking disconnect where 90% of employers acknowledge the benefits of skills-first hiring, yet only 15% have actively implemented it, and explains how the Center's many resources—including a Skills Action Planner, resource library, skills-first credential, and vendor database—helps employers determine an achievable place to start rather than boiling the ocean. The conversation addresses frustrations from both job seekers navigating an AI-enhanced application landscape, and employers struggling to distinguish genuine skills from enhanced resumes, while emphasizing that skills-first approaches complement rather than replace traditional degrees by treating skills as the primary currency for understanding what all credentials represent. Transcript Julian Alssid: Welcome to the Work Forces Podcast. I'm Julian Alssid. Kaitlin LeMoine: And I'm Kaitlin LeMoine, and we speak with innovators who are shaping the future of work and learning. Julian Alssid: Together, we unpack the complex elements of workforce and career preparation and offer practical solutions that can be scaled and sustained. Kaitlin LeMoine: This podcast is an outgrowth of our Work Forces consulting practice. Through weekly discussions, we seek to share the trends and themes we see in our work and amplify impactful efforts happening in higher education industry and workforce development all across the country. We are grateful to Lumina Foundation for its past support during the initial development and launch of this podcast, and invite future sponsors of this effort. Please check out our Work Forces podcast website to learn more. And so with that, let's dive in. Kaitlin: Hello all, hope you are having a wonderful time as we wind down 2025. We are back with another Work Forces "Rewind" episode before we launch our new season. Today, we’re revisiting our conversation with Isaac Agbeshie-Noye, Program Director for Widening Pathways to Work at the Society for Human Resource Management (or SHRM) Foundation. In this discussion, we unpacked the critical gap between the intent to hire for skills and actually implementing the practice of doing so. Among many takeaways, Isaac shared insights on how employers can move toward a true skills-first approach to hiring. We hope you enjoy this conversation. As always, Julian and I want to express our deep appreciation for you, our listeners. We are so grateful for your continued feedback and engagement with the Work Forces podcast. Your support drives the conversations we have and the work we do. Enjoy this Rewind episode, and stay tuned—we’ll be back with brand new episodes to kick off the next season very soon. In the meantime, we wish you a very happy new year! Kaitlin LeMoine: So our conversations on the podcast and in our consulting practice recently, increasingly revolve around the movement to a skills first approach to educating, hiring and developing talent. Julian Alssid: Absolutely Kaitlin and and today we're turning our attention to the employer side of of that equation. And this is a critical conversation for all employers, but it's particularly critical for small and medium sized companies, where half of all Americans work. These smaller companies often lack the dedicated resources of large corporations to measure and track skills development, and it makes it challenging for them to adapt to new hiring models. Kaitlin LeMoine: That's right. And while skills are all the buzz, there can be a real gap between intent and action. According to the Society for Human Resource Management, or SHRM Foundation, 90% of employers acknowledge the benefits of skills-first hiring, but only 15% have actively implemented it. That's a striking gap, and many HR leaders and executives recognize its strategic value, but struggle to implement significant changes. Julian Alssid: Our guest today is uniquely positioned to address this challenge with a particular focus on helping small and medium sized employers unlock a wider range of qualified candidates by valuing a candidate's abilities and understanding how skills relate to traditional credentials. Kaitlin LeMoine: Isaac Agbeshie-Noye is Program Director for Widening Pathways to Work at the SHRM Foundation. Over the last decade, he's served in a variety of leadership roles across nonprofit organizations and higher education institutions, and focused on aligning strategy, culture, and operations to create lasting transformation. He's also been an instructor for undergraduate and doctoral student seminars, exploring his passion for easing student transitions through their educational experiences. Isaac earned his bachelor's degree in sociology from the University of Virginia, as well as masters and doctoral degrees in higher education administration from George Washington University. Isaac, welcome to this podcast. We're so excited to have you on Work Forces with us today. Isaac Agbeshie-Noye: Yes, thank you so much for having me. I'm excited to be here. Julian Alssid: Yes, and thank you for joining us, Isaac. We've talked a little bit about your background. Well, tell us a bit more and what led you to your role at the SHRM Foundation. Isaac Agbeshie-Noye: I got here in part because I'm always very fascinated and very passionate about education and how people go about learning things that then activates them to do things. And so working in higher education, and encountering all of these college students that came in at 18, 19, 20, 21 years old with some understanding of the things that they thought that they were going to do for the rest of their lives, that was just really fascinating to me. And then seeing the evolution over time where their mind changed around that thing, that was also fascinating. I ended up getting into workforce development and talent cultivation, because I realized that it wasn't just enough to understand what they were learning when they were on the college campus, I was really intrigued by then what did they do? Like, where did they go? Where did they end up? How did they navigate their careers after they left that environment? And so that kind of helped me think more broadly, beyond getting people to degree attainment to getting them actually to career mobility and to ultimately, a productive citizenry, which is what, which is what the mission of higher education is actually designed to be. And so I got connected to the SHRM Foundation in part because I just have been really fascinated with, how do we get employers into the game even further to understand their role and to help them as they are trying to tap into this workforce that is filled with skills, but yet we're not matching people in ways that are quick, even though we can see some of the ways in which there might be alignment. And so this position is is actually structured to help try and address that, that gap. Kaitlin LeMoine: As we jump into this conversation, we'd love to learn a little bit more about the SHRM Foundation and your role in widening pathways to work. Isaac Agbeshie-Noye: The SHRM Foundation is the 501(c)(3) nonprofit arm of the Society for Human Resource Management. And the Society for Human Resource Management is the largest network of HR professionals in the world. And so we have 340,000 members that are then deployed and activated into all types of businesses around the world. And so we believe that we can leverage HR and leverage those professionals to advance social good, which is how the foundation came to be. And so in the foundation, we focus on three bodies of work: strengthening the HR field, because we don't often think about who's going to come behind the current HR folks, and who is actually going to take on the new challenges related to HR, and how are we positioning those folks to be successful in that, and so we have a body of work that's focused there. We have a body of work that's focused on thriving together, and how are we creating cultures of care within employers and employer environments. And so how are we focusing on things like the social determinants of health, about or caregiving or workplace mental health, the types of things that make people feel seen and safe at work in order to continue to be there. And then the third part is my area, which is the widening pathways to work area which is focused on skills first, and the things that we do to help employers adopt skills first approaches. How do we test things, try things out so that we are reducing the risk as best we can for people to adopt initiatives that are going to help talent be seen better. And then the other part of that is untapped pools of talent. So who are we not seeing and how can we create opportunities to see them better and also to get them fully activated in this world of work. And so the SHRM Foundation does all of that, and our goal is to try and figure out where are, what's the messaging, what are the levers, where, who are the partners that we need to bring together to actually make this ecosystem work for job seekers and employers at the same time. Julian Alssid: Tell us a bit more about your area, Widening Pathways to Work. And in particular, we're really interested in hearing about the new Center for a Skills First Future. Isaac Agbeshie-Noye: What's so exciting about that portfolio is that we're really trying to figure out what are the things that are getting in the way, and how can we start to solution around those things? And so we know that there are 7.3 million open jobs, and we are highly dissatisfied with that, because it's not because there's a shortage of talent. There's just a shortage of alignment. There isn't those connections and those systems that we're leveraging to make talent visible so that employers can make hiring decisions that make the most sense for them are, to some degree working, and in a lot of ways not working, and that is resulting in a lot of job seekers being incredibly frustrated, and employers also being dissatisfied with what they're getting. And in an age of AI, where we do have some functions that are being shifted based on technology, and we have job seekers leveraging AI to try and make themselves look more visible and competitive, we're in this environment where we have to be having this conversation about how we get these different sides to see each other. So that is what's exciting about the Widening Pathways work, because we are going to have to be considerate of all the things that are happening socially if we're going to make these pathways wider for everybody to walk through them. The Center for a Skills First Future we just launched that in June. We're really excited about that, because this is our try to help meet employers where they are, and that type of work is critical. You've mentioned before about our specific focus on small and mid sized businesses. This is intentional, because for large and enterprise businesses where you are well resourced to try a lot of things. And, you know, figuratively, throw a lot of spaghetti at the wall. You can try a lot of things to see what works. And then you can invest, or make investments based on what you think is working. And you have teams to support that you have, quite frankly, you have teams. To try a lot of different things. For our small and mid sized businesses, they don't, do not have that luxury as much. It's usually a team of one or a team of two that are driving all of the initiatives related to human capital in the organization. And so you can't, you know, it's hard to be thinking about managing benefits and also recruitment, and also employee grievances, and also onboarding and off boarding. And so what we were trying to do is to figure out, how can we put a series of tools at someone's fingertips and let them choose their own adventure? And so that's what the Center really tries to do. So we have four major components of it, where we are trying to take resources and make them most accessible. We have a Skills Action Planner, so any organization can go in and just knowing what's going on at the organization, you can take this assessment, which will give you a readout of your current state and where you are in terms of adoption of skills first practices, and also it maps out for you your desired state based on what you said that you would like to be. And we just then curate a list of resources to help you get from point A to point B. And so we try to remind people, this is this is the time to be ambitious, but we don't have to boil the ocean. So you get overwhelmed when you think about all of the skills first things that you could do. We try to normalize for folks, but it's okay to just do one thing. Just, let's just try that one thing and see how that goes. So whether it is removing degree credentials from a job description, or maybe it's leaning into behavior based hiring, whatever you choose that makes the most sense for where your organization is, we'll give you some tools to at least try and get that momentum going. We have a Skills First credential. It's a one of a kind credential. So for folks that are trying to learn more about what it means to navigate this space and how to navigate some of the barriers you may be running into in your organization, there's a space for you to learn and deepen your skill set so you can help bring others in your organization along, which is really exciting. We have a resource library where we are amassing all of the things scholarly and practically, that have been sourced around this movement, and having it all in one place so that you can search for it however you need to and get access to it. And then for folks that are further along than know this is what I want to do. I just need a vendor, or I need a partner to help me. We have a vendor database where people can go in and just access those professional services that they need to get something off the ground to move closer to implementation. And so we created this hub with the support of 14 coalition partners to really figure out, What do employers need, and how can we make those tools most accessible to them? We're acknowledging we are operating in this space because we have the connections to employers. We're not the only people operating in this space, and everybody has a different lane that they're working in some folks focus on talent. Some folks are focusing on employers. Some are focused on community based organizations. Some are focused on policy. But we all have to be in a conversation together about this, because the ripple effect impact all of us, and so it's great to also have brought together this coalition to be having these conversations together, and so we're excited about the center, and we're excited about how it can hopefully help accelerate adoption for as many people as possible, regardless of how your organization is structured or where you are on your skills first journey. Kaitlin LeMoine: So Isaac, given that you know, this was developed with a coalition of employers, really at the table to help inform. I'm curious to hear a little bit more. What are some of the most pressing challenges you're hearing from employers? Like, what's the perspective of, I know you said, you know, maybe just start with one thing, right? Like, maybe it's hard to take on this whole skills-first bucket of work. But I'm just curious to know, you know, what are some of the perspectives you're hearing from employers and from job seekers in this new, relatively new skills first environment that we're operating in? Isaac Agbeshie-Noye: I'll start with the job seekers. I think that the process is frustrating. This is a tough job market to be in right now, and I say that not only is someone working to widen some of those pathways, but also as somebody that had to navigate that job market. And so I'm three months into this role, and so I also was on the job seeking side, trying to figure out how I get my skills recognized and validated, and this is a hard environment to do that, particularly. When folks are also leveraging AI to make enhancements to their candidate materials, like your resume, your cover letter. And so we're finding that a lot of things because of that look the same. So it becomes really hard for employers to distinguish who has done what. And so that is a very frustrating experience for job seekers to be in, where you want to be actively participating in work, but because of the scale and the size of the job market right now, it's just really hard to stand out on the employer side. We hear a lot about there's a lot of intent, as you mentioned earlier. You know 90% of employers want to be leaning into these skills first approaches. Only 15% have actually done things that's because operationalizing a big idea is hard, and change is harder, especially when you have developed a tradition around certain types of practices that you feel like makes it easier. Like before, a degree was a signifier for you that somebody had some skill or proficiency that you wanted, and you could then filter people out by that. Now we're seeing degrees are not the only place that are telling those stories. Experiences tell us that, skills tell us that, competencies tell us that. And so how do we create an environment where employers can see all of that and then know what to do with it, because it's just so much, and in that environment, not all things operate the same or are created equal? Not all credentials are the same, not all degrees are created equal. So for a hiring manager that's just trying to understand, can this person do what I need? There are so many things to consider to try and get to that answer, and we're then finding people are going through that process of getting through that to that answer, and finding out that that you know, there's more upskilling that's needed, or there are additional supports that are needed in order for that employee to contribute and actively participate. So there's just so many things going on here for employers and for job seekers at the same time, and because there are very few mechanisms for those populations, those audiences, to be talking to each other, that's just harboring more frustration right with the process, because people are not really communicating, and also people are existing with all of these challenges that seem insurmountable to try to fix. So what we're trying to do, at least on the employer side, is make it more digestible, to make it step by step, for us to start thinking about, oh, well, have you considered this? Let's just try this first, and let's see what we're learning from this. Let's understand what success looks like when it comes to this. And one other thing that I'd like to add is, I do want to emphasize, we have chartered this Center for a Skills First Future, and sometimes there's some confusion around what Skills First actually means. And so we are trying to figure out that many different ways that people can be visible to employers and employers can recognize and validate certain skills, but we're not saying that this is a complete replacement for the bachelor's degree, and so we're not working in competition with degrees. We're trying to figure out and get clearer about the ways that degrees also convey a certain set of skills. And so we're trying to treat skills as the primary...
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Work Forces Rewind: Joe E. Ross: Pioneering the Apprenticeship Degree Model
12/16/2025
Work Forces Rewind: Joe E. Ross: Pioneering the Apprenticeship Degree Model
Joe E. Ross, President, CEO and co-founder of Reach University and the National Center for the Apprenticeship Degree, discusses Reach University's "apprenticeship degree" model that turns jobs into degrees rather than the traditional approach of obtaining a job post-graduation. The conversation explores Reach's approach to addressing the "hiding in plain sight" talent crisis by serving the 40-50 million Americans in the workforce without degrees who wish they had them. Ross outlines Reach's three ABCs framework: Affordability, Based in the workplace from day one to graduation, and Credit for learning at work. He shares compelling outcomes from Reach's growth from 67 candidates to over 3,000 across eight states, with 70% graduation rates for Pell-eligible students compared to the typical 40-50%. Ross also discusses the National Center for the Apprenticeship Degree's work with 50 institutions across a dozen states, and offers practical steps for listeners interested in getting involved with apprenticeship degrees. Transcript Julian Alssid: Welcome to the Work Forces Podcast. I'm Julian Alssid. Kaitlin LeMoine: And I'm Kaitlin LeMoine, and we speak with innovators who are shaping the future of work and learning. Julian Alssid: Together, we unpack the complex elements of workforce and career preparation and offer practical solutions that can be scaled and sustained. Kaitlin LeMoine: This podcast is an outgrowth of our Work Forces consulting practice. Through weekly discussions, we seek to share the trends and themes we see in our work and amplify impactful efforts happening in higher education, industry and workforce development all across the country. We are grateful to Lumina Foundation for its past support during the initial development and launch of this podcast, and invite future sponsors of this effort. Please check out our Work Forces podcast website to learn more. And so with that, let's dive in. Kaitlin LeMoine: Hello all, hope you are doing well and enjoying the lead-up to the holiday season. As we prepare for our next podcast season, we're closing out the month with a couple of Work Forces "Rewinds", featuring two insightful conversations from this past year. Today, we're revisiting our conversation with Joe E. Ross, President of Reach University. In this conversation, we dive deep into Reach's pioneering "apprenticeship degree" model, which turns jobs into degrees rather than the traditional approach of obtaining a job post-graduation. We hope you enjoy the discussion with Joe as much as we did. While we'll be back with new episodes in the new year, we want to pause to express our appreciation for you, our listeners. Julian and I are so grateful for your feedback, your likes and shares, and your overall engagement with the Work Forces podcast. Your encouragement and perspectives continue to shape the conversations we hold and inform our consulting work every day. We'll be back to kick off our next season soon..in the meantime, we hope you enjoy this episode! Julian Alssid: Welcome back today. We're diving deep into a topic that's central to our work, the evolution of higher education to better serve the modern workforce. Kaitlin LeMoine: Yes, we are Julian. We've talked a lot about the need for new models, especially those that bridge the gap between learning and earning. So many of our conversations have pointed to the power of apprenticeships and skills based pathways, including our past podcast discussions with Bob Lehrman and John Colborn on the evolution of apprenticeships and the opportunities they afford learners and employers alike. Julian Alssid: That's right. Kaitlan and as we discussed with Bob and John, the apprenticeship movement has been gaining momentum in recent years. Just in August 2025 the Trump administration issued a talent strategy report that calls for the expansion of Federal Registered Apprenticeships, including promoting stronger connections to universities and colleges. Our guest today is at the forefront of this movement, pioneering a groundbreaking model that's reshaping what a degree can look like, the apprenticeship degree. In fact, the apprenticeship degree was called out in the Feds report as a key part of the new apprenticeship initiative. And so today, we'll be discussing this and more with Joe E Ross, President, CEO and co founder of Reach University and the National Center for the apprenticeship degree. Kaitlin LeMoine: Before building Reach, Joe served as president of the statewide association for county school boards in California, and served for 10 years as a locally elected school board member. He previously served as general counsel to a venture studio in several technology startups, and as a deputy district attorney, he acted as sole counsel in numerous hearings and jury trials. Earlier in his career, he served eight years on active duty in the US Navy. The son of a US Postal Service labor custodian, Joe went on to earn degrees from Yale and Stanford Law School. And Joe, we're excited to welcome you to the podcast with us today. Thanks so much for joining us here. Joe E. Ross: Kaitlin, Julian, it's such a pleasure to be here. Thanks for having me. Julian Alssid: Yes, indeed, it is a pleasure to have you, and if you will, you know, we've said a little bit about your background, but we'd love to hear you tell us a little bit more, and the story of what led you to co found Reach. Joe E. Ross: Yeah, sure. So first off, I must offer the disclaimer, I never imagined that I would be a college president growing up. That's not the thing that was on my bucket list, among many things, but I do think I, very early on, acquired a conviction that education is the way you build your own future, I think of it as the pen that you need to have in your hand to write your own future. As you mentioned, my biological father worked for the post office as a labor custodian (that means janitor), and my mom died kind of young, and he was injured in an accident. And I was raised starting at age four by my aunt and uncle, and I think in moving into that new household, in my little head, I must have noticed that these adults had careers and they had degrees and they had power over their lives. And I think in my little head, I thought, I want all three of those things, and I got it into my head that education was my way to those things. That's the only thing I can point to as an explanation for why I was such a nerd in school and so motivated in school, and also why later, after trying all sorts of other things with that pen to my hand, I was a Navy officer, I was a prosecutor, I was an ed tech entrepreneur, I always tacked back to education as where my passion was, and so about 15 years ago, I started running an after school program that sought to turn after school staff into teachers, and that was essentially a job embedded, apprenticeship based program, the first of its kind. And I saw this, this potential of combining work with higher ed. And so fast forward to the fall of 2020, Reach University launched as it's in its current form as an accredited nonprofit institution with a very simple mission, which is to turn jobs into degrees, as you said in the intro, as opposed the other way around. And that model is called the apprenticeship degree. Now. Kaitlin LeMoine: So you know. Reach University has a unique B2B2C model, right where you partner directly with employers, but you have this dual customer approach of working with employers but also serving the needs of your learners. Can we dive in a little bit there? I mean, this is a complex model to build. How have you gone about it? Joe E. Ross: Yeah, so it's, it's interesting, it's complex, but it also creates some simplicity as well. If you're running an apprenticeship degree, by definition, you are running a model that's based in the workplace from day one to the day of graduation. In fact, I'll back up. I probably should share for everybody what we mean by apprenticeship degree, and then that will lead lead to the answer. So an apprenticeship degree is defined by elements associated with apprenticeship going back centuries. This is not something that the Department of Labor defined 50 years ago or 10 years ago or this summer. It's something that goes back to a tradition that is very long standing, and apprenticeships had three defining elements that I think of as the ABCs that apply to an apprenticeship degree, a stands for Affordability for the learner, and in this day and age, that means without student debt, apprentices have been asked for their sweat, not for their debt, right? So at Reach University, we made this commitment the beginning, that no one would be would pay out of pocket. No learner would pay out of pocket more than $75 a month for full time enrollment in a full time work embedded degree program that's a for affordability. B stands for Based in the workplace from day one to the day of graduation or the day of completion. An apprenticeship degree starts with a paid job. It ends, or is designed to end, with a better paid job. And C stands for Credit for work, Credit for learning at work. Kind of has a double meaning. Learning at work means literally learning at work, but it also means learning put to work, theory, meaning practice. C also stands for Credential of value. This is not a compromise. It is still a Bachelor of Arts or a Master of Arts or an Associate of Arts. AA does not stand for Apprenticeship Arts Degree. It stands for Associate of Arts degree. So with that definition in mind, let me go back to B based in the workplace. The reason we think of this as a B2B2C model, as opposed to a, B2C model is because you can't run an apprenticeship or an apprenticeship degree without close engagement with employers and for the university. What that means, among many things, is that instead of coming to the university looking for graduates, the employer comes to the university at the front end, bringing the students, you work with employers, and then the employers engage their incumbent workforce, or they actually recruit new employees into jobs that come with degrees. And so what you end up seeing is a lot of partnership work with employers, which is kind of shoe leather and handshaking and presence on the ground, as opposed to buying Google AdWords and competing in the internet for advertising for consumers. And as a result of that, a B2B2C model is much more affordable to execute, and that savings gets passed on to the apprentices, to the learners, in the form of much lower tuition, much more affordability. Julian Alssid: So Joe, your model, in a sense, is helping to solve labor shortages. And want to hear you talk about, like, who these who these learners are, and what kinds of jobs you're preparing them for. This notion that there's like, this talent, and you know the term like hiding in hiding in plain sight, yeah, is really what you're about, yeah. Joe E. Ross: Well, we started five years ago with our teachers college, and we were focused on the teacher shortage. And by any estimate, there's many as 30 to 50,000 structural vacancies, to as much as 300,000 structural vacancies in teaching. And what we discovered is that in the very same buildings where principals were looking for teachers where there were classrooms without permanent staff, in those same buildings, there were a lot of human beings doing other jobs that didn't require degrees. They were working as classroom aides, as library aides, they were in the lunchroom, they were in the office, driving the bus. They were janitors, like my father and each of these individuals share, typically, the same story. At some point, they had to choose that job instead of a degree to take care of their family. For example, we did some research, because this was anecdotal, and this was something we were seeing on the ground, but we did some research. You know, if you look the Bureau of Labor Statistics, there's about 1.3 to 1.5 million classroom aids in this country, if there's only 50,000 teacher shortages, you only need a fraction of those aids, a fraction of those aides to get upskilled, earn a degree, to just end a teacher shortage. That type of ratio plays out in other high demand industries. If you look at nursing, there's a nursing shortage, but there's also a tremendous number of people working in hospitals as patient care assistants, or certified nursing assistants and many other roles who, if we actually treated those people as the talent we need and give them the opportunity to rise up, we would end these labor shortages and we create this upward mobility that we want this country to stand for. We bring it to life in places, particularly rural places that are education deserts. So that's basically the story here we have, on one hand, estimates suggest about 10 million high demand labor shortages in high demand industries, and on the other hand, there's 40 to 50 million people working in the workforce who do not have a degree, but surveys indicate they wish they did have a degree. And if we can actually move higher ed to think about that population, those 50 million people already in the workforce or about to enter the workforce, as the market for higher ed, as opposed to the 3 million graduating from high school every year, or maybe in addition to the 3 million who are graduating from high school every year, it's such a win, win. Higher ed has a new mission, 50 million people who were left out get brought back in, and we address labor shortages in high demand fields, particularly in rural, remote places where often the only answer is to do a grow your own effort, as opposed to recruiting effort. Kaitlin LeMoine: Can you tell us a little bit, Joe about how this model works like a practical level. So you said, right? You know, people learners should be, you know, receiving credit for the work that they're doing on the job. But what does it look like to implement this? Joe E. Ross: I think the apprenticeship degree is always met with this kind of, oh, this sounds too good to be true. Somebody can have a paid job. Half the learning in their degree program comes from that paid job. The other half comes from seminars held at night or on the weekends or asynchronous instruction. There's no student debt. There's a better paid job waiting at the end of it. Employers are feeling labor shortages, individuals are getting upward economic mobility, and people are kind of like, well, that's genius. Too good to be true. How do you do you do it? Just like you just asked, here are some things that need to go into the design approach. First, employers to higher education providers need to work really closely together to make sure that the degree design meets the needs of the employer. In many ways, the employer is the customer here. They should be actually, in many cases, paying for the program instead of the learner, right? So you have to work with the employers to design now and teaching that's fairly straightforward, because every state knows what teachers need to know, and it's pretty common across state borders what teachers need to know. Similarly, in other professions like a nursing or radiological technician or other allied health fields, the standards of what you need to know in those professions as well now, but you still need to work with employers to make sure that the program design works. And then from there, the employers are also your key partners. I said earlier in recruiting their incumbent workforce, or their new hires into these pathways with the promise that their jobs are not just job type jobs, but jobs that turn into degrees and then give you upward mobility after completion of a certain set period of time. In terms of the actual design of the model, part of what's required here is to rethink some practices that are often taken as rules or laws or regulations, but are just habits In higher education. And I'll give you one example. There's something called the Carnegie Unit that is about the ratio of seat time to homework time, essentially. And this is seen as a barrier to work embedded degree programs, because, oh my gosh, we had to have this much seat time, and then people have to, have to do this, this much homework, and then they have to work 40 hours a week. How do you fit it all in? And so one of the things that we did from the beginning said, Look, you can reimagine the Carnegie Unit as being a function of seat time and work time as opposed to seat time and homework time, right? So if you can combine seat time with assignments on the job, or sense making around what you're doing on the job instead of mindless, irrelevant problem sets or whatever the case may be busy work. But actually make work work, the work instead of busy work, the work. You can actually create an environment where for a learner, and this is the objective for a worker, one plus one in this case, equals one. It should feel like their job and their higher education pathway are the same thing. That's the key element of efficiency here that needs to go into the design. And then from there, there's things in a higher education credential that people think, Well, how could you do that in the workplace? For example, you need to know English or critical thinking or history or writing, or all these things that are referred to as general education? Well, it turns out you can carefully design the liberal arts component of almost any professional or occupational degree to be relevant to that occupation. We're designing a program right now in behavioral health, for example. And to get an associate or bachelor's degree, you need something that looks like writing and reading and literature for to be a degree, but you can choose something that's relevant. So we have a semester we're designing where there's two tracks of learning. One is psychology, one, two and three, which is with one faculty member, and then there's practice on the job. And the other track is literature, but it's going to be the literature of mental illness, right? And it's going to feel really integrated with the psychology track, and it's going to be relevant to the job. So that's the kind of curricular design work that I think the apprenticeship degree needs to entail. Because at the end of the day, these are working adults, and we know what working adults need, and we sometimes are really good at giving them what they need at the graduate level, but now we have to give them what they need at the undergraduate level to make sure the associate degree in the bachelor's degree truly is working better. Julian Alssid: It's all about that context, really, and just baking it in all around. So then, given this integration and approach like, what are the metrics that you're using to track and what's your impact today? Joe E. Ross: Yeah, we started with 67 candidates in our pilot cohort in the Louisiana and Arkansas Deltas. That was five years ago. We'll have well over 3,000 candidates across almost 500 school districts in eight states as of this fall. So the program is growing. That's one metric that's important. And in some places, school districts and parishes are reporting the sentiment that their teacher shortage seems to be going away, which is great news, and in part, that's because of programs like, like Reach University, and that's exciting to see when, when do you get to, like, actually solve a major social problem as a nonprofit leader in your life, it's always something on the horizon. We're actually seeing shortages go away, which is amazing. Notably, the population we're serving are overwhelmingly Pell eligible. And so Pell eligibility, I think, is a good proxy for economic need. And any given semester, roughly 70 to 75% of our enrollment is Pell eligible, 37 to 39 year old folks with families and full time jobs,...
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Amber Garrison Duncan: Advancing Competency-Based Education
12/02/2025
Amber Garrison Duncan: Advancing Competency-Based Education
Amber Garrison Duncan, Executive Vice President and Chief Operating Officer of the Competency-Based Education Network (C-BEN), discusses the evolution of competency-based education from seven pioneering institutions in 2013 to over 600 institutions and 1,000 programs today. Drawing from her experience assessing co-curricular learning outcomes in traditional higher education and later as a grantmaker at Lumina Foundation, Garrison Duncan explains how CBE restores the promise of economic mobility by focusing on mastery of skills rather than seat time. She details C-BEN's systems-level work through initiatives like the Center for Skills and the Partnership for Skills Validation, which build consensus across K-12, higher education, and employers on quality standards for skills assessment and validation. The conversation explores how policy shifts like Workforce Pell and state-level innovations in Alabama, Arkansas, and Texas are accelerating the movement toward skills-based credentials, financial aid, and talent management systems. Duncan emphasizes the urgency of iterative innovation, comparing the current moment to the iPhone era where institutions must test and adapt quickly rather than waiting for lengthy pilot programs, and offers practical guidance for institutions to begin their CBE journey using C-BEN's Quality Framework while building authentic connections between learning outcomes and employer needs. Transcript Julian Alssid: Welcome to the Work Forces Podcast. I'm Julian Alssid. Kaitlin LeMoine: And I'm Kaitlin LeMoine, and we speak with innovators who are shaping the future of work and learning. Julian Alssid: Together, we unpack the complex elements of workforce and career preparation and offer practical solutions that can be scaled and sustained. Kaitlin LeMoine: This podcast is an outgrowth of our Work Forces Consulting practice. Through weekly discussions, we seek to share the trends and themes we see in our work and amplify impactful efforts happening in higher education industry and workforce development all across the country. We are grateful to Lumina Foundation for its past support during the initial development and launch of this podcast, and invite future sponsors of this effort, please check out our workforces podcast website to learn more. And so with that, let's dive in. Julian Alssid: You know, Kaitlin, it feels like just yesterday, but it was actually over a dozen years ago now that we were helping to launch College for America at Southern New Hampshire University, which was one of the very first competency-based education models. And back then CBE, it felt like a radical experiment, you know, trying to prove that demonstrating mastery of competencies and not seat time in a course was the key metric to helping people advance their education and careers. Kaitlin LeMoine: Yeah, it's true. And while it does feel like that was just yesterday, the competency based movement has come so far in so many years. While CBE is still viewed as an alternative, non traditional approach by some in the field of education and training, many institutions have and are continuing to holistically implement competency based models to go beyond the traditional credit hour and ensure a curricular emphasis on what learners can do with what they know, and as we think about the intersection of work and learning in which we're all operating, this movement has only been further strengthened as employers further focus on skills based hiring and learners seek to clearly communicate their skills and abilities in a competitive job market. Julian Alssid: Yes, and our guest today is with an organization that's been central to growing the CBE field, Amber Garrison Duncan is Executive Vice President and Chief Operating Officer of the Competency-Based Education Network, or C-BEN. In her role, Amber spearheads initiatives to strengthen collaboration between education and workforce partners with a focus on competency and skill taxonomies and quality assurance before C-BEN, Amber spent eight years as a grant maker at Lumina Foundation, focusing on higher education success. And in her early career, she served in numerous Student Affairs roles at the University of Oregon, Florida State University, the University of Michigan, Hope College, and Texas A&M University. Amber, we're so excited to welcome you to the podcast. Thanks so much for joining us. Amber Garrison Duncan: Well, thank you for having me. It's so exciting to think back to those early days and just also how far we've come. So it's a good moment to reflect. And so thank you for this opportunity. Kaitlin LeMoine: Well, thank you for joining us and for taking this moment in time to both reflect, and I guess maybe, you know, we'll spend a little time thinking about what's ahead as well. So I'm really glad to see you today for this conversation. Amber, and as we get started, we'd love to hear a little bit more about your background and what led you to your role at C-BEN, sure. Amber Garrison Duncan: Well, as you probably heard in my introduction, I had quite a bit of experience on a couple of campuses in higher ed, and are some of what I would call today our legacy institutions that have been around a long time and really are major leaders when you think about higher education. But in my experience there, I was doing assessment in the co-curriculum, and so I was not working in courses, and I was not working in time based measures. I was working on how students apply what they know and can do? How are they doing that and their co-curricular experiences or at work? And then at the University of Oregon, we were just getting to the point where saying, can we validate this and put it on a record for somebody? And so I was having that experience and also saw how hard it was to do, how much of a change it was to think about. Could people be learning outside of the four walls of this classroom, outside this desk, and where are they taking this knowledge? How would I know? And so from that just knew that also it was a lot of change, and was tired as a change maker, banging my head against the wall. So I said, Where else can I go? This is a systemic issue that, again, I worked at institutions across the country. Why is this so hard? And so then decided to pursue something that could support more of the system's change, and was lucky enough to be at Lumina for that which was a really transformative experience for me to see how the ecosystem is set up, why there's a lot of these incentives and barriers to change. And had the fortune to be leading a portfolio called Learning Infrastructure, and that was a portfolio focused on how we make sure that all high quality learning can count. And I learned there that the only way to maybe do that is, if we were to work in competencies and skills. Other countries around the world were figuring this out. We had to figure it out in the US. And luckily, there were seven institutions that said, Hey, we're already trying this Southern New Hampshire being one of those. And so C-BEN's origin story really is, how do we learn as quickly as possible from these seven institutions. Now that was back in 2013 when we were having that initial meeting and conversation. Today we have over 5000 members. There's no way to track fully and know how many CBE programs there are in the US, but we know there's well over 600 institutions that we know of, over 1000 programs. So it's kind of fascinating when we think about turning the ship in higher ed and how hard that is, and that in just 10 years time, we've gone from those early days to where we are now that really are proving out that CBE is a way to provide greater access. It's a way to ensure mastery, for that every learner gets the quality education and the skills they need. And then employers, again, are very much leaning forward to doing their skills based hiring by connecting with CBE programs. So that's like a quick evolution, and my history is just it's all tied up together in those two pieces. And so once I left Lumina, I just said, I really want to continue to be a part of this and continuing to help lead change. And so now I've been at C-BEN for four years, which, again, time flies, but a lot of really exciting progress to see and be a part of people's stories and watch our community grow. Julian Alssid: It is quite a quite a story, and you're right in the thick of it, Amber. And so looking back, you know, you mentioned the seven institutions initially. I'm pretty sure we were, we were one of them at College for America. Amber Garrison Duncan: You were the home of C-BEN at SNHU, yeah. Julian Alssid: Looking back, what are some of the key moments in the evolution of CBE since those early days that led to the growth we see today? Because it really is quite remarkable. Amber Garrison Duncan: It is, it is. Also a couple of things, I would say is we also like to remind folks that CBE, if we look at the theory and science of learning this, goes back 100 years. I mean, we all probably, if we came up through education, we're big fans of John Dewey and thinking about all this. And so it's, it's kind of interesting as like, the old ideas that have new ways of implementing and scaling. And I think that was always our problem, as you looked at the movement in the cities, that people really again, University Without Walls, and we're really trying to do this, but again, it's hard to do this without new tools. And our tools of the moment were not really there. And so early leaders, as technology started to be used in higher ed to say, Can we do this async? Can we do this in a more flexible way? Can we, you know, again, recognize what people already know and can do and move them on a personalized pathway, not treat everybody as a cohort and teach them all the same thing at the same time, right? So as we started to see that world move, I think that's where CBE started to take hold, and it was a lot of early online learning institutions saying, hey, let's try this thing out where, yeah, we've got this moving async, and we know we can kind of personalize this. But what if we did this instead of again based on time and a module that, again, it's based on as soon as you master and being able to lift that is, again, it's no small task. But certainly, I think early movers were trying to reach people that they hadn't been able to serve before. They were trying to make sure that, again, what they were asking people to perform and know and do was relevant. Had payoff for those individuals and those residents in the way that we all hope, that it led to family sustaining wages, that, to me, it was about restoring the promise of higher ed that we really are about economic mobility, and we needed to try something new to reach people in ways that we hadn't before. And so that, I think, has been, as I hear over and over those 600 institutions talking about why they're trying to do this is they're trying to reach people who just wouldn't have maybe come to us before, wouldn't have been able to have that learning. And again, they want to make sure that if I ask you to spend that one Pell Grant, you get, or that Workforce Pell piece, or that that's your one shot for a lot of people. And I want to make sure it's worth it to you, and that you get, again, that economic return, and so CBE really is the solution to provide that. Kaitlin LeMoine: So building off your last comment there Amber, just around, you know, Workforce Pell and where we're headed, right? I mean, we'd love to hear, you know, what are some of the pressing challenges that you see as institutions and organizations seek to work? Work in this complex landscape, and where are there opportunities, especially around, you know, building a skills based ecosystem that involves all these parties, and really not only involves them, but I guess, allows them to collaborate and work together effectively. Amber Garrison Duncan: You know, I think Workforce Pell is a is kind of a bellwether in the policy incentives and things that will start to shift to reward and make sure that we're paying for things that have, again, return on investments, whether that's, you know, we've been working deeply in Alabama and helping them shift their credentials of value onto what are the skills, not just the labor market demand signal and the but what are the actual skills people need, and how do we make sure those credentials are delivering on those skills, and we're paying for that, not just a completion so again, I think Workforce Pell is starting to lean that way. I think more of the accountability measures are going to be headed that way, and quality assurance being tied to that. So I think that's a huge lever for the work that we're doing, and why people can kind of land on this as a solution to answer that. But again, it comes with a lot of challenges. We are, I say we go everywhere skills go. But if you look at where skills go, it's all the proxies of time that are attached to that, so the credit hour and the just getting into the like, where do I go find a person's skills? Well, I've got to go into the LMS, and I've got to hack the course, and then I've got to hack the assessment platform and the la, la, la, la. And it's like, holy cow. So it's definitely not without challenge. And I do feel like, for the first time, we have again, the market has shifted, and people are starting to say we do need to pay attention to how hard that is. Oh, we do need to say again, should we rethink financial aid based on time and maybe have competency based measures? States again are starting to lead the way in that again Alabama, California. Folks are trying to think about new ways to pay for learning based on skills and competencies and not seat time. We're starting to see Arkansas. Just this morning. I was just reading. They were like, we're not going to call it non credit anymore. It's professional skills learning. And like, why do we again have everything attached to credit? Non credit and hours and time and again. I think that we'll continue to explore, but I do think that it also represents a revisioning of the social contract and thinking about how we pay for things as a society at a moment in time when everything feels very disrupted. But how do we have the forum and the space to talk about what that means, and again, disperse funds, or have policies or have employer engagement in these ways that we all feel comfortable with. And so that's where C-BEN, we're spending a lot of our time. How are we building consensus? How do we reshape a system and not replicate things of the past? As we were getting on, we were talking about, we now have an apprenticeship track at our conference, and we have K-12 coming. And I think now that we're starting to see all these innovators are coming up, looking up and saying, let's not build systems the way that we had them before that we don't like. Let's connect them, because people are trying to move between them. And how do we use skills and competencies to do that? And again, find new ways and new paths in this kind of reimagining using skills as the foundation. And that's what gets me too really excited, but that, again, it's a lot of challenge that we're going to have to face, because now we're talking about admissions policies, and we're talking about dual enrollment, we're talking about things that we have we thought we solved, and now we're figuring out we didn't quite solve them, and we'd like to do better. But that is, is, I think the challenge of where we go next is, how do we build together so that as we're innovating, we don't run past each other, or we don't change one side of the system and not the other. People still need that lifelong learning journey, and we've got to be able to again collaborate to do that. Julian Alssid: So it really is this big systemic issue, and it sounds like C-BEN has been spending quite a bit of time thinking about this and trying to build and scale solutions that cut across the education and employer landscape. You know, I will say, while I agree Workforce Pell's, you know, certainly a bellwether. You know, it's not going to be a lot of money. How do we get solutions that have the employers and educators working in new ways at scale. And what do you guys see being done to advance this? You know, like we want to hear about your, you know, your new Center for Skills and the Partnership for Skills Validation. Amber Garrison Duncan: Yes, Workforce Pell, it's going to be a small amount, but it is our first dip in something different, right, a little bit, but still tied to the credit hours, so we still have to figure that out. But baby steps, baby steps, it is, it's a baby step, it's a baby step, it is a big baby step. But I certainly, through the Center for Skills, as we are observing, again, this growth. We said, how do we get to the intersection? And so. That's where the Center for Skills really comes in and says, if we're really talking about not just skills, as in, like, what's the sentence that describes skills we're talking about, what are the new types of evidence we need to base these policy decisions on? If we're saying people should be awarded or recognized based on mastery and demonstration of skill, for award of a credential. But we're also seeing again, employers saying, I want to hire people based on that mastery. I want to pay them. We're seeing a couple weeks ago, I was at Walmart and they gathered a lot of their peers, from Home Depot to Best Buy, saying, how do we restructure our performance based talent management structures. How are we incentivizing people? How do we pay people? How do we provide recognition for their skills? That's a huge shift. Again, collectively, for all of us to be having that conversation. But again, we can't just say, What do I slap a label on, but what's the performance evidence? And that's where the Center for Skills is trying to say, let's have that conversation at the intersection of what assessment means at the end of the day, and that our perceptions and the ways that we've traditionally done assessment has to shift and change. All of us, you know, if we're older than 20, probably are used to standardized tests and multiple choice, and those are great knowledge tests. Those are things we know we can do with great rigor and validity and reliability. But what we're talking about now is a new world where things are based on demonstration of skill. It's what I know, it's what I can do. What are the different contexts I can do that in? So it's a much richer, nuanced conversation, and that means we have to have new assessment tools and new ways of understanding that and that we shouldn't, again, back to this concept of like we shouldn't go build those separate from each other. If we're trying to all use the same evidence, how do we agree? How to create that evidence? What does quality look like? So that's really what the Partnership for Skills Validation is driving that consensus from K-12 to gray, employer to here, you know, we just released the common language. How do you just talk about this in the most common way possible, demonstration of skill performance. We're observing people and their behaviors at work, or we're observing people in their learning experience. How do we talk about it? And then again, what does quality look like, and how do we scale it? And that's what we're trying to drive that conversation and be that catalyst for consensus, so that, again, these things don't get created separate from each other, and then they don't work together. Kaitlin LeMoine: It's really amazing the work you're doing at all these levels, right? The systems it sounds like you're at the systems level. You're at the very tactical level of what does this look like to implement at one institution, or like, how do you change your technical systems to support this work, and then working across...
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Dan Gonzalez: Scaling a Reimagined Approach to Internships
11/18/2025
Dan Gonzalez: Scaling a Reimagined Approach to Internships
Dan Gonzalez, Co-founder and CEO of District C, discusses how his nonprofit is democratizing access to authentic workplace learning through Teamship, a reimagined internship model where teams of high school students solve real business problems. Drawing from his background as a physics teacher and education entrepreneur, Gonzalez explains how District C emerged from early conversations about AI's impact on work and the need to develop uniquely human, durable skills. He details the program's innovative design—breaking abstract concepts like "teamwork" into observable behaviors and coaching protocols—and shares how they've made the model accessible to over 7,000 students by embedding it in Career and Technical Education courses. Gonzalez describes their low-lift, high-impact approach to employer engagement that requires just five hours of business partner time across four to five weeks, enabling 700 employers to participate without the complications of traditional internships. The conversation explores their test-and-learn philosophy from startup through scaling, the dramatic student improvement across multiple cycles, and practical strategies for both educators seeking to implement experiential learning and employers wanting to support youth development while addressing real business challenges. Transcript Julian Alssid Welcome to the Work Forces Podcast. I'm Julian Alssid. Kaitlin LeMoine And I'm Kaitlin LeMoine, and we speak with innovators who are shaping the future of work and learning. Julian Alssid Together, we unpack the complex elements of workforce and career preparation and offer practical solutions that can be scaled and sustained. Kaitlin LeMoine: This podcast is an outgrowth of our Work Forces consulting practice through weekly discussions, we seek to share the trends and themes we see in our work and amplify impactful efforts happening in higher education, industry, and workforce development all across the country. We are grateful to Lumina Foundation for its past support during the initial development and launch of this podcast, and invite future sponsors of this effort. Please check out our Work Forces Podcast website to learn more. And so with that, let's dive in. Welcome to today's show. It feels like every day we're both reading and hearing about the importance of experiential learning opportunities for students while enrolled in college, and more and more so in K through 12 education, while the importance of these opportunities has been recognized for many years, efforts to develop authentic applied learning in real world contexts at scale have become front and center. Julian Alssid: It's so true, Kaitlin, we're seeing a significant alignment around this. More employers are actively seeking practical, applied skills earlier in the talent pipeline, and educators and learners alike are seeing the value of academic learning applied in real world work environments. Authentic projects are becoming an integral and essential part of the learning experience. Kaitlin LeMoine: Exactly, and with all that being said, we're really looking forward to our discussion today with Dan Gonzalez, co-founder and CEO of District C, a national nonprofit that prepares the next generation of diverse talent for modern work. District C offers a unique program called Teamship, which is a reimagined internship where teams of students solve real problems for real businesses. Julian Alssid: To provide a bit of background. Dan studied engineering at Dartmouth College before becoming a high school physics teacher. After teaching, Dan joined Manhattan Prep, a global leader in test preparation, and became president of the company in 2011 shortly after it was acquired by Kaplan. In 2017, Dan co-founded District C and has been working on its build out since. We're thrilled to have you on the podcast, Dan, and thanks so much for joining us. Dan Gonzalez: My gosh, thanks for having me. I'm excited to be here. Kaitlin LeMoine: We're really excited to have the chance to speak with you today, Dan. So as we get started today, we'd love to learn a little bit more about your background and what led you to founding District C. Tell us the story. Dan Gonzalez: Yeah, so one, one interesting, what I think is an interesting kind of founding story about the founding is my wife and I started District C together as co-founders. We started our research back in 2016 and we both quit our jobs at the same time to invest full time in District C. And I think what we were seeing at the time was, you know, obviously people have been talking about artificial intelligence for many, many decades, but around 2016, 2017 the conversation started to come into the national forefront as it relates to work and preparing for work. And we were kind of trying to look ahead and imagine what do we need to be preparing students for if we are kind of confronting this reality of an AI dominated workplace, and so, you know, at the time, this was a couple of years after the code.org put out that video, and there was kind of this national movement around preparing students to be coders and software developers. And the thing that we are trying to imagine is, all right, if, if we are thinking about how to prepare young people for any job in the future with the skills and competencies they need to cut across any industry, how would we design a learning model that would do that? Now you can call them professional skills, durable skills, soft skills, 3Cs, 5cs, 10, Cs whatever you want to call them, but these like uniquely human skills, and that's what we were after, and that's what we set out to try to figure out. Julian Alssid: So you were you? You were talking AI practically before it was born. Dan Gonzalez: Maybe, maybe not, not so, so early. But I would say, Yeah, we were thinking about it back then. And I think, like, obviously looking back now, we feel like it was the right place to be focused. And I would say one challenge we had early on as we were thinking about building a program like the one we built, is a lot of conversation was centered on, as I said, coding, entrepreneurship, entrepreneurial education. And so it was hard to cut through some of that conversation. And even though there was a lot of discussion around portraits of a graduate, how do we help students develop durable skills, soft skills, the default in education, as you all know, is to kind of generally come back to the content and focus on the content. And so things like coding, entrepreneurship, etc., stem where content tends to be at the front and center, those are the things that tend to carry the day in education conversations. So we had a little trouble initially, kind of cutting through some of that and really trying to focus on all right, if we're serious about durable skills, how do we really get down past the abstractions into learning models that really help students develop these things. And so it took, you know, a couple of years of trial and error and experimentation with the model that we built before we started to kind of feel like the conversation was changing. Julian Alssid: Okay, so, how? So, how are you teaching durable skills? What is the program model? Yeah, yeah. This is the question everyone wants to know. Dan Gonzalez: So the program model is called Teamship. You can think of Teamship as a reimagined team-based internship, where teams of students solve real problems for real businesses in the community, and all the while, they're getting coached by an educator who's been trained and certified by District C and so students are getting proactive support as they're going through this generally 25 to 35 hour experience. The thing that we learned early on was putting students in teams and asking them to solve a real problem actually ended up being the easy part of the model. Of course, it takes work to go out and find businesses, engage them, prep them, Tee them up for the experience, etc. And that's a whole system of work that requires attention and care. But I think what we learned was the most difficult part was helping students actually get better at the work. So it's not enough just to create the experience and create the context for the experience to help students actually develop these skills, you actually have to coach them proactively and consistently, and as I mentioned before, kind of break away from the abstractions and get down to observable behavior. So just as an example, if I were to say Julian and Kaitlin and I'm watching you do your Teamwork, you're solving a problem for a business. Just keep in mind, be team players. Respect your teammates. Those are abstractions, right? Students don't really know what to do with that, that kind of coaching. So what we try to do is break those abstractions down into ways of working, tools, protocols, et cetera, that we can coach students on and actually observe those in their work. Instead of, Hey, be great team players. I might say, hey, Julian and Kaitlin, which set of your tools do you think you can pull out to make sure that you're getting better equity of voice in your team conversations, and they should know like, Oh, if I take tool X, I and Z and snap them together, it will create more balance of voice in our team conversation, and our work is going to be better. Our thinking is going to be better, our ideas are going to be better. Trying to break away from the abstractions and get down to the observable behavior. I think that was an insight we had early on that we really tried to build off of in subsequent years. Kaitlin LeMoine: So I feel like that response has...now I have so many other questions about the program model, but I mean, I guess one area I'm curious to hear a little bit more about is so you partner with employers and with schools to offer this program. And what is, what does the program the 25 to 35 hour model, what does that look like in schools? Is it held after school? Is it during the school day? Is it held in collaboration with a classroom instructor? Is there a range? Dan Gonzalez: Yeah, great question. So most of the Teamship experiences that students get are through their schools. And so you're exactly right. We generally partner with Career and Technical Education departments, so at the school district level, at the K 12 level, and then we work with them to identify schools that are going to adopt the Teamship model, to identify teachers that are going to go through our training and certification process. And then we support these teachers in implementing teamship In generally one of two ways. The first way is as a 25 to 30 hour experience embedded in one of their existing courses. The second way is building an entirely new course that is Teamship exclusive. So imagine a semester-long course where students do two or three Teamship cycles over the span of a semester, and each cycle, they're with a different team of students, and they're working on a new problem for a new business. So that's generally that's the predominant model, and the reason for that is, I know from, you know, back when I was young, I thought I wanted to be an engineer. I got an engineering internship because my dad knew someone, right? So I asked my dad, hey, could you help me get an internship within a week? I had it. I think we know that students with family connections and social capital, they generally don't struggle to get these kinds of experiences. But what about everyone else? So one of the keys to the Teamship design was building it so that it could be delivered and provide access to many more students than typically get these kinds of powerful workplace learning experiences. And that meant designing it so that it could be implemented at school during the school day. So that was a key kind of design constraint that we went into many years ago when we built this. Kaitlin LeMoine: I would imagine too to have the opportunity to engage in multiple of these experiences over a learner's journey through their high school experience would be really powerful to, as you said, build upon and continue to practice and learn some of these human or durable skills that you know take time to learn and hone, right? I mean, it's not like this isn't just because you've engaged in one of these experiences doesn't mean you couldn't engage in another, I assume. Dan Gonzalez: Yeah, and you all, of course, are bringing a ton of your own experience to this conversation. That is exactly the right insight. I think it was two years after we started. We piloted our first semester long course. We got 16 students from four different schools in the Raleigh, Durham area of North Carolina, and we essentially taught a course for those 16 students. They did three cycles over a semester, three Teamship cycles. And we were, I think we were taken aback at that the step wise improvement from cycle one to cycle two was kind of astounding. Like, once they get the first one under their belts, they can look back and reflect and say, that's what this is about. This is such a different experience for them, right? It's so different from traditional school. And so once they have one under their belts, they're able to, just like adapt very quickly, set new goals for themselves for the second cycle, and the level of their work just improves pretty dramatically. And so I think we realized in that moment, the most ideal implementation mode is one where students get multiple touches on the ball for exactly the reasons that you mentioned. Julian Alssid: Okay, so, so staying on the path of specifics, this is great. It's really, really fascinating. And so much of what we try to do is unpack and understand, like, the school side I get, how about the employers? I mean, you know you mentioned earlier, like, yeah, sure. You know, most people are getting it's mostly word of mouth. For most people, that's how they found an internship. How are you engaging employers at scale? How do you find and support them? Dan Gonzalez: So we have a team of people that is dedicated just to this work of engaging employers. To date, we've had, I think we're at about 700 employers who have engaged in this work. Some of them engage once. Some of them engage twice, three times. I think we've had some engage as many as nine or 10 times. The number one key is creating an opportunity for employers that is low lift, high impact. So we want to make it as easy as possible for them to say yes, and before they understand the details of the experience and what their role would be. They often come in with the assumption that their role is going to be kind of like it would be for a traditional internship, which is, all right, I'm going to have to manage a group of students over multiple weeks and multiple hours per week, right? And a lot of times, companies are hesitant to do traditional internships or offer traditional internships for high school students. Number one, because there's a whole bunch of like legal considerations when you're working with minors. Number two, they're often skeptical of high school students' ability to add real value to their businesses, right? So what we try to do is counter both of those potential skepticisms, right? So the first thing we say is, look, this is going to be a five hour experience for you over the course of four to five weeks, the first hour or so is going to be working with us to scope the problem. We're going to actually write the problem statement. We're just going to kind of interview you business partner to understand what's keeping you up at night, and then we're going to craft a business problem statement that will be accessible to high school students. And then the rest of those five hours, you're going to meet with the student teams three times, and the first time, students are going to come in and they're going to interview you, they're going to run the meeting. So all you have to do is show up and represent your business and your problem. The second time is a midpoint check in. They're going to come with some initial ideas, maybe ask you a few more questions, and then the third time, they're going to propose their solutions to you in kind of a boardroom style meeting. And so for the business partner, the reaction typically is, so I don't really have to, I don't have to mentor the students full time during this experience, and the answer to that is no, the teacher who's been trained will do that part. And so it's an easy ask that they can say yes to, given that the students are owning those three meetings and facilitating those three meetings, it's easy for the business partner to plug in. And so the first time, we make it easy for them, and they generally want to participate because they want to do good in their community. And then I think they realize that we have evidence to suggest, they realize the power of the opportunity and how much value and benefit they get out of it, and so that's when they're out for a second and third time. So that's kind of the strategy that we try to employ, that we've kind of refined over the years. Kaitlin LeMoine: So Dan, it's really interesting to hear you talk about, as Julian said, both the employer side of this and the school side, as you reflect on, I mean, you said this was you started in 2017 so you've been building this for the better part of eight years at this point. I mean, tell us about your growth trajectory. What are some of the challenges and opportunities you've encountered as you've built District C, because I would imagine that, you know, you've addressed a lot of challenges that maybe others are, you know, wrestling with day to day, and how to make this type of really authentic work, and these types of authentic projects happen in schools and communities. Dan Gonzalez: Yeah, yeah. Thanks for that question. When my wife and I started this, we were both first time entrepreneurs, and so we were simultaneously wrestling with like, okay, what's what's like, the education part of this, and then what's the entrepreneurship part of this? Like, we're two new entrepreneurs trying to start something that matters and trying to make an impact. And so I think, like, one of the big challenges for me, just like a personal challenge for me early on, is I went from a job where I would wake up every morning and I'd have eight hours of meetings blocked on my calendar, and it was just back to back to back, right? And then starting District C, I'd wake up in the morning and there'd be nothing on the calendar. All proactive, right? It was all like, go out and make it happen. And that was a really difficult transition point for me. And I think one, I had a lot of impatience early on, and like wanting to see results and outcomes. And I think one learning and reflection is this kind of stuff, like when you're building something new from scratch, it takes, it just takes time. You all know this, I see the head nodding. You know this experience, it takes a lot of time to build traction. I think one of the things that, in retrospect, a good decision we made early on was we didn't, we didn't hold ourselves to getting it exactly right the first time. Instead, we took kind of a test and learn mindset, and so the first thing we did is we got 10 or 11 students around, around the community, and we just tried the first version of the program that we had dreamed up. And we learned so much from that, that first pilot, from that first trial, and we just kept building on it. And honestly, we didn't worry about the business model, we didn't worry about the scale model until we felt like we had enough reps on kind of coaching students through Teamship, where we felt like, oh yeah, this is, this is what we want to kind of put out to market. And so I would say the first phase was proving demand. Do students want to do this? Will business partners engage? And once we...
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Rick Laferriere: Building Talent Pipelines at CVS Health
11/04/2025
Rick Laferriere: Building Talent Pipelines at CVS Health
Rick Laferriere, Lead Director of Workforce Initiatives at CVS Health, discusses his team's 25-year commitment to building what he calls "non-traditional talent pipelines" by partnering with workforce systems, educators, and community organizations to reach individuals who face barriers to employment. Drawing from his own journey starting as a CVScashier in high school and spending over 30 years with the company, Laferriere shares the philosophy behind creating relationships rather than transactions with community partners. He explores the complexities of operating across all 50 states where workforce systems, funding priorities, and political landscapes differ dramatically, emphasizing why customization matters more than one-size-fits-all approaches. The conversation delves into practical strategies for employers looking to engage in workforce development, including the importance of sharing curriculum and training rather than keeping it proprietary, offering work-based learning experiences before hiring, and dedicating resources to build genuine partnerships. Laferriere also addresses the challenge of measuring success in work that carries both quantitative and qualitative value, explaining why his team takes pride in the fact that only 30% of program participants come to work for CVS while the other 70% strengthen the broader community workforce. He calls on employers to get curious, join workforce boards, and find champions within their organizations who can balance passion for community impact with demonstrating business value. Transcript Julian Alssid: Welcome to the Work Forces Podcast. I'm Julian Alssid Kaitlin LeMoine: And I'm Kaitlin LeMoine, and we speak with innovators who are shaping the future of work and learning. Julian Alssid: Together, we unpack the complex elements of workforce and career preparation and offer practical solutions that can be scaled and sustained. Kaitlin LeMoine: This podcast is an outgrowth of our Work Forces consulting practice through weekly discussions, we seek to share the trends and themes we see in our work and amplify impactful efforts happening in higher education industry and workforce development all across the country. We are grateful to Lumina Foundation for its past support during the initial development and launch of this podcast, and invite future sponsors of this effort, please check out our workforce's podcast website to learn more. And so with that, let's dive in. Julian Alssid: Welcome back. For a long time, the education and workforce system was tasked with preparing people for jobs, with employers often playing a more passive role. But that dynamic has shifted, with employers increasingly leading the way on workforce development. Kaitlin LeMoine: It's true, Julian employers have stepped into that gap, not just to solve their own talent gaps through internal training and upskilling initiatives, but also through broader partnership initiatives designed to expand the overall talent pipeline, to reach and educate those who may otherwise not know about those career opportunities, or those who previously faced barriers to employment or educational attainment? Julian Alssid: Yes, absolutely Kaitlin. And as more companies are seeking to innovate in this space, it's helpful to look at models that are established and continuing to respond to the evolving needs of their industries and the labor market. Our guest today is Rick LaFerriere, Lead Director of Workforce Initiatives at CVS Health. Rick leads CVS award winning programs that are designed to create opportunities for people facing barriers to employment, partnering with education, community organizations and government agencies to build bridges to meaningful careers. Rick serves as the advisor to CVS Health Abilities in Abundance programming, and has oversight of CVS, highly regarded Workforce Innovation and Talent Center concept. He also contributes his time and expertise in the workforce space to several advisory and workforce boards locally and nationally. Rick, welcome to Work Forces. Rick Laferriere: Thanks, Julian, Kaitlin, nice to see you both and glad to join you today here. This is great. Kaitlin LeMoine: Yes, thanks so much for being with us today, Rick. It's great to see you as well, and looking forward to jumping into this conversation today. So as we get started, could you please tell us a bit more about your background, your trajectory, and what led you to your current role at CVS Health? Rick Laferriere: I've been with CVS Health for over 30 years. I actually started in a local CVS Pharmacy store when I was in high school as a cashier. And so my career here started at entry level in our stores, doing customer service. And at the time for me it was, it was a job to make money, to save money to go to college. And interestingly enough, it turned out to be a lot more than that. I ended up staying with CVS throughout my time at college. I went to school at Boston College and ended up working at CVS all throughout my college career, and when I graduated from college, realizing I had five years with CVS and an opportunity to continue in the management program, I jumped at it. It was an easy transition for me from college into the workforce and to the full time workforce. And so I ended up working on our retail side of the business for about eight or nine years as a store manager in the management program, being at ground level, really working with customers and patients in our stores. And then one day, at the end of 2007 I got a tap on my shoulder asking me if I wanted to run our brand new Regional Learning Center in Boston, which was this new concept of having a training facility, co located inside of a community partner, and in this case, it's Jewish Vocational Services in Boston, where we could work together with JVS and other community organizations and government agencies and the educational community to provide individuals from the communities we serve with the opportunity to engage in workforce and education. And at the time, I'll be honest, I didn't know much about it. I didn't know much about this team. I didn't know much about the workforce or the education space. I had had all my time at retail, but it was an opportunity I couldn't pass up. So not knowing a lot about it, I said, sure, let's go for it. Let's do this. And so at the beginning of 2008 I joined the Workforce Initiatives team. Still here today, 17 plus years later, and it's pretty amazing to me to think about this journey, because I never expected to be here. I never expected that this, this was going to be my career. I never expected that I would be so invested in workforce and education and supporting people with barriers to employment. But I quickly realized after I joined the team that this was this was my calling. This is where I wanted to be. I wanted to be in this space. I had the passion, the creativity, the interest of doing it. So hopefully, my career has grown since I've been with the team. This is my fourth different position on the team. I'm now co leading the team, along with two of my colleagues. We have a team of about 40 across the country. And so when I think about the work that our team does, and I think about my own pathway here, they're very similar. We want people to engage in careers with us, because you never know where you'll end up. And I did not know that I would end up here, but I certainly am glad I did. Julian Alssid: You're the embodiment of walking the walk, I guess, or talking the talk, or whatever that term is, even though it's really, really cool. So today, then Rick, your current role, you know, what are the main workforce challenges that you're looking to solve in this role? And some of the key initiatives? Rick Laferriere: Our workforce initiative team has actually been around for 25 years, and at the core of what our team does, it's building what we call non traditional talent pipelines. Think of a traditional talent pipeline is what your talent acquisition team is doing the standard sort of recruiting approach. Our team takes a non-traditional approach, which is working with the workforce system and with education, looking at individuals who tend to be overlooked, who tend to face barriers to employment, and working with the community, working with government to build programming that helps folks attain the skills they need to come to work for us. And folks know CVS Health, mainly because of CVS Pharmacy, which are our retail stores. And of course, we've got, you know, we've got thousands of stores across the country. Retail tends to be a very high volume, high turnover type of industry. And so, you know, part of the strategy for our team and our company is, how do we find people who we've never engaged with, and have not been in the workforce, or have never considered retail for a variety of reasons, and get them interested in coming to retail. And so for us, you know, there's a bit of an existential need for talent. You know, we're constantly looking for folks for our stores, for the front part of our stores, for the pharmacy part of our stores. And you know when, when you've been doing this for as long as we've been doing it, you discover that the community has, in some way, shape or form, engaged with us at some time, but they may not know enough about our careers and our opportunities. And so there's, there's a portion of that, which is just engaging the community about what it's like to work here. But at the same time, the other part of this is being a solution to filling skills gaps and to providing people with opportunity to enter the workforce. And so for us, we are constantly hiring. We're constantly growing. You know, healthcare, even retail pharmacy is still growing. So we always need talent. And if you, if you're doing it the same way with your talent acquisition folks, or you're doing it, you know in a traditional way that others are doing it, you're gonna you're gonna run out of you're gonna run out of talent to find at some point. And so our team's job is to find new talent and find folks who have not been engaged or don't feel like they fit into the workforce or have a barrier, and so that our team is is in the community, doing that, digging deep to find folks who want to come and work for us, opening the doors to opportunity, showing them what it's like to work at CVS, and then putting someone like me in front of them, saying, I started at entry level in this company, and now Here I am. I never thought I'd be here, but here I am in a leadership role, you know, 30 plus years later, and so we really try to frame it up to the community that we want to work with them. We want to provide you with skills and training and opportunity to come and work for us and grow and eventually thrive. Kaitlin LeMoine: It strikes me as you painted the picture of how you have that conversation with an individual around like here are the opportunities available through CVS that there really is this, this customized approach to working with individual learners, but even I would imagine the community organizations themselves. I'm curious, building on that, what are some of the challenges and opportunities that you've come across as you address workforce needs, recognizing that I would imagine each area is different, and that you work across many states and regions. Rick Laferriere: Yeah, each area, region, state, is completely different, and that is the biggest challenge our team faces. Which is finding out how we best fit into workforce. You think about how workforce is set up broadly, you know, in the flow of federal or state dollars into workforce, programming and education, every state has a different priority. Every state is focused on different industries, has different populations, has different political goals as well, and all of those pieces factor into what workforce looks like. And so as a company that has a presence in all 50 states, we need to figure out how we best fit into those landscapes in each of the 50 states. What we do here in Massachusetts, which is home for me in terms of workforce, is entirely different than what it looks like in Texas, than in Florida, than in some western states. But the Northeast tends to be a bit more similar in terms of workforce and how states support workforce and the industries here. But if you're not familiar with sort of what that looks like as an employer. You're going to struggle to find your place in that workforce system. And if you come at it with a one size fits all approach, or you come at it with, you know, say, a team or an individual as an employer that is walking in with with no knowledge and no understanding of how workforce and education works in a particular region or state, you're not going to succeed. You're going to need folks who can dig deeper and understand the landscape and understand how all of that works, and also express what you're looking for as an employer. So you know, for us, it's it's challenging to understand all of those different spaces, but our team was built and designed to do just that, to understand how workforce operates. And of course, we have to do that as a big national corporation. If you're a more regional or local employer, you're able to dig in deeper where you are. And so, you know, there's certainly a little less complication for the smaller employer dealing in a smaller area, but as a big national employer, you've got to figure out everybody's systems. And so we've deployed a team that does just that, that learns and understands what what each workforce system is doing, how they're funded, how they're funding vendors or providers, what the adult ed landscape looks like, what the community college landscape looks like, the education, all of those pieces are important factors into what we do to build programming that likely is very customized, not just to us as an employer, but customized to the population, the funding, or the community partner or the provider that's doing it and really building something that works locally. Because what we found is that if we build a book and we just hand that book out to everybody and we go, here's the book, it's not going to work. It isn't going to work for a certain population. It's not going to work for a certain region, all of those pieces. So for us, customization is critical and key, and thankfully, CVS has invested in a team like ours to figure that out. And so I think that, you know, we're really well positioned as a team to do that, because we get local, because we understand, you know what, what the priorities are in each state with the federal government as well, and that helps us do our jobs even better. Julian Alssid: Well, and I imagine that understanding what those priorities are within the state and in your industry even more broadly, also requires some gazing into the crystal ball, or at least making some bets about the future of the healthcare industry and and how employers can play a role in addressing anticipated needs. Can you speak to that a little bit? I mean, how do you do that? Are you doing that? And what are you seeing in your crystal ball? Rick Laferriere: That's the really interesting part of our jobs. Our team has to be equally focused, both internally and externally. Internally in that we need to work with our internal leaders to understand what their needs are for talent and what is coming down the road. We're a healthcare company, so obviously, things are changing almost daily in the healthcare space, in terms of healthcare delivery, in terms of the types of care or the types of services we can provide the community, things such as vaccinations or primary care that are that are coming a little bit closer to outlets like ours. That's a whole new frontier for us as a company, we've traditionally been in the healthcare space, had pharmacists and pharmacy technicians and, to some degree, nurses, and now we're looking at expanding into the primary care space and more broadly, into nursing. And we are serving, you know, the Medicare population, with Medical Assistants and with doctors and so all of these things are fascinating. They make our jobs very, very interesting, and we have to have some understanding of how folks get into those roles, get licensed or get the skills they need to do those jobs. And obviously, for doctors and pharmacists, it's years of schooling for pharmacy technicians or for medical assistants or, to some degree, nurses, that doesn't require that amount of schooling or professional certification. And so we tend to kind of look in those areas there, and we'll talk to our internal folks and say, what are the positions you're looking for now, where are we going with this down the road? So we can, as a team, get in front of our community stakeholders such as education and community colleges and adult ed and say this is what's coming. So if you build training for this, it will be job driven training. It will be training that leads to a real job that is coming now, that's coming down the road, that's, that's now, that's that that will, that will sustain long into the future. And of course, in the healthcare space, like that's everybody's questions all day. How is artificial intelligence gonna impact all of this? And I'm not sure we know yet. Yeah, it's, it's, it's very interesting, but it's out there. And so these are the conversations we have to have internally, which is, tell us your talent needs, tell us where you're seeing gaps. I'll give you another quick example. Actually, internally, some of the conversations we're having with our retail leaders is around pharmacists. They see down the road a shortage of pharmacists coming because young students in high schools are not going into pharmacy schools at the rate they were going into pharmacy schools 10 years ago. And so they're already sounding the alarm and asking us and our team to get involved at the high school level exposing students to pharmacy that can be something as simple as having some classes or curriculum on pharmacy or pharmacy technician, or giving students a work based learning opportunity while they're in school, but those are some of the nuances of our work, where you wouldn't think we're recruiting pharmacists as a team from the workforce system, but we do have a place in ensuring that We're helping to cultivate talent in some way, shape or form. So all of these conversations happening internally, big challenge for our team now externally, we've got to take everything we just learned from our partners internally and go externally and go, This is what we see coming. This is what's happening, and largely the workforce, system, community providers, they'll have a sense for that, but when they hear it from the employer, that validates that thinking, it really validates the hey as a workforce system, broadly, we've got to go down this path. We've got it. We've got to get more focused on health care. You know, certainly here in New England and in Massachusetts, where I am, you know, healthcare is a big focus, because we have large, you know, regional healthcare systems that are constantly in need of talent. So largely community partners and educators know that here, but they may not know, hey, medical assisting is going to be huge in three years. Hey, you know, we're going to have a need for pharmacy technicians, because they're going to be operating, they're going to be operating closer to the, what we call the top of their license, which is, they may be doing immunizations, which is not something pharmacy techs have traditionally done, but a certain, you know, state board of pharmacy allows it. Yeah, we're going to do that. We want to notify our partners of that, because what we do as a team has a long tail. It takes time. It takes time to build programming. It takes time...
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Van Ton-Quinlivan: Scaling Allied Health Workforce Solutions
10/20/2025
Van Ton-Quinlivan: Scaling Allied Health Workforce Solutions
Van Ton-Quinlivan, CEO of Futuro Health, discusses her approach to addressing the shortage of critical allied health workers — the 65% of the healthcare workforce including medical assistants, phlebotomists, and technicians. Drawing from her experience leading California's Community College system and founding Futuro Health in 2020, Ton-Quinlivan explains how her organization has trained over 10,000 adults through a debt-free model that integrates 40 education partners with data-driven coaching and wraparound support. The conversation examines broader lessons about adult learner success, including why live coaching proved more valuable than debt-free education in scholar testimonials, how essential skills curriculum with digital badges builds confidence for adults re-entering education, and why scaling such a model required building an ecosystem rather than becoming an accredited institution. Ton-Quinlivan emphasizes that workforce development requires staying the course with aligned money, metrics, and data to embed innovation into organizational DNA. Transcript Julian Alssid: Welcome to the Work Forces Podcast. I'm Julian Alssid. Kaitlin LeMoine: And I'm Kaitlin LeMoine, and we speak with innovators who are shaping the future of work and learning. Julian Alssid: Together, we unpack the complex elements of workforce and career preparation and offer practical solutions that can be scaled and sustained. Kaitlin LeMoine: This podcast is an outgrowth of our Work Forces consulting practice through weekly discussions, we seek to share the trends and themes we see in our work and amplify impactful efforts happening in higher education industry and workforce development all across the country. We are grateful to Lumina Foundation for its past support during the initial development and launch of this podcast, and invite future sponsors of this effort. Please check out our workforces podcast website to learn more. And so with that, let's dive in. Welcome back. You know Julian, our conversations on the podcast and in our consulting work are often about tackling workforce development challenges at scale. It's challenging just to design and implement effective workforce development initiatives, let alone scale them. Julian Alssid: Absolutely Kaitlin, inevitably, these initiatives require collaboration and commitment from employers, educators, public sector leaders, community partners, and learners alike. Needless to say, this is a tall order to pull off in a single community or region, and exponentially more complex when we talk about working across regions. Kaitlin LeMoine: And our guest today has a unique perspective on how to go about making this complex work happen with a career that spans the private, public and nonprofit sectors. She's gone from leading a massive higher education system to founding a nimble, innovative startup in 2020 that has since trained and supported over 10,000 adults across the US as they completed credentials and qualifications for Allied Health careers. Her work is a powerful example of how to effectively prepare untapped talent for career success. Julian Alssid: Our guest is the legendary Van Ton-Quinlivan, chief executive officer of Futuro Health. I joke. I've known Van for many years, and she really has been a true standout in the field. And she's a nationally recognized leader in workforce development. She was formerly executive chancellor of the California Community Colleges and currently serves as an appointee to the California Health Workforce Education and Training Council. She's the author of Workforce RX and host of a podcast by the same name, promoting agile, multicultural solutions for employers, educators, and workers. Van has been named one of the top 50 women leaders in healthcare, and she holds an MBA and a master's in education policy from Stanford University. We are so excited to have you on the podcast, Van, and thanks so much for joining us. Van Ton-Quinlivan: Oh, I'm so delighted to be here, Julian and Kaitlin, to be amongst leaders who are also thinking and trying to solve big problems in the area of education and workforce development. Kaitlin LeMoine: We really appreciate you joining us for this conversation today, and look forward to kicking it off with hearing a little bit more about your background and what led you to your current work. Julian gave a bit of a bio there, but would love to hear more from you. Van Ton-Quinlivan: You know my expertise in workforce development. I got my chops doing it in the private sector with a company of 20,000 men and women, where I brought them from having no opinion in workforce development to being an industry recognized national, national best practice. And then I went into the higher education system with the California Community College driving the workforce mission where, you know, I started in sort of the worst of days where we had about 100 million made available for career technical education program, and by the time that I serve, finished my two terms, it went from 100 million to 200 million, to 700 million to over a billion dollars. And so faced a big quandary when, when I was approached by Kaiser Permanente and its partners after stepping off from the community colleges, they said, geez, for two years, we've been wrestling with how to grow the next generation of allied health workers. And allied refers to the 65% of the healthcare workforce that we know we all need those volumes in our backyard. So you know, they're the emergency medical technicians that come when we have an accident, the medical assistant that checks you in, or the x-ray tech or the lab tech. So a lot of the technicians that are trained through credentials and less than a four year degree, they are the allied health workers. And right now you know, 75% of healthcare facilities report that they have workforce pains in this area. So when Kaiser Permanente and their partners approached me, I had to look in the mirror and really just reflect on the level of risk and how scary it is to go from running a billion dollar system to now going into a startup environment, and what if it didn't work. I think we all have these qualities when we make big career decisions. Fortunately, I had friends that reminded me of my early days, which was that, you know, I'm first generation who came from Vietnam through the war and education opportunity was made available to me, and I feel very grateful for that, and and I do feel the the role that I had with the community colleges was a pay it forward role where, and this role is also paying for the opportunity that I had to others. And so with that realization, I was able to overcome my own internal self doubt, and said, you know, really, for many of us who are on the innovation side, it's like, if it's not us, then then who? And so I'm glad to be bringing a lot of the best practices learned from the private sector, the public sector and into the nonprofit sector infant or health, to see which combinations of best practices can really get the untapped adult learners to be able to get their credentials and qualifications for that first or next healthcare career. Julian Alssid: So looking at the untapped adult worker population and allied health careers, can you speak a little more to the problems that you're seeking to solve related to that population? And really, how does the Futuro Health model work. Van Ton-Quinlivan: Right now the labor market is having its adjustments with all the federal cuts. So I'm going to put that aside for the moment, because the macro, the macro context. The bigger problem is that we have an aging nation. And when you go over age 65 for example, all of us will consume more health care, which means that you're going to need more caregivers, right? And roughly, you know, 30, 40ish years ago, there were 12 working adults available for every one person over age of 65, Today it's roughly seven. And in about, you know, a little over a decade from now, it's going to be 4. So we have a shrinking adult population that is available to get in to compete for all the roles, much less the roles that are in care. So that is sort of the macro trend, and why we should be thinking about this space as well as other spaces. Now, when it comes to the individual adults themselves. You may be wondering, well, what's the problem for them? I mean, given this big need, well, we did four focus groups, including one that was in all Spanish, to learn what were the difficulties. And of course, you know, the first thing that came up was, of course, the theme of flexibility in the delivery, right? The second was, aside from cost, is the navigation, the navigation. So even if you knew you wanted to become a medical assistant, the path to go from here to there was not obvious. And so the noisiest of the options tended to be your private, proprietary option, which then led to the problem of three, which is even for those in the focus group who made it into healthcare careers at these entry level steps, they were so laden by debt, they were just stuck at the bottom rung. So we had considered all of that in the mix in order to create a path to getting credentials and qualification. Because you know, both of you know that healthcare is one industry that if you don't even have the qualifications, you can't even get the interview, right. It's highly credentialed compared to other industries. So that was sort of a good problem space to figure out how to apply the best practices of workforce development and see if we can design a way that could work for adults, or to be able to transition adults into the qualification and credentials they needed. Kaitlin LeMoine: I'm just curious to learn a little bit more. It seems like you have a heavily networked approach in this work. How do you go about building out this model with your many partners? Van Ton-Quinlivan: Workforce development is a team sport, not an individual sport. So it's like, how do you wrap the ecosystem into and fold the ecosystem in a way that, you know, everybody can do what they do best? So when we initially started, you know, many of the healthcare employers, of course, this sort of happened right at the beginning of the pandemic, their impression was, nobody wants to get into healthcare, right? People were not interested in healthcare, so we activated a set of partners and provided them tools that were heavily tied into the data science, our data science acumen to go out and scout and recruit, to take advantage of healthcare workers, to scout and recruit communities, friends and family networks. And it turned out that it was absolutely a myth that people were not interested in healthcare roles. They were interested, they just couldn't figure out how to navigate through. And so we even during the pandemic, when enrollment was declining, I know at the California Community Colleges, it was as severe as like, 20% decline in enrollment. Year upon year, we were able to hit all of our enrollment numbers to bring adults back in. So, you know, it's the gal who is the security guard in the hospital. She's one of our Scholars. So she became a Futuro Health Scholar after taking care of her mother, who had cancer, and coming to the realization that she potentially could be a caregiver and like to be in service of others. And then she found a Futuro Health flier, and we were able to get her phlebotomist credential. I know she moved from security guard into a role that was in caregiving. It's really how do you break into healthcare when you're sitting on the sidelines. Julian Alssid: Putting on your pre Futuro Health hat for a moment when you were dealing with the all the workforce development of the system, interested to hear what you're learning through the development and growth of Futuro Health that can be applied across industries. We were starting with some big numbers. So for example, in California alone, the need was for 500,000 more allied health workers. To begin looking at that, it's a design problem. We had the option with the capital we were given by the health system, we had the option of becoming an accredited institution ourselves. But we said, My goodness, how are we going to solve a 500,000 person problem by growing cohorts of 25, 25, 25, 25 right? I mean, it's a scaled dilemma. So we changed the way we looked at and I said, Well, how do we begin designing at 1000, 2000, 3000 and a time in order to begin tackling this dilemma? And so our approach Julian was, let's build the ecosystem of education partners, and now we have roughly 40 education partners whom we integrate into the student experience. And so our data science tells us, and our coaching tells us what is the best match in terms of which institution, which program, is mapped to the learner. The key, though, this is the key. The key is whether the education institution has the data exchange capability with us, because most of our partners, education partners, exchange data with us on a daily basis, right? So we know, we know where the scholar is, where we needed to intervene. And because we're shepherding their entire journey, and thanks to sponsorships from employers and state agencies, you know, they're coming out debt free as a result of going through this journey. So it's really important for us to not only provide the wraparound that is the live touch throughout their entire journey, but there's the technical education program, of course, vetted, curated based on industry demand. So we have 40 education providers. And everywhere we expand, we source, and vet and integrate new education providers. And then the last part, which is really interesting, is how we have leveraged an essential skills slash soft skill curriculum as the way to effectively onboard adults. And this is interesting itself. We had tried onboarding adults, because before we unlocked the full scholarship, which is fairly expensive to us, could they take two academic courses, like anatomy or physiology, for example. It turns out that that didn't actually predict their success so much as they're confident, building their confidence to re enter education. And so that's, that's one area we're super proud that we unlocked some some experimentation and it has worked. Kaitlin LeMoine: So building on that last example, actually, Van, I'm curious taking a step back on this. I mean you're drawing from many years in this field, and many experiences across public, private sector, given what we're seeing, you know, with respect to economic shifts and technological shifts, and you know, thinking about how we best support learning for adults, what do you believe? Or what are you seeing in some of the best practices around how we support learning in this in the context of a skills based economy where there's just so much shift and change happening. Van Ton-Quinlivan: I know you've had speakers talk about the skills based economy and the importance of credentials, and I'm just going to translate it to what we have experienced with our Futuro Health Scholars. And these are 1000s and 1000s of them, right? And what's so interesting is, even though they have gone through the Futuro Health experience debt free, they never talk about, oh, thank you, thank you so much for for you know, the that we came through debt free, they actually talk about those moments when they were going to stop, those moments they were going to quit, those moments that were really hard, and it was the live coaching that carried them through those moments of hardship. So when it comes to the question, for example, should AI replace coaching? We have so far decided that our population that we're working with, and it's 90% culturally diverse, with about roughly 50% linguistic diversity, very important for healthcare, because it begets trust. We have decided that the live coaching that is essential for the learners right now, so the AI, your applications of AI, improvement on the data can all be on the back end, but that is what the Scholars have valued way more than other things that we thought would be more important. The other thing Kaitlin that we saw was, you know, we have this unique curriculum called Human Touch Healthcare, which is focused. I mentioned that focus on the essential skills and soft skills, and they're all instructed by seasoned healthcare workers who can put it into context. And as they finish each of those modules, you know, they earn a badge, a digital badge, and the pride in which these adults take in being able to post these badges and have the acknowledgement it may be that the positive reinforcement is very critical to building the confidence of many adults who are sitting on the sidelines of learning right now. So I think in the broader context, as we think about the shrinking K 12, and where do we find and how do we tap into adults that maybe not participating or we need to upskill them, the success coaching, making the journey simpler, of course, figuring out the costs, but also, like, how do you, how do you continue to have the positive reinforcement throughout? I mean, these, these are not, these are not things that have been sufficiently designed into traditional education systems, but it helps us all. Kaitlin LeMoine: Absolutely right? Those interim milestones of success, right, that don't just come when you finish the course, but like those moments along the way that provide that continual what you're saying, positive reinforcement and the acknowledgement, like, yes, you have done this, keep going. Van Ton-Quinlivan: I can is really important. I mean, most of us waited until the earning of our degree in order to get that reinforcement, but right? I think when we're dealing with these, the non-traditional learners that are now becoming more standard, we just have to rethink how we structure their experience. Julian Alssid: Well, and you're sort of leading right into what I was thinking, which is, as we watch this world unfold economically and demographically, and in terms of education, and what that means, and the choices folks are making about how to advance their education and careers, what do you see as the as the biggest challenges, both in healthcare and even beyond, for the, you know, for the people who are this band of partners that are coming together to try to, you know, advance, help people advance their careers and grow the economy. Van Ton-Quinlivan: You know Julian, I wonder if you see that we're going to need to be more fluid with our education processes and systems because of how many different ways people are tapping into education, and yet we want them. We know that, Jeff Strohl over there, just issued a report called Falling Behind: How Skills Shortages Threaten Future Jobs, and he says that there's going to be a need to add additional 5.25 million workers with post secondary credentials, of which 4.5 million is a bachelors and above, and this is during the time period of 2024 to 2032. The bachelor's and above is getting very, very expensive these days, right? And then there's a lot of skepticism. So how we get people to partake in the education process and how to convert it over to the degree pathway, is super important. So you know, the prior learning credit, all the transcripting that your guests are talking about. The hard barriers between education and who provides it is likely going to soften over the future. Kaitlin LeMoine: Well, and yeah, you said, it also makes me think about even, like, the technical systems behind how this happens, right? Like, how do we make sure that we have the back end software and ability to say, Okay? Like, how do we make this credential portable? How do we know that we know what it means here will mean the same thing somewhere else, right? I mean, there's just so much at play there around making, I guess, the...
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Audrey Patenaude: Navigating Early Career Hiring in the AI Era
10/07/2025
Audrey Patenaude: Navigating Early Career Hiring in the AI Era
Audrey Patenaude, CEO of RippleMatch, discusses the rapidly evolving landscape of early career recruiting in the age of AI and how the RippleMatch recruitment automation platform is transforming the hiring process for both employers and emerging talent. Drawing from her background scaling AI companies, Patenaude explores the challenging reality documented in recent research: fewer entry-level roles are available due to AI automation, while demand rises for "entry plus" candidates with verified AI fluency and strong power skills like critical thinking, adaptability, and communication. She explains how RippleMatch addresses the application overload problem—where candidates submit over 300 applications to land one role—by using skills-based matching to connect qualified candidates with employers, saving hiring teams 70% of resume review time while giving candidates a 20x better chance of getting interviews. The conversation delves into practical strategies for recent graduates to build portfolios of AI projects and document real-world experience, and for employers to create "AI centers of excellence" within their recruiting teams. Patenaude also discusses the shifting definition of entry-level work, the rising importance of interview readiness and communication skills, and why career preparation increasingly needs to begin in middle school to help students navigate this new paradigm where AI skills are becoming as fundamental as internet literacy. Transcript Julian Alssid: Welcome to the Work Forces Podcast. I'm Julian Alssid. Kaitlin LeMoine: And I'm Kaitlin LeMoine, and we speak with innovators who are shaping the future of work and learning. Julian Alssid: Together, we unpack the complex elements of workforce and career preparation and offer practical solutions that can be scaled and sustained. Kaitlin LeMoine: This podcast is an outgrowth of our Work Forces consulting practice. Through weekly discussions, we seek to share the trends and themes we see in our work and amplify impactful efforts happening in the higher education industry and workforce development all across the country. We are grateful to Lumina Foundation for its past support during the initial development and launch of this podcast, and invite future sponsors of this effort, please check out our Work Forces podcast website to learn more. And so with that, let's dive in. At the intersection of work and learning right now, there's a confluence of challenges for employers and employees alike at all stages of the application and hiring process. In particular, we're seeing an increasing impact on early career professionals, as documented in the recent Burning Glass Institute report, "No Country for New Grads", and the "Stanford Digital Economy Lab paper, "Canaries in the Coal Mine: Six Facts About the Recent Employment Effects of Artificial Intelligence". There are fewer jobs available for early career graduates due to the impact of generative AI, which can accomplish many of the job activities previously done by early career professionals. Julian Alssid: Absolutely Kaitlin. And alongside this complexity, AI has also shifted how prospective employees look for and apply for new roles, and how companies go about recruiting and hiring talent. Just last season, we talked with Sean VanDerziel, President and CEO of the National Association of Colleges and Employers, about how employers are using AI for screening resumes, but also how the use of AI by job seekers to generate thousands of resumes is leading some employers to return to in-campus recruiting to find, you know, quote, legitimate candidates. Kaitlin LeMoine: And then there's also the impact of AI on the very tech platforms and tools that HR talent development and career services teams use to support their own recruitment and hiring efforts. Needless to say, we're facing a complex set of circumstances, and it seems like just the right moment to speak with someone working on this set of challenges every day. Julian Alssid: Which brings us to today's guest, Audrey Patenaude is the CEO of RippleMatch, a recruitment automation platform that seeks to transform how emerging talent connects with opportunity in the age of AI before joining RippleMatch, Audrey spent much of her career in the AI space and helped teams scale through rapid growth and innovation. At RippleMatch, she's focused on building a platform that levels the playing field for candidates while helping employers discover and hire the next generation of AI skilled leaders. Welcome to Work Forces. Audrey. Audrey Patenaude: Yes, thank you. Julian Kaitlin, thank you for having me today. Excited to be here. Kaitlin LeMoine: We're excited to have you with us, Audrey. So, as we kick off today, can you please tell us a bit more about your background and what led you to your role at RippleMatch? Audrey Patenaude: I'll start with a little bit about my journey and why I really connected to RippleMatch's vision. I'm originally from Quebec City, a very charming but very cold part of Canada. And over there, I studied business and marketing in college, but when I got out of school, there were not a lot of marketing jobs in Quebec City, especially this was before remote work, and there were not a lot of tech companies with offices over there. So after college, I had to work some marketing jobs for small local companies for a while, until this one job opened at an AI company that had offices both in Canada and the US. And I remember at the time, all my friends whom I graduated from college with were all fighting for this one exciting job that we had in our, you know, in our backyard, and I got lucky enough to get it, and I think that this gave me some perspective on how the right opportunity can really change the course of your life, if you're lucky enough to, you know, be at the right place, at The right time and get noticed. So years later, I moved to New York, and that AI company grew a lot, and we went through an IPO, and I got very lucky along the way to be supported by amazing leaders and mentors and learn in that fast growing environment with a lot of innovation, and then got the chance to move to the city that I love and now consider home. So when came time for my next chapter, I met with the team at RippleMatch, and I immediately saw how, you know, to me, this platform felt like a way to push some of that luck forward, to help other candidates like me land jobs that could change their lives and open up so many doors for them, so it's really a motivating mission for me to work on every day and get to see the real life impact of it for candidates in the world and employers alike. Julian Alssid: Audrey, speak to us a bit about what are the problems that RippleMatch is trying to solve for those employers and candidates and universities alike. Audrey Patenaude: You touched on it a little bit earlier. But RippleMatch is the marketplace for AI, skilled emerging talent. What that means, or where that talent is, is folks early in their career that know how to leverage AI across all types of roles, and that can be really these amazing contributors that make a huge difference inside companies, and part of the reason why is because Gen Z is leading the use of AI, especially bringing their own tools to school and and work. So the problem that we are solving for employers right now we're seeing employers starting to think very differently about hiring and team design with AI, they are thinking a lot about how to design their teams in a way that will leverage AI intelligence with human intelligence working alongside each other, and what is the best way to build a team that's going to be efficient with the best tools and skills set up, and that's across, you know, go to market teams and technical teams. And in that design of the new, you know, modern team across different function, entry level is no longer seen as a training ground where employers on board a lot of super junior green talent and give them very easy but laborious tasks as they learn the ropes of the job, because, as you mentioned before, now, tasks like data entry, data enrichment and cleaning, or very basic support tickets can be or are being automated by AI. So we're seeing that instead of junior specialists, employers are looking for AI enabled generalists, for example, years ago or recently, if you were going to hire a junior marketer, you would very often look for a profile of a junior professional with very deep expertise or specialization in one part of marketing. So for example, you're looking for a HubSpot expert. Now that profile is changing to looking for someone that has amazing power skills, so someone who's really resourceful, has critical thinking, is going to be very adaptable and very collaborative and with AI and being able to leverage AI tools that deep specialization in one tool is not as critical or as valuable anymore, because you can use AI to figure things out, to build workflows amongst multiple tools, and you're going to innovate much faster and be able to contribute a lot more than that previous profile of a very kind of niche set of expertise. So yeah, employers are looking for these candidates with AI skills who can contribute and innovate quickly, and at the same time, power skills are becoming even more important because AI is automating some of these hard skills. So the net here for employers, and where the challenge comes is that the bar for entry level talent is rising, but at the same time, inbound volume and noise is up more than ever with AI, as you were saying, allowing candidates to send out a lot of resumes or to use ChatGPT to produce a cover letter or resume. The challenge that we help with is helping employers find top talent that's ready for today's workforce by connecting them with candidates that have verified AI skills, power skills, and technical skills. So basically getting them straight to the right talent with the right assessed skills, so that they can spend more time reviewing and interviewing and qualifying these top candidates. Kaitlin LeMoine: So what does it look like to do that? Because, like you said, this is such a complex moment where employers are inundated with applications like, how does your platform work to help verify the skills that job seekers have? Audrey Patenaude: The way it works is that we replace that application overload and traditional resumes that you would get on a traditional job board with skills-based matching so employers enter the criteria that they're looking for in terms of not just background in education, but also the skills that they want for this role, in terms of AI skills and AI fluency, but also power skills and technical skills, and they get matched with candidates who have verified these skills through courses and assessments. So we know that they know how to use these tools, that they are good communicators, because they've taken these assessments that they can showcase on their profile, and they apply to the jobs that they are qualified for through our platform, which is really for them, a guided experience to find their path in this market and to build and showcase the skills that will get them hired. So it's a little bit like the dating app that you need to find the job in this AI-disrupted market that just cuts out all of the noise on both sides. Julian Alssid: Given that then, as we kind of move to this more skills focused marketplace, how, what are some of the successes, and then, what are some of the challenges that you're, you know, you're experiencing with both, again, both the employers and we're interested also in from the employee side as well. Audrey Patenaude: Obviously, it's a tough market for students. AI is automating entry level work, as you touched on, and I think there's generally a more conservative and cautious ethos around hiring in most industries. So it's a bit of an overwhelming job market for them, where the major that you studied in may not perfectly translate into the kind of jobs that will be available to them today and tomorrow, and with all that uncertainty, the reflex is obviously to send out as many job applications as possible, and our latest survey data shows that candidates were submitting over 300 applications on traditional job platforms in order to land one role. So that's obviously a lot of work and overwhelming for candidates, but also for employers. So what we're doing is really helping them build that skills and personality profile, when they can really showcase what they can do and who they are, instead of being one more resume in a sea of thousands and thousands. Kaitlin LeMoine: And how about on the employer side? What are some of the successes and challenges you're seeing there, as you know, build out this platform? Audrey Patenaude: For employers, I think one of the challenges is on leveraging AI in their own internal workflow can sometimes be a bit of a challenge depending on the industry or the size of the company. You know, in our case, AI doesn't impact matching or decision making from employers on on candidates, so it's never an issue when teams actually look into but it's something where just the word AI can sometimes make some IT teams a little nervous, or it can make also recruiters or TA professional nervous in terms of how much is it going to change my work? Do I want it to change? And we really encourage recruiters to see AI as a co-pilot that helps them to do more of that busy work that can just be sped up and automated, but that they are in the driver's seat and they are making the decision it's just allowing them to spend more quality time with the best candidates. But in terms of successes, it's been really amazing to see how transformative this better way of connecting employers and candidates can be on both sides, because, as I was saying, our you know, matching connects only qualified matches on both sides together. We're able to save our employer partners around 70% of the time that we didn't normally spend on resume review, because there's none of the you know, unqualified noise coming in. It's only basically a pipeline of qualified candidates. So that's been pretty transformative, especially in today's market where ta teams are slimmer, there's less budget, there's less resources. So that time saving has been really, really huge, and for candidates, we're giving them a 20 times better chance of getting an interview than if they were to submit an application on traditional job boards, which is also really encouraging and much better for them. It's really great to hear from candidates who write to us after they got a job to thank us for how transformative this was for them in the job search, and how reassuring it was to finally hear back from companies instead of being ghosted. Julian Alssid: Well, it's, it's so interesting though, Audrey, because you're, you're sort of helping then to cut down on the noise and improve efficiency in this process. And but if what you said earlier rings true and is an ongoing pattern this, and we've been seeing this for years, although with AI now, the acceleration is just massive. Is the rising skill demand for entry level? And I'm almost wondering, like, is there going to be an entry level anymore? Like, what is, you know? Is there really, you know? So you're making this more efficient. You're helping employers, in a way, hire fewer people, but with much more precision. Is this a blip, or is this, you know, where? Where do you see this coming? A little prognosticating. Audrey Patenaude: To what I was saying earlier. I think that the profile of what it means to be entry level talent and the demand for it is going to change. We're calling this new type of entry level roles, entry plus, where you're not, you know, expected to come in, and, as I said, like, take a long time to ramp and contribute, because you have to learn very basic skills or do your junior work for a while. You're expected to come in, and, you know, be able to use AI to ramp up really fast, and to start innovating really fast, and to learn new tools really fast. So I think that we're looking at a profile where there may be a little less roles in some industries, but that these contributors make meaningful impact really quickly, and that with the folks that will be able to use AI the best, it's going to be pretty competitive for that talent. And we're already seeing some headlines about the salaries going up for this kind of young talent. That's really AI savvy. So I do think that there's going to be a revived demand for entry level with these right AI skills, and it's also going to be potentially pretty lucrative roles for these candidates too. Kaitlin LeMoine: Well, yeah, it makes me wonder too. This is kind of transitioning a little bit to the higher ed side, but I'm just curious. Like, what do you see that meaning for, like, your higher ed partners right around like, what does this mean for we're talking about the skill needs going up. So what does it mean for career services professionals and those helping rising college graduates with this process of not only finding a job but also building that skill set that you're talking about to be entry plus. Audrey Patenaude: Of course, universities and career services are, you know, working as best as they can to get their students to be job ready and market ready. I think the challenge is that what it means today is evolving very, very fast. It had already been transforming after COVID with the rise of remote work, the way that candidates would connect with opportunity was already a little bit different. It was already getting harder. I think now it is accelerating and getting even harder, because that skill bar is rising and is also changing really quickly. So we see a lot of university partners coming to us to help bridge that gap in the job search, whether for an internship or for a first job out of school, to help alleviate some of the stress and how overwhelming the job search process can be, and the guide directing them to a place where they can receive matches that they are qualified for, which gives them a higher level of confidence when they apply to these roles, that they are a right fit for them, and that they will have a higher odd of getting an interview, but then also identifying the skills that they might want to build, learn, and showcase in order to increase their odds of landing a job. So for example, it may be good for me to take a class in prompt engineering online and be able to showcase to employers that I've taken that but it's also some things as simple as interview readiness. Interview readiness is a big challenge that we hear from a lot of our partners, even before you know the rise of AI and even before the bar got higher on the skills, on the technical skill side, just knowing which candidates is ready for an interview and will have the right communication skill to succeed and to succeed in your interview process was already a big challenge. So that's both kinds of learning journeys that we want to help provide candidates to build these skills and then showcase them, and then, you know, be able to translate that into recruiter sourcing. So yeah, we have universities coming to us and just basically wanting to get us in front of their students to help ease that job search process right after they graduate. Julian Alssid: Well, and we've had numerous discussions at this point about how this process is being pushed down to younger and younger and younger students. Just thinking back to last season, Jean Eddy from American Student Assistance, talked with us about middle school is where it really has to all begin. It's too late, if it's later than that, and I'm guess, I'm wondering is it, is it too early to say or from where you sit, are you seeing that this greater emphasis on building work experience, building those skills, building the interview and...
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Isaac Agbeshie-Noye: Bridging the Skills-First Gap
09/23/2025
Isaac Agbeshie-Noye: Bridging the Skills-First Gap
Isaac Agbeshie-Noye, Program Director for Widening Pathways to Work at the Society for Human Resource Management (SHRM) Foundation, addresses the critical gap between employers' intent to adopt skills-first hiring practices and actual implementation. Drawing from his background in higher education and workforce development, Agbeshie-Noye discusses the newly launched Center for a Skills First Future, designed specifically to support small and medium-sized businesses that employ half of all Americans but often lack the resources of large corporations to navigate hiring transformation. He explores the striking disconnect where 90% of employers acknowledge the benefits of skills-first hiring, yet only 15% have actively implemented it, and explains how the Center's many resources—including a Skills Action Planner, resource library, skills-first credential, and vendor database—helps employers determine an achievable place to start rather than boiling the ocean. The conversation addresses frustrations from both job seekers navigating an AI-enhanced application landscape, and employers struggling to distinguish genuine skills from enhanced resumes, while emphasizing that skills-first approaches complement rather than replace traditional degrees by treating skills as the primary currency for understanding what all credentials represent. Transcript Julian Alssid: Welcome to the Work Forces Podcast. I'm Julian Alssid. Kaitlin LeMoine: And I'm Kaitlin LeMoine, and we speak with innovators who are shaping the future of work and learning. Julian Alssid: Together, we unpack the complex elements of workforce and career preparation and offer practical solutions that can be scaled and sustained. Kaitlin LeMoine: This podcast is an outgrowth of our Work Forces consulting practice. Through weekly discussions, we seek to share the trends and themes we see in our work and amplify impactful efforts happening in higher education industry and workforce development all across the country. We are grateful to Lumina Foundation for its past support during the initial development and launch of this podcast, and invite future sponsors of this effort. Please check out our Work Forces podcast website to learn more. And so with that, let's dive in. Kaitlin LeMoine: So our conversations on the podcast and in our consulting practice recently, increasingly revolve around the movement to a skills first approach to educating, hiring and developing talent. Julian Alssid: Absolutely Kaitlin and and today we're turning our attention to the employer side of of that equation. And this is a critical conversation for all employers, but it's particularly critical for small and medium sized companies, where half of all Americans work. These smaller companies often lack the dedicated resources of large corporations to measure and track skills development, and it makes it challenging for them to adapt to new hiring models. Kaitlin LeMoine: That's right. And while skills are all the buzz, there can be a real gap between intent and action. According to the Society for Human Resource Management, or SHRM Foundation, 90% of employers acknowledge the benefits of skills-first hiring, but only 15% have actively implemented it. That's a striking gap, and many HR leaders and executives recognize its strategic value, but struggle to implement significant changes. Julian Alssid: Our guest today is uniquely positioned to address this challenge with a particular focus on helping small and medium sized employers unlock a wider range of qualified candidates by valuing a candidate's abilities and understanding how skills relate to traditional credentials. Kaitlin LeMoine: Isaac Agbeshie-Noye is Program Director for Widening Pathways to Work at the SHRM Foundation. Over the last decade, he's served in a variety of leadership roles across nonprofit organizations and higher education institutions, and focused on aligning strategy, culture, and operations to create lasting transformation. He's also been an instructor for undergraduate and doctoral student seminars, exploring his passion for easing student transitions through their educational experiences. Isaac earned his bachelor's degree in sociology from the University of Virginia, as well as masters and doctoral degrees in higher education administration from George Washington University. Isaac, welcome to this podcast. We're so excited to have you on Work Forces with us today. Isaac Agbeshie-Noye: Yes, thank you so much for having me. I'm excited to be here. Julian Alssid: Yes, and thank you for joining us, Isaac. We've talked a little bit about your background. Well, tell us a bit more and what led you to your role at the SHRM Foundation. Isaac Agbeshie-Noye: I got here in part because I'm always very fascinated and very passionate about education and how people go about learning things that then activates them to do things. And so working in higher education, and encountering all of these college students that came in at 18, 19, 20, 21 years old with some understanding of the things that they thought that they were going to do for the rest of their lives, that was just really fascinating to me. And then seeing the evolution over time where their mind changed around that thing, that was also fascinating. I ended up getting into workforce development and talent cultivation, because I realized that it wasn't just enough to understand what they were learning when they were on the college campus, I was really intrigued by then what did they do? Like, where did they go? Where did they end up? How did they navigate their careers after they left that environment? And so that kind of helped me think more broadly, beyond getting people to degree attainment to getting them actually to career mobility and to ultimately, a productive citizenry, which is what, which is what the mission of higher education is actually designed to be. And so I got connected to the SHRM Foundation in part because I just have been really fascinated with, how do we get employers into the game even further to understand their role and to help them as they are trying to tap into this workforce that is filled with skills, but yet we're not matching people in ways that are quick, even though we can see some of the ways in which there might be alignment. And so this position is is actually structured to help try and address that, that gap. Kaitlin LeMoine: As we jump into this conversation, we'd love to learn a little bit more about the SHRM Foundation and your role in widening pathways to work. Isaac Agbeshie-Noye: The SHRM Foundation is the 501(c)(3) nonprofit arm of the Society for Human Resource Management. And the Society for Human Resource Management is the largest network of HR professionals in the world. And so we have 340,000 members that are then deployed and activated into all types of businesses around the world. And so we believe that we can leverage HR and leverage those professionals to advance social good, which is how the foundation came to be. And so in the foundation, we focus on three bodies of work: strengthening the HR field, because we don't often think about who's going to come behind the current HR folks, and who is actually going to take on the new challenges related to HR, and how are we positioning those folks to be successful in that, and so we have a body of work that's focused there. We have a body of work that's focused on thriving together, and how are we creating cultures of care within employers and employer environments. And so how are we focusing on things like the social determinants of health, about or caregiving or workplace mental health, the types of things that make people feel seen and safe at work in order to continue to be there. And then the third part is my area, which is the widening pathways to work area which is focused on skills first, and the things that we do to help employers adopt skills first approaches. How do we test things, try things out so that we are reducing the risk as best we can for people to adopt initiatives that are going to help talent be seen better. And then the other part of that is untapped pools of talent. So who are we not seeing and how can we create opportunities to see them better and also to get them fully activated in this world of work. And so the SHRM Foundation does all of that, and our goal is to try and figure out where are, what's the messaging, what are the levers, where, who are the partners that we need to bring together to actually make this ecosystem work for job seekers and employers at the same time. Julian Alssid: Tell us a bit more about your area, Widening Pathways to Work. And in particular, we're really interested in hearing about the new Center for a Skills First Future. Isaac Agbeshie-Noye: What's so exciting about that portfolio is that we're really trying to figure out what are the things that are getting in the way, and how can we start to solution around those things? And so we know that there are 7.3 million open jobs, and we are highly dissatisfied with that, because it's not because there's a shortage of talent. There's just a shortage of alignment. There isn't those connections and those systems that we're leveraging to make talent visible so that employers can make hiring decisions that make the most sense for them are, to some degree working, and in a lot of ways not working, and that is resulting in a lot of job seekers being incredibly frustrated, and employers also being dissatisfied with what they're getting. And in an age of AI, where we do have some functions that are being shifted based on technology, and we have job seekers leveraging AI to try and make themselves look more visible and competitive, we're in this environment where we have to be having this conversation about how we get these different sides to see each other. So that is what's exciting about the Widening Pathways work, because we are going to have to be considerate of all the things that are happening socially if we're going to make these pathways wider for everybody to walk through them. The Center for a Skills First Future we just launched that in June. We're really excited about that, because this is our try to help meet employers where they are, and that type of work is critical. You've mentioned before about our specific focus on small and mid sized businesses. This is intentional, because for large and enterprise businesses where you are well resourced to try a lot of things. And, you know, figuratively, throw a lot of spaghetti at the wall. You can try a lot of things to see what works. And then you can invest, or make investments based on what you think is working. And you have teams to support that you have, quite frankly, you have teams. To try a lot of different things. For our small and mid sized businesses, they don't, do not have that luxury as much. It's usually a team of one or a team of two that are driving all of the initiatives related to human capital in the organization. And so you can't, you know, it's hard to be thinking about managing benefits and also recruitment, and also employee grievances, and also onboarding and off boarding. And so what we were trying to do is to figure out, how can we put a series of tools at someone's fingertips and let them choose their own adventure? And so that's what the Center really tries to do. So we have four major components of it, where we are trying to take resources and make them most accessible. We have a Skills Action Planner, so any organization can go in and just knowing what's going on at the organization, you can take this assessment, which will give you a readout of your current state and where you are in terms of adoption of skills first practices, and also it maps out for you your desired state based on what you said that you would like to be. And we just then curate a list of resources to help you get from point A to point B. And so we try to remind people, this is this is the time to be ambitious, but we don't have to boil the ocean. So you get overwhelmed when you think about all of the skills first things that you could do. We try to normalize for folks, but it's okay to just do one thing. Just, let's just try that one thing and see how that goes. So whether it is removing degree credentials from a job description, or maybe it's leaning into behavior based hiring, whatever you choose that makes the most sense for where your organization is, we'll give you some tools to at least try and get that momentum going. We have a Skills First credential. It's a one of a kind credential. So for folks that are trying to learn more about what it means to navigate this space and how to navigate some of the barriers you may be running into in your organization, there's a space for you to learn and deepen your skill set so you can help bring others in your organization along, which is really exciting. We have a resource library where we are amassing all of the things scholarly and practically, that have been sourced around this movement, and having it all in one place so that you can search for it however you need to and get access to it. And then for folks that are further along than know this is what I want to do. I just need a vendor, or I need a partner to help me. We have a vendor database where people can go in and just access those professional services that they need to get something off the ground to move closer to implementation. And so we created this hub with the support of 14 coalition partners to really figure out, What do employers need, and how can we make those tools most accessible to them? We're acknowledging we are operating in this space because we have the connections to employers. We're not the only people operating in this space, and everybody has a different lane that they're working in some folks focus on talent. Some folks are focusing on employers. Some are focused on community based organizations. Some are focused on policy. But we all have to be in a conversation together about this, because the ripple effect impact all of us, and so it's great to also have brought together this coalition to be having these conversations together, and so we're excited about the center, and we're excited about how it can hopefully help accelerate adoption for as many people as possible, regardless of how your organization is structured or where you are on your skills first journey. Kaitlin LeMoine: So Isaac, given that you know, this was developed with a coalition of employers, really at the table to help inform. I'm curious to hear a little bit more. What are some of the most pressing challenges you're hearing from employers? Like, what's the perspective of, I know you said, you know, maybe just start with one thing, right? Like, maybe it's hard to take on this whole skills-first bucket of work. But I'm just curious to know, you know, what are some of the perspectives you're hearing from employers and from job seekers in this new, relatively new skills first environment that we're operating in? Isaac Agbeshie-Noye: I'll start with the job seekers. I think that the process is frustrating. This is a tough job market to be in right now, and I say that not only is someone working to widen some of those pathways, but also as somebody that had to navigate that job market. And so I'm three months into this role, and so I also was on the job seeking side, trying to figure out how I get my skills recognized and validated, and this is a hard environment to do that, particularly. When folks are also leveraging AI to make enhancements to their candidate materials, like your resume, your cover letter. And so we're finding that a lot of things because of that look the same. So it becomes really hard for employers to distinguish who has done what. And so that is a very frustrating experience for job seekers to be in, where you want to be actively participating in work, but because of the scale and the size of the job market right now, it's just really hard to stand out on the employer side. We hear a lot about there's a lot of intent, as you mentioned earlier. You know 90% of employers want to be leaning into these skills first approaches. Only 15% have actually done things that's because operationalizing a big idea is hard, and change is harder, especially when you have developed a tradition around certain types of practices that you feel like makes it easier. Like before, a degree was a signifier for you that somebody had some skill or proficiency that you wanted, and you could then filter people out by that. Now we're seeing degrees are not the only place that are telling those stories. Experiences tell us that, skills tell us that, competencies tell us that. And so how do we create an environment where employers can see all of that and then know what to do with it, because it's just so much, and in that environment, not all things operate the same or are created equal? Not all credentials are the same, not all degrees are created equal. So for a hiring manager that's just trying to understand, can this person do what I need? There are so many things to consider to try and get to that answer, and we're then finding people are going through that process of getting through that to that answer, and finding out that that you know, there's more upskilling that's needed, or there are additional supports that are needed in order for that employee to contribute and actively participate. So there's just so many things going on here for employers and for job seekers at the same time, and because there are very few mechanisms for those populations, those audiences, to be talking to each other, that's just harboring more frustration right with the process, because people are not really communicating, and also people are existing with all of these challenges that seem insurmountable to try to fix. So what we're trying to do, at least on the employer side, is make it more digestible, to make it step by step, for us to start thinking about, oh, well, have you considered this? Let's just try this first, and let's see what we're learning from this. Let's understand what success looks like when it comes to this. And one other thing that I'd like to add is, I do want to emphasize, we have chartered this Center for a Skills First Future, and sometimes there's some confusion around what Skills First actually means. And so we are trying to figure out that many different ways that people can be visible to employers and employers can recognize and validate certain skills, but we're not saying that this is a complete replacement for the bachelor's degree, and so we're not working in competition with degrees. We're trying to figure out and get clearer about the ways that degrees also convey a certain set of skills. And so we're trying to treat skills as the primary currency here for us to even understand what degrees tell us when they come across or when applications come in. And so that is one misconception that I'm hoping to clarify, is that we are not trying to campaign against degrees. We're not saying degrees are not valuable. They obviously have a lot of value, but the underlying thing around a degree, a degree is supposed to signify skills and abilities and competencies, and so we're trying to figure out, how do we get closer to that, so that whether you have a degree or not, you can still be seen and can actively participate in this job market and contribute to the workforce. Kaitlin LeMoine: Right. And so that everyone is communicating their skills regardless of what degree or credential has been attained. It's about this is the important thing for everyone. Yep. A lot of sense, yep. Julian Alssid: Right. And it brings us back to that interplay between work and learning and education. And again, it's complicated. We can't separate these all out artificially. Isaac Agbeshie-Noye: Yeah, they're all in...
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Joe E. Ross: Pioneering the Apprenticeship Degree Model
09/09/2025
Joe E. Ross: Pioneering the Apprenticeship Degree Model
Joe E. Ross, President, CEO and co-founder of Reach University and the National Center for the Apprenticeship Degree, discusses Reach University's "apprenticeship degree" model that turns jobs into degrees rather than the traditional approach of obtaining a job post-graduation. The conversation explores Reach's approach to addressing the "hiding in plain sight" talent crisis by serving the 40-50 million Americans in the workforce without degrees who wish they had them. Ross outlines Reach's three ABCs framework: Affordability, Based in the workplace from day one to graduation, and Credit for learning at work. He shares compelling outcomes from Reach's growth from 67 candidates to over 3,000 across eight states, with 70% graduation rates for Pell-eligible students compared to the typical 40-50%. Ross also discusses the National Center for the Apprenticeship Degree's work with 50 institutions across a dozen states, and offers practical steps for listeners interested in getting involved with apprenticeship degrees. Transcript Julian Alssid: Welcome to the Work Forces Podcast. I'm Julian Alssid. Kaitlin LeMoine: And I'm Kaitlin LeMoine, and we speak with innovators who are shaping the future of work and learning. Julian Alssid: Together, we unpack the complex elements of workforce and career preparation and offer practical solutions that can be scaled and sustained. Kaitlin LeMoine: This podcast is an outgrowth of our Work Forces consulting practice. Through weekly discussions, we seek to share the trends and themes we see in our work and amplify impactful efforts happening in higher education, industry and workforce development all across the country. We are grateful to Lumina Foundation for its past support during the initial development and launch of this podcast, and invite future sponsors of this effort. Please check out our Work Forces podcast website to learn more. And so with that, let's dive in. Julian Alssid: Welcome back today. We're diving deep into a topic that's central to our work, the evolution of higher education to better serve the modern workforce. Kaitlin LeMoine: Yes, we are Julian. We've talked a lot about the need for new models, especially those that bridge the gap between learning and earning. So many of our conversations have pointed to the power of apprenticeships and skills based pathways, including our past podcast discussions with Bob Lehrman and John Colborn on the evolution of apprenticeships and the opportunities they afford learners and employers alike. Julian Alssid: That's right. Kaitlan and as we discussed with Bob and John, the apprenticeship movement has been gaining momentum in recent years. Just in August 2025 the Trump administration issued a talent strategy report that calls for the expansion of Federal Registered Apprenticeships, including promoting stronger connections to universities and colleges. Our guest today is at the forefront of this movement, pioneering a groundbreaking model that's reshaping what a degree can look like, the apprenticeship degree. In fact, the apprenticeship degree was called out in the Feds report as a key part of the new apprenticeship initiative. And so today, we'll be discussing this and more with Joe E Ross, President, CEO and co founder of Reach University and the National Center for the apprenticeship degree. Kaitlin LeMoine: Before building Reach, Joe served as president of the statewide association for county school boards in California, and served for 10 years as a locally elected school board member. He previously served as general counsel to a venture studio in several technology startups, and as a deputy district attorney, he acted as sole counsel in numerous hearings and jury trials. Earlier in his career, he served eight years on active duty in the US Navy. The son of a US Postal Service labor custodian, Joe went on to earn degrees from Yale and Stanford Law School. And Joe, we're excited to welcome you to the podcast with us today. Thanks so much for joining us here. Joe E. Ross: Kaitlin, Julian, it's such a pleasure to be here. Thanks for having me. Julian Alssid: Yes, indeed, it is a pleasure to have you, and if you will, you know, we've said a little bit about your background, but we'd love to hear you tell us a little bit more, and the story of what led you to co found Reach. Joe E. Ross: Yeah, sure. So first off, I must offer the disclaimer, I never imagined that I would be a college president growing up. That's not the thing that was on my bucket list, among many things, but I do think I, very early on, acquired a conviction that education is the way you build your own future, I think of it as the pen that you need to have in your hand to write your own future. As you mentioned, my biological father worked for the post office as a labor custodian (that means janitor), and my mom died kind of young, and he was injured in an accident. And I was raised starting at age four by my aunt and uncle, and I think in moving into that new household, in my little head, I must have noticed that these adults had careers and they had degrees and they had power over their lives. And I think in my little head, I thought, I want all three of those things, and I got it into my head that education was my way to those things. That's the only thing I can point to as an explanation for why I was such a nerd in school and so motivated in school, and also why later, after trying all sorts of other things with that pen to my hand, I was a Navy officer, I was a prosecutor, I was an ed tech entrepreneur, I always tacked back to education as where my passion was, and so about 15 years ago, I started running an after school program that sought to turn after school staff into teachers, and that was essentially a job embedded, apprenticeship based program, the first of its kind. And I saw this, this potential of combining work with higher ed. And so fast forward to the fall of 2020, Reach University launched as it's in its current form as an accredited nonprofit institution with a very simple mission, which is to turn jobs into degrees, as you said in the intro, as opposed the other way around. And that model is called the apprenticeship degree. Now. Kaitlin LeMoine: So you know. Reach University has a unique B2B2C model, right where you partner directly with employers, but you have this dual customer approach of working with employers but also serving the needs of your learners. Can we dive in a little bit there? I mean, this is a complex model to build. How have you gone about it? Joe E. Ross: Yeah, so it's, it's interesting, it's complex, but it also creates some simplicity as well. If you're running an apprenticeship degree, by definition, you are running a model that's based in the workplace from day one to the day of graduation. In fact, I'll back up. I probably should share for everybody what we mean by apprenticeship degree, and then that will lead lead to the answer. So an apprenticeship degree is defined by elements associated with apprenticeship going back centuries. This is not something that the Department of Labor defined 50 years ago or 10 years ago or this summer. It's something that goes back to a tradition that is very long standing, and apprenticeships had three defining elements that I think of as the ABCs that apply to an apprenticeship degree, a stands for Affordability for the learner, and in this day and age, that means without student debt, apprentices have been asked for their sweat, not for their debt, right? So at Reach University, we made this commitment the beginning, that no one would be would pay out of pocket. No learner would pay out of pocket more than $75 a month for full time enrollment in a full time work embedded degree program that's a for affordability. B stands for Based in the workplace from day one to the day of graduation or the day of completion. An apprenticeship degree starts with a paid job. It ends, or is designed to end, with a better paid job. And C stands for Credit for work, Credit for learning at work. Kind of has a double meaning. Learning at work means literally learning at work, but it also means learning put to work, theory, meaning practice. C also stands for Credential of value. This is not a compromise. It is still a Bachelor of Arts or a Master of Arts or an Associate of Arts. AA does not stand for Apprenticeship Arts Degree. It stands for Associate of Arts degree. So with that definition in mind, let me go back to B based in the workplace. The reason we think of this as a B2B2C model, as opposed to a, B2C model is because you can't run an apprenticeship or an apprenticeship degree without close engagement with employers and for the university. What that means, among many things, is that instead of coming to the university looking for graduates, the employer comes to the university at the front end, bringing the students, you work with employers, and then the employers engage their incumbent workforce, or they actually recruit new employees into jobs that come with degrees. And so what you end up seeing is a lot of partnership work with employers, which is kind of shoe leather and handshaking and presence on the ground, as opposed to buying Google AdWords and competing in the internet for advertising for consumers. And as a result of that, a B2B2C model is much more affordable to execute, and that savings gets passed on to the apprentices, to the learners, in the form of much lower tuition, much more affordability. Julian Alssid: So Joe, your model, in a sense, is helping to solve labor shortages. And want to hear you talk about, like, who these who these learners are, and what kinds of jobs you're preparing them for. This notion that there's like, this talent, and you know the term like hiding in hiding in plain sight, yeah, is really what you're about, yeah. Joe E. Ross: Well, we started five years ago with our teachers college, and we were focused on the teacher shortage. And by any estimate, there's many as 30 to 50,000 structural vacancies, to as much as 300,000 structural vacancies in teaching. And what we discovered is that in the very same buildings where principals were looking for teachers where there were classrooms without permanent staff, in those same buildings, there were a lot of human beings doing other jobs that didn't require degrees. They were working as classroom aides, as library aides, they were in the lunchroom, they were in the office, driving the bus. They were janitors, like my father and each of these individuals share, typically, the same story. At some point, they had to choose that job instead of a degree to take care of their family. For example, we did some research, because this was anecdotal, and this was something we were seeing on the ground, but we did some research. You know, if you look the Bureau of Labor Statistics, there's about 1.3 to 1.5 million classroom aids in this country, if there's only 50,000 teacher shortages, you only need a fraction of those aids, a fraction of those aides to get upskilled, earn a degree, to just end a teacher shortage. That type of ratio plays out in other high demand industries. If you look at nursing, there's a nursing shortage, but there's also a tremendous number of people working in hospitals as patient care assistants, or certified nursing assistants and many other roles who, if we actually treated those people as the talent we need and give them the opportunity to rise up, we would end these labor shortages and we create this upward mobility that we want this country to stand for. We bring it to life in places, particularly rural places that are education deserts. So that's basically the story here we have, on one hand, estimates suggest about 10 million high demand labor shortages in high demand industries, and on the other hand, there's 40 to 50 million people working in the workforce who do not have a degree, but surveys indicate they wish they did have a degree. And if we can actually move higher ed to think about that population, those 50 million people already in the workforce or about to enter the workforce, as the market for higher ed, as opposed to the 3 million graduating from high school every year, or maybe in addition to the 3 million who are graduating from high school every year, it's such a win, win. Higher ed has a new mission, 50 million people who were left out get brought back in, and we address labor shortages in high demand fields, particularly in rural, remote places where often the only answer is to do a grow your own effort, as opposed to recruiting effort. Kaitlin LeMoine: Can you tell us a little bit, Joe about how this model works like a practical level. So you said, right? You know, people learners should be, you know, receiving credit for the work that they're doing on the job. But what does it look like to implement this? Joe E. Ross: I think the apprenticeship degree is always met with this kind of, oh, this sounds too good to be true. Somebody can have a paid job. Half the learning in their degree program comes from that paid job. The other half comes from seminars held at night or on the weekends or asynchronous instruction. There's no student debt. There's a better paid job waiting at the end of it. Employers are feeling labor shortages, individuals are getting upward economic mobility, and people are kind of like, well, that's genius. Too good to be true. How do you do you do it? Just like you just asked, here are some things that need to go into the design approach. First, employers to higher education providers need to work really closely together to make sure that the degree design meets the needs of the employer. In many ways, the employer is the customer here. They should be actually, in many cases, paying for the program instead of the learner, right? So you have to work with the employers to design now and teaching that's fairly straightforward, because every state knows what teachers need to know, and it's pretty common across state borders what teachers need to know. Similarly, in other professions like a nursing or radiological technician or other allied health fields, the standards of what you need to know in those professions as well now, but you still need to work with employers to make sure that the program design works. And then from there, the employers are also your key partners. I said earlier in recruiting their incumbent workforce, or their new hires into these pathways with the promise that their jobs are not just job type jobs, but jobs that turn into degrees and then give you upward mobility after completion of a certain set period of time. In terms of the actual design of the model, part of what's required here is to rethink some practices that are often taken as rules or laws or regulations, but are just habits In higher education. And I'll give you one example. There's something called the Carnegie Unit that is about the ratio of seat time to homework time, essentially. And this is seen as a barrier to work embedded degree programs, because, oh my gosh, we had to have this much seat time, and then people have to, have to do this, this much homework, and then they have to work 40 hours a week. How do you fit it all in? And so one of the things that we did from the beginning said, Look, you can reimagine the Carnegie Unit as being a function of seat time and work time as opposed to seat time and homework time, right? So if you can combine seat time with assignments on the job, or sense making around what you're doing on the job instead of mindless, irrelevant problem sets or whatever the case may be busy work. But actually make work work, the work instead of busy work, the work. You can actually create an environment where for a learner, and this is the objective for a worker, one plus one in this case, equals one. It should feel like their job and their higher education pathway are the same thing. That's the key element of efficiency here that needs to go into the design. And then from there, there's things in a higher education credential that people think, Well, how could you do that in the workplace? For example, you need to know English or critical thinking or history or writing, or all these things that are referred to as general education? Well, it turns out you can carefully design the liberal arts component of almost any professional or occupational degree to be relevant to that occupation. We're designing a program right now in behavioral health, for example. And to get an associate or bachelor's degree, you need something that looks like writing and reading and literature for to be a degree, but you can choose something that's relevant. So we have a semester we're designing where there's two tracks of learning. One is psychology, one, two and three, which is with one faculty member, and then there's practice on the job. And the other track is literature, but it's going to be the literature of mental illness, right? And it's going to feel really integrated with the psychology track, and it's going to be relevant to the job. So that's the kind of curricular design work that I think the apprenticeship degree needs to entail. Because at the end of the day, these are working adults, and we know what working adults need, and we sometimes are really good at giving them what they need at the graduate level, but now we have to give them what they need at the undergraduate level to make sure the associate degree in the bachelor's degree truly is working better. Julian Alssid: It's all about that context, really, and just baking it in all around. So then, given this integration and approach like, what are the metrics that you're using to track and what's your impact today? Joe E. Ross: Yeah, we started with 67 candidates in our pilot cohort in the Louisiana and Arkansas Deltas. That was five years ago. We'll have well over 3,000 candidates across almost 500 school districts in eight states as of this fall. So the program is growing. That's one metric that's important. And in some places, school districts and parishes are reporting the sentiment that their teacher shortage seems to be going away, which is great news, and in part, that's because of programs like, like Reach University, and that's exciting to see when, when do you get to, like, actually solve a major social problem as a nonprofit leader in your life, it's always something on the horizon. We're actually seeing shortages go away, which is amazing. Notably, the population we're serving are overwhelmingly Pell eligible. And so Pell eligibility, I think, is a good proxy for economic need. And any given semester, roughly 70 to 75% of our enrollment is Pell eligible, 37 to 39 year old folks with families and full time jobs, and so they're eligible for Pell. And the typical graduation rate at the undergraduate level for someone who is Pell eligible is a shocking 40 to 50%. In our program. It's on track to be 70% for all our almost all of our cohorts. And I think actually, we have a tailwind in this case, because the number one reason that people who are Pell eligible drop out is economics. They need a job, but in an apprenticeship degree, they already have a job. So you've removed one of the major barriers to completion of a college degree when you pair the degree with a paid job from beginning to end. And so it's not surprising that we're seeing much better completion rates. We also look at retention, you know, the you know, retention is kind of along the way. The most challenging year for a Pell eligible first generation student is the first year of college. And so you really, you can't lose 30 or 40% in year one and have anything close to a 70% graduation rate, obviously, four years later, five years later, and and so we tracked that first year persistence really carefully, and we constantly, actually...
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Kaitlin and Julian on Work Forces: Past and Future
08/26/2025
Kaitlin and Julian on Work Forces: Past and Future
Kaitlin LeMoine and Julian Alssid turn the microphone on themselves to kick off Season 5 of the Work Forces podcast. As they approach their 50th episode, the co-hosts reflect on their journey and the dramatic shifts they've witnessed at the intersection of work and learning. Kaitlin and Julian discuss the evolution of workforce development from a fringe topic to a central national priority, highlighting how this shift has been influenced by economic, political, and technological changes. They unpack the rise of a skills-based ecosystem, noting how the traditional "once and done" model of education has become obsolete in an era of rapid technological change, particularly with the widespread adoption of generative AI. Drawing on their consulting work and insights from past guests, the co-hosts emphasize the imperative of cross-sector collaboration and human-centered design in bridging the gap between education and industry. They stress that experiential learning is now the new currency of opportunity, and human connection remains the "secret sauce" for success. Kaitlin and Julian offer practical advice for leaders navigating this period of unprecedented change. They encourage listeners to embrace agility and partnership, keep their eye on the prize of helping individuals thrive, and anchor their work in human purpose to build a more equitable and prosperous future for all. Transcript Julian Alssid: Welcome to the workforces Podcast. I'm Julian Alssid. Kaitlin LeMoine: And I'm Kaitlin LeMoine, and we speak with innovators who are shaping the future of work and learning. Julian Alssid: Together, we unpack the complex elements of workforce and career preparation and offer practical solutions that can be scaled and sustained. Kaitlin LeMoine: This podcast is an outgrowth of our Work Forces consulting practice. Through weekly discussions, we seek to share the trends and themes we see in our work and amplify impactful efforts happening in higher education, industry, and workforce development all across the country. We are grateful to Lumina Foundation for its past support during the initial development and launch of this podcast, and invite future sponsors of this effort. Please check out our Work Forces podcast website to learn more. And so with that, let's dive in. Kaitlin LeMoine: So Julian, we're at an exciting point here, kicking off Season Five. Can't believe it. We're rapidly coming up on 50 episodes and two years of hosting this podcast. Thanks to all of our guests and listeners who have supported this work so far, and we're excited to be in this new season, and it felt like a good moment to welcome everyone and take this moment to share our own perspectives. It feels like a good time to flip the mic back on ourselves and share a bit of our own thinking at this evolving and fast moving intersection of work and learning. Julian Alssid: Yes, it indeed is a milestone moment for us, Kaitlin, as we embark on Season Five here, and it's been such a pleasure working with you, consulting with you, and podcasting with you. And also, I'm so grateful to our guests and our audience for making this possible. It's just as as we had hoped from the beginning, as this kind of grew out of our consulting, it really has just become kind of a natural corollary and feedback loop for us to keep learning and sharing and learning and sharing. So let's learn and share with one another today. Kaitlin LeMoine: Absolutely well, the feeling is mutual. Thank you for your partnership over the last few years in this work and in our consulting efforts. And yeah, excited to dive in with this conversation today. So I guess to kick us off, Julian, you know, given your many years in this space and in the last few years of our work together, you know, how are you seeing the intersection of work and learning, changing and evolving. What are you paying attention to? What are you thinking about? Julian Alssid: I keep going back to the same point when I really think back to my like, 35 years in the field. You know when I started this, and even when we met over a decade ago, this was still fringe work. It was people interested in workforce development were basically the people who were working on workforce development in one form or another, and it has gone from front to center, I think, driven mostly by economic imperative, you know, by rising skill demands and gaps between learners and employers and everyone trying to find a better way to come together. It's been enforced, and I think, fed further by policy. So for example, I mean, I guess I will say it's and have been saying this for a long time too. It's really been kind of an apple pie topic that cuts across the political spectrum, and so, you know, and we're and we're even seeing that with all the change going on now. The Biden administration, previous administration, made significant investments in workforce development, and that helped to accelerate and focus attention across industry and government and education. And just recently, the Trump administration released its new talent strategy report, which kind of lays out a plan for a more streamlined system. Now, of course, these approaches are very different, and I think along with that is this kind of great sense of uncertainty, like, well, where will these new policies drive us and so it's, it's kind of like we're all dressed up and not exactly sure where to go. Kaitlin LeMoine: Right. Well, and everything's moving so quickly too, right? Like it's it's the policy, it's also the tech space. It's also how industries are shifting very, very quickly, and just trying to keep pace and kind of keep all of these different changes on our radar screens while still moving the work forward feels like a key challenge. Julian Alssid: Yeah. So, yes, absolutely. I mean, and there's just so many pieces of this to unpack. I mean, what do you see as, like, what is, what is rising to the surface for you? Kaitlin LeMoine: Yeah? I mean, I think that one of the things that strikes me that feels distinct from other points, I guess, in my work in this field over the many years is that I feel like there's so much happening for employers and industry, for educators, whether in K 12 or in higher ed, and for learners, kind of all at the same time. And maybe it's partially that, you know, the focus of my work has shifted to over the years, like from being very focused on implementing one program, or one initiative, or thinking about tactically, how to go about doing things, versus also now operating at a level of thinking about how does this broader landscape impact work with different types of clients, but it just feels like there's so much movement for employers as they think about how to hire and train and recruit the next generation of employees. Then there's the next generation of learners, and how we are educating those individuals, whether they're from some of our podcast conversations, right, like in middle school, or whether they're in higher ed or adult learners who are looking to advance further. And then for the actual people you know, for those learners, as they're looking for jobs and looking to advance. It just feels like there's so much movement, so much at stake, and it's like this moment of de siloing wherever possible, because we're all like, there's this recognition that employers can't do this work without educators. Educators can't do this work without employers, and we need this feedback loop in order to really try to all advance in this complex intersection of work and learning together, that's I feel like, really top of mind for me at this moment. Julian Alssid: Yeah, it is. It is so complex. And I like to try to think about like, well, what are the kind of, what are the threads that run through it all? Kind of try to bring some clarity and and one that that keeps popping to mind for me is this whole idea of the the rise of a skills based ecosystem that, you know, I think that you know that there was so much talk for years about, you know, kind of the knowledge based economy and, and I do think we are, on some level, shifting to more of a skills based economy. And I was even just thinking back to like interviews we did. I remember Matt Siegelman from Burning Glass Institute talked about the study that Burning Glass had done back in, I think '22 that showed that at that point, the average job had seen 30% of its skills replaced in five years. And so this whole idea of kind of the one and done model of education becomes obsolete. And by the way, that 37% figure came before the widespread adoption of generative AI. Kaitlin LeMoine: Yeah. So what does it mean now? Right? Julian Alssid: Yeah, exactly. Are we moving now? Right? It was bad enough then, and you could see the gaps, and you could see people employers complaining about not getting the skills, and people frustrated with their education, saying they're not getting what they need. And yes, but I think what we're seeing now is employers are increasingly prioritizing skills and competencies. Their still certainly their leadership has degrees, but it's definitely moving to the fore. Kaitlin LeMoine: No, I think that's, I think that's right. I mean, I think one thing that stuck out to me from our past, from our episodes this past season, kind of building on that, you know, were a couple of different conversations just around this integration of, like, career advice, support, and transparency, kind of across this ecosystem and certainly being built more into the educational experience. Like you know, whether it was our conversation with Nisha Taylor, with NACE regarding both the career competencies and making the skills and competencies that learners are acquiring clear and transparent, like how to talk about those things with employers, how to make it ring true to employers. And then even thinking back to Scott Carlson and Ned Laff with their Hacking College book, and thinking about how do we really make the experiential learning more embedded through, like, a field of study type approach in the higher ed experience, right? Like, so it's like, I think what you're saying about this knowledge based economy and this becoming more front and center there, I think is more and more great work being done around, how do we bridge that gap and make the language we're using clear across employers and learning institutions, so that it's like this is what people know and can do, and learners know how to communicate it. And actually the transparency thread is has been woven into our consulting work as well. We support clients in researching and determining learning pathways that lead to career progression in order to make opportunities clearer for both learners and employees, who may themselves be at very different stages of their career journeys. So, you know, I guess really, so much of it's about being explicit, about naming the skills being acquired in a way that's useful for learners, especially at this moment with AI where it can be really challenging to make oneself distinct. And really, so much of it's about being able to communicate your knowledge, your experience and what you know and can do. Julian Alssid: Exactly, and it's really leading so many of the institutions to adapt their curriculum and embrace this sort of new model of education that focuses on skills and practical applications. So how do you do that, while maintaining, you know, academic standards to the degree that you feel those. Are important, you know, we know those academic skills, or are the skills that carry people longest in their careers and and I think part of what also adds to this complexity is this proliferation of new tools to kind of inform and support the entire learning and advising and hiring cycle, right? So it's a blizzard of information and activity that all revolves around this kind of rise of a sort of skills based ecosystem and redefining the role of education. Kaitlin LeMoine: No, I think that that's right. I mean, and it does make me think about, like, what does all of this mean for us? Like, in our consulting work too, right? Like, because, because, I think for all of us, I mean, every time we're on this podcast, right, there's this element of like, how can we be forces in this work? How do we apply this work to our own our own lives, our own efforts? It feels like it's like we're talking about these big picture challenges and and areas of opportunity and like, as as we're talking it's making me think, well, as we go about our own work, I think one of the things we're trying to do is both drive projects and initiatives forward in collaboration with our clients, while also being mindful and aware of this landscape and remaining kind of up to date on what's happening, what's current, right? And like, trying to decipher, okay, what do we need to pay immediate attention to, and what's like a thread to be monitoring, but like, we keep the work going, right, right? Like, that feels like a piece of the work that's just now inherent in everything we take on. As far as, like, one idea for, like, practical implementation of all this learning. It's just part of how we approach it now. Julian Alssid: No, for sure, and it's interesting because I think it calls for sort of a level of discipline on our part, as well as our clients or partners, that didn't exist previously. It's just, again, trying to keep the focus on what we are trying to accomplish? So for example, and that just keeps bringing me back to like, what are the what are the things that matter, no matter how much is changing that you need to keep the handle on and and one that comes to mind for me, and I look back at last season and thinking about our consulting, as well as is the imperative of partnerships and the need for cross sector collaboration. And you know, the idea that no one partner can do this alone is way, way too complex. Kaitlin LeMoine: Absolutely, and that's where so much of where consulting work takes place, as the external partner that helps develop and facilitate these partnerships to ensure stakeholder alignment and a continuous feedback loop that allows different partners to bring their unique vanity points and perspectives to the table, while also being mindful and aware of the broader landscape in which we're all operating and collaborating and working together can help to unearth where there might otherwise be hiccups, like you were thinking of it this way. Oh, I was thinking of it that way. How can we come together before we design a solution? Julian Alssid: Exactly, I'm thinking about the work we're doing now with a community college in Massachusetts and its partners around manufacturing. It really is about what each partner brings to the table that's unique. In this case, the educators educate, the employers run businesses. There's a lot of nuance there in the perspectives, and how do you communicate them, and how do you get everyone on the same page so they can, right up front, have the basis for a solid partnership that's going to ultimately make a difference? Kaitlin LeMoine: Yeah, exactly. I mean, this is difficult and complicated work. Julian Alssid: Yeah, and it's often why we're brought in as consultants. So given all of that, what can people do to be forces at this rapid time of change and transition? Kaitlin LeMoine: And maybe this sounds too optimistic, but there's a part of me that's like, let's continue to drive good work forward, right? There's so many amazing programs, initiatives like that are really focused on helping learners succeed, meet their next milestone, their next goal, whether it's workforce development, a training program, you know, four year degree, whatever it is, right? Like, there's so many great initiatives moving like, I think at moments of, like, a lot of change in transition. It's almost like, don't stop, like, there's the need to slow down and reevaluate and be aware of what's going on. But also, there's just so much need that, like the work will continue in some way, shape or form. And I think, like I'd said earlier, the other thing is really to remain as much as possible, like remaining current, right on, on these shifts, maybe without it letting without any one new bit of information totally driving you in a totally new direction. Because I think it can feel like oh, wait a minute, this is the new the newest information on AI, what do we do with this? And it's like, well, how does that new information fit within the existing strategy you have in place? How can you learn from that information or incorporate it without maybe it upending? Like, you know, whatever your strategy or plan is, those are a couple things that stick out to me. Julian Alssid: Yeah, it's. Funny as you say that, what popped in my mind is, you know, technology alone does not solve the workforce challenges totally, at least not yet. But in fact, I think for me, two points that kind of come to the fore in terms of what we can do to be forces in this time of change as well. One is the main one is just to kind of keep our eye on the prize, because it is, as you say, so easy to get caught up in the swirl or chase down rabbit holes and and at the core, you know, the intersection of work and learning is about helping individuals thrive and growing the economy. It's kind of this dual customer focus, as we like to say, and so I think therefore our clients, our customers, our audience and us all need to embrace agility and partnership. We really need to adopt this mindset of continuous learning and adaptability, because this things are changing, and they're gonna keep changing and changing. I mean, you know, we're like again, we've barely begun to factor in AI to what the impact on work, and if you look at the amount of money being invested, it's going to have an impact, no matter what the reports today are telling us. Kaitlin LeMoine: The impacts are already happening, right? Julian Alssid: They're already happening, but they're going to be way more massive than anyone will probably realizes or wants to admit. You know, I think back to the conversation we had even a couple of seasons ago with Pardis Madhavi, who's, you know, former university president who talked with us in Season Three about how leaders of institutions have to embrace a high tolerance for failure and a culture of nimbleness and, you know, in order to remain relevant, and I think that's something we all need to do. And then the other is just not to lose sight of the fact that this all has to be anchored, this work has to be anchored in human purpose. I mean, that's the secret sauce, right? Kaitlin LeMoine: Yeah, no, I think one of the things that sticks out now more than ever, and it's come up in a couple of our podcast conversations with, I think, with Matt Siegelman and Julia Freeland Fisher just around, like the human connection piece, right? Like so much of, I think what's happening now is re emphasizing the importance of human skills and like, how do we make sure those connections remain and that we continue to build skills like problem solving and critical thinking and communication, right, like not let go of those skills as as these other technological advancements, as you said, right, continue to push us in new in kind of unchartered directions. Kaitlin LeMoine: It was on Jean Eddie this, this quote kept popping out at me as I went back to listen to our earlier podcasts in preparation for this discussion, is Jean Eddy from American Student Assistance said that the goal is to help students find a path that makes their hearts sing. And I think ultimately we've just got to keep that human focus. Kaitlin LeMoine: Yep, yep. I think that's right. Julian Alssid: So with that said, you know, here we are ready to launch our next set of interviews, where we will certainly continue to unpack and delve into these...
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Work Forces Rewind: Scott Carlson and Ned Laff on Hacking College
08/12/2025
Work Forces Rewind: Scott Carlson and Ned Laff on Hacking College
Scott Carlson and Ned Laff, authors of "Hacking College," discuss how to craft a higher education experience that intentionally links student learning to future work and career success. They emphasize the necessity of a proactive and personalized approach to higher education, tapping into students' passions and hidden intellectualism. Carlson and Laff champion a field of study approach, empowering students to actively design their undergraduate degrees, unearth hidden job markets, and leverage faculty expertise. They underscore the significance of cultural and social capital, urging institutions to adapt and support this student-centric model. The conversation illuminates the ways that higher education administrators and faculty, and students themselves, can personalize the learning experience to ensure higher ed graduates are well-equipped to navigate diverse career opportunities. Transcript Julian Alssid: Welcome to Work Forces. I'm Julian Alssid. Kaitlin LeMoine: And I'm Kaitlin LeMoine, and we speak with the innovators who shape the future of work and learning. Julian Alssid: Together, we unpack the complex elements of workforce and career preparation and offer practical solutions that can be scaled and sustained. Kaitlin LeMoine: Work Forces is supported by Lumina Foundation. Lumina is an independent, private foundation in Indianapolis that is committed to making opportunities for learning beyond high school available to all. Let's dive in. Happy summer all. We're back with one more rewind episode featuring Scott Carlson and Ned Laff. And in this conversation, we dive deep into their new book Hacking College. Amongst many topics, we discuss a framework to approach college and the college experience with a personalized focus on future careers and long-term goals. We hope you enjoy this conversation and look forward to kicking off our next season in our next episode. So Julian, I've noticed a real shift in our conversations lately, both with clients and on the podcast, we seem to be delving deeper into the complexities of the school-to-work transition, especially for young adults and for working adults. Julian Alssid: It's true. Kaitlin, and it really highlights the increasing complexity of that transition. The job market is constantly evolving, and it can be tough for students to figure out where they fit in, especially with so many opportunities hidden from public view. Kaitlin LeMoine: Yeah, exactly. I mean, it's a tall order for educators and institutions too. For example, faculty are being asked to wear many hats and skills like career advising can sometimes feel separate from their day to day roles and require new sets of tools and related training. Julian Alssid: Right? It's not just about helping students find a job, but about guiding them through a process of self discovery, exploration and network building and helping them understand their own interests and strengths and how those connect to real world opportunities. Kaitlin LeMoine: And that's where I think our guests today, Scott Carlson and Ned Laff, have some really valuable insights. They've literally written the book on this. It's called "Hacking College", and we're talking to them on the book's release date. Julian Alssid: Yes, and congratulations, guys. The book offers a framework for faculty and staff to help students take a more proactive and personalized approach to their college experience with a real focus on future careers and life goals. Kaitlin LeMoine: Though we'll ask Scott and Ned, to give their own background, Scott's a Senior Writer at The Chronicle of Higher Education, where he's been writing about the trends shaping higher education for over 25 years. As his LinkedIn profile states, he writes about where education is headed, how it serves or doesn't serve students and the public, and how the sector can stay relevant and resilient. Julian Alssid: And Ned has over 35 years of experience in higher ed, helping students design successful undergraduate experiences. He's held leadership roles at numerous colleges and universities focused on academic advising, curriculum development and student engagement. Kaitlin LeMoine: Scott and Ned, welcome to Work Forces. Congratulations on the publication of this book, and we're excited to dive in with you today to learn more about Hacking College. Ned Laff: Thank you so much. Scott Carlson: Thanks for having us on. Julian Alssid: So to get the conversation started, love to hear a bit more about your respective backgrounds and how you came together to write this book. Scott Carlson: Well, as Kaitlin had said, I was at The Chronicle for about 25 years. I've you know, in the years leading up to the pandemic, I was writing a lot about inequality and the path from college to work. I wrote a couple of Chronicle reports about the future of work and how students wind up getting jobs. And in writing some of this, these reports, and writing some of these stories, the follow up stories in The Chronicle, I had been getting a lot of notes from one Ned Laff who had been contacting me and had been working in this area for some time. And this is, in fact, how we got to know each other and got to meet each other, because Ned was just writing me over and over again about, oh, there's a better way. There's a better way to do this. I'll let him take the story from there. Ned Laff: Yeah, I have the work that I had been doing in higher ed. It's hard to call it something like advising. It's, it's in this middle, middle ground. I got into this when I was a grad student at the University of Illinois in Urbana, where I was working in a program called Individual Plans of Study, where students could design their own academic major, provided it couldn't be done in any of the colleges at the University of Illinois Urbana. And what we began to find out working is that students would be coming in and we would help them figure out how they could do essentially, the heart of an individual plan of study, but underneath the rubric of a major. And that started to raise questions in my mind about what is the nature of a college curriculum from the eyes of a student. What is the relationship of a college curriculum to the world of work? If there is this giant thing called the hidden job market, which is not advertised in career services, you don't see it on, you don't see it on. Indeed. You don't see it anywhere. And what does this mean in terms of student engagement, and how students can tap what they're genuinely interested in, what we call hidden intellectualism, and how they actually better engage learning and and the university they're at. And I would send Scott these. I'm like, probably about 100 emails a week, just nagging them. I got something here. I got something here. Just give me five minutes, though. Kaitlin LeMoine: You share about this in this, in the book, a little bit. We'd love to hear about how the book title came to be. And can you share a bit about the major challenges you hope to tackle when writing this book? Scott Carlson: Well, I think when I was writing some of that stuff for the Chronicle about the path from college to work, I was sort of following along the kind of narrative that everyone else sort of follows. And it's, you know, it's sort of about skills. What do you do with liberal arts education? How do you get students to land internships and all of that. And you know, really, one of the points that we that we make in hacking college is that a lot of that just sort of comes about by luck. For a lot of students, they just sort of happen to run into the right person who shows them how to play the game, or they come from a lot of social and cultural capital that sort of paves the way to where they want to go. And part of what we're trying to do with hacking college is to describe, kind of, the principles of how people wind up creating valuable undergraduate degrees. We're kind of looking at the whole issue of what is the empty college degree. You know, the empty college degree being sort of this degree that is a quote, unquote useful major, and then a bunch of other stuff in the degree that doesn't really knit together. And a lot of students graduate with that kind of degree. You know, we think this is like a huge part of what drives the national conversation about underemployment and of the value of college right now, and that emptiness being sort of the main problem there. And so with Hacking College, we're trying to tackle this, this question like, how do you actually get to something that's valuable? The term hacking comes from the notion that colleges sort of set up a bunch of rules around, you know, how do you get through? How do you, what do you major in? How do you, how do you fill up the rest of the undergraduate degree? And we're using the metaphor of hacking we're talking about like, how do you, how do you use these different structures that you find in college and then knit them together in a conscious way? How do you, how do you create opportunities and create a program that plays off the strengths that you already bring to college? This is a big part of the hacking metaphor there, coming out of the work of Bruce Schneier, who talks about how hacking is across society. People hack the tax code. People hack regulations, government regulations. People hack their lives in all sorts of ways. And of course, the wealthy hack college in hiring expensive college consultants, in, you know, in lining up opportunities for their children in all sorts of ways. How can we do this for students who don't bring these kinds of resources to the undergraduate experience? Julian Alssid: So Ned, you so in the book, I think you used the term earlier, you described approaching this undergraduate experience as a field of study. Ned Laff: Yes. Julian Alssid: What does that mean? What exactly do you mean? And how does approaching college with that lens impact their learner experience? Ned Laff: The interesting thing about using field of study is, I asked students once, can you tell me the difference between your college faculty and your high school faculty, and they couldn't and it was a wonderful experience, because what it meant was basically 90% of what faculty have to offer, what a university has to offer, is invisible. So when you look at faculty, faculty are field of study specialists. They aren't just, I'm a professor of English or I'm a professor of biology, they are I'm a professor of environmental biology, and I'm looking at the migration patterns of whales. And that is looking at it is defining a problem which we call in the book wicked problems, which demand a multi disciplinary approach. And how you approach those wicked problems depends on how you define it. So it's not unusual to hear students come out and say, I just graduated with my degree. I'm at Northwestern University. I actually heard this the other day at the gym. I'm at Northwestern University. I'm graduating, and I have no idea what I'm doing with my degree. I don't know how it adds up, because no one had ever asked them a question like this. I'm going to go into accounting. I have no idea what. Talking about, can you explain that to me? And as soon as you ask for that explanation, whole bunches of things open up. And among those things that open up are all this possibility in what Scott and I call the hidden job market. So the other part of field of study is that it brings an outward looking perspective into how students think inwardly about the college. When they begin to do this, what they realize is there's three basic components to an undergraduate education. When you look at most colleges, right, Gen Ed, the major, and what are you going to do with the rest of the hours, which is almost a third or more of your hours? Sometimes it could add up to 50 hours, because some courses in the gen ed count for the major. Well, when you look at a degree audit, it's except for the basic required courses. It's blank spaces to be filled in. How you fill that in is either going to lead to a profound field, the study for you, where you're using the that thing that you're interested in, your hidden, what we call hidden intellectualism, to guide the way you start looking at the learning opportunities on campus and filling these pieces in so they integrate and they fit together. So Gen Ed links with elective courses, which link with how you select what you want to take from this thing called the major department, and how you begin to identify faculty by their fields of specialty. So for instance, take psychology. There's developmental psychologists, there's social psychologists, there are psychologists that focus on Labor and Industrial Relations. There are cognitive psychologists, neuroscientists, all of those, if, depending on how you're going to look at the problem you want to study, all of those represent a different way of organizing the learning opportunities on campus. How you organize those learning opportunities that starts building out a field of study. But the other thing that's important in doing this is finding out who is doing that thing you want to do, because all of a sudden you walk out into the world, right? And this world, by the way, could be faculty doing their research and they're discovering things that, wow, if I was to do it all over again, I would be doing this for my course selection instead of that, because this is what I'm encountering right now, and students can bring that information back into how they begin to design what their curriculum or their course of study is, and that's the difference. It's an active design process, not from an advisor or a faculty member talking about degree requirements, but from a student designing the pieces of their curriculum. Julian Alssid: Just going back for a minute. I mean, this makes all the great sense and and I think anyone you know, so many of us can hearken back to that faculty or administrator that kind of helped us help the lights go off. But I guess I do wonder, and I don't know, maybe I'll love this one to you, Scott, this requires a bit of a mind shift for a lot of faculty. I mean, I don't think you know, they signed on to be the Career Counselor, the social networking expert, along with the, you know, the content expert and expert instructor. So A, what's your view about that? And B, how are we going to get from here to where you guys think we need to go? Scott Carlson: I mean, I think what you're asking is sort of what I'm picking up from what you're asking is, you know, an implement, an implementation sort of factor here, like, how does this actually happen on a college campus, right? And so kind of part, you know, what we envision, you know, we wrote Hacking College in this very conversational style that allows anyone to read it and anyone to sort of adopt the practices there. Because, you know, on one hand, people you know, they sort of asked us, do you want after this, this book came out of a story that I wrote for The Chronicle called the crusade against terrible advising, right? And after the article came out, you know, Johns Hopkins Press and others had asked, Do you want to turn this into a book? Do you want to write a book about advising? And we really didn't want to write a book about advising. We wanted to write about these structures that cause students to fall off the path. And in writing the book, we wanted to write it in this accessible style, because we sort of felt that everyone on a campus should be able to read this and then work with the students that they, in particular, have in their orbit. That's how you're going to sort of increase, increase the touches that that students have with people on campus, right? We can't just sort of lay this all on advisors, or lay this all on faculty advisors, and in part of the part of implementing this, part of what we're getting at is that what the colleges can do is they can, they can sort of adopt this as a mind frame at the colleges where everyone is sort of speaking this field of study, language and instructing students how to how to go about this, how to talk to people, how to find these contacts that are going to help instruct them in how to design their undergraduate degree. Now, these can be faculty members, but we're hopeful that when the students do encounter the faculty members, when they are working with them. They're working with the faculty members that share this kind of passion, or this hidden intellectualism, or this area of interest, this place where they're going to have a head start on the conversation, because they're already into what the faculty are talking about. And those faculty members, members then will be motivated to work with those students, because those students are in the area that they're interested in. I mean, a big part of the social capital that we talk about in hacking college comes through cultural capital. You know, the conversation about social capital is everywhere in higher ed right now. It's about who you know, right? But a big point that we're making in hacking college is that what drives the social capital is the cultural capital. It's the stuff that you're bringing as a person to the other person in making this link across interests, hidden intellectualism, obsessions, that kind of thing. So this is, I think, a big key to sort of making these relationships work. Ned Laff: And another part of it is this is very much the student is agent. So there's a student in doing this, they're creating networks. So it's not like I'm I am dependent on a faculty member. There could be three or four faculty members. There could be somebody in student affairs that they talk to, they go out on what we call this research, investigative inquiry, and start talking to people in the areas that they're interested in, and they're bringing information back there. Then they can sit, perhaps with somebody in an advising office and say, Here, I've got all this information. Now, how do I put the how do these pieces start to come together so that I can graduate under the requirements of a major, right? But design the pieces so it gets me to where I want to go. So it's very much a process of students building out their social capital, building out their cultural capital, learning how to network with people on campus and off campus, right? These are all the skills that everyone says people need, right? But they're doing this to design their undergraduate field of study. So in the process of doing their undergraduate education, all these mystical skills of oral communication and teamwork and stuff, they're all coming together, because what's driving it is the students' hidden intellectualism and their vocational purpose. Kaitlin LeMoine: Yeah, I mean, I really appreciated in the in the book, when you know you had a line, it's not where you go to college, but how you do college that matters. That really stuck out to me. And I think, you know, as as we're thinking about the the social and cultural capital, and you know, one point in the book, you raise this concept of the hidden jobs, and you take it in a slightly different direction than I think we sometimes hear it talked about like it's not just about what's posted on LinkedIn as a job opportunity or not, but really that other definition around like pulling back the curtain of the world of work and helping learners really get an understanding of what are all the different job opportunities and career paths available in what might be. I mean, you, I love the scenario of working in a museum, right, like, but would love to, would love just to hear you talk a little bit more about that and what that, you know, what going down that path, through those hidden jobs, can really unearth for learners. Ned Laff: You know, this is where students, all of a sudden, everything changes for them. I sent this...
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Work Forces Rewind: NACE's Shawn VanDerziel on Colleges & Employers
07/29/2025
Work Forces Rewind: NACE's Shawn VanDerziel on Colleges & Employers
Shawn VanDerziel, President and CEO of the , kicks off a special three-part series exploring the crucial intersection of higher education and industry. Drawing on his extensive experience in HR and recruitment, VanDerziel discusses how the evolving economy is reshaping entry-level hiring practices and the growing importance of skills-based recruitment. He highlights the challenges facing both employers and higher education institutions, including the “language gap” that prevents students from effectively articulating their skills to employers. VanDerziel also examines how AI is transforming both recruitment strategies and career services, drawing employers back to campus recruiting while offering new opportunities for understaffed career offices. The conversation offers practical strategies for helping students translate their academic experiences into workplace-relevant skills, ultimately strengthening the vital bridge between post-secondary education and meaningful employment. Transcript Kaitlin LeMoine: Hi all, hope you all are doing well. As we plan for our next podcast season, we're posting a few Work Forces Rewinds featuring some of the insightful conversations you may have missed from this past season. We hope you enjoy them as much as we did. While we'll be back with new episodes in the coming weeks, we want to pause to express our appreciation for you, our listeners. Julian and I are so grateful for your feedback, your likes and shares and overall engagement with the Work Forces podcast. Your encouragement and perspectives continue to shape the conversations we hold on the podcast and inform how we approach our consulting efforts as well. We hope you enjoy these Rewind episodes and we'll be back to kick off our next season soon. So here we go. Julian Alssid: Welcome to Work Forces. I'm Julian Alssid. Kaitlin LeMoine: And I'm Kaitlin LeMoine, and we speak with the innovators who shape the future of work and learning. Julian Alssid: Together, we unpack the complex elements of workforce and career preparation and offer practical solutions that can be scaled and sustained. Kaitlin LeMoine: Work Forces is supported by Lumina Foundation. Lumina is an independent, private foundation in Indianapolis that is committed to making opportunities for learning beyond high school available to all. Let's dive in. Julian. We've spent a lot of time on this podcast exploring the connections between higher ed and industry. Among many topics, we've discussed experiential learning, skills based education, business, higher ed partnerships and the impact of AI. We've examined how colleges are continuing to adapt to workforce needs and how innovative collaborations are aligning academic programs with evolving career opportunities. Julian Alssid: That's right Kaitlin, and we're excited to share that we've partnered with the National Association of Colleges and Employers, or NACE, for a special three part mini series focused on a really critical piece of the higher ed-industry connection. Kaitlin LeMoine: For our listeners who may be less familiar, NACE is the leading professional organization for career services and university relations and recruiting professionals. As described on their website, NACE empowers and connects the community of professionals who support, develop, and employ the college educated workforce. Julian Alssid: This series will examine the work happening at the crucial intersection of learning and work in three parts. First, we'll discuss the broader landscape surrounding college career services and recruiting. Then we'll explore NACE's latest research, including projections for the class of 2025, and finally, we'll look at how leading colleges and employers are putting these insights into practice. To kick off today's conversation, we're honored to be joined by Shawn VanDerziel, President and CEO of NACE. Kaitlin LeMoine: Shawn, thanks so much for joining us today. We're excited to have you on this podcast. Shawn VanDerziel: Well, thanks for inviting us. I'm excited to be here with you all. Kaitlin LeMoine: So, Shawn, as we jump in today, can you please give us some background on yourself and what led you to NACE. Shawn VanDerziel: Sure I've had a windy road to my current position. I'm going to start back way back into college and move quickly through my career, so you can see the perspective by which I approach my work. I graduated from a large state school with my undergraduate and had no idea what I was going to do with my degree, and I had an opportunity to move to Chicago afterwards, which was a great move for me. And I found my first position working in college admissions, student enrollment, which was a natural for me, because in college, I was one of those overly involved students. I was a first generation student, so I didn't have the same resources as as many others may have had, and and wasn't quite sure how to approach my job search, etc, but I knew some things from my college experience, such as like giving campus tours, working with the admissions office, leading student groups, and I found my way into admissions. It was a great way to start my career. Worked my way up, and I got really burned out, and but what can I do? I was so tired of traveling all the time, being up until 10 o'clock at night, going to college fairs at high schools, all of those things. And so I thought, how can I transition these skills into something else? And I thought about recruiting, recruiting employees. So I was recruiting students. Why couldn't I recruit employees? And I found an organization that was really interested in me because of my connection to college students. They were very interested in connecting with college students to their employment opportunities. It was the first time that an outsourced service. Well, I should say, Fortune 500 company, utilized a outsourced service to fully take over the recruitment function. And so I worked for a company called Norrell Corporation, which was a billion dollar staffing company at the time, and we took over Bank of America's recruiting function for their Midwest region because they were expanding banks. So they were opening over 100 banks throughout the Chicagoland area in a period of about a year and a half. And I started as the recruitment manager, hiring all of these folks who are going to work in these banks, particularly through their management trainee programs and for tellers. And they wanted college students to be involved with that. So I was back on college campuses, looking for those students. Well again, I got really burned out, and I was like, Oh my gosh, this is the i being an outsourced service is a no joke kind of job. And I thought again, like, how can I transition this? And I already had the recruitment experience. I had always wanted to work at a museum, and finally, I had the skill to actually do something in a museum, and that was to work in a human resources office within a museum which is very niche, but I found a job and that I could apply for, and I actually got the job. And so I spent almost 25 years at the Field Museum of Natural History in Chicago, which is one of the world's largest natural history museums, and I worked my way up from a human resources rep doing recruitment and employee relations to becoming the Chief Human Resources Officer, Chief of Staff. And I oversaw lots of different departments over time, including our IT department, our education department, marketing for a short while, and also oversaw our Board of Trustees and the functions related to that. While I was at The Field Museum, I built a really large internship program that included over 200 interns every summer. And that experience led me to NACE, the National Association of Colleges and Employers as a volunteer, I became a volunteer leader and eventually the Chair of the Board of NACE. Over a decade ago, when the executive director of NACE was about to retire, I became a part of the search process, and was lucky enough to actually be offered the job at the end of that executive search process. So five years ago, I started as this President and CEO of NACE, and am so delighted to be representing this organization to the world. Julian Alssid: Always so great to hear peoples' origin stories. And so tell us a bit more about NACE. So give us an overview, if you will, Shawn and and then the role that nice really plays at the sort of intersection of higher ed and industry. Shawn VanDerziel: Yeah, simply put, that's exactly what we do. We bridge post secondary education to employment. We're all about outcomes and equitable outcomes for all students who pursue post secondary education. What that means on a day to day basis is that we are a membership association that represents folks who work on college campuses, mostly in the career services offices. So we represent every type of college and university, small, large, private, public, community college, four year, you name it, that's about two thirds of our members. One third of our members are the employers who go into college campuses and recruit college students for employment opportunities, for full time internships, co ops, apprenticeships, you name it, the full gambit of opportunities. We represent close to 3,000 organizations, and over 17,000 almost 18,000 individuals are a part of the association. Kaitlin LeMoine: Wow. Yeah. So this is, this is an extensive operation you have going on, and I would imagine, thank you. Thank you for the background you provided, because it just feels like, wow, you're drawing on, I'm sure, all the different skills and experiences gathered over the years, especially both on the college recruitment side and then on the employer recruitment side as well. It's quite striking. Shawn VanDerziel: Yeah, it's a lot of fun. And one of the things that on important work, really important work. And we're not insular, so meaning, like we just don't do things for our members. We do things for the public at large, so that they understand what's happening with the outcomes of students. So at the center of everything that we do is research. We're a knowledge based organization, so we're able to study the employment market from a variety of perspectives. We can see what's happening at college campuses to prepare students for employment opportunities. We can talk with students about what they're looking for in their jobs and how they're being prepared for jobs in their careers, and we talk to the employers about what they're looking for and how those other two pieces need to evolve to meet the growing and demanding needs of the workplace of the future. Kaitlin LeMoine: Amazing. So with all that being said, given the rapidly shifting environment that we're currently operating in this very dynamic space, we'd love to dive into a couple of different areas that you just that you mentioned, and that NACE raised recently as part of a recent more environmental scan. I believe you posted about it on LinkedIn not too long ago. So one question we have is, first, how do you see the current economy and economic outlook reshaping how employers are hiring entry level talent, and how, with a different lens how colleges are preparing those learners for success as well. Shawn VanDerziel: What we know right now is that the employment market is contracting so there are fewer opportunities for college graduates to join the workforce as compared to, let's say, two or three years ago, and that is from general full time employment all the way through to internships. With that we also know that employers are continually telling us that there's a gap between what college students offer and what they're looking to hire. So they have, they have made a bunch of shifts in their hiring and how they hire, which is no different than the general employment landscape. So we keep hearing about skills based hiring. Well, this has caused employers, particularly with early talent to really focus on that skills based hiring. So what they're saying is, is that in the old days, they would look at students who had a particular major, and they would look to see what their grade point average is as a starting place for the hiring process, and today, they're telling us for some jobs, we will do that, particularly highly technical jobs that require technical skills. So if you're going to be an engineer, Well, you certainly don't want someone working on your airplane who didn't get good grades, right? So you want to know that they're the top of their class because they have the knowledge to do the job. So they might still be screened by GPA. But if I'm looking for someone who's going into a management trainee program of some sort, that's more of a generalist or etc, I might think a little bit more broadly. I don't necessarily have to have someone who has the highest GPA. What I want is someone who has the skills and competencies to do the job. So how am I then going to find that person? Well, I have to substitute something in there to screen that person by we know from talking to employers that work experiences in general are very important to them. So anytime a student can demonstrate work experiences, and they can list what they actually gained in skill or competency in that work is super important, and they look for internship experience, either internship experience with them as their that student's employer, or they look for industry experience. So did the person have an internship in something that's closely aligned? And those are the students that they're saying they probably have the skills to do the job. They're also, of course, doing things like keyword searches and and using AI as part of part of the recruitment process. But they're really trying to dig down to find students who are going to succeed long term, and that's also one of the reasons that they invest so much money, particularly large companies, into internship programs, because we know that internship programs are the number one return on investment for employers from a recruitment perspective, the cost value is there for them. They know that they can convert at least 50% of those interns into being full time employees. They know that when they hire that student who starts as an intern, they're going to be with the company, more likely a year later and more likely five years later. We know that we've got that that data data to back it up, so the return on investment is really there. So we're finding more and more interest from employers and and partnering with schools to make sure their internship programs are solid. We're also finding that they are returning to campus, so they've been doing hiring on the web for quite some time. They've been focusing on it virtually, but they're also finding a need to get back in person so that they can weed through some of the talent a little bit more quickly. Julian Alssid: That's so interesting that they're they're coming back. Shawn VanDerziel: Yeah, absolutely. And AI has a lot to do with that, and we certainly can talk more about AI and how that's impacting everything, but there's an impersonalization that's happening, and there really is a business case for for getting back on campus and finding that talent. Julian Alssid: Yeah, so before we go into AI, which definitely we want to hear more about, it's all the rage, as you may have heard, interested to talk a little bit more about the skills based practices, because there's been some written about how... The Burning Glass Institute and Harvard Center on Workforce wrote a piece a few months ago, which, of course, could be ancient history at this point, that companies were not picking up so much on on skills based practices. And so I'm interested to hear your take on that. You know, I get it with respect to the jobs where they're they are looking for skills. But how is it? Are they integrating this more broadly into their organizations? Are you seeing that? Shawn VanDerziel: Yeah, it's a really interesting question. So employers in our surveying do say that they, the majority of them, are doing some type of skills based hiring. Where they are doing it is either through keyword searches as an example, in screening the resumes through automated systems or the the other bulk is through behavioral based interviewing questions. So when a student actually lands an interview, being able to talk through with them what they have actually accomplished, and what they have the ability to be able to do based upon the skills and competencies that they've gained. And so by providing those concrete examples, they're able to kind of dig through that. But it also goes back to what I was mentioning just a few minutes ago, which is around they're kind of substituting when they say skills based hiring, what we say academically doesn't necessarily match what employers are doing logistically. There's always this gap between industry and higher ed and the language. And this is a really good example. And so when, from an academic perspective, we think of skill, we think, well, gosh, you're looking for someone who has great verbal speaking skills, right? You can do public speaking. Okay, great. So then, how do you screen for that? Well, what are those employers going to do to find that they're not going to put a test in place to have every candidate come through and do some kind of speech, right? That's not what they're going to do to get to that skill. What they're going to do is they're going to look on that resume and say, oh, gosh, did this student have an internship? And in that internship, did they use their verbal communication skills? Did they designate that on there? So if that skill is not listed, the employer isn't going to find it as a starting place, and then they're not going to be able to dig deeper on it when they get them into an interview. So this comes full circle to what's happening on campuses and preparing students to be career ready, and bridging that employment because we have an onus in higher education with these students to help them to articulate their skills and their competencies in a way that an employer can translate it and employers speak a totally different language. They want the shortcut. They want to get to the candidate in the fastest way possible. So they are going to put any mechanism in place to do that. And so it behooves us to help those graduates to be able to articulate it in every which way, all of the experiences that they have, right? So it doesn't even have they can come from unexpected ways. It could come from student activities. It could come from work study. It could come from a whole variety of places that a student may have obtained skills and competencies throughout their college career. Kaitlin LeMoine: Yeah, it's really interesting to hear you talk about the language gap that exists Shawn and kind and the difference between, you know, maybe how, on the academic side, we describe a skill, and then the shortcut language that employers might use, I feel like that's, that's an area that we've I feel like has, you know, it's been around for for so long now, and it feels like there's just, there's more and more great work happening around how to close that gap. And you know, I think that if we're going to turn to the conversation of AI, it seems like there's some really interesting work there that might be able to support some of the closing of those gaps. But then there's also some new challenges that emerge as well. So would love to transition over to talk a little bit more about AI and how what you're seeing from the perspective of both use on the employer side with respect to recruitment and hiring, and also when we think about career services and preparing learners for really bridging that gap between post secondary and employer....
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Work Forces Rewind: Jean Eddy on Youth Career Exploration
07/15/2025
Work Forces Rewind: Jean Eddy on Youth Career Exploration
Jean Eddy, President & CEO of American Student Assistance (ASA), discusses how middle and high school students can develop career awareness and gain meaningful workplace experiences before college. Drawing on research showing middle school as the optimal window for career exploration, Eddy details ASA's digital platform approach, which reaches 15 million students through engaging, mobile-based tools that help them discover interests and connect to potential career paths. She emphasizes the critical "testing and trying" phase where students need hands-on experiences, highlighting ASA's grant-making initiatives that fund intermediary organizations bridging gaps between schools and employers. The conversation explores scaling these efforts through policy engagement and community buy-in, with Eddy advocating for making career exploration an integral part of education rather than a disconnected add-on for teachers while offering practical collaboration strategies for all stakeholders to help students find paths that "make their hearts sing." Transcript Julian Alssid: Welcome to Work Forces. I'm Julian Alssid Kaitlin LeMoine: And I'm Kaitlin LeMoine, and we speak with the innovators who shape the future of work and learning. Julian Alssid: Together, we unpack the complex elements of workforce and career preparation and offer practical solutions that can be scaled and sustained. Kaitlin LeMoine: Work Forces is supported by Lumina Foundation. Lumina is an independent, private foundation in Indianapolis that is committed to making opportunities for learning beyond high school available to all. Let's dive in. We've spent much of our time on this podcast exploring learning and career pathways, especially for college students and adults, and while those conversations are important, we also know that it helps learners when they begin a process of career exploration much earlier on in their academic journeys. By the time someone gets to college, it can often be too late for foundational career exploration. We need to help K-12 learners develop an awareness and curiosity of various career options, get them age appropriate experience and help them link their academic interests to the world of work. Julian Alssid: That's right, Kaitlin, and it's something we both know firsthand. We both started our careers in innovative high schools, where we each designed project based and experiential learning opportunities intentionally integrated with internships and real world experiences. We so, you know, we understand the complexities of this work, particularly figuring out the right level of exposure to workplace skills and experiences for young people, you know, how do we best help them explore, gain experience, build social capital and discover their likes and dislikes? Kaitlin LeMoine: Yes, it is about developing the skills and awareness learners need to navigate the world of work and thinking about practical implementation. It's about working with employers who can meaningfully support this process, and about providing educators with the time and creative space to make these integrated learning experiences happen. Julian Alssid: This is a complex topic to unpack, and that's why we're so pleased to have Jean Eddie with us today as President & CEO of American student assistance, or ASA, she's leading the charge in changing how kids learn about careers and prepare for their futures. Jean is an accomplished leader with over 30 years of experience in higher ed, and has held leadership positions at Rhode Island School of Design, Brandeis University, and Northeastern University. She's a nationally recognized speaker and subject matter expert, cited frequently in major publications and a contributor to forbes.com Jean is deeply committed to student success and is the author of crisis proofing today's learners, and co host of The One Question Podcast with Michael Horn, who was a recent guest on Work Forces. Jean, we're looking forward to discussing ASA's innovative approaches to career readiness for middle and high school students, and how you're reaching them in new and novel ways. Welcome to Work Forces. Jean Eddy: So happy to be here, looking forward to the conversation. Kaitlin LeMoine: Yes, so are we Jean. It's such a pleasure to be with you today. So as we dive into today's conversation, can you please tell us more about your background and what led you to ASA? Jean Eddy: What is interesting is I met a colleague this morning for breakfast, quite early, and I worked with that person at one of the colleges that you mentioned. We were talking about the fact that we worked with a lot of young people who are on a college campus, and they really didn't know why they were there. And my colleague was basically saying that he oftentimes felt as though he was taking care of young people who were really not they couldn't find their own way. And I would have to say it reminded me of my own journey. I was in high school, and no one approached me about what was next. Never talked about it, never got prepared for it, etc. And if it weren't for the fact that I ended up, after leaving high school, going to a community college, I was lucky, you know, I met people who were interested in me and wanted to kind of show me some way or some path. Who knows where I'd be right now. But I guess, you know, I ended up in higher education because I was so taken with my own experience at a community college. And I worked in higher ed, as you said, for a number of years, but I worked with a lot of young people who really didn't know why they were in college, and I would say that some of them really should have taken another path, and instead, went on to college, spent an awful lot of money that they didn't need to spend, and then ended up with quite a bit of debt that they had to repay somehow, some way. So fast forward now to ASA. I became involved with ASA because ASA is a federal guarantor, and as a person who worked in higher ed I was on the board of ASA for a number of years. And why, why I was interested in ASA is because of the fact. They were really committed to helping young people. It was a very personal relationship, which with a lot of guarantors. It was not but at ASA, it was. And I stayed committed because I was so interested in how they interacted with students. When I was asked to become the CEO here, which was eight years ago now, we were talking about how we could think about working with young people before a problem arose. What we were doing was basically trying to put a band aid on something at the end of the day, rather than getting in front of the problem to see what we could do about that. So we did an awful lot of research and found out that the best time to really talk about careers was in middle school, and that seems kind of young, you know, sixth grade, seventh grade, but what we found was is that kids who are in that age bracket are really open to exploration. They aren't hardwired that they want to do this or they want to do that, and furthermore, their friends haven't made such a huge impact on them that they don't they were willing to go and find their own way. So we then did research about, how do we interact with these young people? What's the best way to do that? And we tried a number of things, but at the end of the day, what we found was we needed to kids meet kids where they are, and that's on a mobile device that's on their cell phone. So like it or not, 97% of the kids who are between 13 and 18 year old, 18 years old, have a cell phone. And so we created mobile, friendly programs that would allow young people to, first off, go out and have fun. Because to me, learning is all about fun. Let's start with that. It doesn't need to be something that's imposed and sometimes treacherous. It's rather what can be fun. So the first thing we developed was something that allowed a young person to have fun, but to basically do puzzles and games, which actually came up with kind of an indicator of things that somebody was good at, but moreover what they liked to do. And then we showed them all kinds of ways to be able to get to that in a successful career. And it's not to say at someone who's in the sixth or seventh grade is saying I'm going to be an X, but rather, I'm interested in these things. And let's see all the possibilities for if you're interested in this, what is possible. And then we went on to build more programs that allowed kids to test and try, which is really key here, testing and trying, having them figure out, maybe I like this, but is there some aspect of it that I really can't do or I don't want to do? And so when we develop these programs, testing and trying, really came in in high school, and the reason for that is by the time students leave high school. We want them to have a plan. And so it's not that again, that they have a road that's absolutely mapped out, but rather, this is the this is the path I can take to see what might come of this, to see what might come with what I love to do with what I'm good at. And can I be able to relate this to that job, that career, that pathway? Julian Alssid: Great to hear the bit about your journey and and the genesis of ASA. So. So now, what are the Could you give us an overview where you are now at ASA with the types of initiatives that you're focused on, and what are the key problems that you know you're looking to, the key challenges or problems you're looking to solve. Jean Eddy: So, you know, the initiatives that we are working on currently, you know, I mentioned the digital we have four digital programs which really bring students from the discovery phase right on through the testing and trying, you know, getting a mentor, getting an apprenticeship, understanding how to be able to get ready for to dress for success, all those kinds of things. There are many, many things kids can do there. We have about 15 million kids on our platforms at any given time. They're between 13 and 18 years old. But in addition to that, we also work with schools, school districts and states who are interested in infusing this kind of a career exploration into their into their curriculum. The biggest one I always talk about is Delaware. Delaware is the nice sized state you can get your arms around it. So we worked with a couple of other funders to basically put career exploration into middle schools in Delaware, so every kid in Delaware has an opportunity to do this kind of career exploration. But I think the biggest challenge we have is the next step is the testing and trying. Because I would have to say, I. So we need employers to be able to help us do that. But any employer will tell you, and I've talked with many, they don't have the infrastructure to be able to provide that, and sometimes they are. They are quite hesitant to get into this, because, again, they don't have the staff, they don't have the know how, and they cannot figure out how to connect with the school district with a system. So a lot of our initiatives are now working with intermediaries places who basically go in and they take care of the things that need to happen at the high school and things that need to happen with the employer, and we do a lot of funding in those respects. My favorite is the caps network. They are national, and they basically give they work with employers and they work with schools to be able to have kids have first hand experiences in how a career could actually map out in a given field. They are beyond impressive. I could talk about them all day, but there are many of them. There are also states who get involved in this, and I will pick on Rhode Island native Rhode Islander, we've worked with skills for Rhode Island for a number of years. They are great intermediaries in basically bringing employers and schools together to provide apprenticeships and internships for young people to test and try. So I think that that is, that is, I'm going to say next big Frontier, we need more opportunities to connect employers and schools in a way that makes sense, and it actually it works for everybody. Kaitlin LeMoine: That last point, you just ended on Jean right? I feel like that's where the rubber meets the road. And all of this work is like, how to make these, these relationships happen? What are you I know, you know you mentioned the intermediary work. What are some of the best practices, or like strategies that you know that are working well to bridge those gaps? Because I think that for so many you know whether, whether it's actually higher ed institutions, K 12 institutions, employers. It's about like, how do we bridge those worlds and in a scalable way? Jean Eddy: So, I think that there are a few things, getting the word out is incredibly important, thought leadership and getting people to understand or or be able to see the kinds of opportunities that are available. But moreover, the funding that is available. There are a lot of programs out there right now, and we participate in some of these funds, which basically back financially, back opportunities for employers and schools to be able to come together and do this kind of work. And one thing I didn't mention before is the amount of grant making we do, and the grant making we do has everything to do with those kinds of opportunities. Historically, we've given up between $10 and $20 million a year, and it is to fund those kind of opportunities where they have not existed before, or to grow networks that you know have started off but have not how to reach across the country, because what we're trying to do is impact kids everywhere. You know, not only in the places that I think, with the northeast, we have so many colleges and universities, we are so focused on kind of these connections, but there are parts of the country where that's not the case, and particularly in the middle of the country. You know, it's really up to us to do a better job in connecting those intermediaries who work in those places to provide opportunities for young people who otherwise are thinking, Okay, what do I do next? You know, what are my opportunities? And they're not as I would not say that there's not a rich as rich of an offering as there could be, because kids just don't know. Julian Alssid: So I get the scaling with, you know, your the digital stuff, and how that you know you've been able to reach so many young people directly, I guess my big question is, with the work, with the intermediaries, or the sort of the partnerships, how does that scale? And how do you ensure that it can live beyond the life of your grants? Like, how does this get baked in to what communities do, what educators do, what employers do, and then, how do you scale that? Jean Eddy: You know, we worked with the state of Massachusetts, and we funded a program that basically put pathways into high schools. It was one of Governor Baker's big initiatives and part of his legacy, I would have to say, the idea in doing some of these things. And we did it in Delaware as well. We did it in Rhode Island. As you start to fund these programs, you do it with the hope that you're working with policy makers who are going to encourage the state legislature to put it in the budget and have it move forward. And that has happened in every single one of these cases, I would have to say you have to have buy in, not only from the intermediary and the school and the employer, but you also need buy in with policy makers, because if they don't believe this. Yes, and they don't see, I'm going to say a road map for a state prospering. It's not going to go anyplace. But again, in the state of Massachusetts, we have an enormous shortage in the trades, construction, tech, skill trades, and we worked with the workforce council here to try and develop programs that would allow us to be able to, I'm going to say, start the pipeline for the jobs that we cannot fill and and that, I think, is really it's a problem that we have across the country. We have so many unfilled jobs right now, and I do believe that half the reason why we have that is because young people are not aware of those jobs, and we're not doing the best, the best work we could possibly do, in making sure they know it, but moreover, that they could try those things and find that they could fall in love with something that they didn't even know was existing. Julian Alssid: Interestingly, we have been working in Massachusetts on the very topic, actually, with the community college and focused on manufacturing. And it's incredible the opportunities that are going wanting because kids and their families know nothing about these roles and the paths associated. Jean Eddy: You know, just this morning, I was listening, I think it was on NPR, they were talking about the fact that there are wait lists for kids in technical high schools, and that they are trying to now impose a lottery system to let young people in, just that is such a telling update on on what is happening in this state. But moreover, in this country, we should be thinking about, how do we integrate the aspects of those vocational high schools into all of our high schools to give kids an opportunity. And I'm not saying that there aren't high schools who do that, because there are, but it usually requires either a principal or a super superintendent who has that drive and that feeling in their gut that this is what has to happen, and then they make it happen. We need more of that. Kaitlin LeMoine: Yeah, and that combination of both of the leadership, and then, as you mentioned earlier, Gene, the financial backing as well, right to, like, especially for some of the more technical programs that require a lot of equipment and, like, lab space, right? I mean, like, the infrastructure required in some cases is is more significant than others. But like, that's another huge factor in this whole effort. One thing that I find really fascinating about the different digital solutions that ASA has built is it seems like it's a pretty low lift for schools to implement and for learners to engage with I'm curious, how do what's the split? I guess, that you see across like learners who engage with these tools on their own as individual users, versus who are introduced through a classroom like experience like, how do learners come to these materials? Maybe individually? How do they find that? Jean Eddy: So I would say, by and large, young people come to us directly. We have, obviously, connections with teachers, with superintendents, etc. And many will use our products as a way to have a hybrid experience. As far as career exploration is concerned, they are using it for that purpose. So they're basically saying, Go out to asa.org, look at this, look at that, etc. But by and large, most of it is coming from kids who come directly to us. And I think I when we first started talking, I talked about the fact that I wanted kids to have fun. So what we basically do, I'm going to say, we invade the time that young people are using their phones, which is on average, five hours a day, which is frightening to me, frankly. But we approach them and it's something that they can take it or leave it. So we go through Tiktok, Snapchat, Instagram, etc. We throw out these things. Invite kids to come in. They either do it or they don't. Most of the time, we find they do it. We have a high level of engagement, but it's got everything to do with that. They're seeing it as this is curious, this is fun, and then suddenly we're opening up another world to them, and then kids stay and so we have four platforms, and it's amazing to me that they keep going. And of course, again, it's all about fun. So I think that that is really the key to this, and what is really, really important, particularly with with young people in this, in this generation of young people, they want agency. They want...
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Holly Zanville: Mapping the Skills-Based Learning Ecosystem
07/01/2025
Holly Zanville: Mapping the Skills-Based Learning Ecosystem
Holly Zanville, research professor at the George Washington University Institute of Public Policy and founder of the Learn and Work Ecosystem Library, discusses her approach to organizing information about the rapidly evolving skills-based learning landscape. Drawing from her extensive background across education, state systems, and philanthropy, Zanville explains how she created a specialized digital hub that curates resources about key ecosystem components. She explores the growing tension between degree-centric and skills-based approaches in higher education, highlighting how institutions are navigating the "both-and" reality of offering traditional degrees alongside competency-based programs. Zanville shares insights from her collaboration with the Society for Human Resource Management's new Center for Skills First Future, which aims to transform hiring practices for 100,000 employers over the next decade. The conversation examines how employers across five leading industry sectors are implementing skills-based hiring practices, while addressing the critical need for better information sharing and standardized language across the fragmented learn-and-work ecosystem. Zanville emphasizes the importance of collaboration and community engagement in building resources that serve learners, educators, employers, and policymakers navigating this complex landscape. Transcript Julian Alssid: Welcome to Work Forces. I'm Julian Alssid. Kaitlin LeMoine: And I'm Kaitlin LeMoine, and we speak with the innovators who shape the future of work and learning. Julian Alssid: Together, we unpack the complex elements of workforce and career preparation and offer practical solutions that can be scaled and sustained. Kaitlin LeMoine: Work Forces is supported by Lumina Foundation. Lumina is an independent, private foundation in Indianapolis that is committed to making opportunities for learning beyond high school available to all. Let's dive in. Julian Alssid: Kaitlin feels like every day the way we help people advance their learning and careers becomes more and more complex. Kaitlin LeMoine: Indeed it does, Julian. From employers rethinking hiring practices with skills based approaches to educators, redesigning learning models with AI and experiential learning, our podcast guests have highlighted many new models and cutting edge innovations, and we see these efforts impacting our consulting projects as well. Julian Alssid: Absolutely, and keeping track of this dynamic and ever changing environment is no small feat. It requires a deep understanding of what's working, what's not, and how all these interconnected pieces fit together. Kaitlin LeMoine: Which brings us to our guest today. We're so excited to be speaking with a leader who is doing just that, making sense of this intricate and ever changing ecosystem. Julian Alssid: We are thrilled to be joined by Holly Zanville. Holly is a research professor at the George Washington University Institute of Public Policy and codirector of the Program on Skills, Credentials and Workforce Policy. She's also the founder and lead of the Learn & Work Ecosystem Library. Previously, Holly co-led the national initiative Credential As You Go and served as a strategy director at Lumina Foundation. Her background includes leadership positions at state higher education systems and boards in Oregon, Washington, and WICHE, as well as academic roles at community colleges and non-traditional university programs. Kaitlin LeMoine: So without further ado, Holly, welcome to Work Forces. We're looking forward to learning more about your work. Holly Zanville: I am so glad to be joining you today. Kaitlin LeMoine: Well, thank you for being with us. So as we get going, Holly, can you please tell us? I mean, Julian talked a little bit about your background, but we'd love to hear more from you about your background and what led you to founding the Learn & Work Ecosystem Library. Holly Zanville: Great. So as you already heard, my background is pretty wide ranging. I've worked in K 12, community colleges, universities, non traditional programs, coordinating boards and systems in states and in philanthropy, as the strategy director at Lumina Foundation and all those jobs really, I realized recently carry one thread, and that kind of reminds me of what I've always really cared about, and that is my long-standing interest in both information, the quality information and systems, believing that if we're going to make improvements in all of our systems, in education and workforce, we're going to have to seed these relationships and work in collaboratives. And so a lot of my work over the years has really focused on acting like a system and making improvements in systems and sharing information and collaborating. So that's a little bit of my background and what brings me, I think, to really the topic of the Learner and Work Ecosystem Library. And, you know the why. Where did this idea even come from for a library? And actually, it started with my work at Lumina Foundation, when several of the national foundations were starting to pay attention to changes in credentialing that were going on, and especially noting that 40 million some Americans who come under that title that we don't like called some college and no credential. So they had some background in college work, but they never received any credential. And we were really increasingly concerned about what we could do to help with these kinds of issues. So at that time, and this was about 2017, 2018 about 40 of the foundations, mostly national foundations actually came to a meeting to compare notes. How could we really better learn about what investments we were all making on these issues of importance, particularly around micro credentialing, was just coming to the fore around that time so that we could maybe leverage our monies to make them go farther, because we could all see what was coming in the tea leaves. So the outcome of that meeting was actually a call to action, and folks were saying, well, could we develop a map? Could we try to map out the key initiatives, the big footprint initiatives that were being funded mostly by the foundations at that time to improve our information about them, and once we maybe could get the map, maybe we could collaborate more effectively as a group of foundations. So being a person who likes system work and challenging work and mapping, et cetera, I raised my hand to work on this. And so a small number of us from a few of the foundations actually designed what a map of key initiatives might look like, and we put on the map who was working on initiatives, because who's doing the work is really important for us to know. And then we classified them into some key categories. There were actually, over a period of years, three versions of the map, and I think this speaks to how quickly changes were going on in the innovation space of the nation, and Lumina posted it at its website. There's still remnants of it at the website. And one of the things we could all see was that there were important philanthropic investments in all these areas. They were growing, because we could see the number of actual things on the map growing every year, and that there were many collaborations that were going on we were picking up among states, employers, higher ed institutions. And that one really interesting thing to us was that managing a lot of these big scale initiatives were coming from intermediaries, the third party groups that we all know that play such an important role in helping, particularly with collaborations. So this was a really interesting area I became extremely interested in, and my read of the system that we were all looking at the map was that it was going to keep growing in importance and confusion and be marked by lack of information. And so I really wanted to expand the mapping effort then so we could take this a little further. That really was not a priority of the foundation at that time. They wanted more direct funding of the innovative initiatives. And so that was when I left philanthropy to go, after 15 years, to become a research professor at George Washington University. And I kind of took it on as a personal mission to here's my I'm going to bring in FedEx as an example. So I decided it would be good to come up with a bitter airplane that could deliver needed information. And it would, but it would be a specialty airplane. It'd be like a FedEx airport with special airplanes that we'd be carrying specialized information about the learn and work ecosystem. So I started, I reached out to lots of experts around the US. I think many of them have probably been on your podcast, and we designed the special collection and called it a library, the learn and work ecosystem library. It's really a hub. It's like an airport, as it were, where we collect, we curate, we coordinate digital content about key components of the ecosystem. We think there are maybe 12 of them. And if you go to our library, you'll see what the 12 are. There are key topic reports for more in depth coverage of what some of the leading topics are going on in the ecosystem. We included those initiatives and special projects that are working to improve the ecosystem, like we did on the original map, that mostly are, I think 80% of them are probably funded by foundations. So the foundations are playing a big role, and have been in, in fueling the innovation agenda, I think, for the US. We also identified the organizations doing the work and several other features. So we opened for business our little airport in late 2022. We've been growing really quickly. Now we're using AI to help users who come to us to find information using more natural language queries, and we've been adding just two features, and then I'll stop. I'll stop here. We've entered into partnerships with other organizations. If it was FedEx, we found that people have a lot of baggage, and they need to have a place to put their information, and they don't really put it. It's easier for them to put it at a place like the library, where we can host it, and then all their members and other groups can come and see that information there, rather than putting it in a siloed website among all these different collaborators, and furthermore, we're working with a lot of organizations to test the usability of the other library. Does this really meet information needs? Because we're so early, we need to keep testing the waters about that. So we've grown from a few 100 artifacts at launch to over 1500 now we have a glossary of nearly 600 terms that are used throughout the learn and work ecosystem, and we've made that available free to organizations that want to put the glossary at their website, so that as visitors come to their website but they don't know what some of these terms mean, like, what does a micro credential mean, or what is badging and what's up skilling and re skilling, what are skills versus skills based hiring, we have all that captured, and they can put our our glossary, if they like, there and or folks can just be advised to come to our library where we have terms. Julian Alssid: Given your work now at the intersection, or should I say, the learning and learning and work airport, perhaps we'd like to talk first about the education side of the equation. And we know that one of the themes that has been taking on greater and greater prominence, and we've talked a lot about it on our podcast, is a focus on skills and competencies. And so we're interested to hear your take on how educational organizations and institutions are shifting their efforts to focus more on skills and competencies. And if you could give us an example or two that we should follow. Holly Zanville: So the library and or the airport where education is takes up a lot of space at the airport, as it should, because the preparation of folks for jobs is a very large effort that we all care so much about and is so important to our economy. So but, but to go back to something we've been witnessing for several years now, this growing dilemma for higher education, the big question, should we remain degree centric and continue our literally 200 plus your focus on college degrees as maybe the best preparation for good jobs in the US, or move to shorter term credentials of value. And I'm purposely portraying this dilemma as an either or, but we know that there's growing recognition that the answer really has to be both and. So the and the reason is that higher ed has to be closely aligned to workforce demands by both employer demands and student demands, and there are significant needs and some different needs by industry sectors. So we can't have the same answer for everybody. So degrees and licenses are essential for professional jobs in medicine, nursing, law, architecture, engineering, and a much longer list than that, but there are a growing number of other types of credentials, shorter term credentials, like certificates, badges, micro credentials, energy certifications, that they do have value in many areas of the workforce, and they're often used in which is a good thing, I think, a combination with traditional degrees like associate degrees, baccalaureate and The various graduate level degrees and the impacts of AI are changing and coming on strong, because it's really impacting job getting and job keeping in major ways. So we don't think higher ed, I don't think anyone thinks higher ed can throw away the traditional degrees they offer, but I think there's growing agreement that higher ed needs to update their offerings and expand their offerings to meet changing workforce demands through shorter term credential options. So within this dilemma, along comes the competency based education push for the last, oh, I don't know, more than a decade. And then comes the skills agenda, coming on really strong, with employers who are asking candidates for jobs, but they're also asking their own employees, do you have the right skills for the jobs we have open, show us what you know and can do. And the emphasis is really increasingly on can do. So how are we going to know when somebody has the right competence skills? And I would say that higher ed tends to use the word competencies more to define the learning outcomes that occur in higher ed programs. And employers tend to use the skills word more, but they're coming together, and those words are graying, and now everyone is using the terms back and forth across those fences. If there are actual fence lines between higher ed and important, some of us think there are, but they're coming down, and movement is rapidly approaching. So to answer your question directly about competency based, many of the higher institutions have been shifting their focus toward competencies and actually skills to better align with workforce needs. And we're noting, which we think is really interesting, that educational institutions are adopting frameworks to do this, all kinds of credentialing systems and partnerships to understand what should the new array of credentials be? And we're seeing institutions that are doing both. They're doing both, and they have a portion of their programs that are competency based, are mostly competency based, but there are other programs at their institutions that are not so what's interesting is to have both curricular models on the same campus. But there are also some institutions, but the research data shows that there's relatively few, maybe only about 15 institutions that either are entirely or mostly comps based education. So even though the conversation is rich around competency-based education, the actual number of institutions that have really gone to the major full shift, pretty few, except we know that the ones that have made the shift are very well known. And I'm just, I have a short list of them here. You know Western Governors University Capella, University of Wisconsin Extended Campus, their flexible option, Walden, Charter, Oak College, Purdue Global. And then there's some that are mostly competency based, but not entirely: Southern New Hampshire, Texas, A & M University has several Northern Arizona University, Thomas Edison and Central New Mexico Community College, Austin Community College. I won't go through the whole list, but the point is that we're in the middle of a shift. Some people have already put the landing gear down on their plane, and I think they're saying, well, we've done the areas of programs that really are competency based, like, like nursing that is, or cybersecurity that are led by national organizations that are very strong on here are the competencies in this profession. But there are other ones, particularly the liberal arts, that are not being led as much to being set up as competency based programs. So the institutes have to make their piece, and we all have to put together a system which has a little bit of a lot of things, and this is creating, I think, a lack of information about who's got what and why is this important? So once you accept the fact that differences are good and there's a good reason why we have these differences, then you move to this question of, are we creating a system that is really confusing for employers to understand, for students to understand, for policymakers to understand, for faculty. Yes, we are. We're sorry. We're all sorry about that. But in fact, it's a more difficult learn and work ecosystem now than we've had in the past. And there are some organizations that are making it a little clearer, and on the competency based side, especially, Julian, you asked for an example. I think one of the best ones is the Competency-Based Education Network, or C-BEN. They've really been growing rapidly, working with institutions that really want to understand how to do compass based education and why to do it, and what happens on a campus where you've got both-ands, how are they, how they are navigating the choppy waters. So I would say that through the kinds of workshops, webinars, training opportunities, C-BEN provides, they're a really good example on the higher ed side for competency based education. And I've already named some of the institutions that are really on that side. So I think I'll stop there, because I think that's a lot of the background, least that I think about when I, when I think about the competency based side of things with higher risk. Kaitlin LeMoine: Well and and I think what you've just talked us through there Holly shows right exactly the complexity that we're facing here, and that with this confusion, the need for a library is more and more essential. I just had one quick follow up regarding the library. Who is the primary target audience for the library? Is it professionals in the field? Is it learners themselves? Could it be both? Holly Zanville: It's all, and in fact, when we have a slide, when we do slide presentations, it has 26 stakeholder groups, and when you go to the library, you can do a search by your stakeholder group, so you could be primarily a policymaker interested in content. You could be a credential provider interested in content. You could be an employer and workforce. You could be a workforce board. You could be more aligned with the data structures around that side of the shop. You could be more of a journalist trying to understand, where do I go to get information and examples for stories. So and students we're really hoping are using the library, particularly students that might want to get a job someday working in this with the think tanks, with the research and policy think tanks, the intermediaries that I talked about where, if you're in graduate school now, and you might be in education or political science or economics, you'll get some of this information, but you are not. I just would bet no one's going...
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