Work Forces

Ellie Bertani, President and CEO of GitLab Foundation, discusses the foundation's unique approach to philanthropy that prioritizes ROI, risk-taking, and speed to support economic mobility initiatives. Drawing from her cross-sectoral experience in nonprofit, public, and private sectors, Bertani explains how the foundation measures impact by tracking how every dollar invested aims to generate at least $100 in additional lifetime earnings for people living below a living wage. She shares success stories from a portfolio of over 120 grants across Colombia, Kenya, and the United States, highlighting investments in areas like green jobs, short-form credentials, and technology infrastructure. Bertani also discusses their Learning for Action Fund, which helps grantees build monitoring and evaluation capacity, and offers practical advice for nonprofits on becoming more outcomes-focused through agile, data-driven approaches to program design and implementation.

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: On the workforces podcast. We feature a range of companies and organizations offering various programs, products, and initiatives that live at the nexus of work and learning. Some are funded through public dollars, other through private investments, and we don't always dive into those details in our conversations. However, today we're taking a slightly different approach and speaking directly with the leader of a foundation that's focused on supporting a range of innovative organizations seeking to solve significant challenges.

Kaitlin LeMoine: Yes, Julian, we're looking forward to this conversation. The mission of the GitLab Foundation is to improve lifetime earnings through access to opportunities by supporting organizations in a number of different focus areas. The Foundation seeks to have impact in three different geographic regions, Colombia, Kenya and the United States. The foundation's focus on ROI is particularly distinct. They pay close attention to how their dollars contribute to the total lifetime earnings for low income families.

Julian Alssid: Yes, and at a time in which we're navigating significant change in the world of work and learning from policy shifts, economic uncertainty, the rapid advancement of AI, we're looking to dive deep into a conversation with the President and CEO of GitLab Foundation, Ellie Bertani. We'll discuss how they monitor and measure impact and ensure that every dollar spent drives true and lasting change.

Kaitlin LeMoine: With a background in the nonprofit, public and private sectors, Ellie brings a shared value cross-sectoral approach to drive sustainable impact. Prior to joining the GitLab Foundation, Ellie spent 10 years in the private sector with roles at Wells, Fargo and Walmart, and much of her work focused on frontline worker economic stability and mobility. Earlier in her career, Ellie spent nearly 10 years in the nonprofit and public sector, including positions with the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, the US, State Department, Third Sector Capital Partners and Rotary International. Ellie, thanks so much for joining us for today's conversation. We're so excited to have you with us.

Ellie Bertani: Oh, I'm so grateful for the invitation. It's great to be here.

Julian Alssid: Yes, Ellie, thank you so much. And if you would tell us about your background and what led you to GitLab Foundation.

Ellie Bertani: As you can tell, my background is a mix of 10 years in the nonprofit and philanthropic space early in my career, and then 10 years in the private sector, and I've really tried to combine perspectives of what makes each of those sectors impactful and what can contribute to drive social change into GitLab Foundation, as we have launched it and founded it two and a half years ago. I think in particular, we're trying to say, what are the most important factors that drive great investment in the private sector, some approaches from venture capital in particular, that we think, when translated into a philanthropic setting, can really help us make evidence based smart decisions, help us move really quickly as an organization, and help us find these really sort of diamonds in the rough jewels of projects or organizations that have great new ideas that can really help people who need economic mobility get money into their pockets and move up the ladder.

Kaitlin LeMoine: So you're starting to take us in this direction, Ellie, but can you provide, I know we said a little bit about the GitLab Foundation, but can you know you provide more of a background on on an overview of the foundation, and really what makes your investment strategy unique?

Ellie Bertani: We are a global, independent, private foundation, as you said, working in three markets today. We have a mission to improve lifetime earnings through access to opportunities. And we really think about economic mobility pretty broadly. We think there are tremendous number of factors that can help support an individual to grow their earnings over time. Some of those supports may be skills development and workforce training programs. Some of those supports may be things like early education and earlier in their lives, their access to great opportunities at younger ages, and some of those may be access to technology solutions that can help them navigate or find new opportunities as they're working through their lives. But we really take I think there are three different things that make our investment approach a bit unique in philanthropy, first is our focus on ROI. Here we estimate and track the impact of every investment that we make using a unique what we call North Star return on investment methodology. That means for every dollar that we invest, we seek to drive at least $100 in additional lifetime earnings for people who live below a living wage. We seek out solutions that lead people to pathways to prosperity, and we recognize that it's really important to have financial stability as a foundation to drive economic mobility. The second thing that is a bit unique about us is we have a pretty high risk tolerance. We believe that philanthropy is in a unique position to take risk and test out new social innovations in a way that others, for example, the public sector, really can't, since they're using taxpayer dollars. And so building on that unique capability, we are willing to bet on unproven ideas and also to invest in our grantees' ability to build evidence of whether their ideas work, and also to learn through iteration how their ideas can be improved. And I think this, this ability to seek out risky projects, is something that we would encourage other philanthropies to do as well. And then the third thing that we do that is a bit different is we really move with speed. We believe in getting capital as quickly as possible to organizations who are driving change. That's why we've designed our processes to be as grantee friendly as possible, asking for just enough information to help inform our decision making and make some good bets. And this, I think, is demonstrated by the fact that over our first two years, we've made over 120 grants and moved almost $35 million quickly to high potential ideas. So that's what really, I think makes this difference.

Julian Alssid: Well, so Ellie picking up on that. So you have this, you've developed rapidly, then pretty big portfolio. Well, how do you develop maybe a little bit more on that? And how do you then monitor this portfolio that is in different focus areas and has different kind of time and impacts horizons?

Ellie Bertani: How we develop the portfolio is very much sort of a building upon the scientific method. We lay out a series of hypotheses of what we think is important, what is driving the labor market? For example, in the United States, where do we see opportunity and growth, and where can we make bets in that space? So for example, last year, we made a lot of bets in the green jobs space, as you might imagine, when there was significant industrial policy and investments in the CHIP and IRA acts that were really fueling growth in the energy sector and other sectors. So where we think we can make a good bet and also see the potential maybe to leverage other dollars, government dollars or other foundation dollars, we think we'll get a higher return on investment, that's one example. We're also making a pretty big bet in the short form credential market, college degrees aren't for everyone. Lots of people are turning towards shorter form training programs, as you all know quite well, but there's not yet a lot of evidence for which of those programs are the best, which deliver skills that employers are really seeking, which will really drive increased income for people. And so we're actually investing in helping make that market have a clear signal of value. That is to identify which programs are actually the best. And we've made some big investments in in that work. But that's all built on this hypothesis that if we can solve that problem, it will really drive earnings for potentially millions of people here in the United States. So that's a little bit about how we develop our portfolio around certain hypotheses that we will learn over time if they're working or not. In terms of monitoring our portfolio of projects, I think again, what makes us a little bit unique is, first, we work directly with grantees to tailor grant requirements, because we see economic mobility as having lots of inputs, lots of ways to drive improvements. Some programs maybe one year long, and we'll be able to build something quickly and see results quickly. Often, technology projects are like this, you can really see quickly if they're working or not. Sun like skills training programs take multiple years to understand if they're working or not. And so we we adjust the time periods, the amounts given, etc, and try to be very flexible with our grantees, allowing them also to adjust mid project if they need to go in a new direction, and then for monitoring and evaluation. You know, most funders don't support their grantees in efforts to measure their impact. We understand that those investments are important, that it can be complex, costly and high effort to conduct robust impact measurement. And so we actually. Have a fund supporting grantees to do just this. We launched it last year. It's called our Learning for Action Fund, and in its first iteration, and invested in 12 grantees from our portfolio to build their monitoring and evaluation capacity to both improve their own program designs by capturing feedback from their participants and allowing them to iterate their programs and to build evidence for what's working. And we are hopeful that as grantees, are able to build that evidence and prove what's working that will inspire other funders beyond us also to invest in some of this great work.

Kaitlin LeMoine: You know, I'm struck by how responsive the foundation is, it sounds like to the needs and kind of priorities of the different organizations that you invest in. I mean, both from, like, the tailoring of, like you said, some of, I guess, how people even, like apply for these, these funds, but also, and like, the kind of things they're looking to achieve once they've obtained the funds. But also this, this focus on monitoring impact, right? Because I think, like in this space, that can be really challenging and doesn't always have a short time horizon associated with it, depending on the initiative or the program. So I mean, I'm curious, Ellie, can can you share a couple of examples of grantees that are demonstrating impact, and then maybe we can dive into some of the challenges and learnings you're seeing as well.

Ellie Bertani: Two organizations that I wanted to highlight that I think are great examples of really interesting, unique, high ROI projects that we're excited about. So the first is an organization you may know called Upwardly Global. Upwardly Global is an organization here in the United States that helps immigrants translate their skills from prior jobs or careers from their home countries to to re credential them and allow them to employ those skills here in the United States, as you probably recognize, there are a lot of barriers when someone is immigrating, and often, many immigrants end up in rather low wage jobs like house cleaner jobs or Uber drivers or things they can quickly get to sustain their families, but aren't harnessing everything they have brought with them from their prior life and upwardly global really helps people go through the process of re credentialing, demonstrating those skills, pointing them towards the right programs that will allow them to then join the workforce in a much more productive way. So they're already doing great work. Upwardly global came to us saying, we really have this vision of expanding our work to serve more and more refugee serving agencies across the United States. What we want to do is kind of some what I would call unsexy infrastructure work. We want to build a learning management system so that we can codify all the work we do and train other organizations to do it, which would dramatically expand our reach across the United States to serve more and more people. And other funders hadn't been willing to make this investment, but we saw, based on how we model and analyze grant potential return on investment, that this was going to be a really high leverage investment and really drive many more people to have higher income. So we made the bet. They implemented the system. We have seen great results as of this work continuing, we've estimated that this will contribute to increasing annual income per person of the program by about $19,000 so really high returns for the investment we made. The second one I would call out is one of our grantees in Colombia called Kuepa EduTech. So cuepa has recognized that in Colombia there's a growing demand for hospitality and services because of the growing ecotourism and tourist industry, and we invested in a pilot program to help low income students be trained in these programs, to provide personalized coaching and to iterate a program so that other funders would come along and grow it over time, we've seen great success In this program, showing that, in some cases, the graduates are now doubling their earnings from below living wage there to over $6,000 a year per person, which is significantly above living wage in Columbia. And so, you know, we estimate that for only about $1,000 we will drive more than double increases to their lifetime earnings over time. So really, again, a really high return on investment now in terms of learnings, right? So I'll give one example of a grantee that you know, we invest in risky things. So many things don't work out. We see about two thirds of our prod. Projects, if we're doing a really good job or panning out as we had hoped, about 1/3 may not be, and that's to be expected. What we really look for, though, is these grantees who are learning and iterating as they go. So we invest in generation Kenya. Generation is a multi national organization that focuses on increasing skills, country by country across the world, and in Kenya, they launched this, really at the time, very innovative project, to help Kenyans, particularly in urban areas, gain skills, to be to have technical skills, and become freelance, digital freelancers in the open marketplace, the theory being, if they could then be employed by Americans, for example, their earnings would be significantly higher than if they were working for local and local jobs that are relatively poor paying with the continuing push into AI and the rapid changes the technology space, what originally seemed like a really exciting, high potential program over the first year ran into some significant challenges with the second and third cohorts gaining employment. The first cohort did great. The second and third really faced some significant challenges, and so they were forced. The grantee came to us and said, we think we should stop the program. We think we should save the funds and reallocate them to some higher potential initiatives. And we said, Thank you. Thank you for coming to us. Thank you for raising this as an issue. Thank you for recognizing this challenge. We were happy to see them pivot the strategy and repurpose the funds quickly and recognize the challenges they were facing. So, so all this to say, you know, this is a normal course of things. When you're making a high risk investments. What we really look for is the learnings and the ability of flex and pivot.

Kaitlin LeMoine: And I would say that, you know, I appreciate like, Thank you for sharing that that set of lessons learned. And I think you know having some of that story is is on your website as well. And I think it's really valuable to put that out to the community, right to say, like, here's what happens. Like, it's not always like a linear path to success. Sometimes it's actually about yes, let's repurpose or let yes, we're learning along the way, and what can we do differently? And I think showing models of how that work happens is really important, because I think, as you're saying, right, more many times, that's what occurs, especially with a lot of these social impact initiatives. It's not a linear path to success, and it's and there are so many external factors impacting these projects along the way, absolutely. I mean, just in the last few months, we can see how external factors can change all sorts of dynamics for nonprofits and philanthropies trying to make bets. So as long as the leadership team is one that is recognizing learning, we're willing to continue investing and betting on those teams.

Julian Alssid: So Ellie, even in less tumultuous times, I'd say that the field has been littered with good ideas that have come and gone with grants. And I'm really interested in hearing a bit about how, how do you work with your grantees to, you know, to ensure that they're to try to give the best chance of life beyond this grant like, how do you leverage these investments in that respect?

Ellie Bertani: Although we're young, we recognize that we would like to go beyond the check in terms of support to our grantees. And so with two of our three funds, currently, we have started implementing grantee cohorts and grantee support to those cohorts. So I'll give two examples of what that looks like today. We have an AI for Economic Opportunity Fund. We were one of the first foundations to invest in this space. And I say that not to toot our horn, but because we have learned a lot along the way since we started over two years ago, about what helps a grantee be successful when they're building a new technology, particularly a technology that it is itself evolving so quickly through our first cohort and our first fund, we were very fortunate to form early on a partnership with open AI, and that has really matured in the second cohort, to them offering engineering support for all of the grantees going through our second cohort, we host monthly meetings, bring all of the grantees together focused on a specific topic, each time, from topics ranging from ethical use of AI and building ethical frameworks for building and implementing AI in your own organization, all the way to highly technical conversations on, you know, rag and how do you set guard rails around your llms and, you know, things that I can't talk about even as intelligently as the rest of my team? Yeah. But and we use grant the grantees come in and bring a use case, a problem they're trying to solve, the engineers will help coach them in real time so everyone can learn collectively from that conversation. So we're seeing where we can bring in expertise to really support a cohort of grantees, and where they can learn collectively from each other, if you can build in those supports, it really goes a long way to making those projects as effective as possible. The second thing we're doing in that cohort and in others, is setting up demo days. Demo days work great for technical projects. They also work great for non technical projects, but allow it really bringing in other funders at the sort of capstone event at the end of a cohort, so be it six months or a year long, bringing in, you know, in some cases, 40 to 50 different funders to come and hear from the grantees about what is working, what may not be working, what have they learned, and what's the evidence? Can really get other funders excited and investing further in these programs, which we think is a huge benefit for the work, for impact and for these grantees. So those are a couple of ways we're thinking about it. You heard a little bit already about a Learning for Action Fund. We continue to believe it's critical to help grantees build their evidence base and build their M&E capabilities, because that itself allows them to communicate their work with such more data and detail that we think it really enhances their ability to thrive.

Julian Alssid: It's convening a lot of different conversations and resources, really, that's what we hope to do. So Ellie, what? This is a question we like to ask all our guests, what practical steps can our audience take to become forces in designing programs and solutions that demonstrate ROI and positively shape the future of work and learning?

Ellie Bertani: We at GitLab Foundation are on a mission to demonstrate that philanthropy and the nonprofit sector as a whole can be as outcomes based and accountable as private sector investors, we feel for that reason, we hope the sector can be clear on the outcomes in general that we all seek to achieve, not just focused on inputs, like how much dollars We grant out, which is often what we talk about, or on just the outputs, like how many people we touch and support, but really on the outcomes, have we moved the needle on improving how much money people are earning over their lifetimes? And that's not easy. We recognize it's complicated, but it's, we think incredibly valuable to stay focused on the end game. And in fact, we actually offer advisory services to other foundations, to individual philanthropists and to nonprofits that are seeking to become more outcomes oriented and ROI focus. So if any of your listeners want to learn about that, they can reach out to us, but we think that's just imperative for improving impact as a whole in the sector. In terms of specific strategies that we've seen often have a high ROI after our two years and then 120 plus grants, we do encourage funders to pay attention to some of those things I referenced before, these unsexy infrastructure grants, technologies that can help organizations become more cost efficient, more they extend their reach. Sometimes data systems, right? We live in an environment where being able to harness data and technology more and more is really what helps ideas scale, and that can often help a nonprofit supercharge its reach and growth. For nonprofits, hearkening back to some of my earlier comments, we just really advocate for agility and a learning approach. That's what we look for first and foremost, in a team that we're ready to grant to that includes sort of the mindset that the leadership team brings. Are they constantly collecting data? Do they have fast feedback loops from their clients that help them improve program design? Are they a test and learn organization that can do rapid prototypes right and put things out there. Those tend to be the most successful. We recognize some projects just failed. Failure is fine, as long as there's the ability to learn and adapt. But that's a mindset that just doesn't exist on every team, and it's something we we just think nonprofits really be be looking for in the talent that they recruit as well.

Kaitlin LeMoine: Thank you, Ellie, for those very...I think they are very practical steps as far as how our audience can become forces in this area. So as we wind down our conversation today, how can our listeners learn more about your work and the GitLab Foundation and continue. You to follow your efforts.

Ellie Bertani: Well, you can follow us on LinkedIn. You can look us up at GitLabfoundation.org. We actually have a newly launched newsletter on LinkedIn called Powering Progress. So if you can go to get lab foundation on LinkedIn, you can sign up for our newsletter. And then if you're interested in learning more about our modeling and measurement advisory services. You can reach us at measurement@GitLab foundation.org.

Julian Alssid: Well, thank you so much. Ellie for for this conversation. It's it was. It was very grounded. I'm sure you're going to get lots and lots of visitors to your site, and hopefully lots and lots of more nimble, iterative-inclined nonprofits.

Ellie Bertani: Well, I appreciate it. I want to say thank you to all your listeners. Thanks for you too, and for inviting me to come and be here today. I'm a big fan of Work Forces podcast, and it's just great to play a role. So thanks so much.

Kaitlin LeMoine: Thanks so much for joining us. Ellie, it was a great conversation. That's all we have for you today. Thank you for listening to Work Forces. We hope that you take away nuggets that you can use in your own work. Thank you to our sponsor, Lumina Foundation. We're also grateful to our wonderful producer, Dustin Ramsdell. You can listen to future episodes at workforces dot info or on Apple, Amazon and Spotify, please subscribe, like and share the podcast with your colleagues and friends.

Kerry McKittrick, Co-Director of The Harvard Project on Workforce, shares research conducted in partnership with the National Governors Association on how governors are reshaping workforce development to address labor force challenges. She identifies key trends including agency mergers, stakeholder engagement, dual-customer approaches, innovative funding, and investments in wraparound supports for underrepresented populations. McKittrick highlights how states focus on industry partnerships in emerging sectors and emphasizes the importance of data-informed regional strategies. She explains how successful pilot programs using governor's reserve funds can lead to permanent state policies, offering practical guidance for practitioners to adapt research insights to local contexts.

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. You know Julian, when we talk about and use the term workforce development, it can sound like we're talking about one system, but really it's an interconnected web, like set of systems. It's not just one thing.

Julian Alssid: A web is a good way to put it. You've got education and training programs, employer needs, government policies, economic data, new technologies and people seeking to advance their careers. So all these different pieces, and they're all influencing each other, you can't really address one without thinking about the others.

Kaitlin LeMoine: Yeah, exactly. It requires so much collaboration. Educators need to talk to employers. Policy makers need to listen to communities. And it's not just a top down function either. It's you need to you need input from the people going through the trainings and the workers trying to navigate their careers as well.

Julian Alssid: Which is why I'm excited that we're talking with Kerry McKittrick today from the Harvard Project on Workforce. Kerry is helping to make sense of the work happening across these interconnected systems.

Kaitlin LeMoine: The Harvard Project on Workforce is an interdisciplinary applied research project between the Harvard Kennedy School, the Harvard Business School and the Harvard Graduate School of Education that examines workforce development and the future of work from these various vantage points. In Kerry's role as co-director, she leads the project's policy, research, and partnership strategy, and spearheads initiatives focused on building better pathways to economic mobility. She has co-authored multiple papers focused on education, training and career navigation, and she speaks regularly about issues at the intersection of education and work.

Julian Alssid: And prior to joining The Project on Workforce, Kerry was a senior manager at Jobs for the Future and served as a senior policy advisor on education workforce, civil rights and child welfare policy for Congressman Jim Langevin. She started her career in politics serving as a campaign manager for Massachusetts State Rep Ken Gordon. Thanks so much for joining us today. Kerry.

Kerry McKittrick: Thanks for having me. I'm a big fan of the podcast and excited to chat.

Kaitlin LeMoine: We're excited to connect and chat with you today as well, Kerry. Thanks so much for joining us here. So as we jump in today, can you please tell us a bit more about your background and your role at The Project on Workforce?

Kerry McKittrick: Absolutely. So I come from a political policy background, and it was actually through that work, through working with a congressman from Rhode Island, Jim Langevin, who really was interested in career and technical education, that my eyes were kind of opened to the workforce development and career and technical education world. And you know, I found it really interesting, because unlike many policy areas, it's pretty bipartisan. We were able to find some great agreements across Democratic sides and Republican sides and between employers and educators. Everyone sort of agreed that this type of approach was extremely necessary to both fill what was called at the time, you know, the skills gap, but also expand equity and so, you know, I did that work in Washington, got a little bit tired, as you may imagine. My, you know, my, my heart goes out to all the folks still doing this work. It's really amazing in Washington. But wanted to kind of dig deeper into the broader ecosystem. And as you were saying, really understand all of the different players and their roles and their unique levers for driving economic mobility. So I was fortunate to work at Jobs for the Future and now at The Project on Workforce. I'm thrilled to sit at the intersection of all of these players and try to make research accessible. So often I feel like research is on one side and practitioners are kind of on the other, and so it's important to ground the practice conversation in the evidence. And really, our mission is to build better pathways to economic mobility for workers and learners who haven't been served well by our systems in the past, and so we advance research on, you know, education and workforce transitions. We focus on the role of community colleges and regional economic development, the, I would say, role of career navigation supportsin economic advancement and workforce policy and education policy about the state and federal levels.

Julian Alssid: So Kerry, so you do indeed sit in the in the middle of it all, and which is, which is great, and your research coming out of the center has been out of the project has been quite, quite amazing. As we seek to remain kind of current on the, you know, on the future of work and learning, what are some of the trends you're seeing, and tell us about some of your most research and related findings.

Kerry McKittrick: I think that's a great question, because things are shifting pretty rapidly beneath our feet. And, you know, it's, it's a complex, complicated time to be doing this work. I think one of the things we're focused on at the project is really shifting workforce policy at the state level. And you know, we recently released a report focused on the role of governors in shaping workforce development systems, and we focused on governors because they have a unique position, both under the Workforce Innovation and Opportunity Act from the federal level, as well as over the states agencies which we know workforce touches everything from education systems to economic development systems to child care and transportation, all of these issues are really interconnected, and governors have a unique ability to bridge those gaps, and so we wanted to understand, because there is a lack of research on this topic and on what states are doing at the workforce level. Wanted to understand what governors were focused on, what were their priorities, what are some of their strategies and processes that they're deploying as they try to address low labor force participation. And I call that out, because when we were interviewing governor's workforce advisors to do this research, 60% discussed low labor force participation as a key driving factor that was contributing to their workforce development strategy. And so I can go a little bit deeper, but I'll highlight five trends that we saw at the state level. The first is that organizational structures are shifting across states. So we're seeing, in a lot of cases, agencies being merged, whether that's education and workforce agencies or workforce and economic development, we're seeing new stakeholder driven engagement, stakeholder driven approaches to WIOA planning. So we asked about, you know, some of the Workforce Opportunity Act, I think the listeners know we owe is the acronym for that. But in many cases, you know, these are resource intensive processes, but states are really engaging with stakeholders and understanding both, both with employers, with industry associations, to really understand the challenges that they're facing. And then the third piece was this dual customer approach to workforce development, so serving both employers and individuals, both job seekers and job holders. And so I think you know, balancing that, that support between quality jobs and job demand, is something that came up in our interview, 75% of folks mentioned this is the tension they were addressing. And then the last two trends are really trying to address some of the challenges with WIOA funding, federal funding in general, coming up with creative approaches, using governor's reserve funds in innovative ways. And then the last is, you know, really investing in targeted training towards youth, towards underrepresented populations, like justice involved folks, and investing in wraparound supports. So 60% of the folks we talked to mentioned childcare as a really important component of a workforce development strategy, particularly in the wake of COVID, folks, we're seeing, you know, so many caregivers leaving the workforce. And right now, the challenge in many states is how to bring people back, and how to adopt this sort of whole of life, whole of government perspective, to workforce development.

Julian Alssid: So that's, that's a lot. It's a very, very you're what you're seeing. So it's very comprehensive, very systemic. It's, it's, it's great to know that states are moving in these directions. Are there priorities that are standing out among the kind of array of shifts you're seeing that cut across states, yeah.

Kerry McKittrick: Yeah, that's a great point. I would say the industry partnerships really focusing on key sectors at the time that we were doing these interviews, which was during 2024 from April through December, folks were really focused on clean energy. They were focused on semiconductor manufacturing. A lot of these industries that actually were being targeted by the Biden administration for industrial policy. So we're seeing that states are really investing in industry as partners, in some cases, providing incentives for folks to hire underserved populations. In other cases, building, you know, kind of customized training programs. In other cases, this is a extremely, I think, promising practice, providing business navigators, so a point of contact for a business to help navigate the workforce system, which is not easy to do. So I think there are a lot of exciting, promising practices out there, and focusing on this drill customer approach is certainly something we're seeing become more of a trend.

Kaitlin LeMoine: Yeah, that makes so much sense. I'm wondering. Kerry, going back to one of the first things you said around the priorities you had mentioned, or the five trends, rather, you had mentioned agencies that are merging. And I was just curious to hear a little bit more about that. What are some of you know, kind of, what are you seeing merge, and what are the reasons for it, for those mergers to be occurring?

Kerry McKittrick: So in some states, there's been efforts to merge education departments and workforce development departments. And in part, this makes it slightly easier to braid funding. So there are a lot of, you know, obstacles to braiding Perkins or education funding and workforce funding. But because workforce funds are so low, and we could have an hours on conversation about that, there's, you know, really a need to kind of be creative and berating funds. So that's kind of one piece. The other reason we saw was trying to build workforce pipelines that start at the youth level. So starting in K-12, with career and technical education, moving through community colleges up to workforce and community colleges starting to serve a real kind of integral role as upskilling institutions for their communities. So an effort to build these pipelines, one in four of the states we talked to mentioned youth apprenticeships as a priority. So merging these agencies helps folks to really improve the coordination across the board. And then I would say the other piece, the other emerging that we were seeing was, and this wasn't across the board, right? This was just, you know, several states was economic development or commerce with workforce, and this allowed for more business services to be integrated with workforce services, and a few of those that I just mentioned, but we're seeing, you know, one of the trends that I've observed is really the use of workforce policy as business engagement policy. Because businesses, you know, it's, it's far more than just, perhaps the tax incentive for moving to a specific area. It's really incentivizing workforce support and workforce investment, because this is what businesses need to and it's also helping states grow.

Kaitlin LeMoine: Yeah, well, and it's interesting to think, you know, to kind of hear these are the different ways that really, these different players are almost de siloing their efforts, right? Like, like you're saying about building that pipeline, what does it look like to build a an education and economic development pipeline, kind of like, K on up, right? Like, let's, let's start at the very beginning, and and all work together, kind of throughout and across these systems. So that's that's exciting to to hear you're seeing as, like, kind of an emerging trend in this space.

Kerry McKittrick: Exactly. And I think another thing I'd add to that is career exploration becoming a bigger trend, especially at the youth level, and understanding that, you know, many people might not know what a career in semiconductor manufacturing is, I think I still don't. So for young people you know, to really have the opportunity to explore, to figure out, you know, this is something that could leverage my talents. This could be something I want to do. Is an effective and kind of exciting way to go, I would say, you know, one of the other things I would add around this career navigation and career support piece is the need for more career coaches. So in addition to the child's care, the child care trend, half of states mentioned career navigation or career coaching as a priority, both at the youth level but also at the adult level. But there's an acknowledgement that there's a massive shortage of coaches, and then the funding for for these support services is also pretty low.

Kaitlin LeMoine: Yeah. I mean, I think we've seen in our work, like, it's almost like, there are all these new there's there's new industry, sub-industries within industries, there are new jobs that it's like, what are these jobs? Right? Like you hear it, but then it's actually like, what do you. Do day-to-day. It seems, as you're saying, it just feels like there's so much work to be done around like further defining these new and emerging roles that you know maybe haven't been around that long, or have experienced really significant shifts in recent years.

Julian Alssid: So it sounds like it's kind of you're seeing different flavors or different accommodations around the country, and the way governors are tackling this and and I'm interested you're one of the things we've seen in the past with with some of the reforms you know, that involve collaboration among education, workforce and economic development actors, is that they kind of come and go with leaders and administrations. So what do you see states doing to kind of bake this work? You talked about some, you know, merging of agencies and that sort of thing. But even on, like, the highest sort of coordination level, like how who's who's leading this work for states.

Kerry McKittrick: In part, because, you know, we did see some of the merging of agencies as a key lever that was implemented with new administrations. So it was something that governors could do right away. I think, you know, we did hear in our interviews that different transitions across administrations was difficult, particularly given, you know, usual funding silos. But you know, one thing that I think is interesting, one of the things we drilled down on was the use of Governor's reserve funds. So these are the governor set aside funds under the Workforce, Innovation Opportunity Act, and in some cases, so this, you know, is something from year to year that that could change. You know, states have their plans, but governors ideally have some flexibility and some discretion over where these funds go. In some cases, you know, folks actually said, Oh, well, it's been decided by the administration before us. It's it's hard for us to use this as a priority. In other cases, you know, it was used to backfill administration costs. But what I want to highlight here, which I think is interesting is that there was a case in there are certain cases in which people are using these funds to test ideas that are then that that, once they prove the efficacy, can then be signed into law and funded at the state levels. So I want to, and I think that's a really interesting way of continuing it post, you know, post a certain administration. So an example of this is Washington state. So the governor launched an initiative called economic security for all, which provided, using the governor's reserve funds, which provided wraparound supports and financial assistance for folks just above the WIOA threshold, income threshold. It did that for four years. Studied it found massive wage gains and had huge success. And because of that, the state signed it into law and added state appropriations to fund it. So this was able to kind of continue past the administration, which I think is a really promising use for those funds when they're available. I mean, again, you know, the small funding levels continue to be a challenge, especially for small states, who still have to maintain the data systems right, who still have to administer a lot of these, you know, these practices, but don't have as much funding as a larger state does, just based on the formula.

Kaitlin LeMoine: So building on that, that last comment, certainly, you know this, the small dollars, I guess we would say, is maybe one of the challenges here, but based on on, you know, your research and findings, what do you see as some of the more the other challenges to address that states are addressing or working to address around the effective use of WIOA dollars and other workforce funding dollars as well.

Kerry McKittrick: Yeah, I think, you know, lack of good data and information is a real challenge. Folks are, you know, investing in data systems, there's a great you know, data, quality data, workforce quality fund through workforce innovation, and many states are investing in state longitudinal data systems. So there's progress there, but this is still a place where we could use a lot of investment and a lot of improvement. We've done some analysis of state WIOA websites, this was a few years ago, and found that many of them, the most of them, didn't have clear outcomes data on earnings or completion rate or employment after a training program. So not only does this, you know, harm an individual who's trying to use WIOA services to upskill, but it also is makes it difficult for states that are trying to direct resources or allocate resources strategically. So I think we need a lot more investment in data systems so we can understand what works and provide information for, you know, job seekers, so they can make the decisions that are right for them.

Julian Alssid: So Kerry, you know, I know you're you say you're a regular listener, and we do appreciate that. And as you know, one of the questions we like to ask all of our guests is, you know, what are your recommendations for how our audience can become forces in applying? You know, in your case, your research findings to policy and program designs.

Kerry McKittrick: You know, I often say that my worst nightmare is our research sits on a shelf and no one uses it or looks at it. So I appreciate any opportunity to tell people to go to our website and look at our research. But in all seriousness, I think that grounding conversations at the regional level in data and evidence is crucial. You know, I think a lot of conversations that are happening are more anecdotal, like, oh, we know this employer has a shortage, or we're hearing that people may be like this program, or these jobs may be in demand. I would encourage folks to use our research, use some of our data, tools like the Workforce Almanac, which maps out the workforce sector different providers across the country, to actually start these conversations between employers, policy makers and educators at a common place say, okay, you know this is not the the end of the discussion. The data isn't the end of the discussion, but it's the start, and it allows us to, you know, kind of not base our strategies and our practices on assumptions what we might think is happening, but really to look at a common ground of this is what we're actually seeing. So using real time labor market information, you know, these are the job postings that are in demand, or using our research on some of the best practices around college to Job pipeline, to say workforce or work based learning programs have the strongest evidence behind them, let's use that as a starting point to Bridge our partnerships, to realize and to integrate some of the best practices. But again, these are regional conversations. This is very place based work, right? And so, you know, hopefully these are tools, but we don't think these are, you know, necessarily the answers. There's a lot more work to do, a lot more research questions out there that we need to answer, but hopefully it's a good start in the right direction.

Kaitlin LeMoine: Yeah, absolutely. I think that that is such a key piece of this work, right? It's like, what, how can we draw from best practices and, like, common processes that seem to work really well, and then at what point do you say, okay, but what's happening locally, regionally, and what does that mean for, like, what we actually do on the ground right? And it's, I feel like it's a really, it's a complicated balancing act of trying to learn from what's working well in different areas, but then also saying, Well, what's, what's unique to this region and where are what, what strengths should we leverage, right or build upon? It feels like it's, I don't know if you were finding that in your research at all. But I feel like that's just like, just living in this work. I feel like that's one thing that's always like, top of mind for us. It's like, how can you, like, you know, take what's best, a best practice, but also really apply it in a localized way that makes sense for wherever you're working?

Kerry McKittrick: Absolutely. You know, we've done some research on community colleges, as I mentioned at the beginning, and their role in their ecosystems, and we specifically looked in one project on how they were using data, real time, labor market data, to drive some of their their programs. And we found that while that was a great tool and it was a great starting point, it actually didn't provide all the answers. And so having conversation, validating and supplementing that data with conversations with employers was just as crucial. And so I absolutely think you're right there. You know differences a job that may be in demand in one area is not in another area, right? It's so regionally specific, a challenge of out migration in one area may not be the same in another right different industries require different types of services. So that's where we've tried to kind of pull out some of these shining examples and some of the best practices. Hopefully in our research we, you know, we hope institutions or states can look at it and say, oh, there's an example that maybe applies to my my situation or my context, and that I can, you know, use I can see a small state, you know, a state like Wyoming is not going to have the same sort of workforce context as California or New York, but perhaps they can look to another State and say, I can learn from that one. And so there's a lot of that that we try to do too. I think the quantitative data is great, but the qualitative data is equally important. And looking at the case studies and really what works for different contexts is crucial.

Julian Alssid: Well. And Kerry, you know, you said it a couple. Level of times. I think the the notion of the data as a starting point for discussion is so key. And even then looking at other examples around the country, and, you know, it's all kind of this iterative process that goes straight back to the dual customer approach. And you just kind of have to keep, you know, testing and test the test, test the numbers, test the hypotheses, iterate, you know, etc, and then the economies keep changing, and demographics keep shifting. So it's, it really is this kind of ongoing, you know, living, breathing, kind of organism, this workforce system.

Kerry McKittrick: Absolutely, I think, and the labor market changes faster often than the system does, which is certainly a challenge, particularly, I think, for education systems, for trainers, keeping up the labor market is a challenge, particularly today, with all of these kind of technological advancements. And generative AI is changing things faster than you know, I think we would expect, and there's just a lot of unknowns out there, and so being responsive, continuing those relationships in a meaningful way, think is crucial. Sometimes it's easy to say, oh, develop a partnership. Well, what does that look like? What does that mean? Right? Like, what, what is a good kind of communication and cadence? So I think that's where learning from other examples is, is especially crucial.

Julian Alssid: Absolutely so. So Kerry, as we, as we wind down our discussion, how can learners learn more and to continue to follow your work,

Kerry McKittrick: We have a newsletter. Please sign up for our newsletter on our website. I promise we won't inundate you every week. Um, we send it out when we have new releases, and follow us on LinkedIn. We, we try to, you know, blast out a lot of our research and other research that we may not be doing, but that we may see folks from other centers, you know, finding the latest data on generative AI the other day, we, we posted research for several researchers, but including one of our faculty directors, actually, Rafaella Sadun, on the use of Generative AI as a team member. So in addition to our own reports, we have all sorts of, you know, in our our own ecosystem, all sorts of things we're trying to highlight, and then we also highlight events. So we'll have different webinar series where we'll bring in folks and talk about our latest research or some of their work. And you know, again, we try to bring in folks from across the ecosystem, so from employers to researchers to educators and policy makers. So I encourage everyone to stay up to date, because we are busy.

It certainly sounds that way based on today's conversation, and we will definitely continue to follow your work and really appreciate you joining us for this conversation today.

Kerry: Thanks for having me. It was fun.

Julian Alssid: Thanks, Kerry.

Kaitlin LeMoine: That's all we have for you today. Thank you for listening to Work Forces. We hope that you take away nuggets that you can use in your own work. Thank you to our sponsor, Lumina Foundation. We're also grateful to our wonderful producer, Dustin Ramsdell. You can listen to future episodes at workforces, dot info or on Apple, Amazon and Spotify. Please Subscribe, Like and share the podcast with your colleagues and friends.

Dana Stephenson and Dave Savory, co-founders of Riipen, discuss their journey creating a platform that connects students with project-based experiential learning opportunities. The conversation explores how work-integrated learning can bridge the gap between education and employment through flexible experiences that complement traditional internship models and help students gain valuable experience and transition more successfully into the workforce. Stephenson and Savory share insights on the evolution of experiential learning from limited co-op programs to a more accessible continuum of opportunities that help overcome barriers for both students and employers. The discussion also examines emerging trends, including the growth of dedicated experiential learning roles at institutions and development of regional learning ecosystems.

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, it feels like every day we're hearing more about the challenges facing new college graduates entering the workforce.

Kaitlin LeMoine: It's true. Julian, some hiring managers say recent grads are unprepared for the world of work, and employers are increasingly seeking candidates with work experience, even for entry level positions. It's a pretty tough landscape to navigate out there

Julian Alssid: Yeah, and that's where work based learning becomes so critical. More and more jobs require experience so so we have to build experiential learning into learners academic programs, but developing effective experiential learning programs at scale can be incredibly challenging for both employers and educators

Kaitlin LeMoine: Which is why we're so excited to have Dana Stephenson and Dave Savory of Riipen with us today. Ripen is tackling this issue head on by providing a work integrated learning platform and ecosystem.

Julian Alssid: Dana is Riipen's, Co founder and CEO, and he launched Riipen with a vision to end underemployment by ensuring every learner can access authentic, project based experiential learning opportunities. And Dave is Riipens, co founder and VP of experiential learning, with over 15 years of experience and entrepreneurship and business development. He brings us to this important work.

Kaitlin LeMoine: Dana and Dave, welcome to Work Forces. We're looking forward to learning more about how Riipen is, making work based learning accessible at scale.

Dana Stephenson: Thanks, Kaitlin, thanks, Julian, great to be here. So as we dive in today, can you please tell us more about your respective backgrounds and your current roles at Riipen, and from there, we'd love to hear more about the problems that you're looking to address through Riipen.

Dave Savory: Sure. Yeah, thanks great to be here. Thanks for having us on. My name is Dave Savory. I'm one of the co founders of Riipen, and lead our experiential learning team. Really, in my day to day role, I focus on working really deeply with partners across a pretty diverse range of industries, in higher ed workforce, intermediary groups, government as well as funding partners. So really thinking through and excited to invest in really new models that can remove barriers and create more access to experiential learning programs, and so excited to share a little bit of that work today.

Dana Stephenson: Yeah, Dana Stevenson, Co founder and CEO of Riipen. We're building the world's fastest growing and largest work-based learning marketplace, connecting to students to companies through short term skills specific projects where students get experienced professional connections and find the jobs they love and employers gain fresh insights from the next generation of leaders and decision-makers and build and diversify their talent pipeline for upcoming roles in their in their organization. And we were an incredibly mission driven company. And I think, you know, the mission for us is really all about entering under employment globally. It's an exciting story of sort of where that came actually. The story really, really kicks off where Dave and I met back in business school, back in back to 2012.

Dave Savory: Yeah, we actually, well, we actually met in 2010 very serendipitously. We were in an orientation of our business school program at University of Victoria, we randomly sat next to each other and and instantly had a lot of mutual kind of values and alignments. And the following year, we actually had a course together where a faculty member came in and kind of ripped up the Harvard Business Review case and and brought in a CEO of a local mid sized company in the Victoria area, and basically said, hey, everyone this, instead of doing a case of a textbook, everyone's going to break up into groups and we're going to do a real project for credit on this company's kind of strategic crossroads that they were, that they were at, and Dana and I were in the same group, and we had quite a bit of work experience before entering our undergrad experience, and we just thought this was amazing in terms of, like, how to better engage with the learning and really apply the learning. And we had the CEO came in with a few team members. They presented their organization. We had a few kind of check in meetings with them throughout the semester, and at the end of the semester, the team came back, and they kind of did a Shark Tank kind of experience for every group, presenting their recommendations. And we just came out of that experience with just like so much more enthusiasm around like, Hey, why can't more of our experience, our courses that we're doing, who all that all have relevant kind of real world applied projects that are built into them. Why can't most of why can't more of them be with real employers that are going to help us build our network, develop our skills, grow our portfolio and our resume of experience, and that was really kind of our light bulb moment for why we started to go down the path of building record.

Julian Alssid: Yeah, that's so cool. So Dana, how has the experiential learning landscape evolved since you started?

Dana Stephenson: Right? A ton. Dave's, you know, the story we just described takes us back to 2010, 2012 we were part of the University of Victoria. So Riipens, a Canadian company born out of the University of Victoria as a student project for students. But one of the main reasons why we focused on on this project-based experience model is that in Canada, maybe people audience may or may not know. But in Canada, Northeastern, the co op model that Northeastern and Drexel and universities in Cincinnati and the US are so well known for it among others. In Canada, Co Op is huge. Almost every student, every institution offers a Co Op program, highly sought after, really well funded, really one of the most amazing experiences that we've had. So when, when we first got into this space in Canada, experiential learning, work, integrated learning, was really all about the co op model, but in the programs that we're offering Co Op, by no surprise, just like we're seeing in the US right now, I think Northeastern is now harder to get into than Dartmouth, given some of the stats that we're seeing, unsurprisingly, in Canada, the programs that we're offering Co Op were highly sought after getting a lot a lot of a lot of enrollment. The challenge is, at the time 2 million students across Canada, only about 200,000 students were getting access to a co op, so a huge supply and demand problem. And we started thinking to ourselves that there's got to be really a better way. There's got to be a more flexible approach to help reach students earlier on and throughout their education pathway. Dave mentioned we had a lot of experience when we got into this, when we were early on going through our education pathway. So we had no problem getting our Co Op, but we were shocked to find out how many students were in their their third year and had no work experience. So I think where we see things evolve is that traditionally, when people think about work based learning in the higher ed context. They've been thinking about the more traditional Co Op model. They've been thinking about the more traditional internship model. But the evolution is now what we're really excited about is that more folks are really starting to see this on a full continuum. Learners have all faced different barriers. They might be in different geographic locations. They might have other jobs that might have to hold on, hold on to to help pay for their higher education degree or program, they might have loved ones that are taken care of, a whole bunch of different barriers. And so the beauty of having an entire continuum is you can meet the students where they are. We can have a whole bunch of different types of approaches, going from lower intensity, shorter duration opportunities that can fit within a course or fit in a co-curricular setting, all the way up to higher intensity, longer duration experiences like a full blown internship, Co Op or apprenticeship and everything in between. And that's part of the, probably one of the most exciting evolutions that we've been seeing over the last little bit.

Dave Savory: Yeah, and I just add to that, it's been interesting to kind of see just the evolution and the nature of how a lot of these experiences, like when we first started, a lot of the experiences that we were supporting, of course, we're an online platform, but a lot of the the educators and the employers that we are working with were doing in person kind of collaborations. And then obviously, as the as the pandemic happened, there was a massive push to remote and virtual collaborations between employers and students, which obviously has amazing benefits in terms of breaking down barriers for learners who are not in parts of the country that have access to a lot of employment or industry opportunities. And now we're kind of seeing a bit of a push back towards some sort of hybrid model where we're very focused on, how do we how do we take the best from the remote kind of virtual model, but then how do we actually layer in kind of a local or regional ecosystem element to it, so that learners are actually getting experiences with organizations that are relevantly close to them. And so we're seeing a really nice, just kind of trend of how some of these regional and and statewide ecosystems are starting to blossom.

Kaitlin LeMoine: So you've presented kind of all the it sounds like there's a full suite and range of offerings that you try to provide to both, I would imagine, kind of, it's kind of a three sided marketplace, right? So, I guess for employers, institutions and learners, you're looking to provide kind of a range of opportunities, work based, learning opportunities, or positions or projects. How do you go about doing that? Like, can we get a little bit into the nuts and bolts of like, of, you know, we're thinking about thesecurrent trends. How is your How are you building your company in response to those trends?

Dana Stephenson: I will say one point of clarification. So we do offer a whole suite, but we're very vertically deep on the project based experience. And what's excited with the project based experience is that it can be 10 hours long completed over two weeks. It can be individual or group, or it can be 250 hours long can be completed over two semesters and everything in between. And that's really what gives it the flexibility, and really ensures that you can have these high quality experiences where students are focused on developing skills rather than some of the experiences that you do sometimes see out there. We all know that some internships are better than others, and you can really ensure that you're focusing on career relevant skills as part of that project and solving a real business challenge in your community or around the world. So we don't do traditional internships. We don't do traditional Co Op programs, just to be clear on that. But what's really exciting is most of our partners, actually, the vast majority of our partners, realize that the fastest way left in a world of really challenging supply and demand in the internship and Co Op space. One of the fastest ways to grow your internship and Co Op supply is to actually do more project based experiences that attracts more employers. They engage as a stepping stone. They convert those into Co Op and internship employers. And of course, it prepares your students to go land those so we're extremely complimentary, but we are very much focused on the on the project based. So how do we do that? We've got an entire you name it. We really are a marketplace on one side of the marketplace. We attract employers. We work with our partners to help them activate their networks of alumni, activate their networks of even Co Op and internship employers who want to, who want a wider variety and wider spectrum of things that they can do to engage students. We have our own channel partners with business associations and chambers and all sorts of organizations where we have a one to many approach to reach employers. And then, of course, we do our own outreach. We provide a platform that just makes it really easy for companies to come on and start to input all their ideas, all their challenges, all the goals that they're trying to achieve. And it starts to pump out a whole bunch of different project ideas that they can put into our ecosystem and make those available to our academic institutions. So typically, we've got anywhere from 3000 to 5000 live projects in the marketplace waiting to be matched to an educator to provide to their students at any given time. We completely oversubscribed that side. So we've actually flipped the supply and demand challenge, and the employers are now, rather than students competing for jobs in this marketplace, companies compete to work with students. The other side of it is we have our partner institutions, and they come on and it's really all the whole system here is very educator driven, so the educators get to be learned very early on. That if we can put the educators in the driver's seat and allow them to create the experience that aligns with their learning objectives, and then we can use the platform to help them communicate in that experience in a way that helps the employers and the educators be speaking the same language. Then we can make these really meaningful matches and get these projects that align with the business and talent needs but also align with the learning sections of the program embedded directly to the curriculum. So we that's sort of like half the battle right there. We just really build this marketplace offer the opportunities for these to connect at the right project, the right educator for the right students at the right time. And that helps with you know, the larger we grow, the more we scale up, the easier that becomes, the more valuable that becomes for everyone who's participating in our in our in our network. And then we have a whole suite of tools. So once you actually launch these project based experiences. We've learned from our partners that, how do I manage my students? How do I help make sure that my students are communicating well to the employers, having meaningful conversations? How do I track them through? How do I survey them before, during and after? How do I create opportunities for reflection on the skills that they're developing as part of these projects? All of that is built into the platform so that our partners can manage it. They can track it, they can measure it, and they can really see how much these interventions, these project based experiences, are improving students, retention, students, improving students, student success, student completion rates, and, of course, ultimately, student employment outcomes.

Dave Savory: Just build on that by really focusing on the project based model, we're really tapping into a pool of employers, primarily small and medium sized employers that aren't traditionally engaging in more formal kind of apprenticeships or internship or Co Op model, because they are a big lift and they're quite resource intensive for smaller organizations to to really support well. And so by working with employers who are kind of thinking through more, smaller, flexible, project based experiences, we're able to to engage an audience that isn't participating in some of those traditional models. And that's really helped us to grow that side of the ecosystem very well.

Julian Alssid: It's quite an undertaking. I mean, it sounds like there's a lot of moving parts. And I'm interested to hear a little bit about I'm interested to hear more about how you actually build this. Dave, is this like, Do you have a team of folks who are developing these projects? How do you, you know, what's the level of involvement on the part of the employers and the other partners? And then I really want to hear about challenges. What keeps you guys up at night?

Dave Savory: Well, I mean, we do have a great team on both sides of the ecosystem, supporting educators and our academic partners, as well as our foyer partners. And on the employer side, we're really focusing on, we almost recruit and engage employers in a just in time, way based on kind of the needs and demands that we're seeing from our educators and our academic partners. We and we've learned over time that when they actually see a tangible opportunity at a institution that they recognize and it's a call to action of a real program that's accepting applications that helps small, medium sized businesses, any any business really be like, yes, I want to do that. Or maybe that's not a good fit, but I want to post my project into the ecosystem. And so the way matchmaking happens is it goes both ways, so employers are able to apply to an educators program, and vice versa. A lot of great a lot of our educators are actually really good at going into the employer side of the ecosystem, searching for projects that are aligned with their courses, and actually reaching out and being proactive to employers. And so we see success kind of both ways. We've also really been investing and leveraging AI in the Riipen system to just remove friction points for just saving time and helping employers, obviously, creating content and thinking of project ideas is, is it can be a challenge. How do I write a project that's a really good fit for for an educator, that would be a good project for their class? And we've always had really great templates built out, but really, in the last year and a half, two years, we've built into the platform the ability for employers to go in and just type out ideas that they're interested in doing and use our project AI tools to create a project scope that's really well defined and is designed in a way that can be embedded into into a course. And then we have kind of a an assessment of when they're looking to apply to courses, if their project is a good fit, green, yellow or red, and if it's if it's a great fit, that really increases the match rates, but it also helps employers think through, okay, well, what do I need to do to add into this project, or change the project scope to make sure it is aligned with what an educator, what an academic partner, is looking for? One of the one of the major challenges that we see has have always seen, is that there's no shortage from our academic partners and educators who want to deliver this kind of high quality, high impact experience to their to their to their learners.

Dana Stephenson: The biggest challenge that I think we've been dealing with really, from from from day one has always been I'd love to offer this for this my students. I see how this is happening out there, and other faculty members are doing this, but where am I going to find the time? Where am I going to find the connections? And how am I going to manage this? So technology can play a huge role in that we've we can help bring the connections. We can help remove friction as Dave, as Dave described. We can, we can, we can offer enormous amount of features to help with the management, but ultimately, that's only one part of the equation. One of the most exciting trends that I think we're seeing right now in this in this space, is the the fastest growing job title that we've seen out there is experiential learning coordinator or manager or director or work based learning manager or director or work integrated learning manager or director or coordinator. And some of these teams are actually growing quite big, and they really kind of bridge the gap between the academic world and the career services world. And these are the teams that we're often working very closely with. So often we'll work directly with faculty members, but as an institution, starts to really see the opportunity to scale this and go from five to 50 to 100 different courses at their institution and 1000s of different students getting these experiences on a semesterly basis. And there's there's this opportunity to build out a team like this that we can really work very closely with to run these programs on behalf of faculty members, and then there's a whole new cohort of faculty members who wouldn't have otherwise participated, who are now willing to participate, because there's someone on campus who's a staff member who really understands their institution, understands the strategic goals, understands what you know, is trying to standardize how things are measured, has a tool like Riipen that can say, hey, look, you focus on teaching and learning, and you focus on supporting the students. We're going to focus on managing the employers and managing the students through this project. And we'll all work on this together. And that way, really, you know, within an ecosystem, within an academic institutions, ecosystem really becomes this, this, this partnership between the experiential learning coordination coordinator, the faculty member, and Riipen, setting up the best possible experience the students and employers together.

Dave Savory: Yeah, and just to together. Yeah, and just to kind of build on the from a challenges perspective, I know from a regional kind of ecosystem perspective, I mean, one of the main challenges is just breaking down silos across a lot of different stakeholders who are doing really great work and all have the right intentions, Across workforce, higher ed, government, policy, chambers of commerce, like, how do we actually, they're all doing pockets of this work really well, but how do we actually kind of break down some of those silos and bring bring these folks to the table under a more unified approach, to really drive the outcomes that they're looking for, their for their different stakeholders that they're serving.

Kaitlin LeMoine: So one thing that strikes me is this balance of what sounds like a really hands on and like customized approach, in many ways, with some amount of standardization as well, like around you know, I would imagine, in order to ensure like quality of the types of project proposals that are coming in on the employer side, and then what the learn, the quality of the learner experience that you know that occurs as a result of the connection between the instructor and the employer. So I'm just curious, how do you, how do you balance that customization, standardization, tension or and do you see it as a tension?

Dana Stephenson: I guess we've taken a hybrid approach. When we actually first launched Riipen, it was all standardized. You know, when our partners, our academic institutions, came on board, they launched experiences. They launched it the Riipen way. When our employers came on they launched it the rRipen way. Everyone was joining Riipen and getting matched, made on Riipen. They ran it the right, really, really the Riipen way, and that was super successful at reaching scale, as we mentioned, standardization really helped with removing friction reaching scale, which really helped us solve the chicken and egg challenge and the cold start problem that a lot of schools have when they want to get an ecosystem off the ground. But then it became very clear that every institution that we work with is very unique. The students that they serve are unique. The employers that they engage with and serve, and you know, the challenges they want, they want to support in the community, are unique. So they're sort of becoming a whole wide variety of different ways that our partner institutions wanted to run these programs, what they wanted to measure, what was important to them, how, you know how to set up these programs, both from a curricular or co curricular way. And so what we essentially ended up launching is this hybrid model where each academic institution that we work with can launch their own private, branded portal that is completely configurable. Can they can set it up the way they want to set up. They can set up the nomenclature. They can set up how they want to what skills they skills they want to measure and track, you know, how they want to survey their students. They're reporting everything. And they can bring in their own employers, and their own employers really live within that ecosystem. So they're constantly building up their own vibrant ecosystem. But what we also heard of our institutions is they did not want to lose access to the marketplace, because that was incredibly valuable. So the hybrid world really came from us being able to still have the more standardized, open marketplace where all of our partners live. And so any employers who come from our network, when we're bringing them in, they're coming into the standardized marketplace where they can launch their projects super quickly. They can get them off the ground. They can really build the scale of the opportunities available. That's how we can make these project based experiences abundant, and really sort of flip the supply and demand challenge. But each of our institutions now can launch their own custom configured portal the way that they want to run it, and then we seed that ecosystem. We're able to seed that ecosystem. So, you know, another challenge before we did this was, you know, helping schools start their own ecosystem was really challenging. They all face their own chicken and egg. They all face their own cold start problem. But then with the with this ability to have the hybrid, we could seed that ecosystem with more than enough employers get it off the ground, and then once it gets off the ground, you'll start to quickly see that many of our partners, they'll flip from 80% of the employers coming from our ecosystem and 20% from their own networks to the complete opposite. 80% are these employers who are from their own local community, using our tools, coming back year over year over year, and they're less reliant on our open marketplace, but they still always have that so they want to launch a new program in a new area that they haven't done yet. Don't worry, we can help you get that started as well.

Dave Savory: Yeah, and on, on your the point of your question about like, support of the learners and the employers once they're actually in an experience, we've had over 275,000 students now in the US and Canada go through and complete a work based learning project and and we've learned a lot in terms of, no matter who's running the experience, what are the key things that need to happen in order to set the experience up properly, in order to source the right employers, in order to set the right expectations, in order to support learners, connecting to those employers, and making sure that the little things are happening in terms of signing NDAs, having kickoff meetings, having those those milestone check ins, getting the right information from the employers and actually utilizing and maximizing kind of the opportunity right through providing feedback and reflection and helping learners build a portfolio that can help them articulate that experience and the skills that they learned. And so those things need to happen, regardless of who does it. And so we've kind of taken a philosophy and approach over over time, we've actually built out a specialized team at Riipen that is is focused on being in the weeds, kind of support experts in managing these experiences on behalf of some of our academic partners. And or we're working with schools that have that function built up already, and they've been investing in that experiential learning management element. And or working with faculty who have been doing this for years, and they have a really well defined system. And so before we kind of launch any partnership, we really want to make sure that everyone understands kind of all those key things that need to happen to make sure that we're going to be driving the outcomes that everyone's looking for.

Julian Alssid: Well, you've sort of, you've sort of gone there., Dave. The next question, the one that we like to ask all our guests is, how can our audience become forces in, you know, authentically integrating work based learning experiences into educational offerings, from from short term programming to long term degrees, and whether it's folks who are already involved in those efforts or who want to become involved, you know, what are the first steps.

Dave Savory: I would recommend, if you're not ready to kind of launch a wide scale kind of program, don't be afraid to just get started, even if it's a small implementation. Don't let perfection kind of be get in the way of progress. I think that's the term. But often, with a lot of programs that we talk to their forming committees, and they're doing research, and they're figuring out how to do this and what that impact is going to be, and how to budget and resource and those things all need to happen, of course, but that shouldn't be in lieu of getting started. There's cohorts of students going through their programs every every semester that that that's happening, and they're missing out. And so I guess the message there would be, don't be afraid to get started, even if it's in a small, kind of controlled area that can then inform how you're going to invest in this work. Further.

Dana Stephenson: The thing I'll add to this is really adopting a yes and mindset, or a both and mindset. I think one of the things that a lot of higher education institutions often will get tripped up on is, you know, should we be doing internships, or should we be doing project based learning, or should we be doing simulated experiences, or should we be doing, you know, authentic, real, live engagement projects with real employers. And, you know, going back to the whole continuing continuum conversation right from the beginning, we're big believers that it's like, yeah, it's a both and and it really shouldn't be a debate between one or the other. It really should be. Let's try and invest in all of these types of experiences. Meet the students where they are, have them scaffold them throughout their entire education pathway, so that when they get to the more intensive experiences, they're really set up for success or when they're ready to enter into the workforce. They have more than enough experience. They've been through the challenges they've experienced a whole wide variety. Have a lot of career, career clarity and exposure to industry, and they're the best set up to land meaningful employment post graduation.

Dave Savory: And don't forget to engage the small and medium sized businesses a lot of our institutions, which is great, but a lot of them tend to go after the large kind of Fortune 500 type logos and employers, which we should obviously do. But there's a wealth of opportunities and possibilities with with organizations that are in your regions, in your backyard, that might not have that large employer brand presence, but they can provide really amazing opportunities for your partners,

Julian Alssid: Which is where the vast majority of people work, in smaller companies.

Kaitlin LeMoine: Well, thank you so much for taking the time to speak with us today. It is really that you're the growth that Riipen has experienced is remarkable, that your the reach is really noteworthy, and we appreciate being able to dive more deeply with you all today about you know some of the ins and outs of how you how you've made this happen. As we close out our conversation today, how can our listeners learn more about Riipen and continue to follow your work?

Dana Stephenson: Riipen.com is the first place that you can come explore. We actually have an open marketplace. You can explore live engagements of app. What are employers posting onto the platform? What are our experiences that post secondary institutions are posting onto the platform? What kind of workforce programs are being developed and launched on the platform? We've got a whole spotlight area and wall of love where you can hear from our partners and their experiences with this. We also have an annual impact report, and so we encourage everyone to come and sign up. We did our first inaugural annual impact report last year. You can check that out. We will be releasing our new one in the in the coming months. So there's a sign up for our newsletter and our annual impact report to stay engaged.

Dave Savory: And we also attend a lot of conferences, so I really appreciate you having us both on today.

Julian Alssid: Appreciate you being here.

Kaitlin LeMoine: Thank you both.

Dana Stephenson: Thank you so much. Really appreciate it.

Kaitlin LeMoine: That's all we have for you today. Thank you for listening to workforces. We hope that you take away nuggets that you can use in your own work. Thank you to our sponsor, Lumina Foundation. We're also grateful to our wonderful producer, Dustin Ramsdell, you can listen to future episodes at workforces, dot info or on Apple, Amazon and Spotify. Please subscribe, like and share the podcast with your colleagues and friends.

Matt Sigelman, President of the Burning Glass Institute, discusses the crucial role of real-time labor market data in guiding workforce development and helping stakeholders navigate the evolving skills landscape. Sigelman highlights the rapid evolution of skills, noting the decreasing 'half-life' of skills and the growing importance of lifelong learning. The episode explores how workforce systems can adapt to these changes, including the need for better training infrastructure and a focus on career progression. Sigelman also examines the impact of artificial intelligence (AI) on the future of work and the importance of complementing AI with human skills to ensure a more equitable and prosperous future.

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.

So Julian, for years, we've been helping clients navigate the messy intersection of work and learning, and using and interpreting labor market data has been essential to help inform and guide the direction and decision making of various stakeholders, ranging from business and industry to higher ed and training providers.

Julian Alssid: It's true Kaitlin, but early on, data tools were limited government data lags, which made it hard to keep up with pace of change, and the tools available were also challenging to use or interpret, which which made it difficult to adopt the use of this data across whole teams and organizations. Often, data analysis was housed under, you know, one person, or in a small analytics shop, which further like limited ongoing use by the individuals charged with educating and training and hiring. And to compound this all further, students and workers were even further removed from labor market data and related trends.

Kaitlin LeMoine: And that's why the work of our guest today is so critical. Matt Sigelman, president of the Burning Glass Institute, has dedicated his career to unlocking new avenues for mobility, opportunity and equity through skills. He and his team created the field of real time labor market data, a breakthrough innovation which has transformed how we understand and navigate the world of work.

Julian Alssid: Matt's work has cracked the code of an increasingly dynamic labor market tracking demand for 10s of 1000s of skills across 30 countries before before launching the Burning Glass Institute, he was CEO and then Chairman of Lightcast for over 20 years, and worked at McKinsey & Company and Capital One. Matt also currently serves as a senior advisor at the Harvard Project on the workforce, and is founder of the elementary school mainline classical Academy. Is it? He writes widely on the job market, and it's consulted frequently by public officials and the global media.

Kaitlin LeMoine: Matt, welcome to Work Forces. We're so excited to have you with us today.

Matt Sigelman: It's great to be together. Thanks so much for having me.

Kaitlin LeMoine: Great. Well, so as we jump into the conversation today, can you please tell us a bit about your background and your current role at the Burning Glass Institute.

Matt Sigelman: As you pointed out, I spent 20 years before starting the Burning Glass Institute, building what's now come to be called Lightcast. What a lot of people don't realize is that, like cast started not as a data company, but as a job matching company. We built a engine for first being able to read people's resumes, and then to be able to what they call resume parsing, and then to be able to match them to jobs. And it was a successful little business and we wound up doing a lot of work in state and local workforce systems, providing them the the matching engines that were used to be able to support clients and connecting them with work. And this was around kind of the start of the Great Recession, when suddenly a lot of workforce agencies found themselves inundated with people, many of whom weren't traditional kinds of workforce system customers. People who are professionals or from a wide array of occupations and, you know, we had this great engine and, and what we realized, though, is that it could only work well if it could connect people with jobs. There had to be jobs for them to be capable, to be connected to and what, of course, your listeners who work in workforce systems know is that employers haven't always been so forthcoming in connecting and putting their jobs in front of workforce systems. And so what we essentially had was this Ferrari engine flight plucked down inside of a Yugo. Right, you know, it searched across the 100 jobs that happened to be listed on, on what effectively was an online bulletin board in, you know, in a workforce center. And so what occurred to us is that we were solving the wrong problem. We were solving a one on one matching problem. That is to say, how do I match Matt with a specific job? But so much of the problem that we have in workforce development, economic development, in policy, but also in the world, of education and employers? Well, is a planning problem. It's not a one on one matching. It's a problem. It's it's a how do it's a it's a population genetics problem, right? Like, how do you connect this group of people with these kinds of jobs? Because that's when you can start to plan. And so we started scratching our heads and said, Why is that not happening? And what we realized is the same reason why our matching engine was constrained. The fact that there weren't a lot of jobs in one place was the same reason that a lot of that planning wasn't happening. And so we said, Well, gee, this is this is strange right now. Pretty much most job postings. And I think this was largely true, then it's certainly a lot more true 17 years later today, that pretty much most job postings across whether you're talking about very entry level jobs, whether you're talking about highly skilled professional jobs, are posted online. And so instead of having to rely on employers to come to you, you could actually go and just scrape their jobs. And so we we built a whole system of spiders to crawl the web and bring back what ultimately became millions of job postings every day. But our ambition, again, was, was not so much to create a bigger database for a matching service. Our ambition really quickly became to be able to say, what do those jobs say? How can they help us plan more effectively, so that we're not leaving people, leaving training, leaving policy at the mercy of the spot market, where it's like, okay, what jobs happen to be available today? But instead to be able to think ahead and say, Hey, what's the training that we're gonna need to be what are the programs that we're gonna need to invest in? So, what we did is we started to develop all these coding engines to be able to make sense and interpret, make sense of and interpret all the jobs that we're bringing back. And that was sort of the birth of what people have come to refer to as the real time labor market industry. And it's, it's evolved greatly since then, and I'm proud of the work that Lightcast and others are doing, to continue to advance those data. I left that three years ago, and I left it because as powerful as the data are, I came to realize that a lot of what's missing is the ability, is, the trend is, is the translation and transformation layers? How do we use these data to affect fundamental transformations? And a lot of that really isn't necessarily about the data themselves. It's not about software, but it's about working together with stakeholders in the field and solving things very experimentally, because a lot of these big problems, the big, thorny problems that we're all trying to solve, well, inherently, they haven't been solved yet. So the Institute is a fully independent nonprofit data laboratory to advance research and practice at the intersection of the of the future of work and the future of learning, where our goal is to undertake the kinds of experiments that advance economic mobility, that build community prosperity and that ensure that we're, we're seeing better outcomes for workers and learners.

Julian Alssid: It's great Matt to hear you tell the story, and you know kind of I've, I've known you and really followed you through this, most all of this process, and I'm glad that you're now at the intersection of work and learning and trying to help solve these, these thorny problems. What? What are some of the trends that you're seeing now? And you know, at that intersection and in particular areas of research that you're really excited about and are kind of looking to further unpack.

Matt Sigelman: So when I think about the intersection of work and learning, what's shaping the imperative there and shaping the greatest sets of transformations is the level of dynamism and skills. We're used to thinking about a labor market that's denominated by jobs and a lot of the prognostication that we see is about jobs going away, new jobs being born. What we see instead is that the greatest changes are happening at the layer of skills. What are the skills that it takes to land a job? What are the skills that get accrued within a job, and what's the dynamism that's reshaping those skills that's really important, because the skills affect not only what it takes to get a job, but they affect how you get your next job. You think about a job transition, you're essentially taking the skills that you just learned, and you're moving from job to job. And what we're seeing is a tremendous rate of skill change. People often talk about a half life of skills. Listeners won't be surprised to hear that that half life is quickening and quickening. Well, quickly, we did some work a few years ago with our colleagues at BCG, where we found that the average job has seen 37% of its skills replaced in just the prior five years, and that was before generative AI. So here's the thing about it, though, when we think about that pace of skill change, we really sort of assume it's about technology change, and there's certainly no small amount of that, but the greater set of changes are actually about skills blending from across domains. Think about a field like marketing. You know, we all know people in marketing, they tend to be very nice people because they went into marketing because they know how to talk to people well. So you have right brain people, and all of a sudden marketing is becoming a data driven sport. So you have right brain people who need to be able to use left brain skills, not hard to find marketing people, but try finding a marketing person with SQL skills, and the job becomes much harder to fill. It comes, you know, starts to command big salary premiums. So we're seeing that kind of phenomenon around the market. Here's why I talk about that as as the key imperative shaping the intersection of work and learning, because what it says is that a educational model of once and done learning. You go to high school, maybe you go to college, and then you sort of never look back and go a step into your career. A model like that that was already challenged is increasingly broken or perhaps risible at minimum. I think you could say it's inadequate. Maybe that was a more polite way of saying it so. What it says is that there's 165 million US workers in the workforce, and the vast majority of them are in a position where they need to be able to acquire new skills, and they need to be able to acquire new skills on the fly. And we need an infrastructure for that. The logical infrastructure that we have things like our workforce system is tremendously under invested. Think about the scope of Workforce Investment monies that actually get allocated towards skill training, talking about a few 100 million dollars out of a couple billion of total WIOA funds a year. You think about our community colleges, which are slightly better funded, but the vast majority of, or at least significant majority of community college enrollments right now are into we're called degree transfer programs and not to workforce training. And so we really are leaving people to navigate their transitions without much guidance and without the resources to acquire the learning that enables them to move up, that gives them a greater chance of making sure that each of those transition is an opportunity for greater economic mobility. The average US worker right now will see 12 career transitions over the course of her career, and each of those transitions is an opportunity to either move up or to stay put or perhaps even fall back. And right now, we are not helping people systematically to discover what are the skills that will help them move up? What are the skills that are in demand that will allow them to command a premium? What are the skills that will prepare them for the future? And even if we help them discover those skills, we don't provide them with an infrastructure to acquire them. So you know that says to me that there's a whole big space around around lifelong learning. It has implications for higher ed, because right now, higher ed has largely surrendered that space to online players, and I think there's a big opportunity for colleges and universities in a time that they're seeing enrollments thin. It also has implications for how we think about non degree credentials and what it takes to make them successful.

Kaitlin LeMoine: I think that what you've said about kind of this moment of both the reality that the skills are changing very, very quickly, right? And what's needed as far as the half life of, kind of like, what's most up to date, as far as job relevant skills is shifting more and more quickly, kind of at the same moment as perhaps we're all needing to rethink, what does it look like to keep up to speed. I guess I'm wondering, like, who's whose job is this to figure this out, right? Because it feels like it's both on the it's, it maybe lives with the individual. It might live with employers. It certainly could live with higher ed and training institutions, but only if learners are going to them. So kind of, how do we think about, you know, how we all work to solve this challenge? It's a really, really big one that you're raising here.

Matt Sigelman: So I'm so glad you raised this, this question. There's right now no shortage of dysfunction in the market. For the most part, what we have is a system in which the responsibility for navigation rests with individuals themselves, with individual workers and learners. And that's a problem because individual workers lack information, they lack counseling, and they lack liquidity, both financial liquidity and time liquidity. They lack the financial liquidity to be able to invest in training and the time liquidity to be able to have the time to do it when...

Kaitlin LeMoine: Or even be aware that they need to do it right.

Matt Sigelman: Exactly. And so if you sort of think about where there would be logic in this. There'd be a lot of logic in employers investing. There'd be a lot of logic in the public investing in this. But both are encumbered right now by issues of cost, time and risk. We've got employers who, whether logically or not, wind up getting obsessed with what economists call free rider problems, right? You know, I've got a workforce that's likely to turn over very quickly, and it's true that, you know, in a lot of roles, retention is historically low and and so you know, why should I, as an employer, invest in training somebody who's likely to be leaving now, there's, there's all sorts of good logic for why they should, but, but regardless, you can understand the perception of how it's hard to for an employer to get a return on investment when the time duration of their return is is likely to be so low. But it doesn't change the fact that employers, the ones who are in the best position to signal to their employer, to their employees, right? You know, you would want an employer to say, Hey, Matt, I'm struggling to fill these jobs up here, and I think you could fill them, I want to pay you more. Here's the learning that I want you to take on. Here's the training I'm going to invest in you to get. The public has significant stake in this as well as we think about, you know, kind of our modern Sputnik moments in our global contest for economic competitiveness, as we we try to navigate an increasingly fraught geopolitical environment, the ability to be able to have a highly skilled workforce working in the kind of sectors that we think are going to be most important means that we need to have the opportunities to invest. But here too, I think, you know, we're, we're struggling with issues of, of cost on the one side, of planning on the other, which is, which is a time question, how do we predict where those changes can be and what the sequence of those changes going to be? And so, as a result, what we have, and by the way, educators, likewise, are either asleep at the switch in the sense that they're not offering the kinds of programs that are oriented towards selling degrees. And they are also where they are trying to promote things. Are trying to promote their programs. They're self interested. Not surprisingly, I think here's where we can change this dysfunction. And been lucky to be collaborating with a group of of 30 people in in a project at Stanford right now being led by by Mitchell Stevens, where we're really trying to say, what would what the new economics of learning be, if you were trying to think about moving from an educated society where education happens at the start of a career to a learning society? Where learning happens throughout a career. I think you can imagine sets of structures that allow us to both reduce risk through more effective information sharing, through better signaling, but also to share risk. You can imagine financial structures, for example, where if employer invests in an employee and training employee and the employee leaves that the employer gets a tax credit, regardless of whether the employee is still at the firm, proportionate to the amount somebody's income rises, which, by the way, is something you could fund out of the greater tax revenues that you get when people are earning more. So there's structures that we could put in place that would allow us to reduce risk, having better Labor Market Information Systems, having better mechanisms for employers to share data on the training that they're investing into their workers. Having better assessments of credentials, are all mechanisms that we can put in place, and some of which, you know, we're trying to advance at the institute.

Julian Alssid: I almost feel like we haven't even gotten to AI yet. So speaking of which, you know, as AI is sort of rapidly, you know, permeating all. How do you see, how do you see it impacting today and the future of work and learning, you know, short and long term, and, and, and, you know, and kind of the construct you're laying out for us.

Matt Sigelman: So there's a couple of effects that we've been we've been studying one that I've been working on, together with, with Mike Fenlon, who was formerly the the Chief Human Resources Officer at PwC, and with Joe Fuller, professor at Harvard Business School, and a colleague on the Harvard Project on the Workforce. And what we've been looking at is how AI is going to reshape learning curves. It turns out, what we found from our research that a lot of the impacts that we've been sort of thinking about as impacts on on jobs or on tasks are really about how AI shifts expertise, how much expertise is required to get into a job, and how expertise gets accrued over the course of a job, essentially, what's the shape of a learning curve? And what we find is that there are some kinds of jobs where learning curves tend to be relatively flat, where there's a fair amount of skill that's required to get into a job, but once you get into a job, productivity remains fairly constant, no matter the level of experience that you accrue. Think about the job of a bus driver, for example. Maybe not a great example, because it's probably not going to be particularly impacted by AI, but just as an example of a job with a flat learning curve, those jobs are worth, by the way, sort of paying attention to, because those are jobs where the hypothesis that we sometimes hear about how AI is going to be the worker best friend, they're going to democratize knowledge. They're going to help overcome barriers to access. Those are the kinds of jobs where, where that's likely to be the case, where, essentially, you needed domain expertise to get in. You needed language proficiency, whatever it was. But you know, once you've got that, you can do that job. And so I think those are going to be places where we may, in fact, see AI reduce the level of expertise that's needed, but there's a lot of other jobs where what you see is a pretty steep learning curve over time. And what that says is that expertise is accrued over time, the productivity rises over time. And what you can then do is look at the differences in skills that are required at the entry level versus for somebody who's highly experienced in the domain and in many of those kinds of jobs. You see is the AI impacts are much more the AI overlaps are much more pronounced at the entry level. That says in big parts of the economy, the entry level opportunity landscape is going to dwindle. Think about what that means, both for people who are educating and training people, and what it means on the other side, for employers, for for educators, it says, what it mean to train people to start their careers in the middle, as opposed to at the beginning, when people are going to need that much more proficiency, when we're already struggling to make effective connections between education and work, and now we need to to raise the bar the. That's a critical challenge. On the other hand, think about what this means for an employer, where whole organizations right now are shaped around the idea that you hire a whole bunch of people on the entry level, and over time, that field narrows itself, and a few people get, you know, at each stage kept promoted up, and so you have organizational structures that are essentially pyramid in shape. Now of a sudden, you're thinking about diamond shaped organizations where you really don't need a lot of people at the entry level. Okay, fair enough. But how do you get talent when your whole pipeline has always depended on having lots of entry level people who are getting early experiences, and through those experiences becoming expert. So that's one of the AI impacts that we've been thinking a lot about. We have another branch of research we've been looking at, as you might imagine, we spend a lot of time thinking about skills, and so we've been trying to not only translate a lot of the the early models of AI impacts, which are about tasks, into skills, what are the, what's the capabilities that people need in order to do work in an AI era, but specifically, trying to intermediate this tug of war between, you know, are, is AI going to automate work or augment work? And so, you know, it's sort of like the the taste great, less filling of our age. I think the three of us are old enough to remember that. I don't know if our listeners are, but in any case, you know, there's been when you think about skills. Are, you know, are some of these skills going to get replaced, or is AI going to help us do them better? And so we've developed a set of data models to help us sort of think through this. And here's the fascinating thing, we approached this as trying to intermediate a tug of war. And a funny thing happened. What we found was that some of the same skills showed up atop both of our models. In other words, we were saying, Here's, you know, take a given skill and and it's, it's the top of most likely to to get automated away, and in top of the most likely to get augmented by AI. And so we, first we looked at, we're like, okay, we screwed something up royally, because, like, we were trying to, like, intermediate and exactly, and then, and then, when we looked into it, what we realized is there are sets of skills think about as an example data analysis, where AI increases our efficiency and it increases our effectiveness. And those kinds of skills are going to be a new power skills for the 21st century. And so we've been thinking a lot about, how do we make sure that everyone has those new power skills? Interestingly enough, even things like writing are among those new power skills. You know, the the exercise of writing looks very different in an AI era, but the ability to craft narrative, to shape logic, actually become more important, not less, because that's how we we leverage AI effectively so and then finally, as we think about AI, and it's both the disruptions that it portends, but also the opportunities that it opens, again, we've been thinking about skills. So if you start again with this idea that AI is going to change the skills that are required in a given job because some of the skills are no longer needed, other skills become more important. And then put that alongside something which I said earlier in our conversation, that the way right now, you get from job to job is by building on the skills that you've been using and bridging the gaps and using that to be able to to step across to a new job. Well, wait a second, if the skills that you're using in any given job are going to be different. What it means is that your next job, the transitions, the pathways by which people move from job job, actually get totally reshaped as well. Think about...give you an example right now, in the world of machining, you go from being a machinist to being a computer numerical control press operator to being a CNC programmer. Well, you can imagine that the distance between some of those may become, you know, for example, the distance from being a machinist to being a programmer may actually, you know, get compressed as CNC programming becomes easier to do. On the other hand, what that may mean is that a ladder that might have existed between CNC programming and actual software development and computer programming may get stretched for pulled further apart. So, you know, it doesn't mean that the transitions are no longer available, but there'll be different transitions, and so the kind of training that we've been used to providing to help people bridge gaps is going to need to be rethought.

Kaitlin LeMoine: Circling back what you just said connects back to something I feel like that you had said earlier. And I was really intrigued by regarding, you know, this, this notion that, through AI really access, and frankly, I guess it's true of the internet in some cases too, just that the access to knowledge is ever present, right? Like the ability to rapidly obtain information about any topic is, it's kind of limitless. And what that means for that kind of diamond shaped job market, I think, is really fascinating, and it's what it's really intriguing to me. Like, what happens when knowledge might be ever present, but the skills needed to be engaging at that next level up are things like communication, conflict resolution, negotiation, right, skills that are perhaps that can't be honed with AI alone. And so what you just said about like the gap between, or how you bridge the gaps between these skills might look and feel really different. Just feels, I feel like that's where, where we're headed now is, what does it look like? And I don't have the answer, but this is one thing I've been wrestling with. Is, is, what does it look like to build training models and education models that help people, you know, kind of get to that next level a little earlier with those other skills, beyond the knowledge acquisition component. I don't know if that rings true to you, Matt, but that's just been on my mind.

Matt Sigelman: Absolutely two things that I'll say there. You know, one, I've been thinking a lot recently about artificial intelligence and human intelligence, and how, in a lot of ways, they're almost exactly opposite each other. AI is, you know, what we're seeing with generative AI in particular is, is that Gen AI is, is phenomenally powerful as a pattern recognition engine, but and the human brain is a powerful human, you know, pattern recognition engine as well, but, but here's, here's why it's worth distinguishing them. Generative AI works by just sort of crunching tremendous amounts of data and looking for the patterns within those data. And so in a lot of ways, it's totally agnostic to content. It just crunching through it and seeing the relationships. And eventually, if you put enough into it, it can confine patterns and relationships. Again, human brain is a great pattern recognition machine as well. But think about your brain works. Your brain is not actually sort of chewing through every relationship that it could possibly look for. Your brain works exactly opposite. What we're really, really good at is filtering, is being able to very quickly, almost immediately, seeing the most salient relationships the human brain works by constructing narrative. I can give you a picture and you will immediately zoom in on the most salient thing in that picture, the thing that's that's most unusual, because you can see the story. And I think when we kind of see those kinds of differences, means understanding the difference between generative AI and and and human intelligence, we can understand how the two can complement each other, and what kinds of domains will be most complimentary.

Kaitlin LeMoine: Yeah, no, that makes a lot of sense.

Julian Alssid: It really feels a bit like what you're saying is we need to, we need to do what we do really well, but understand how to work with the technology.

Matt Sigelman: That means as well that we need to have the ability. We need to have both sets of abilities. You know, I keep hearing something. I keep hearing people say, Well, gee, you know, we're not going to need to code anymore, because generative AI is going to do it for us. Where we're not going to do data analytics because the generative AI is going to do it for us. We will need fewer specialists, but actually, many more of us will need coding skills. Many more of us will need data analytics skills. The analogy I would offer here is, is Microsoft Excel, which, in a way, sort of automated some of the work that that, you know, kind of ledger accountants did and the like. Think about all the ways that we each use data today, whether it's to create charts, whether it's to, you know, kind of build a discounted cash flow analysis, whatever it may be, and think about what that would have been like to do without Excel. The answer is, you wouldn't have done it. And so many more of us are using data today than we could have done 40 years ago precisely because we have that automation that's available to us. So whenever you hear someone say, Hey, we're not gonna need to know how to code, it's just flat out wrong. You know, we need to make sure that we're building those kinds of basic proficiencies across the workforce, even if many, few of us may need to be dedicated software developers.

Kaitlin LeMoine: So I feel like you're taking us in in this direction through through your last comment there, Matt, but you know, one thing we like to ask on this show, given that it's called Work Forces, is really a question about, really, what are your recommendations for how our our audience can become forces in navigating, or helping others to navigate career progression and advancement in you know what we've discussed here today as a really a shifting, ever changing landscape.

Matt Sigelman:The key to that Kaitlin is in the words you just used, which is progression we tend to think about jobs, and particularly those of of our listeners who are supporting workers and learners and making effective transitions. Getting to that next job is such a, you know, often a big challenge, and it feels like a big triumph in and of itself. And I think a lot of what I would recommend is that we give more attention to the downstream consequences of each job. Where does How did to job? How do jobs connect to one another? One of the things that we've done at the Institute is we built a database of 65 million US workers career histories. Represents about 40% of the US workforce, and it's given us a very powerful way of understanding the twist, turns and tangles that run through people's careers, essentially the cow paths that that lead from one job to the next, and what it's given us a really good sense for is how much variance there is, how easy it is for people to get stuck in the one hand, but also how proximate people often are to jobs that lead to much greater opportunity.

Matt Sigelman: You know, one of the things that I've often heard from people in the workforce field, and that depresses me no end, is that people with college degrees have careers and people who don't have jobs. And the reason why it upsets me so much is that the difference to me between a job and a career is that a career has a directionality to it. It has a vector. It has momentum. We recently did a report where we analyzed the careers of several million people who went straight from high school to work, and we looked at what happened to them over 20 years, and what we were able to find, what we're able to see, rather, is that there are very predictable paths to success. First of all, we found that it's true, you don't need to go to college to have a good career. We found that the top 20% of people who go straight to work after high school wind up out earning the median college graduate. But on the other hand, and we found that certain first jobs we called Launchpad Jobs, make you literally four times more likely to wind up as a top earner by the time you're 40. But we also found that there are some kinds of first jobs that make you four times more likely to wind up in or close to poverty. And here's the thing that, again, is most important to bear in mind: many of those good starts and many of the bad starts actually look the same. They pay the same and so think about what that means for somebody who's coming out of high school, they're saying, Okay, well, I could wind up seating people at a restaurant and making $23,000 a year. I can wind up as a cook in the back and make $24,000 extra, slightly more. And one of those kids, the former, will be making, if you sort of follow all the different directions that happen over their career, on average, will be making over $70,000 a year by the time they're 40, and the other one making in the low 30s, and we are providing no good insight into that. So that ability to think not just about the next job, but about what happens after that job, and what are the skills that will prepare somebody to make that next transition is, I think, one of the biggest transformations that we can we can have as as workforce professionals.

Julian Alssid: Wow, Matt, it's been just incredible hearing you your download on all the these multiple aspects to what we're seeing now and and bring some clarity to the landscape. How can people follow your work? And I know you've touched on several different reports and research projects. What's you know, just as we wind down, we'd like to leave people with, you know, good, actionable info.

Matt Sigelman: Well, I hope people will visit our website, Burning Glass Institute.org, all one word, and there's a place where you can sign up to join our mailing list, and we keep people abreast of the research that's coming out.

Julian Alssid: Well, thank you so much for taking the time to meet with us today. This has really been a master class?

Kaitlin LeMoine: Yes. Thank you so much for talking about different directions of your research.

Matt Sigelman: So enjoyed this.

Kaitlin LeMoine: That's all we have for you today. Thank you for listening to Work Forces. We hope that you take away nuggets that you can use in your own work. Thank you to our sponsor, Lumina Foundation. We're also grateful to our wonderful producer, Dustin Ramsdell, you can listen to future episodes at workforces dot info or on Apple, Amazon and Spotify. Please subscribe, like and share the podcast with your colleagues and friends.

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 to be able to say, I chose this. This is what I want to do without some someone imposing it on them. So I think that we've got to, you know, we're meeting them where they are. They have choice, and they're having fun.

Kaitlin LeMoine: I really I appreciated your earlier insight about the research around this work, and like at what at what ages young people are most open to this exploration. Because it, I think it sometimes can feel like, the closer you get to the end of high school, it's like, what am I going to do? What am I going to do? Right in the creative kind of space to explore, it gets maybe a little bit more narrowed, and maybe, as you mentioned, influenced by peers. So I think it, I really love the the process of going from like this discovery phase, right, really, like a design process, and a lot of ways of thinking about like, just this, this discovery earlier on, and then narrowing as one goes through this journey.

Jean Eddy: When we first started investigating this, and the research that we did, and I met a number of wonderful faculty members at University of Virginia, New York, university, et cetera, having these conversations. And I was actually surprised people always talk about the fact that a toddler has this immense capacity to be able to take in information and process it. But likewise, kids who are in the 13-12, 13-14, years old, their brains are working pretty much the same way. So to be able to offer up all of this information, they're ready for it. They're ready to take it in which, you know, I absolutely love and one of the things we also found out, and one of the things that kind of pushed us to move earlier, is the fact that the stress level young of young people, particularly in high school. We monitor it. We've researched it. From the time they were freshmen in high school to their senior year, the level of stress goes up exponentially, so that now it's a case of, what am I going to do? How am I going to do it? Where am I going to find it? Etc, rather than okay, let's take a step back and really think about, what are the kinds of things that, you know, and I always use this phrase that makes your heart sing. You got to do this a long time. So what is it?

Julian Alssid: Yeah, it's funny, when you talk about the stress levels going up, it's kind of like, you know, they're building muscle early on. And you know, it's these muscles that that, if you're going to be successful and happy and make your heart sing, you're going to have to figure out who you are and what do you like, and how does it fit, and how do you apply your skills, and how does it tie your academics, et cetera, et cetera.

Jean Eddy: Yeah, and it's a lot. It's a lot to ask a young person. It's really a lot. And all we're trying to do is help them kind of find a pathway to some of that, but it's not going to all magically appear at one point in time, which is why we have to start so early.

Kaitlin LeMoine: Well, and I think especially in a moment where you know, the job and career landscape seems to be like shifting beneath our feet, right? Like it's, I think, all to have digital tools that can help support those conversations, maybe kind of a little bit more agnostic to exactly what's happening at the you know, this present moment in time regarding AI, right? And the impact there. Like to be able to take a step back and just say, like, wait a minute, let's think about your interests, your passions, like transferable skills, right? Like that feels like a very productive place to start and to have that those digital solutions as a grounding tool in for that learner and for educators, I would imagine, would be very helpful as well.

Jean Eddy: Yeah, and it's just one step in the process. It certainly can't be the whole thing. And I would have to say, I applaud the role that teachers play in this. What I'm trying to figure out is, how can we integrate some of the things that we've learned into the system without overburdening overburdening teachers, because they have too much to do now I know that, and how are they supposed to change the curriculum, get things in there about career exploration rather than being an add on. You know, in some places again, have had to use policy makers, employers and entire communities to make this change. One of our grantees is out in Cajon Valley, right outside of San Francisco, and that Superintendent of Schools basically fervently believes in everything I've just been talking about, and their entire school system, from kindergarten right on through high school, embraces the thought of career exploration and how you connect courses that you take in high school to how you could use them in a career. I remember when I first heard about cajon Valley and the world of work, my immediate response was, these are our people. How do we find them? How do we connect with them? And we did. And then we started, you know, granting them funds so that they could add on to different school districts, which they've done. So it is possible, and it is it is strong. A movement.

Julian Alssid: So that's a perfect segue to a question that we ask all of our guests, gene which is so our audience really represents the various stakeholders that need to be a part of this, from the employers to the educators, hire secondary policy makers, etc, even ed tech people who need to be a part of this. So what practical steps can our audience take to become forces in initiating or supporting efforts to provide earlier opportunities for career exploration and exposure?

Jean Eddy: One of the things we do when we do more and more and more of it, this is that we host meetings at major conferences across the country to be able to pull in those constituencies, to have conversations, we have to start conversations with everybody sitting in the room. So it's a case of, you know, employers, it's policy makers, it's educators, all of those people have to come together and we have to start a conversation. I would also say parents need to become involved in this as well. They need to be raising their hands in their school districts, talking to their representatives, talking to school committees about the things that really need to happen to give the young people the absolute best experience they can have. So that is certainly a start. But I would also say that we need to do a better job in getting the word out, as far as bringing people, everybody into opportunities where they can see this live. So I'll give you an example. There is a program out there called school links. It's in high schools across the country. That program right now, and you know, we are partnering with them. They have 160,000 employers on there, on their site. They're in school systems. They have employers there, and it gives them an opportunity to be able to go out and connect in relevant ways. We need to be doing more of that, and there are opportunities to do that. We ourselves are partnering with Jobs For the Future to basically create a site that kids can go to, employers can go to, teachers can go to policy makers can go to that will allow people to see available training programs, how you pay for it, how a major in college or a training program that you've been in can relate to a job. It allows employers to go in to see young people who have the credentials, but more over the interest in some of the jobs they offer. These kinds of things are going to bring everybody in. It's going to pull everybody in I should say, for those people who care about it, and I would say most of us care about it.

Kaitlin LeMoine: Right, this is, this is an initiative, right, that I think, as we think about like learners, who then become part of our workers and broader society, everyone cares as we wind down our conversation today, Jean, this has been such an insightful conversation. We've learned a great deal. How can our listeners learn more and continue to follow your work?

Jean Eddy: Certainly go to asa.org there's an awful lot of information on that. And I am not, I am not plugging my book for any other reason than to say that it's an opportunity to see the thinking behind what we do. But moreover, some of the things we are doing in ways that people could get involved. You know, crisis proofing, today's learners, is the is the name of the book. And any proceeds for the book just go back into funding the things that we do for kids. So it's it's and I would also say it's an easy read. It doesn't sound like a textbook. It doesn't read like a textbook. It's a fairly easy read.

Kaitlin LeMoine: Great. Well, thank you so much for for sharing more about ASA, the initiatives that are top of mind for you, some of the initiatives that are have been a bit more long standing. We really appreciate your time today and look forward to continuing to follow your efforts.

Jean Eddy: It's been my pleasure.

Julian Alssid: Thank you so much, Jean.

Jean Eddy: Thank you.

Kaitlin LeMoine: That's all we have for you today. Thank you for listening to Work Forces. We hope that you take away nuggets that you can use in your own work. Thank you to our sponsor, Lumina Foundation. We are also grateful to our wonderful producer, Dustin Ramsdell. You can listen to future episodes at workforces, dot info or on Apple, Amazon and Spotify. Please subscribe, like and share the podcast with your colleagues and friends.

Description

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. 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 one to Scott recently because I didn't know this existed. There is a national Egg Board. I mean, isn't that cool? It's it's a national organization, and what they deal with is eggs, the eggs you eat. So that means, when you think about it, they have to have a director, they have to have communications, they have to have organizational structure. There's all these things out here. You will never see the National Egg Board listed in a career services office. But that doesn't mean a student can't access it. So what happens is, everything is fair game. And part of the issue that we need to start thinking about is, we right it. Universities tend to define here's where the jobs are. Instead of listening to students and helping them realize, Oh, you want to do something like spoken word, and you want to help students. You want to help kids, in general, use that in order to build out their self esteem, get on their feet and start moving forward. Well, what major is that called, right? But when you start looking at it, you know, we have Google, type in Google, and all of a sudden, up comes all this information. And will people talk to you? Sometimes you have to tell students that they have to put a time limit on it, because once you get people talking to you about what they love to do, they'll go on and on and on, and that opens up possibilities, plus they didn't help the student network to other people doing similar types of things. So now what happens is the model is sort of like a good dissertation advisor who asks you that question and then says, here's how you go find the answer. Now, go come back and tell me what you're coming back with. And so that's how the process works. So it's faculty, it could be staff, it could be anything you hear on the radio, anything you see on TV, anything you read in a newspaper, a billboard that you see you're in yoga class and hear a conversation. All of that is fair game in this process, and it changes the whole nature of the job market and for students, when all of a sudden they say, oh my god, I just ran into somebody who's doing what I love, right? We tend, we tend to say, follow your passion. That's the line out there, right? But really it's following that hidden intellectualism and vocational purpose. The passion is just the emotive expression of, Oh, my God, this is real.

Scott Carlson: One thing I would say is that you know this process that allows students to go out and discover these worlds that are important to them, you know, the Egg Board, or whatever. You know these the world of skiing, the world of anime. You know, it's not just good for the student in discovering something that's out there. I think it's also good. We also think that it's good for the institution. Yes, have you ever heard of the concept of the desire path? You see desire paths when you walk through a city and there's a, sort of a grassy place along a sidewalk, and then you see this sort of like dirt path that goes through the sidewalk to Earth, through the grass to another sidewalk on the other side. It's the people sort of making, this is the shortcut. This is how I want to get there. It's the way that people hack the urban urban infrastructure, in a sense, right? But it also shows others where they can cut across the grass to get to a place faster, right? And eventually, over time, in a lot of instances, the cities will just pave that part because that's where this that's where the people are going. Let's create it. Let's create an actual path there, right? And that's kind of what we're saying. Can happen with the colleges too. The students go out and they discover these worlds, and they're like, oh, I can use this to go to open up the world of eggs through the Egg Board, or I can go into anime, or I can go into museums, or what, what have you. And then the institution starts to discover, oh, these students are leading the way. They are blazing the path. It gives us an opportunity for other students to follow them. And then we can, we can institutionalize that path. We can create a way for students to get there easier,

Ned Laff: And it also challenges, it also challenges our traditional way of thinking about things. I have an academic minute that I wrote it was the answer to the Dead Poets Society. Of course, you can study Shakespeare and go to medical school, more than likely you're going to end up being a much more empathetic doctor. But what students begin to discover when they start looking at the 5000 different ways you can actually get into medical school, it allows them to balance out their life. So I've had students who never had that semester of chemistry, physics, math and biology in the same semester because they discovered, wait, this is what's required to get into medical school. But there's other stuff. There is this whole thing of. How does culture affect health care? How do social social factors affect health care? Why is understanding language important? Because language involves not just speaking to somebody. It involves a culture of eating, a culture of behaving, a culture of everything all of there's so many different paths to get into medical school. Why do so many students only hear about one? Right? Because I remember reading an article that was in The Chronicle that people who are trying to defend history were saying, Wow, we have a couple of history majors who are interested in medical school, but they never ask this question. They never lay this out. How does understanding how to do historical research help you take a better patient history, and asking that question changes everything for a student, and allows them to plan things in a way that best fits all the all the gymnastics that are in their life.

Kaitlin LeMoine: I appreciated the use of the term translation chasm in your book, and I think you know whether that's talking about from a more liberal arts major to a more technical job, or, as you're saying, right? What does it look like to think about maybe something, maybe a graduate school opportunity where it's like, Wait, does this relate? And how and what really are those tangible skills, those cross functional skills, just interdisciplinary skills that kind of follow you wherever you go. I think you know is, is invaluable from a learner perspective, especially, you know, as we recognize that people tend to have more than one job, more than one career at this point, right? So like taking that skill and being able to apply it over and over again, and think about, wait a minute, how do these skills translate to this next opportunity, or to this maybe peripheral or tangential opera that might seem peripheral, peripheral, but actually maybe isn't.

Scott Carlson: Yeah, and I think, I think that's an interesting point about the translation chasm there, because I think a lot of the students go in thinking like, well, major equals job, right? And so what do you do with history? What do you do with dance? What do you do with you know, art, right? Like, become an artist, become a dancer. You know, like, there's all sorts of ways to think about it under this framing. There's different ways to think about what your pathway can be. But you make a good point. One of the things that we write about in hacking College is the notion that you only gather those skills, and you only really sort of understand their meaning and their applicability if you know why you're sitting in the courses, if you know why you're there, if you know what it's leading to, or how you're sort of applying it, right it's skills. I think the conversation about skills in higher education right now is just so much about like, well, we're going to open these kids' heads, and then we're going to dump the skills in, and they're going to be great, and then somebody will hire them for those skills. Eventually we're going to go to skills based hiring, quote, unquote, right? And, you know, we just think that the whole scene is a lot more complicated than that, and requires a lot more human engagement, yeah, than all of that. It's just not this turnkey, like, let's give people skills and then go from there, right? You know.

Ned Laff: Skills are always contextually based

Kaitlin LeMoine: And the coaching that underlies what you're talking about.

Ned Laff: Yes, and interestingly, I'm taking something from my background. It's a metaphorical step to take the skills that you've learned in one contextual setting, and then begin to apply them in another to see how they apply into other contextual studies. You're seeing these analogic connections. And this is, this is the other power of the field of study approach.

Julian Alssid: Yeah, well, it's and it's interesting. We, like Kaitlin, and we talked quite a lot about, you know, that? I mean, it's really about ensuring that each of us has this kind of, you know, good understanding of what we bring to the table, both intellectually interest tech and in the end, the good jobs now, the more we can see from what's emerging here with tech and AI and such as is like, you know, it's like, kind of these jobs require the higher order thinking a good liberal arts program teaches, and the ability to apply yourself. So in a way, what you're talking about is a very organic way of just using this infrastructure that we have to move more in that direction.

Ned Laff: Right and building off Gerry Graff's work on "Clueless in Academe", this idea of hidden intellectualism is important when I work with students or when I'm talking to a group of students, I always ask them this question, have you ever gone to a movie with your friend? Yes, and they all say yes. And then I ask them, but did you see the same movie? And then there's a certain line right. There's a certain area where they could say yes, they saw the same movie. But then when they start to get into that interpretive mood that that's not the same movie that everyone's seen. Well, this is the same thing that happens when a student is in a class, when they have clarified their hidden intellectualism, they know they're looking at the contextual nature of the skills and then shaping that through the lens of their hidden intellectualism into the field of study, the problem that they're going after.

Scott Carlson: Julian, I, you know, I would just say too that, like this is one of the things that it's one of the points of Hacking College, but it's also one of the things that we worry about a little bit. You know, Hacking College is, on one hand, really critical of a lot of the structures within, you know, the average four year institution or university, and what they're doing wrong with advising, and what's happening with, you know, the tracks that they're setting up, and how they're shoving students into boxes and all of that. But you know what you're talking about in terms of what we're talking about here, in terms of, how do students actually acquire skills? How do people actually learn to grow into the roles that they eventually occupy. You know, that's really, it's really individualistic and really hard work. You know, it's hard work on the part of the institution, too. And we do worry that, you know, that the national conversation that seeks to simplify this process, that is about like setting up pathways or putting up tracks, or, like, saying it's all about skills based hiring, or it's all about, like, you know, setting up these, these very, you know, rote pathways. You know, we just worry that that's not really going to get us where we want to go as a nation, in terms of a working nation, you know, there has to be this balance between offering people opportunities that are clear and may have clear pathways to them, but also, you know, giving people the opportunity to be entrepreneurial and to express the skills that are already within them and the desires that they have and the worlds that they want to enter.

Julian Alssid: Okay, so just riffing off of that. Scott, one of the questions we like, always like to ask on each of our episodes is, you know, what can our what steps can our audience take to become forces, in this case, in hacking college? And you know, our audience is more the people who are trying to run these institutions and teach students and interested to hear your take on that, you guys.

Scott Carlson: I, I'll start, and then I'll let Ned take it from there. But like one of the one of the things that Ned and I have thought about writing for The Chronicle as a follow up to hacking College, is as a story that says it's right in front of you. The answers are right in front of you, because there are so many times when we've gone to colleges and the institutions just are not even doing the basic work of getting off of campus, talking to the various constituents that are off campus, really engaging the students on what they really, really want there, that there are sort of unfilled internship positions out there, that you know, that the college is lined up, but no one's bothered to like connect the students to it. I think some of the work that has to be done right now is really low hanging fruit, and it is really just about getting people out of the out of the confined space of the campus, and getting them off campus and to discover what's out there, and to start to build these partnerships that are really fun. I think the other piece of it too is to try to engage the student around what we're talking about in the book, in terms of playing off of their playing off of what drives them. I mean, we're in a position right now where, you know, we've been talking about this for a couple of weeks, where we just have no idea where the world is going. This is where we end hacking college that you know, Zach Stein, he's this educational futurist that we quote in the last chapter says, you know, we just, even the elders, have no idea where the country is going, where education is going, what form it will take. So maybe we need a little less control around that, and we need to start to embrace this hacking concept that allows us to open it up a little bit more and maybe experiment a little bit more. That's what's coming. I think for higher education.

Ned Laff: There's something very deliberate also in what we did with Hacking College, we focused on, Hi, here's a school that anyone can get into. Here's a community college that anyone can get into. These are not Ivy League colleges. They're not the high end flagship institutions, and all of a sudden they become hidden dream schools, because what students begin to see is that these, all these schools, have a wealth of learning opportunities on their campuses if they can see it well, the flip side is for college administrators to be able to see exactly the same thing when students begin to see when they begin to look at faculty as field of study specialists, the whole nature of the college changes. Everything changes. Well, if we can get faculty and administrators and staff to see the same thing, then what you begin to realize is, gosh, go wander into some of the offices or some of the labs on a community college, and all of a sudden you're going to see some of the craziest stuff going on, right? So there's this wealth out there. So here's all this wealth, and here's this thing of what our college is going to do to try to attract students or to show students that there's value and it's right in front of you. Change this is interesting, right? Change the conversations, right? So the last time I looked, and trust me, I look at this all the time, there is no budget line in change the kinds of conversations right. Change the conversations the students see themselves differently. They see the campus differently. They see all the opportunities around their campus differently. All of a sudden it's a wealth of opportunities. The other thing that's interesting is this, people will always ask me, why will these people that we send students out to talk to? We make them make these phone calls, this research, investigative interview? Why would people talk to them, and I tell them straight up, because they're all frustrated parents whose kids never listen to them, and they've got so much to share, and they really want to share it. And so the hack is, I'm not going through an HR gate. I'm going around the gate. I've taken a desired path. I'm connecting, I'm matching my interest with somebody else's interest, which then brings passion to passion, and all sorts of stuff begins to blow up. It's great.

Kaitlin LeMoine: So I feel like we could have, we could have a full day's worth of conversation about this book, and I, and I hate to take us to the last question of our conversation today, but, but I will so you know, we've really enjoyed this conversation and really appreciate so many of you know so many of the topics that you raised and in this book. As we close out today, how can our listeners learn more and continue to follow the work that you're doing? And Scott, you know, you mentioned the follow up piece you might be writing, and how can our listeners kind of remain in the loop?

Scott Carlson: I mean, I think, first of all, you know, just for me, I'll continue to write for The Chronicle. I have a column called The Edge, where we'll be hitting these topics on a regular basis, and we'll be out there on social media. I mean, social media is kind of a disaster these days, but I am on LinkedIn, so I'll be posting on that. And, you know, we'll just continue to have this. We're just going to continue to push this. I think, given the way that people are talking about college right now. We want to change that conversation. And we want to change the conversation around, what does it mean to be connected to the workforce? Yeah, that's been part of it.

Ned Laff: So I'm on LinkedIn. Contact us. You know, we will gladly sit down, set up a time. We could do a Zoom talk. There's whole bunches of different ways to do this, and this is important for people in universities to understand you can take what already exists that you're already using, reshape the insides of it, and all of a sudden a master in college class becomes a class in mastering how to hack the college right same amount of time you already have it scheduled. You're not increasing any revenue. But the important thing is the effects on the students will be different. And so it's easy to do. It's like anyone who would like to continue the conversations just, just contact well.

Julian Alssid: And I'm sure people will definitely want to continue the conversation. We're so excited to have been at the front end of this dialogue you're starting, I hope others will read the book I'm about 52% of the way through, judging by my bookmark here to the left. But thank you both so so much for joining us today. Good luck with this, and you know, we too look forward to being part of this conversation.

Scott Carlson: Thank you both.

Ned Laff: Thanks so much.

Kaitlin LeMoine: Thank you. That's all we have for you today. Thank you for listening to Work Forces. We hope that you take away nuggets that you can use in your own work. Thank you to our sponsor, Lumina Foundation. We're also grateful to our wonderful producer, Dustin Ramsdell. You can listen to future episodes at workforces dot info or on Apple, Amazon and Spotify, please subscribe, like and share the podcast with your colleagues and friends.

Frederick Wehrle, Assistant Dean for Academic Innovation and Learning at UCLA Extension, discusses his research on using AI to optimize adult learning. Wehrle focuses on developing AI-powered instructional tools and approaching learning and course design from a neuroscience perspective. He shares practical strategies for educators and learners to keep pace with the changing needs of industry, including advice on the best ways to use AI for learning and development.

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: We spend a lot of time in the show, in our consulting engagements, talking about best practices for building effective, engaging programs and learning experiences for adult learners. It's a topic I find endlessly fascinating.

Kaitlin LeMoine: As do I Julian, building programs grounded in the principles of andragogy, and allowing adult learners to demonstrate what they know and can do is so critical.

Julian Alssid: Couldn't agree more. And I often think back to our time at Southern New Hampshire University, where we helped to build College for America that project based, competency based online program was a real breakthrough moment in higher ed.

Kaitlin LeMoine: It really was. College for America was designed to reach adult learners who had many skills but had not previously earned a college degree. The program offered them a way to demonstrate mastery of competencies through projects aligned to real world deliverables that met academic requirements in an online and asynchronous format.

Julian Alssid: Our guest today is doing some really fascinating work in the space of adult learning and course design, taking the notion of learning, design and optimization to a whole new level.

Kaitlin LeMoine: He certainly is. We're excited to have Frederic Wehrle on the show with us today. He's the Assistant Dean for Academic Innovation and Learning at UCLA Extension. Frederick joined UCLA in 2023 after serving at UC Berkeley Extension since 2018. Before immigrating to the US, Frederick led accreditation and International Relations at business schools in Paris, France. He's held faculty and administrative positions in France and in the US, and served as an advisor and mentor to startups, nonprofit organizations and universities worldwide. Grounded in research on innate and in learned behavior, Frederick focuses on developing AI powered instructional tools and applications of those tools to adult learning. Essentially, he's approaching learning from the perspective of neuroscience and exploring how we can optimize it. Welcome to Work Forces, Frederick.

Frederick Wehrle: Thank you. Thank you so much for having me, and thank you so much for the very kind intro. I'm very excited to be with you.

Julian Alssid: Well, and we're excited to have you here as well, Frederick, welcome to get us rolling here. Caitlin said a bit about your background, but we'd love to hear in your own words about your background and what brought you to your work.

Frederick Wehrle: Most fundamentally, I would say my background is in behavioral sciences, human behavioral sciences. I specialized during my studies, actually, back in Germany, on behavioral ecology, neuroscience, anthropology and bioinformatics, and my key interest there was innate behavioral patterns and pre existing biases. So things that we are born with in terms of mental pathways, and I've been fortunate to be able to do a PhD in Paris at the Sorbonne where I was specializing in consumer behavior, which is kind of this subgroup of management and marketing sciences that actually looks how marketing and marketers are able to manipulate people, and then tries to explain how that works and give the tools to corporations and policy makers, I would say, to regulate if necessary. So when I was saying hey, I actually study, from a biology or biological perspective, how humans react without knowing that they do or act without knowing that they do, that was very interesting for the people in that field. And so that really was, let's say, my education background, I was able and lucky to become a faculty relatively early on in business schools in France, and put my my work to practice and apply a lot of this neuroscience into my teaching, and then very quickly, was asked to use it to design courses, design programs, to design entire degree programs, review the entire structure, if you want, of of schools through accreditation processes, build new types of partnerships and so on internationally. And when I got the opportunity to move to the US in 2018 there was an opportunity at UC Berkeley, and their continuing education division, extension division. I was very excited, because I've been I've been concerned with AI laying off millions of people or displacing millions of people, 10 years ago already, and I was mostly concerned because I didn't find anyone particularly at that time concerned. And I thought, with the background that I have and the theories that or the research I was pursuing, I'm effectively on to figuring out how we can make education at least three times more effective and efficient. So here in California, first at UC Berkeley and now at UCLA, this is really what I'm pursuing, and that is really figuring out how how to teach differently so that learning becomes much, much more effective.

Kaitlin LeMoine: So can you tell us a little bit about what your current research is focused on and what you're learning. I mean, I'm intrigued by the concept of, you know, making education at least three times more effective, right? So, like, let's, let's dive in there.

Frederick Wehrle: Despite the fact that it was over five years in the Bay Area and Silicon Valley and so on, I'm still humble. I'm only 3x ing. It not 10x ing. And yeah, they would not be happy. I couldn't pitch this to Google, probably. But the interesting perspective is that, unfortunately, let's say neuroscientists really haven't looked into how learning happens naturally through most of our lives, before the late 2000s, so about maybe 15 years ago or so, and actually started working on animals, and later figured it out with humans. And it's quite fascinating to see how that relatively recent research paints a very different picture of how we learn. For me that can be easiest understood if we think about what we're doing right now. So we're having a conversation. We're talking about things that we have some mental representation of education. Our brains are active. And in this situation, everything I'm saying, I don't have to repeat. You don't have to write it down and put it on a Quizlet card and learn it by heart and so on. Everything I say, maybe with one or two repetitions, you're able to assimilate. That's actually the proper term for this process in neuroscience, you assimilate that information into an active framework in your brain, a schema, and that active framework adapts to that new information, and so it's memorized. And so effectively, this process of learning, contrary to what still most education scientists and learning scientists believe, does not have any blockers. So the system that most education is still built around is a system of repetition. Because also in neuroscience, we were able to prove that if you have to learn something anew, completely anew, without any context and without any mental frameworks active or schemas active, you have to build those frameworks. You have to repeat, repeat, repeat, and that's how synaptic pathways are built and reinforced until they they're there, and that is usually now, if you look at the broader picture and child development or human development, that's really just how humans learn very early on in their childhood, like the famous light switch that you kids click 100 times until they figured out the principle of the light switch, right? But once you have that framework, once you like this basic pathway is built through repetition, and then, especially as you have kind of finalized building those frameworks, you're really switching most of the time, throughout your life, into this other pathway that has been discovered only more recently, which is information is just assimilated into active frameworks and those frameworks adapt unless You sit at school in a classroom that is sterile or at least out of context, and you learn from a book out of context, from a person out of context. And for me, the these things were, particularly, as I say, egregious, and became very, very clear when I was working in business schools back in France, or early on, even in my career, because in France, like in Germany, you have a system, or systems that are very popular, which is called apprenticeship models. And the most fascinating thing there is, is that you have a very large amount of students studying their entire three year bachelor program (Europe is three years for bachelor's,) or your two year master, either full time studying or in an apprenticeship where you work about 60% of the time and then you study about 40% of the time. What is fascinating about this is, all students finish on time. If I share this oftentimes here in the US, people like pause and scratch their heads and say, how's that possible? Especially like, there are institutions that really are extremely proud and adamant about saying that you really need to be full time otherwise, like you can't dedicate yourself and so on and so forth. And I think that's true. If what you're studying is sciences, where you actually spend a lot of time in sciences or even humanities and so on, but you are, like doing it, and you're preparing for university environment you want to become a researcher, then, yes, you're effectively doing an apprenticeship in in the university, but for many, many other fields, it doesn't make sense. So this is the background, if you want that I'm basing my work on. And I find it particularly fascinating to think about workforce development and to do this in continuing education, because the, let's say the good instructor and the good learning designer in this field already knows that the best and most efficient way to teach is to be able to kind of capture the students where they are, is to be able to understand who they are like with what knowledge do they come in there, and then, if it's in a life interaction likework with with what they bring to the table and their experiences, and organize in a way where they can share and practice with their experiences. So this is a very good background for me to to push that forward and formalize it a little more, to be honest, though, I must say, much more of a experimentalist than I'm a theorist. So I do spend much more of my time, or have over the last decade, experimenting, building the types of courses, running them, seeing how they work and so on, rather than spending my time writing literature reviews and contributing to a relatively set field of research, which is all based on a very different approach to education.

Julian Alssid: So given your your approach as an experimentalist here, and we're, you know, Kaitlin and I are also very grounded and in this kind of bringing together, this intersection of work and learning, which we think you know clearly has to be theoretical in many respects. But ultimately, people need a job. They need to apply themselves. And flashing forward to from eight years ago, when you saw the future, what do you see as some of the greatest opportunities for using generative AI in learning and course design, and also, conversely, what are some of the biggest challenges? Because it seems to be the story of the day.

Frederick Wehrle: Yes, it's the story of all our lives. So I'm actually hopeful that through the work I'm doing, also with colleagues, we're able to to provide some some way through this, I can maybe start with the challenges, because that's maybe top of mind for many people. In my experience, interestingly enough, I think the biggest challenge comes from a lot of resistance from the people that are the faculty, instructor slash expert, or also the instructional designers, the learning designers, who I think, like in many professions, don't feel very easy about the introduction of AI because it seems like it is getting at the core of what they are doing and what they're contributing. And having spent a lot of time, evidently, like overseeing these types of teams and being with a lot of colleagues, I realize it's justified in a certain way, because nobody has given many people that are not deeply into AI a framework and somewhat of a roadmap to where this all will go, and it's certainly not a goal of what this will look like at the end. So if you want as an as an experimentalist, the beauty here is that I was able to work out, and am working out with some colleagues of universities across the US a framework on how to effectively use generative AI for course content development, either in the role of a subject matter expert, so the AI can take the role of subject matter expert, and an instructional designer can actually go and build the entire baseline of a course, if you want, that then gets reviewed and analyzed by a human subject matter expert, or in the other form of an instructional designer, where subject matter expert has the help to effectively design the entire baseline of a course with generative AI. The point of us coming together is to figure out how to do this in a structured way, provide a framework how that looks like, and demonstrate how you get to a very high quality output and how much time that can save you, for example. Now, the interesting thing is, we're doing this because at that point the entire all the professions in the entire industry will say, like, okay, so we can actually get this if we do XYZ, if we follow that pathway. Now we can adopt it without having that much fear, because we see that all the jobs across the entire if you want production line are maintained. And the beauty is, once we have a little bit more time back on our clocks in all the different roles, we can now actually think of using a generative AI or just, let's say, the classroom to do other forms of education and things that we never have been able to do as much as we want to do. So if I talk to any instructional designer or learning designer, they're always unhappy about the fact that they never get to really roll out all the amazing methods of instructional design, or learning design, for all the activities they could do. Spend more times focusing on what different learning methods they could apply. Never spend enough time on the actual if you want learning structure, never spend enough time on case studies, or the assignments could be much better, much deeper, and so on and so forth. If I talk to faculty and subject matter experts, they always fall short on time in terms of sharing their research, sharing their practice, what they actually love, if they're teaching live, they really love the live interaction, right? But what they do is a lot of times it's just roll down a slide deck that they spend all that time preparing, then they're actually not really prepared to share anything else. So ultimately, the beauty there as a first step is that generative AI, by accelerating a lot of the groundwork, will be able to allow you, as an instructor, for example, to spend much more time engaging with the students. If you're able to build an entire learning experience relatively quickly. As a learning designer, then you can think about, what can we do beyond just the course production to make sure the learners have the opportunity to learn more effectively. And this is where I get particularly excited, because that's where it then comes the second part of AI. Now we can use AI to do something that is very much akin to the better way of learning, which is simulations, which is personalized content, which is activities that allow you to learn in a pseudo social environment, that is things that allow you to be much more applied, and so on and so forth. So we are. We're able to use generative AI to do groundwork, and then we're able to use generative AI with this neuroscientific background that I shared with you to create new formats of education.

Kaitlin LeMoine: It does occur to me, Frederick, as you're talking, and be curious as to your thoughts on this, that really you know you, you, we began this conversation with you, talking about the process of, for adult learners, of really assimilating existing information into or new information into an existing framework. And it occurs to me that, I mean, with, with AI, even if, like you said, right, it's maybe, maybe you've been aware of it for many, many years, and maybe now people have been aware of it for a year or so, adults are, I think, developing a new framework around AI. And so, how does you know? What is that work? What does it look like to apply your own kind of research, and the research around neuroscience and like related adult learning principles to this advent of this new age that we live in.

Frederick Wehrle: I think it's almost like a perfect storm on education and learning at the moment, and the pressure is as much on higher education, secondary education as it is on workforce development. I think the forces that are coming together is that leads to adult learners asking for more, asking for efficiency in learning, and are just not ready and willing to sit through content just cause, just because. Somebody put it into a framework. And it actually turns out, in my experience, that the educators themselves do not particularly enjoy producing the baseline content. They'd actually much rather spend the time and their time and energy on what is valuable. So in terms of AI and workforce development, I've two perspectives.

The first one is a lot of people need and want to learn more about AI and how that will impact their their work. And the second one is the environment. And AI enables them to learn anything that they need to move ahead and go further in their in their jobs, and stay ahead in their careers, or maybe even in certain situations, change their careers. So the first one how to learn about AI, I think the most critical part there is similar to what we're trying to do with that group of partner universities, institutions, organizations have to invest into, let's say, the experimenters in innovation labs and structures that will allow their organization to paint a picture of what it will look like in the future. Otherwise, you will always have that, that very strong resistance. And for you as a person, it is very difficult any individual kind of it's very difficult to to navigate the path of insecurity. And I think right now, with AI learning, there's so much out there. How do I stay informed? There's so much FOMO, and you feel like any hour you spend on that one thing, if you're interested in this, is a hour you lose, because then you didn't focus on the other thing. So you never feel on top of the situation. So I think there is a lot of work to be done by organizations to actually invest into people that are able to provide frameworks and an outlook of what it will look like if your organization is not doing that, and you are an individual, I always recommend actually going to events if you have the opportunity, be it virtual events or conferences or things like this in your field of expertise. For the last two years, all the places I've gone, anyone and everyone talks about AI anyways, it just gives you a much more concrete outlook on where things where things are going. And the third advice I give is actually take the time to watch at least the keynotes of all the large developer conferences that are going on throughout the year. So you want to hear the heads of Google and Meta and Microsoft and Apple, Nvidia and so on, talk about their releases and what's going to happen the second part, in terms of how you can use AI for your own education, I think there's, again, these two different aspects, from an organization or institutional perspective. You can use generative AI to actually create situations that make learning much more effective. So you can either use your student's existing mental framework and create content that makes them able to learn very quickly. Give you a quick example. Imagine you have 30 people that need to learn something, and instead of giving them one case study about a shoe factory, which nobody's working in a shoe factory, you actually allow the students or the learners to put in their job and cooperation into an AI or pre-configured GPT that builds you and each student an individualized case study, knowing that all case studies are based on the same learning objectives and the same kind of generic questions that they have to answer at the end, so every student will have an individualized, 10 page case study that really speaks to them, that they can understand very quickly, and then they can still discuss it with the instructor very effectively. The second thing is, you can use generative AI, particularly if you have the opportunity to do simulations, to create a situation where you can build mental frameworks. So if I want to train somebody up in something they have never experienced (nursing is an environment where this is particularly prevalent, or medical school as well), where you have to have these very, very long time practical and training periods, because certain cases just don't happen that often. I don't know a violent patient just doesn't happen every every week. So if you need to learn how that, how to handle that, you need to be able to experience it quite a bit of of times. And if you haven't experienced it, it's very difficult for you to learn the content of a textbook or so that explains to you how to handle this situation. So what you can do is you can create a simulation effectively. You simulate with generative AI, an interaction that is generated on the fly, where you just set some parameters effectively for the different actors in there, and you act out the situation. And you can interact with that verbally. And once you have that experience, then you can quote, unquote, hit the books and learn everything about it, and you will be able to learn it very quickly. Other example is project management scope out. This is an experiment I'm running at the moment, how to scope out a project. So what I'm trying to do is have a simulation with it's a startup that's called Convey. They have the possibility of you creating a virtual avatar, and that's based on a knowledge base, and you configure it however you want, and then the student just clicks on the link, takes on the role of a new member on the team, and that avatar is the boss of the department, you have to engage and talk with that boss and figure out what you need to scope out a new project. And the reality is, if you do this before learning anything about scoping a project, you will make every mistake in the world. You will feel terrible, especially if the character is made to be a little bit egregious and doesn't have much time, and it's like, okay, is this done? Do you need anything else? Then you really have an intense in five minutes, intense framework that is built through that experience. And then you read the text on how to scope a project, and everything will make sense instantaneously. And you can then even go back into the into the simulation. So that is actually interesting for for both the organizations, institutions, as well as the individual learners. AI has the possibility to personalize based on what you know and what exists in your brain, but also learning designers, particularly and instructional designers, can work with experts to create the situations you need to experience to learn more effectively.

So Frederick, while the world waits for you and your colleagues at the other universities to produce the road map from your perspective, what even more sort of practical steps can our audience take to become forces in keeping pace with the changing education and training needs of industry in particular, and and even be interesting to hear your take on like, I mean, part of what I spend a lot of time with is like playing around with different AI tools. Some seem to be better at this, and some seem to be better at that, and then a week later, this one's better at that, and this one's better at this. So can you offer just sort of very practical steps that people can take to be forces?

Kaitlin LeMoine: Recognizing they might change next week?

Julian Alssid: Yes. Thank you, Kaitlin.

Frederick Wehrle: I think the biggest thing you can do, it's a change in mind set in, in how you approach your day and how you approach your work. Most of us are very much set in non-AI work processes. And I myself had to reconfigure my thinking, in my the way I approach any any problem or task, and think, how can I solve this with AI before I try anything else? And it's quite interesting to consider that. So to your point, there's different AI tools. I would absolutely recommend people, if they haven't done this before, they should definitely just take any LinkedIn learning or YouTube or Udemy intro to prompting, how do I use models, and get comfortable with using these models. But once you have that, I would not hesitate to use several models. I do as well, and try to have them at the very least, assist me, if not do the work for me. And the interesting perspective there is that I can configure the different bots so that they can take on different roles. So what I would recommend for anyone very practically is to have a virtual you so you effectively create a GPT or a Gem in Gemini that you configure to be equivalent to you, like your position, your context, upload examples of what you do, what you write, and so on and so forth. But especially give it the expertise, or configure it to be an expert in XYZ and have that role, because at that point you can actually use that as a second you to work with yourself, have it do things on your behalf. And the second thing that I use models very effectively with, and I know colleagues do as well, is when you use them as experts. So if you're in terms of designing, if you're doing learning design, instructional design, or if you're trying to develop your own skill set, you can give or create, either give the chat bot while you chat with it, or you create your own GPT or Gem that has a certain expertise, right? So you can create an expert instructional designer. You can create an expert subject matter expert in a field. You can create an expert colleague, and then you can actually engage, I mean, work with those experts to help you along the way with your tasks. In terms of keeping up into with the pace of the development. What that would allow you to do is to keep up as these tools evolve, as you mentioned, and that, for me, is almost more important than necessarily following the news or like being kind of on your social media, constantly trying or hunting after the latest information is to actually be practicing it, because then, through the practice, as the new updates roll out and so on, you feel comfortable integrating them into your into your toolkit. So these are, these are just the practical ways other things that that I do, and I think other colleagues do as well, in terms of keeping up to date, as I mentioned earlier, as conferences in your field, particularly, and configuring your, let's say, your news feed very consciously to follow things that that are relevant to your work environment, like a Google alerts you know where you can get the information that is very pertinent to your structure, but I felt mostly and most importantly, that's the change in mindset of using it first before you do anything else, being very comfortable that gets you very comfortable with it, that allows you to just be up to date and then seek out your community and the others that are excited about this within your industry, and try to connect on conferences, events, social networks, wherever you can.

Kaitlin LeMoine: It's really helpful to hear those very practical strategies, Frederick, and and it strikes me too, right, like the just how opposed, in some ways, the idea of, like a many year degree is relative to this type, this approach to learning these, these tools, which is really just like, kind of keep continuously up to speed and try things like, don't try to be the expert first, that just sticks out as pretty distinct with AI and kind of how to most efficiently learn these tools.

Frederick Wehrle: If you're trying to upskill yourself. And I think there's a lot of confusion out there right now. I think a lot of people have a lot of or procrastinate around using AI because it seems it seems complicated. It seems like a huge, huge task, and people read more about it than they use it, and especially like worried about your job, and how is it going to impact my job and so on and so forth. All of this gets quote, unquote. This is not really debunked, but all of this gets kind of resolved if you allow yourself to actually use it. I did it myself at a very early on, when ChatGPT came out, for example, and was readily available to spend quite a bit of time actually using it and realizing how much it can do what you're doing and how much it is better at your job than what you're doing in many respects. And so you panic. Then you don't sleep for two weeks until you have engaged with it enough, or two months. You reach a point of level of engagement with it where you see, oh, this is where my contribution lies. This is where my expertise comes in. This is what I will be doing in the future effectively, I might quickly say I always keep forgetting this, because it's never how I approached AI. Because of my background, there are a lot of people who use AI as a tool, so just know that that's not how it's built. If you're using AI as a tool or chat bot as a tool, you're effectively not using the user interface or the you're using it wrong in a certain way, because it was configured and built to be a conversational colleague and partner, right? An assistant. So it is made to understand and engage with you through full conversation. If you bark commands at it, it actually doesn't really know what to do with it, right? That's not how it was built. And so the output is not really good. And I've seen massive changes, and people like completely change their relation and engagement with AI, just from shifting their mindset to I'm not the expert, it is the expert, or at very least, it's a colleague, and I'm just treating it as if it was and I'm having a serious discussion with it. A colleague of mine always says he wants to challenge anyone on a panel, or anyone who is like giving a talk about AI or especially politicians and others, and ask them, Did you ever have a philosophical discussion with ChatGPT? And most of them haven't. And if you haven't, you probably have never actually discovered what this, what these things are capable of, and how you can engage with it.

Kaitlin LeMoine: Well, with all of that being said and thinking to the future, how can our listeners learn more and continue to follow your work? Frederick, as it continues to unfold.

Frederick Wehrle: I do usually post things that are interesting through my LinkedIn, so I'm very open. If people are interested, just reach out over LinkedIn. I do have a Medium account where I do put things from time to time, and I'm going to be publishing more, evidently, in terms of research papers as we as we move ahead with our framework, because we realize that that's where experimentation has to provide some output as well. We can't just keep it for ourselves.

Julian Alssid: Well, thank you so much for taking the time today, Frederick, it's been really fascinating, and we certainly want to follow you and keep in touch.

Frederick Wehrle: Appreciate that and very happy to be in touch as well. Thank you very much for having invited me.

Kaitlin LeMoine: Thank you so much, Frederick. Really appreciate your time today. That's all we have for you today. Thank you for listening to Work Forces. We hope that you take away nuggets that you can use in your own work. Thank you to our sponsor, Lumina Foundation. We're also grateful to our wonderful producer, Dustin Ramsdell, you can listen to future episodes at workforces dot info or on Apple, Amazon and Spotify. Please subscribe, like, and share the podcast with your colleagues and friends.

Matt Evans is CEO of Julius Education, a company that provides workforce technology tools to help job seekers and employers navigate fast-developing industries. Matt shares his background in emerging fields, including online learning and water technology, and his journey to Julius Education. He highlights the lack of detailed data on occupations, particularly in sectors like clean energy, where job titles are often inconsistently used. The conversation also explores the challenges and opportunities of using technology to provide granular, real-time data for effective workforce planning and engagement. Evans provides examples of successful partnerships and offers advice for building new models.

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. So Julian, it's been fascinating to see how many of our recent conversations on the podcast and in our consulting projects keep coming back to the need for a dual customer approach to bridging talent gaps, one that provides employers and learners or job seekers with the tools they need to navigate fast developing industries.

Julian Alssid: Absolutely, Kaitlin. It's a topic that's becoming more and more critical, especially with a rapid emergence of AI transforming the labor market and emerging sectors like advanced manufacturing, life sciences and clean energy are being particularly impacted, and we're seeing employers in those sectors struggle to find qualified candidates and job seekers often don't know what jobs exist and have the opportunities out there aligned with their own interests.

Kaitlin LeMoine: Absolutely, that's right, and we've been hearing from so many of our guests about the growing mismatch between the skills that employers need and the skills that job seekers possess. This is especially true in fields that are being rapidly transformed by changing technologies and AI where the pace of change is accelerating and the skills gap is widening.

Julian Alssid: Yeah, and it's not just about finding people with the right technical skills, but also about fostering those human skills like critical thinking, communication, and problem solving that are essential for success in any field. Those are the skills that will set people apart in an AI driven world.

Kaitlin LeMoine: Definitely. And that's why we're so excited to have Matt Evans, CEO and co founder of Julius Education, join us today. Julius education is a workforce technology company that addresses the talent needs of fast moving industries such as energy, semiconductors, advanced manufacturing and others to help them keep pace with the rapidly changing economy using AI and machine learning, the company addresses talent gaps to make sure employers, learners and job seekers have the information they need to navigate these dynamic sectors.

Julian Alssid: Before Julius, Matt was a Senior Vice President at Pearson, where he led the Online Learning Division and served a large network of university partners and adult learners. He's also a co founder of Imagine H2O A leading water Technology Accelerator. So he knows a thing or two about fostering talent in emerging fields.

Kaitlin LeMoine: So without further ado, Matt, welcome to Work Forces.

Matt Evans: Thank you. It's great to be here. Thanks so much for having me.

Kaitlin LeMoine: Thank you for joining us. Welcome and we'd love for you to jump in now and to we'd love to hear more about your background and what brought you to your role at Julius Education.

Matt Evans: We are a workforce technology company. We use AI and machine learning to provide really, first of its kind, industry specific labor market intelligence and a suite of workforce tools to support fast moving industries keep up with the pace of change, as you alluded to Kaitlin. And so our work spans the industries that are really dynamic to the economy, from energy and semiconductors, advanced manufacturing, biotech, and we work with a really interesting set of partners from industry such as major employers and industry associations, to regional coalitions, to government agencies at the federal, state and and local level, who are all focused on this work in my background, as Julian you alluded to, has been in the education technology space for the past 20 years, and most Recently at Pearson at the same time, for the past 15 years or so, I've been on the board of this organization driving water technology innovation called Imagine H2O and what that experience really drove home for me was for all these critical industries, Water among them, but not exclusively. We need new technologies, we need new policies, we need new forms of capital for these industries to thrive. But there's this whole people component, which historically has not been getting the same level of attention, and so that's really was the the innovating spirit behind Julius particularly in these industries, which we alluded to Kaitlin, which are going through significant change, with new jobs coming on board, new skills required, new employers popping up, and so that really is the context for for the work that we do at. That Julius,

Julian Alssid: Yeah, well, it's certainly, it's certainly timely, Matt. I guess I'd love to hear, we'd love to hear some more about the problems that Julius is trying to address. You know, kind of digging a little bit further.

Matt Evans: The core problem that our partners are facing is they simply don't have the data on the occupations that they care most about. So when they're trying to answer questions like, What is the demand in my region, in my specific industry, for specific roles down the job title level, if they're trying to understand, what are the skills and credentials that employers are actually looking for. If they're trying to say what is the future going to look like across all these dimensions, they just don't have the data that they need to understand that. And so with our approach, using AI machine learning, we're able to ingest large unstructured data sets and give them a real time view in the way that their industry talks about these jobs for which data previously, there had not been any data currently available for it. So that's the kind of the core the core problem. I think the change context that Kaitlin was teeing up is certainly exacerbating a lot of this dynamic so with the ripples of technology through the industries that we've touched on that's creating real complexity for folks who are in key decision making. Seats to say, how do I align an ecosystem or my resources to drive workforce outcomes? How do I understand exactly what employers need today and also going forward for the jobs that are important to them, for other stakeholders, like learners and job seekers, they're trying to understand what is this field? What are these job titles? What are the career paths when I go to indeed.com What am I supposed to be putting in here? What are skills do I have today, and how do they transfer into this potentially exciting new industry for me? So those are some of the kind of core problems at the stakeholder level that we are, that we are seeing folks had historically been trying to get at this. This is not a new problem, even though it's been exacerbated now by accelerants and change in technology. You've been trying to get at this with legacy tools. So doing things like employer surveys is one approach to get data on the local labor market needs that is often challenging, just given response rates and also given latency of getting the data back. And these things, entries are moving so quickly that often that data is stale by the time the surveys come back. If it's kind of 12 or 18 month cycle, other approaches have been to say, hey, can we use legacy data sets that oftentimes are some version or tied somehow to Bureau of Labor Statistics, SOC data. That's a little wonky, but that that that sock code folks may be aware of on this podcast, but that's also challenging, because those are really economy wide views, and they don't work for the industries in which we are, which we're focused on, or, you know, third folks may have great data for their industry down five jobs deep, but what they're really need is something that goes 250 jobs deep for their particular industry, within energy or within semiconductors, advanced manufacturing, biotech, etc. So really, that core issue is where Julius comes in, and we are supporting our partners really, with this very detailed, industry specific depth of data, and so we just take a fundamentally different approach to to provide that for, again, for these occupations that the data just doesn't hasn't previously existed.

Kaitlin LeMoine: What is your process for beginning to unearth that level of detailed data? Matt, as you said, right, there are so many legacy tools, but what does it look like to live in this space of kind of rapid change and transformation, and how do you go about remaining current in that.

Matt Evans: It's almost setting up the data infrastructure is kind of the way we think about it. Because, as you're alluding to, it doesn't really do folks any good to have kind of a, just a one time snapshot about what's going on across these, these, these jobs or labor market data that they care about. It's really how does their repeatable and ongoing view into these, these data needs. And so that's where our where our own kind of proprietary data and AI classification models provide for that ongoing data infrastructure which provides a current view on an ongoing basis. So that really is kind of the foundational piece of it, which is it gives us that ongoing pulse and allows us to continue to keep up with the pace of change with these industries, not just for today, but going forward as well. Great.

Kaitlin LeMoine: So I mean. Diving a little bit deeper, please tell us. What are some current projects that you're working on, either within clean energy or any other sector you'd like to discuss. And what are you learning?

Matt Evans: In clean energy? There's, there's a ton of things to point to. Maybe I'll call out two or or three. One example at the state level, one of our wonderful partners is Mass CEC, which is the Massachusetts Clean Energy Center, really leading the clean energy initiatives for for Massachusetts, they they're very focused on the workforce, in the workforce issues of the Commonwealth, and they've been through all the legacy tools that I was alluding to, the challenges in many of these kind of important sectors. In the clean energy economy, there's real fragmentation with how employers are talking about different roles. So they may employers may be using the same job title for for the same different job, excuse me, for different, for the same, for the same role, which is causing a lot of the lot of the complexity. So for Massachusetts, there's a priority set of occupations that they're trying to get much more precise on what's going on in labor market, one of which, for instance, is a role called an energy auditor, which is an essential role for energy efficiency and for high performance buildings, because they're the ones really helping to diagnose where there are energy inefficiencies and efficiencies within a within a minute building. It's also a critical role, because in some ways it's not just kind of the output of a lot of effort focused on energy efficiency. In some ways it's the upfront constraint to ensure this actually happening. It's a leading indicator to say, hey, if we have enough energy auditors or not, because if we don't, there's no way we can effectuate the rest of the energy efficiency strategy we need for for buildings. So it's a really, really key, key role. The challenge that we found in Massachusetts is that job is being called 40 different things by employers throughout the state that is, makes it so hard to get accurate understanding about what is employer demand for these roles, where in what county, skills certifications, all the kind of knock on on questions. So that would be kind of one really interesting example. There are other roles in that same kind of world, with with with mass CEC, like job titles, like assembler, which is can be a really important role in everything from electrical assembler, mechanical assembler, working assembling on kind of solar solar farms, but that catch all title or assembler really makes it kind of challenging to understand. Are we talking about junior level assemblers? Senior level assemblers? What kind of what segment of the clean energy economy actually talking to so you're trying to align the Massachusetts ecosystem with programming with dollars to serve employer needs. Getting much more precise about what we mean by these rules is really, really essential, and our data reveals that. So that so that would be another example of the work in Massachusetts as a learning.

Julian Alssid: I can totally get the titles and the, you know, like and AI being really helpful and beginning to see through the different titles and find some common data grounding. Cutting across multiple industries, can you speak to other learnings that you that are transferable across industries.

Matt Evans: One other, I think, example that that is, I think we found really interesting is we do a lot of work with employers, utilities in particular, and they're really interested in looking around a corner to understand the skills of the future and how their workforce is going to be impacted by macro trends in the energy landscape. So we've done some really interesting work with a major industry association called EPRI, the Electric Power Research Institute, to develop a framework which helps lay out how the mega trends shaping the industry impact job cluster areas as well as impact down to specific occupational areas. And so, for instance, if you're looking at, say, the impact of EV adoption, well one obvious place where that's going to show up is in kind of field technicians or EV kind of focused technician roles, but it's also going to show up in other jobs which don't necessarily have EV in the job title. So skills, what is a someone who's running programs and utility in which EVs is a part? What kind of skills do they have related to EVs? What does a customer service rep need to know about EVs, as well as when they get when they get questions about that. So really thinking kind of beyond specific roles, but for the skills impact, and that kind of framework is certainly applicable to other industries, about how do you think about what those mega trends are, and then how those cascade down to specific roles? And then, obviously with the data infrastructure. You're seeing, tracking how that really is being expressed by employees, and are they closing the gap between what needed for the skills of the future by role and then? And actually, is it is actually happening?

Kaitlin LeMoine: Yeah, I think that's a really interesting challenge. I mean, I guess it has been over the years, but I feel like it stands out more so than ever before, really, that, you know, there, it's like there are all these skills that you fall, that fall into many industries, and do employers recognize that? And do learners know and employees know how to talk about that? And is there that common understanding that, oh, well, the skills I'm using in this industry also apply in this one maybe with, like, this one little area of upskilling, right? Or something like, it feels like there's a lot of room for that, and room for building understanding and clarity around that transferability.

Matt Evans: And also for learners and job seekers as well. So as I think, another kind of transferable application as well, to kind of bridge both your questions. We did some work with the DOE analyzing advanced manufacturing, the intersection advanced manufacturing, semiconductor roles, and how we can bring that to life in the right kind of career navigation solutions for understand, for folks to understand the progression pathways. So we looked at 100 different roles within the sector, and 250 different career pathways to really help people understand, what are these jobs, which I may have heard about, maybe I haven't really, what are the career pathways? What does that look like over time? And interestingly enough, over 50% of the jobs and did not require a four year, four year degree. And so that story also is, I think, an important one across many of the dynamic industries in which we work, certainly there are roles which require kind of higher level degrees, for sure, but there's also a lot of career pathways which which don't and so bringing that to life for learners and job seekers, I think, is really important aspect that certainly is transferable across a lot of these a lot of these sectors.

Julian Alssid: I'm interested that, looking at your website, and given your sort of intro, you're, you know, you're sort of similar to our consulting work, you know, sort of workforce development being this kind of, this intersection of work and learning. Be being multidisciplinary. It sounds like your kind of partnerships and partners and are being used by many different types of groups, from government intermediaries to, you know, employers and I'm assuming, educators and not individuals. Where are you seeing sort of the greatest pickup at this stage in terms of groups that are really looking to get on board with and bake this kind of data use into their work.

Matt Evans: The folks that are, I think, particularly focused on kind of the data and consuming that data infrastructure are folks that we think are almost these kind of conveners. So they're really convening stakeholders, and they need the data to really kind of align the ecosystem around a commonly understood set of employer problems. So that convener hat we've seen is is worn by some industry association. It could be worn by a utility because oftentimes they're thinking actually more broadly than a typical employer is about their region, but certainly kind of regional, kind of coalitions are important part of of that. And then there are certain kind of government agencies who are also getting that charge, such as such as Mass Mass EC. So the kind of the the intersection really is these fast moving industries and those kind of convener types, but they may wear kind of different, different hat, depending on the particular region, the protection of the industry in which we're which we're talking but that's, that's the common thread.

Julian Alssid: And just Just a follow up to that. I mean, we've seen over the years, often data tools, you know, are purchased or used by organizations, and they kind of end up dying on the vine or shelves or whatever, the digital equivalent of that would be collecting dust somewhere. How do you ensure that that doesn't happen with your client, your clients and partners?

Matt Evans: It's a it's a great question. There is often, we've seen this the same the same thing, and so there's often a conversation that we continue to have with our partners on an ongoing basis and with the ecosystem of partners that they're bringing into it that needs to be had about how do we make sense of this data, and kind of, what do we do about it? I think what we've seen is the data provides not only kind of a roadmap of what's needed, but it's an accelerant of aligning the stakeholders around a common set of understood problems. So if we're trying to, say, engage employers effectively, or make sure we're reflective employers needs for a particular industry in a specific region. So it's we found it so much faster to have the data or workforce tools in which they're at the table, and we're talking about that, versus kind of people just staring at each other, kind of starting, starting from from scratch. So that really is a kind of a great kind of use case about how this really kind of plugs in. It plugs into people's kind of changing for driving workforce outcomes.

Kaitlin LeMoine: Building upon that last point, Matt, you know, I mean, we, we always ask some version of the question I'm about to ask on this show, given that the show is workforces. But from your perspective, you know, what are some practical steps that our audience can take to become forces in using these types of tools effectively, on in their own initiatives, in their own work, especially in the case of fast moving industries, but maybe just in general. I mean, please take the question in whatever direction you'd like.

Matt Evans: Really, it's, I think it starts with a question which is really centered around, does the existing data that I have give me the insights that I need to understand some of the questions that we've been talking about. Do I really understand the specific needs of employers with down to the role level? Do I really understand the skills that are attached to those roles? Do I really have a good understanding of what the future looks like for for forecasting or for for skills that often, I think, is the simplest, but are super powerful place to for folks to to start. And I think in some instance, the answer may be, Yep, I got what I need. For many of our partners, they're saying, well, actually, I don't I the data that I, that I looking for, does not exist. I really need these industry specific, specific solutions give me give one example in another industry, in biotech, one of our partners was kind of asking themselves the same question as they were trying to forecast the biotech workforce in their particular region. They've been using legacy data sets, including stuff at SOC Code or BLS level data. And it turns out, they were dramatically under because that is hiding in so many ways, or it doesn't even capture the full range of occupations that are needed in the industry. They were dramatically under forecasting, actually the workforce that they need in the region over the next, kind of seven to 10 to 10 years. So really, just starting with that simple question led them to kind of that insight. And I was maybe kind of a powerful place for anybody to start.

Julian Alssid: Yeah, that is powerful. And it's good to know that we're moving forward with more granular, actionable data, because I think that so often we've been using, you know, a sledgehammer when we need a scalpel.

Matt Evans: Yeah, we often, the analogy we often use is, you know, go from using glasses to actually using a microscope, so you really get the level of specificity that you need down to that job level, again, for roles which were not previously covered.

Julian Alssid: Well, this has been really, really fascinating, Matt, and I'm sure will be of interest to many in our audience. And so how can our listeners learn more and continue to follow your work and Julius Education?

Matt Evans: Well, obviously we'd love to connect with anyone on LinkedIn. Our website is another place to engage or for folks to reach out. Would certainly love to love to pick up any threads will be helpful. Our website is juliusedu.com we're also frequently at many of the conferences and workforce conferences that folks will be attending, I'm sure, who are listeners. So whether it's ASU, GSV, or Horizons, would look forward to the opportunity to say hello in person to folks. Too.

Kaitlin LeMoine: Great. Well. Thank you so much for taking the time to speak with us today, Matt, we've learned a great deal from you, and look forward to continuing to follow and track your progress and exciting work ahead of you.

Matt Evans: Thanks so much for having me.

Julian Alssid: Thank you, Matt.

Kaitlin LeMoine: That's all we have for you today. Thank you for listening to Work Forces. We hope that you take away nuggets that you can use in your own work. Thank you to our sponsor, Lumina Foundation. We're also grateful to our wonderful producer, Dustin Ramsdell. You can listen to future episodes at workforces dot info or on Apple, Amazon and Spotify. Please Subscribe, Like and share the podcast with your colleagues and friends.

Naomi Boyer, Senior Vice President of Digital Transformation at Education Design Lab, discusses the importance of skills-based learning and how to align education with workforce needs. Boyer also discusses the need for trust and transparency in the talent marketplace, and a common language and framework for discussing skills and competencies. The episode also covers the importance of collaboration between education and industry. Boyer provides examples of successful partnerships and offers advice for building new models. The episode concludes with a discussion of the importance of empowering individuals to take control of their learning journey.

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. One of the biggest challenges we face in aligning education to workforce needs is a disconnect between education and industry, especially when it comes to building new learning models.

Julian Alssid: So true Kaitlin and this gap became apparent as we began to shift to a knowledge based economy 30ish years ago, and addressing the gap is a big part of what attracted both of us to education and workforce development in the first place. But now it's taken center stage. Workers and students are frustrated and falling behind, and employers are way more interested in addressing the disconnect than ever before.

Kaitlin LeMoine: Yes, there is now a much greater emphasis on skills from skills based hiring to skills based learning. And while identifying common skills across education providers and employers is a piece of the work, we also need to drive broader systems level change.

Julian Alssid: Yeah, and as we know from our own consulting work, this is no small task, and and our guest today is is working on bringing sense and clarity to systems level efforts. And you know, we're excited to welcome Naomi Boyer to the podcast today.

Naomi Boyer: Thanks so much for having me excited to be here.

Kaitlin LeMoine: Thank you so much for joining us, Naomi To give a bit of background on Naomi's years in this work, she's a driving force in transforming education for the future of work. As senior vice president of digital transformation at the Education Design Lab, she leads initiatives on digital micro credentials, skills based learning, and competency frameworks, ensuring learners are equipped for success in a rapidly evolving economy. With over two decades of experience in higher education, Naomi has a proven track record of innovation in areas including distance learning, faculty development and global initiatives. She is a recognized expert in competency based education and a passionate advocate for self directed learning, and we're very excited to have her with us on the podcast today. So thank you for being here.

Julian Alssid: So Kaitlin, gave a little of your background, but would love to hear your own words about your background and your role at the Education Design Lab.

Naomi Boyer: Thanks so much, Julian, I so first I don't have supreme clarity. If I did, we'd all be rich and have everything figured out in our society and everything else. But part of, part of why I'm in this work is because I have a passion for transforming education and learning and really helping facilitate differences for people in people's lives, right? And so that's an ongoing journey, and I don't think it's ever anything we're going to solve, but we can certainly make it easier and help people find their path as they go along. And so I actually started my journey in special education, and I think I use those skills every bit along the way here, even as I continue my my own journey through life. And so I went from teaching special education to becoming a mom, and then went back and worked on my doctorate in a really funky area at the time, distance learning. And actually my doctorate, my specialty was in systemic change, or organizational change and systemic leadership. And then wrote my dissertation though on building online learning communities and international environments. So this is back in 2001 so at the advent of of online learning, and it was at this point in my life that that I really began realizing that I can't always decide on going from point A to point B, you got to kind of follow the journey and the rolling the rolling hills as you go along, and it'll take you to some really cool and fun places. And so through that journey, I ended up at in higher ed, as you said, for over 17 years, both at the at a university, research one university, and at a community college and vice president positions that allowed me to do strategic innovations and change and contribute to all the cool stuff. I was chief information officers for five, five of the last years of that scope, and then jumped over to education Design Lab, which you will hear me affectionately call to to speak about is the Lab versus education Design Lab. I joined them over about six years ago, and came in and working on digital, micro credentials and a bunch of other things. I can tell you a little bit about the Lab, the position I'm in now at the Lab, I'm having the opportunity of really diving into three areas that are passionate for me. You've heard me say, education, transformation, the personalization of learning, I think, is key and really a disrupter, which some of what I heard in one of your last podcasts with Michael Horn. He was talking about some of those driving forces of personal, personalization of learning, and then the individual and empowerment in the learning process and how an individual can gain control over their own processes of learning in life, and this is not something that we necessarily cultivate in our K12 or even many of our higher ed classrooms. We cultivate compliant learners. And so people understanding and learning how to take control of their own learning process becomes absolutely instrumental. And so when I joined the Lab, I was able to bring all of those three things together. And basically, I get to run amok. I'd love to run them up and and contribute. And that's why I say we don't have it all figured out. So using human centered design is the methodology of the Lab, and get to deal with the many pervasive issues have created a fractured and limited talent development continuum, and how do we think about the things in between? And so the Lab has basically three streams of work to do this, one of which is college transformation, where we work directly with community colleges and help them think about new and innovative non degree credentials that they can introduce to be responsive to the local workforce and learners. You know, we do some deep work and understanding who the new majority learner is, and we use the word new majority, majority to refer to all of those learners that higher ed was not was those who fall out of the scope of who Higher Ed was originally designed for, right? Like the 18 to 22 year old that was going to is going to go full time to university. So the new majority are those. They don't fit into that mold. And then the area that I cover, which is digital transformation, which sounds like it's all about technology, but it's about leveraging the technology for that human experience. So how do we really think about human change, access and opportunity, right? And really think about it for those who in order to improve social mobility, economic vitality, for those who need it the most,

Kaitlin LeMoine: As you mentioned the last, the last focus of your work, the digital transformation piece, I appreciate your call out of like, it's not just about the technology, but can you tell us a little bit more about when you say, yes, our work is around digital transformation, what that means and what, what the problems are that you're looking to address through, through that element of your work.

Naomi Boyer: There's no doubt that technology needs to be a component of thinking about scalable, accessible, innovative options for facilitating. I can go back to the beginning, where I said personalization, of learning and really rethinking the way we do things. In our current talent market, there's a disconnect between the way we have, we may be using the technology tools to apply for a job, but we're not necessarily capitalizing on those tools so that Naomi can say what I know and can do, so that my skills are captured in such a way that they become transparent. So, you know, at the Lab, we deal with a number of problems, I'll say, or issues, challenges that are in that talent continuum. And I like to say we deal with wicked issues, big, hairy issues, right? Like portability, transfer, ability, flexibility, and my work with digital transformation is really around the visibility. So how do we make each individual skills visible, not only just for everyone else, but for themselves. What are the skills that I have? How do I then document those skills? How do I see the skills I need along a career trajectory, and then how do I make those skills visible in the marketplace for others to find me, and for me to find those a match up with, with the skills that I have, right? And so whether that's through digital micro credentialing, whether that's through what we call learning and employment records, whether it's through the validation and trusting of establishing trust and what someone knows and can do, there's all of these issues around visibility, and that's how we're using the technology to allow an individual to flow through their process and fund it. But it's not about necessarily programming and technology, just about the technology.

Julian Alssid: Yes, indeed. I mean, that's, yeah, that's That's great. It's all the stuff we love. Kaitlin, I mean, come on. So I'd love to hear a little bit about projects that you're most excited about currently, where, you know, where you're employing, you know, this personalization in the digital strategies. You know you'd mentioned Texas and Arizona when we talked. Earlier, but about some projects you're most excited about.

Naomi Boyer: And some of the projects that that I'm going to describe right now deal also with some of those big, hairy issues I mentioned, right like so. So one of the things that we're, I'm hearing a lot from employers, is is, is trust, not necessarily trust in the way you may hear some of our colleagues who are more technically focused, talk about which is the verification of credentials, but more about the trust whether this credential represents the true skills someone has, and that's the skill validation piece of things. And I've heard from employers that it's a crowded, crowded marketplace out there right now, as far as what the credentials mean and what it looks like and how they can consume them. I've heard from my colleagues at the SHRM Foundation that that it, you know, they spend somewhere between four to six seconds HR leader sends to spend somewhere between four to six seconds on resumes and as part of that hiring process. So how can I make sense of all of these credentials and information that's coming in in this new skills based marketplace. And so that's one piece of it, the other one, and one of those problems, is that that the skills continuum from learning the skills documentation of those skills, transfer those skills, and then using those skills for each to communicate something, whether that's into a higher ed degree, into another higher ed learning experience, or into some sort of employment, those systems are broken because you have your education systems working and trying to get in play in this marketplace, you have your workforce support organizations that are are talking about skills and doing their skills, and you have your employers who are doing the same thing, and most folks are in their own silos, in their own organizational sectors, trying to figure this stuff out, but the systems are not being connected together. How do we think about connecting those systems? In fact, I have a colleague from Colorado who's involved in a project called the skills forward, work that's being doing, being done nationally. And she described the Colorado project, what's something they didn't know going into the project was and of course, she was using a metaphor, very Colorado issue of trees. And she says each organization as a group of trees. But what didn't exist were the roots in between to connect those systems, right? And so the projects I'm going to tell you, I'm going to talk to you about, are all about, how do we connect these systems, establish more trust and really allow these the conversations to happen around regions and industries, to leverage the economic change that we're trying to create. So the first one I'll talk a little bit about is in Texas right now. And in fact, they I just heard that there was new legislation that was being introduced to increase their crypto currency abilities. And you know, the Bitcoin developing Bitcoin resources. But right now, the area of Western Northern Texas, I'll say, from Dallas to Odessa is burgeoning forth with data processing centers, both traditional data processing centers and those that are more say on the crypto, Blockchain side of things. And there's a difference in those lines of industries. There's the same industry, but two tracks, because of the type of individuals that could be attracted, as far as talent that comes in the door to really work in those spaces. Right now, we're working on a project that is multifaceted. We started with the employers, did a number of salons, and heard and learned from the employers in this industry, what they needed, what their their deficits were, what was important. And then from there, we've been designing a project that will kick off in June and February with a convening, and we will have employers at the table. We will have education entities and alternative education entities, K 12, technical schools, universities, colleges at the table. We will have workforce and community based organizations at the table. And the idea is to create, is to get people, stakeholders, all in the room, having conversation and dialog, to create a flywheel around an industry and create a blueprint, trying to establish replicable blueprints that can create a connected talent ecosystem, which then attracts the industry, which is already coming to the region, because they already have like SpaceX coming to the region, and Google coming to the region, and Amazon coming to the region for these data centers. But if you want to have a successful industry movement like that, you've got to have the talent and so and because we, I know from my economic development partners that talent is one of the biggest things that you will they that is used in that space to attract i. A major industry to a region, and so we will be working over the next year and a half to create that dynamic ecosystem that can supply talent for the businesses that need it, that it will be an employer focused, business driven approach, and we will work with our education partners to help meet that pipeline, and hopefully, by the end of this entire project, we will also have those technological systems in place to make sure all of the entities are connected together and able to share the information and that skills visibility comes to the forefront. The Arizona work is all about doing for education, some of the ecosystem. Work you heard me describing in Texas, all of the higher ed entities, community colleges and universities in Arizona, are at the table having conversations about how they build their connected infrastructure so that they can minimize transition points for learners, high school into university, high school, into college, into the workforce, all these different back to college, back to university. And right now they're figuring out how they can consume credentials, much like we're trying to get employers to consume credentials in that space. They're the only that's the only project I know of that's really focused on the education side of things.

Kaitlin LeMoine: Yeah, I find it so interesting what you just said a moment ago. I mean, everything you just said was very interesting. But one thing that sticks out to me in what, and what you just raised Naomi, is this concept of employers need to see talent in the space in order to be attracted to the region, and yet, learners need to know that there are jobs available for them to go into, right? And so it's like, it's kind of, like this chicken or egg phenomenon of, like, where do you start, right? And I feel like that's that's such a big challenge in this work is figuring out how to, as you're saying, build that flywheel, but you have to ground it in some kind of a starting point, right? Like, so curious. I mean, if you have any thoughts or insights there around, like, how do you start, right? What do you need to show first in order to, like, get this work going well.

Naomi Boyer: And there's actually a third element there that's even adding another wheel going in, that hamster there, which is, which is all, is all about the emergent fields, right? So there's a number of emergent industries. Historically, we've always worked from targeted occupation lists. Where's the gap, where's the need, what do we need to fill? Right? And when you're talking about emergent industries, whether that's AI like this, data processing, sustainable energy, right? We can go into automation, robotics, we can talk about all that, but they're emerging industries, and as a result, you don't necessarily have the workforce data to support that those jobs are needed, which is coming first? And how do you think about this in this particular case? How did it start? And I would say that this has probably got to be it's a huge element and insight for myself and learning this past year champion, there's a local champion who is driving the effort and basically saying, and he's, he's talking to people. He's attracting, attracting businesses. And he is a very successful businessman. He He's the, he owns Cholla Energy and Cholla Petroleum, and he's been called out in the in the literature, is the crypto cowboy, but, but he is that voice in the region that has really started the movement to get the traction, to get like, where do you start? It was with him. He's the power and the voice behind it, and then, as a result, that's created other levers to make things happen, and then there is local market data that can support that. There was already a number of data processing organizations that were beginning to work there.

Julian Alssid: As you're speaking now. I mean, it's making me think, Kaitlin, of some of our work as well. I mean, a project we've been doing in my home state where I'm sitting right now, Rhode Island, with this helping to build a plan for workforce development in the life sciences industry. It's, yes, it's that chicken or egg issue with respect to economic development, but it's also like, you also don't want to train people for jobs that don't exist yet. So it's also trying to figure out, like, Well, what do we do currently, that we do well, that we can build on, that can then become the basis for the attraction and training people for future jobs. It's a real it's a very delicate dance.

Naomi Boyer: You're exactly right, Julian, because it is. Because even as we're talking about data processing now, data processing isn't new, right? We've had since cloud computing emerged on the market, you've started seeing more decentralized data processing centers that were that, have you know, came into the market as part of that work. And there was an article I read that said, for every data processing center, you need 800 electricians. So we're not just talking it. And cybersecurity and data networking folks that know how to do it. We're also talking plumbing and HVAC and electricians and all of these. So to your point, Julian, there's already there are talent pieces there of that puzzle that are already in existence that you can leverage and thinking about that and leverage the existing market, even while you build those burgeoning industries that are that are coming forward. And because it takes time, it takes time to get all of those things going. So Julian, your point's well taken.

Kaitlin LeMoine: Naomi, you talked about the salons that you held in Texas to drive this work forward across a range of stakeholder groups. And really, it sounds, you know, with the goal of breaking down these silos that we all talk about right are maybe front and center more than ever before, because we're trying to do more and more of this. You know, very needed cross functional and cross stakeholder work. What are the biggest challenges you face as you work across these different groups to build new models and new systems and and where do you see the emerging opportunities.

Naomi Boyer: What's fascinating to me is my education colleagues. Just about every college and university has an advisory board, right? And they bring their they bring employers in, they ask them to sit on an advisory board. And I this is, I'm going to make a broad generalization here that is not accurate for everyone, but say a lot of them are, sit and listen to what we've been doing, and please nod your head at what we've what you know. And yeah, give us a few comments here and there about what we need to do, but it's not meaningful deep work. And when they ask the employers to come, and they don't always come and sustain over time, our my education colleagues get frustrated with the fact that, hey, we invite them and they don't come right? And so my point has always been, why are we expecting them to come to us? Why aren't we going into them? Why aren't we meeting them where they're at right? Like, why aren't we going to where employers are having your HR conferences, you're where they're having skills conversations, where they're doing all of these things. Because I've been in a number of meetings where I've heard people say, Yeah, but the employers, they're just not there. They're just not ready. They're not doing these things. Well, my conversation suggests, oh yeah, they're doing they're doing this. They're having the skills dance, but they're having the same skills dance that the educators are having within the organization. They're trying to get their own closets in order. They're trying to make their own skills taxonomies set situated, and what's been most important for them is not skills based hiring, but skills for optimization of their own organizations. Because the ROI has really been around the optimization in their own organizations, just like on the educator side, our higher ed institutions are awarding credentials because that's where their ROI is. They're not accept, necessarily accepting credentials on the way in the door through digital, you know, digital credentials and their digital micro credentials, or other forms of digital skills in the door either they're not hiring based off of skills, but it's really easy to say, Oh, they're just not interested in playing, right? And so helping break that down and really think about what that looks like, we actually, at the lab, we designed a new activity last year that we call the skill simulation. And if anyone's participated in a poverty simulation before, it's very much like that. Everyone has a persona that they're asked to assume as part of the exercise, everything from an employer a learner, an education entity or community based organization, and the goal is to have our opportunity seekers end up in jobs, and through the journey, they quickly realize with these different personas, where all those challenges exist in our current systems, and how fractured it is as they go through that process. So sometimes it's just a matter of helping people walk a mile in the shoes of the other entities to really understand what we're dealing with here, and as we keep talking about skills and skills based practices, it's so much bigger than skills, because we're really talking about competencies, even though skills has become the more mainstream vernacular.

Julian Alssid: Yeah, it's no, it's so true. It's fun. I'm kind of smiling and nodding. For those of you listening to audio who can't see us, it's just so fun to have this conversation with someone who's kind of in the in the playing in the same sandbox, because it's just so interesting to hear your take on it and and I think you just offered some really good advice. Part of what we do here with Work Forces is, you know, so the whole idea is, we're helping these education and workforce leaders navigate this very complicated intersection of work and learning. Can you, can you offer so they can become forces just like you? Some more, some more, very specific, practical steps that folks can take in developing innovative and responsive, you know, programs to meet current and future needs.

Naomi Boyer: So one of the things I mentioned. Early on is that we use human centered design at the lab and for coming up with new models to make all this work. So please don't think in anything. I'm saying that it is a here's how you fix it. This is how it should work, kind of thing. Because really it depends on the stakeholder, meaning education. The advantage to the education entity, the advantage tothe employer. Like when we're saying, what are the tangible steps? I think it looks different for each of those entities and even for the opportunity seeker, because the thing I love about this environment is that person who's seeking opportunities can be empowered now in so many ways that they otherwise couldn't have been previously people have once they're given full advantage of the skills that they own. You, you might be thinking yourself, oh, I always knew my skills. I always could do these things. Well, you may have known your skills, but how do you communicate those in a way that can be consumed by others, right, in a different way. And so we're at an intersection, I think, where, where we're at an inflection point, where I can see true systemic change happening. So a few things, a few things that I would say, one, if you're on the education side, really get in and listen. I mentioned employer salons, those are really informal setting sessions we have with employers in an informal environment to have a conversation about what their need is. We listen. We do not say we've got your answer. We listen and we take down notes, and from there, we then can come back and say, Okay, so now let's design together. Let's think about things together. So understanding would be the first step through all of that. The second piece is, as we ideate to what the, what the possible model is, is to, is to do it together. So if I'm an employer who's really looking for for some support, like, I really need someone to take to help me fill this particular training pathway, let's say, make the call to the local community college, make the call to the university, somehow, get that that partner and sit down and really talk with them about what the need is, and understand, if you're an employer, where I start to see, and this is, you know, just tangible steps where I start to start to see the barriers break down are in those industries that have become at a crisis, and employers are working together within An industry. So for instance, rather than it being just my company trying to fill my job roles, I'll use healthcare as an example. I have other projects in healthcare. It's become such a crisis that the healthcare entities previously in competition with each other, they know they're just stealing the talent from one to another, giving bonuses. You know, I'll give you a $10,000 signing bonus, and you jump from one hospital and come over to me, they're not fixing their talent pipeline, because all they're doing is trading it back and forth. And once they come to the table together and talk across their industry, they're then able to think about more innovative solutions together that then potentially can open up that pipeline in a way that then is going to bring all of them more success, rather than that competitive nature. So I'm not giving you step one, step two, step three, because I think the stakeholder group is is different, and those steps look different for for those individuals. You know, as far as what that looks like, the opportunity seeker is now completely empowered to take your resume and a job description and put it through open AI, and as they do that, they're going to come out with a job with a resume that looks right along the lines of what that employer was asking for. Now I'm giving away a big secret, because now those employers are going to get resumes that all look alike, another big, hairy problem now where we're going to have to figure out how to really start thinking about matching up those skills for optimal benefit for everybody involved,

Kaitlin LeMoine: As you mentioned earlier, Naomi, that really does right in some way. All circle back to competencies, both in under a way to communicate on the learner side and a way to validate on the employers to go, to go way beyond what you know. ChatGPT will do to ensure that you know, you're really able to confirm what people know and can do. We've got to get down to trust.

Julian Alssid: So yeah. It also circles back to the personalization notion, like, ultimately, you know, and this is coming up in a bunch of conversations around AI is like, you know, like, how do we even you know if students are going to be, for example, if students are using AI, how do we know what the student knows? Ultimately comes down to, similarly, on the job, what can that person do? How are they going to represent and even though the resume look may look like everyone else is, how are they going to distinguish themselves and describe what they do and show clarity of. The context in which they're carrying their skills to the next weigh station.

Naomi Boyer: Absolutely, and start part of that skills visibility. This is a personal belief, and it was something that I actually came to when I came to the lab, that that was part of their their conversation, which is explicitness and intentionality. So so part of the learning process, and this is back on the education side, things to do is, is really think about how we're making the skills and competencies that we're embedding into our learning process intentional for the learner, they need to understand exactly what they're learning when they're learning it, and explicitness so that they can then walk into a job interview. Let's say somebody is we've said, we've we've empowered somebody with critical thinking, right? Like, how many of our general, general education classes talk about, you know, doing embedding critical thinking? Well, okay, so I put on my resume, I can do critical thinking, and then I walk in or ChatGPT tells me to put on my resume critical thinking. And then I, I walk into, you know, I get, I get through the gate, and I come into this interview, and I get asked, okay, so give me an example of when you just display critical thinking and what, what was included in that, if I can't explicitly say, what were the competencies and how did I demonstrate those? It's pretty clear that I don't maybe I don't have those skills, but I could have those skills, I just don't know how to talk about it. So that explicitness, the transparency, the intentionality, becomes really important on those steps right to success of being able to do that. And I would say that that's a big part of this whole skills movement

Kaitlin LeMoine: Absolutely, and that's a skill in and of itself, right? I mean, just to communicate, oh yeah, those skills and building that skill for a learner as well. Really appreciate the steps you've provided. And we totally recognize that these are not like, you can't necessarily, necessarily say, first you do this and then you do that, but at, you know, taking that, the concept of understanding and then ideating, we think those are some really grounded recommendations as we as we seek to drive the future of this, of this type of work. Naomi, as we wind down our conversation today, and it's really been such a privilege to connect with you. How can our listeners learn more and continue to follow your work? Well,

Naomi Boyer: Well, really excited to to connect with anybody who's interested after this podcast, but my email address is n, b, o, y, e, r at all one word, eddesignlab.org. Our website is eddesignlab.org and we have an innovator network that you can sign up for and get get ongoing newsletters that come out as part of the work to stay abreast of what the Lab is doing.

Julian Alssid: Thank you so much Naomi for taking the time to speak with us. And I know we didn't give the none of us have yet given the conclusive perfect answer to it all. But as you say, it's, it's all a process, and it's all about adaptation and customization and learning along the way. So hopefully that's what everyone is hearing.

Naomi Boyer: Yes, all fun to run amok, and we didn't even, we didn't even get all the way through the design process right, which we would have moved into prototyping and and launching all the things that as you go through that process of CO designing with with your partners.

Julian Alssid: Yes, well, we'll have to have you back for a chapter two.

Kaitlin LeMoine: Part two, yeah, part two. Thank you so much for your time.

Naomi Boyer: Thank you.

Kaitlin LeMoine: That's all we have for you today. Thank you for listening to workforces. We hope that you take away nuggets that you can use in your own work. Thank you to our sponsor, Lumina Foundation. We are also grateful to our wonderful producer, Dustin Ramsdell. You can listen to future episodes at workforces, dot info or on Apple, Amazon and Spotify. Please Subscribe, Like and share the podcast with your colleagues and friends.

Brandon Busteed, CEO of BrandEd, joins Work Forces to discuss the power of industry immersion in education. He shares his background as an edtech entrepreneur and executive at Kaplan and Gallup, and his journey to BrandEd, a company that partners with global brands like Sotheby's and The New York Times to offer experiential education programs built and taught jointly by industry leaders and academics. The conversation also explores the importance of hands-on learning and how better align educational experiences with the world of work.

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. Welcome back. We're excited to be kicking off season four of Work Forces.

Julian Alssid: As we kick off this new season, we're looking forward to diving into topics that resonate with you, our listeners, and connect with our consulting work as well.

Kaitlin LeMoine: One topic that's top of mind for us is how to most effectively prepare learners for the jobs and careers they enter upon graduation. We're seeing more of an emphasis on models that bridge education and work, from work based learning to apprenticeships and internships.

Julian Alssid: With increasing skill demand, we know that students need more experience when they graduate, whether from high school or post secondary programs. And in our work, we're involved with initiatives that are tackling this issue from different levels, from community colleges to statewide consortia.

Kaitlin LeMoine: We're looking forward to our discussion with today's guests to explore how corporations can act as a driver of high quality industry aligned education. Brandon Busteed is the CEO of BrandEd, a family owned education company that partners with global brands like Sotheby's and the New York Times to offer experiential learning courses. He's a passionate advocate for work integrated learning, and believes the future of education will seamlessly blend learning and work environments. With a background as an ed tech entrepreneur and executive at Kaplan and Gallup, Brandon brings a wealth of experience to his current role. He's a recognized thought leader in education and workforce development, having founded a successful ed tech company and authored numerous articles and publications, Brandon is also a sought after speaker and serves on the boards of several organizations dedicated to improving education and workforce outcomes. We're thrilled to have him join us today for a deep dive into the exciting intersection of learning and work. So welcome to the Work Forces podcast, Brandon.

Brandon Busteed: Yeah, thanks that to me is the most exciting intersection to be in the middle of, and I know you guys in your podcast have sat at that intersection as well, so I'm glad that we had an opportunity to meet up virtually here. Thanks for having me.

Julian Alssid: Well, yeah, it is great to have you Brandon. And yes, we often use the that analogy of the intersection and what a messy intersection it is, but for people like you who help help us all trying to make sense of this crazy intersection. So yes, welcome. Kaitlin gave a little bit of your background, but we'd love to hear in your own words -- about your background and your current role at BrandEd.

Brandon Busteed: Yeah. So you know, as you guys noted, I started down this education path literally right out of college as an undergrad. If you had asked me my senior year in college whether I was going to be in the education space, I would have probably told you no, really wasn't on the radar. And then, you know, I started a company. I started an education company that was focused on addressing a really important issue of college binge drinking, which at the time was, you know, at the top of the list of concerns among college leaders. And so that was, you know, kind of my first run as a founder and CEO of outside the classroom and in a very specific space, trying to address dangerous drinking and other drinking related behaviors on campus. And you know, when the organization was acquired, I had an opportunity to go help Gallup build an education and workforce development division. And that really in terms of, you know, where, where I am at. BrandEd is a bit of my origin story to why BrandEd. Because you guys may recall that during that time, Gallup issued this massive study on the outcome of college graduates. It was, you know, under the heading of the Gallup-Purdue Index, and to this day, still the largest representative study that's ever been done, looking at college graduates and their outcomes in work and in well being and other dimensions. And what was so important about that study was that work-integrated learning opportunities, if a student had one during college, doubled their odds of being successful later in life, not just from a workplace engagement perspective, but in their overall well being. And so if you think about the secret ingredients of education or the secret ingredients of college, one of the big aspects is work integrated learning. And Kaitlin, as you were doing the introduction, there's a lot of different derivatives of what we would call work integrated learning, but specifically it was things like whether a student had an internship where they were able to apply what they were learning in the classroom, that connectivity was really important, long term projects that took a semester or more to complete, again, mimicking more of a real world work environment. And so I pause on that part of my Gallup experience, because as I left and went to Kaplan and was able to work in a global role at Kaplan, specific to education, I was spending a lot of time looking at the learning and work intersection that included work that we did with Amazon and their Career Choice Program for upskilling their frontline workers, and even, you know, innovative options for high school students in enabling them to have a better understanding of jobs and careers, so that they could better understand what they should major in during college, right? So, so all that led to why BrandEd you know, I've been at BrandEd for just under a year now, and in simple terms, I looked at what they were doing and to me, and I won't take any credit for it, because I said this prior to my arrival, but there's no doubt that BrandEd is doing the world's best industry immersive education. And what do I mean by that? Right? We work with iconic brands, as you mentioned, organizations like the New York Times or Sotheby's or Manchester City, and we develop just incredibly engaging and exciting educational programs that are co taught by industry experts and educational experts that give students real, hands on experiences and applications. It gives them behind the scenes access to these organizations in the industry and access, not just to one but many experts from those industries to understand the incredible diversity of jobs that one could have in the art industry or the fashion industry or the sport business industry. And so I was excited to be part of that, and have, you know, been thrilled to be coming up on almost a year here so far.

Kaitlin LeMoine: So can you tell us a little bit about the history of BrandEd? How did it start? And, you know, kind of, what was the, what was the impetus for, for the organization?

Brandon Busteed: Yeah, I've had a few friends joke thinking that I must have started my own company because, you know, I called it BrandEd. It's just a coincidence that it happens to be, you know, very closely aligned my name, because BrandEd has been around for a good 20 plus years, Kaitlin, and it started with, interestingly enough, the acquisition of Sotheby's Institute of Art out of Sotheby's the Auction House. So Sotheby's had started Sotheby's Institute of Art, some 55 years ago as an educational institution that would train the future leaders of the art industry. And although, from the beginning, they certainly had the idea that it would help train future leaders at Sotheby's, they were very innovative in their thinking, in that they also knew it would be the kind of place that would contribute to talent and leaders in the industry writ large. And, you know, that's a consistent theme that I've seen in all of the brand partners we work with, you know, the New York Times. We run the school of New York Times that's a pre college program for high school students. But they very much see their their role as contributing to, you know, students going into the field of journalism having a better understanding of what the different roles are within that industry. And not just for the New York Times, but for the entire industry, if you will, media and journalism. Same thing can be said for the work we do with Manchester City and with Vogue and so anyway, the starting point was that acquisition, interestingly enough, of an educational institution being run inside of a company, realizing that education wasn't their wheelhouse, it wasn't their core focus, but that it had an important role in the world, and looking to an organization like BrandEd to run it in a, you know, highly professional academic way where there was a lot of alignment to educational outcomes. Similarly, the organization acquired what was then called Conde Nast College of Fashion out of Conde Nast, it was recently rebranded Vogue College of Fashion, so that's what it is now. And then we partnered with, I'd say, an organic partnership with both the New York Times and Manchester City in developing the programs there. So it's a really interesting example of a couple that were educational institutions started inside of companies that were very forward thinking and how they viewed talent development and talent development, not just for their organization, but for the industry in general, and then others who just saw the value of, you know, partnering to do this. Because I would say, if you ask me, what some of the secret sauce of our BrandEd programs is, it's a really simple example, but it's a powerful one, and it's co teaching. You know, we, we always have examples where a school invites somebody in to give a guest lecture. That's great. It's usually a one time thing. There's not a lot of prep. That person might be really great, engaging or not so much. You know, all the programs we do, they're co designed, curated, developed and taught by the industry experts and educational experts, which you would think of as teachers or faculty. I don't think that's unique to BrandEd, I think we do it in a world class way, but that's an example, I think, of where other educational organizations can make big strides in scaling this industry immersive opportunity. It's not rocket science, you know, but that co teaching is actually just a really rare example right now.

Julian Alssid: Yeah, it's so interesting. Brandon hearing you, kind of talk about the history of the companies being so kind of at the forefront, and this notion of this immersive approach. But I also think back to the study you referenced when you were a Gallup that produced that big study. And it does seem like, and I don't know if this is chicken or an egg or whatever, but that study was big, and it, you know, it would highlight this issue about the work based learning component being so impactful, it seems that this has become way more of a storyline in workforce development than it was back then. And I'm curious from where you're sitting now, and since you did that study, like, why? What's going on? In your opinion, that's made this more front and center than ever before.

Brandon Busteed: Yeah, look, I think the biggest driver is just when, when the price tag of education goes up, and especially higher education, and when the number one reason why people value higher education is to get a good or better job there starts to become a more rigorous return on investment calculation being done by prospective students and their families as they evaluate it, right? And, you know, if you say, hey, the number one reason why I value this degree or I'm going to pursue it is to get a good or better job, and you don't feel like that's happening, or that you're being, you know, really sufficiently prepared for that next step. Well, that, I think, is one of the big, big drivers, right? Cost has been going up. Doubts about the work, readiness of graduates has been going up as well. And so you've got a perfect storm of, I don't believe we're doing a good job of this work, you know, preparation or career readiness thing, and it's getting more and more expensive. And, oh, by the way, there's a lot of other interesting alternatives, right? And so it's been the backdrop of that. But, yeah, look, I think that study made a meaningful contribution to the thinking of the higher ed community around Wow, this is a valuable component. We do it, but we don't do it at scale like that was the big finding Julian from my study. About a third of college graduates had a job or internship where they were able to apply what they were learning in the classroom. So it's not zero, but two thirds are missing the mark. And you know, there's fresh data just this year from the Business-Higher Ed Forum that kind of speaks to this. There were 8.2 million college students who wanted an internship last year. Only 3.6 million got one, and of those, only 2.5 million had what they called a quality experience in that internship, right? Because we all know there's internships that are really great and some that are total duds. Well, what I take from that data? First, I'm a huge fan of internships. There aren't many people that are a bigger fan of internships than me, but you also realize they don't scale. So there's no data to suggest that the number of internships in the United States has increased over the last 30 or 40 years. Clearly, demand for it is sky high. And so you say, Okay, if you can get an internship grade. But short of that, what are the other ways that we can bring this valuable experience to more students at greater scale, and that's obviously why, you know, I'm so excited about the work that we're doing at BrandEd. I think we're going to make a meaningful contribution to that.

Kaitlin LeMoine: So as you're talking about your learners, Brandon, who are your learners, and how do you reach them?

Brandon Busteed: We work across the board, Kaitlin with each of our brand partners. We have pre college programs for high school students, primarily 10th, 11th and 12th graders. So that's clearly a big demographic that we serve, is current high school students who are looking to augment their high school academic experience with, you know, something that is really industry immersive. And we also serve undergraduate college students with opportunities to study away or study abroad, where, instead of the traditional study abroad experience, they're doing an industry immersive program with one of our brands, and then with Vogue and Sotheby specifically, we do operate master's degree programs within both of those organizations. So at Sotheby's, you know, we're known probably most prominently for our masters in our business, you would expect an organization like Sotheby's Institute of Art to probably have a degree like that. So, you know, within those two brands, we're serving Master's Degree students, but in terms of the largest volume of students that we're serving by number, it's clearly pre college students and undergraduates who are looking to add a valuable industry immersive experience to their otherwise academic portfolio.

Julian Alssid: So Brandon, as you build out these immersive experiences with these global brands, what are the major successes and challenges you faced?

Brandon Busteed: Yeah, look, I mean, you know, part of it is what we've invested a lot of time and energy and years as an organization and refining the, you know, the aspects of, how do you take the best of what you can learn in a work environment with the best of what academics do in terms of curating something that you know looks like an academic, you know, syllabus or schedule that has building sequential pieces to it, reflective components. You know, think about in the workplace. You know, how little we take time to reflect or digest a project, or be like, Hey, how did that go? You know, cutting edge organizations do a good job with debriefing and certain things like that. But anyway, to your good question, a lot of it has been refining the blending of these two worlds, right? And, you know, you've, you've all heard it. You know, a lot of academics who are trained in educational pedagogy have rarely had experiences outside of academia. And you know, they went, they went to graduate school for education, you know, they have a master's degree, but you know, relatively little work experience outside of being a student and outside of working in an academic environment. And then with a lot of the subject matter experts we work with, who have real jobs and real organizations, right? They haven't been trained in educational pedagogy. They haven't thought about, well, how do I make this engaging for a high school student? And so it's really been the efforts that we've invested in training both our educational experts or faculty and our industry experts, and then getting them to work together. Because, like I said, it's not Hey, invite a guest lecture in, and they do their talk and leave like, these are things that are co designed, curated together, developed together. And so that's our biggest challenge and opportunity. We've honed in on that craft. Doing that requires real effort. You know, I can't launch a brand new program without having some pretty good lead up time in terms of the work involved in producing it, whether that's an in person or an online program. And then the other thing where, you know, we bring this to life for students, it has some natural limitation, is access to behind the scenes things right? Students who come into a Sotheby's program are visiting the Auction House. They're, you know, they're getting a behind the scenes look at the organization in ways that you know you just, you just can't replicate otherwise. So I think our our biggest opportunities, like everything else, are indeed scale, but we've developed a model that has a lot more scale than an internship model or a co op model, so, but fundamentally, there are still those limitations like I've provided.

Julian Alssid: So Kaitlin asked you, we tend to think of this as a dual customer kind of business, right? Your learners, your employers, who are the faculty?

Brandon Busteed: So it's any number of folks in various roles within both our partner organizations and folks within the broader like sport industry, for example. So you take the school, The New York Times, probably about half of the faculty in The New York Times are indeed staff members or former staff members from The New York Times. The other half are a combination of folks that have had journalism backgrounds for other organizations, right? Et cetera. So it's a mix of both staff from the organizations we partnered with, and then staff from the industry. But again, underneath that layer, Julian, it's an industry expert, and what we would think of as a teaching or educational expert. So we have general education faculty who are partnering with the subject matter experts to help create the syllabus, right? Put some structure around it. Think about not just the assignments and projects that students would do, which largely come from the industry expert input, but thinking about, okay, how do we roll this out with a student group? How do we create a rubric for giving them feedback or grading these projects, right? And so it's those two types of backgrounds working together that definitely make every one of our programs come to life. But it's, you know, it's been interesting because as I watch and sit in some of our classes, I see joy in the students that are in the classes, right? Where they're clearly getting exposed to things that they don't in school. You know, one of those common refrains I get from students is like, wow, this felt nothing like school. This is totally different, right? I mean, just it feels different to them. But I also see joy on the faces of the faculty that are teaching these programs. And again, faculty meaning, two meanings, the educational that, you know, trained experts, and then the industry experts who are spending time away from their jobs to, you know, come and provide these educational experiences for students and and for them, it's very much about getting excited about the future generation of folks who may be interested in this field, find them, embrace them, and more of a mentorship, you know, support type fashion, which is really awesome to see.

Kaitlin LeMoine: Yeah, I'm really, I'm really stuck on what you just said a moment ago. Brandon about how learners will say, This doesn't feel like school. It's curious to me, right? Like what I want? I mean, this is a general wondering, but it's almost like I wonder what that means for how we offer secondary ed, right? Or higher ed. I mean, if you're saying you're drawing from secondary learn, secondary school learners, as well as learners already enrolled in undergraduate programs, what are the implications for even how those learners go back to those environments?

Brandon Busteed: You know, here's the good news. There's awesome examples out there, right? They haven't been brought to scale. So you think about the high schools that have invested heavily in project based learning, that's a big component what we're doing, right? I mean, their students are engaged in real projects. They're given feedback on those projects. They have to then go back to the drawing board and iterate a bit, right? So that iterative feedback process in the midst of a real project or deliverable is a big part of what we do in our BrandEd programs, but you can do that with just a little bit of imagination in any academic program out there. I've seen it done in intro to Spanish to philosophy, right, where project based learning and iterative feedback and small group work is part of it. Those things mimic much more of what a real world work environment is like, so short of having a job where you do that, or short of having an internship where you do that, I think we can do these kinds of things at greater scale. We've seen schools do this at greater scale. So it gives me a lot of hope that with a little bit of familiarity, a little bit of support, a little bit of teacher encouragement, we can indeed get to a place where a lot more of this happens, where the students do say, like, oh my gosh, I got to do something real. I met a real life so and so, you know, person in job that you, you know, invent, envision you might want to be in someday. And then, you know, like, the other refrain we get a lot from students is they're like, I had no idea that there were so many different kinds of jobs in this industry, right? So you think fashion, you're like, oh, fashion design, right? Well, but the reality is, there are, you know, hundreds of different kinds of jobs that exist in the fashion industry, including you could be an accountant working for a fashion organization. So that might not mean that you are the fashion design guru, but you are in the fashion industry, in a job, like an accounting role, and so I think that's the other thing, is we're opening, we're hoping to open the aperture of thinking to the art of possible, not just, oh, the fashion industry, but all the different components of it. Think about a hospital, right? There's everything from, you know, the nurse to the doctor, those are the classic roles everybody thinks of very simplistically, right? Then you think about the lab techs and the radiology texts. And, I mean, you know, all of a sudden you can take a single hospital and realize there are dozens of different jobs beyond doctor and nurse, right? And so that's a lot of what we need to help younger people do. And I would argue, maybe even older people figure out if there's a lot of college graduates leaving, you know, their undergrad program or their master's program, still not really fully understanding the breadth of jobs that exist in the world.

Kaitlin LeMoine: Yeah, 100% I mean, I think we, and Julian, I've been talking a lot about that point recently, just around the transparency of roles and feel like, you know, it's not, we're not. We're no longer in the days of like, you know, doctor, lawyer, teacher, right? Like, there are so many jobs and so many jobs that cross sectors and what those you know, there's some common skills that you draw upon throughout those different jobs, but there's some distinct knowledge and skill sets you need as well. And just being transparent about that, I feel like, is such a critical piece of this puzzle. And I, you know, I think what you mentioned about the project based learning piece, right? I mean, like that is something that is certainly transferable. And, you know, spent years designing those, those types of programs and curriculum myself and there, there certainly is that transferability, but it does require different type of intentionality and just a slight shift in thinking that, you know, it's exciting to think about, you know, more and more as we think future state. How can, as you're saying, How can we integrate work based learning more kind of across education? There are, I think, because I'm really excited to do that.

Brandon Busteed: We lose track of this. Like I use the words fun and exciting and engaging when I think about or describe BrandEd programs. So it's not just that. It's industry immersive, and it has this very purposeful connection to work readiness and career readiness. It's that, like, you're in these programs, and you're you're having fun, you're excited and like, I just feel like we have lost sight of the fun and excitement and engaging factor of school and education. Like, if we can't figure out how to get back to that where students are like, that was awesome, wWe've got another thing coming, right?

Julian Alssid: Well, it's funny too, like we're doing work now around manufacturing and advanced manufacturing, and a big project in Massachusetts, for example, some work in Life Sciences. There's some really cool jobs out there that people know nothing about, right? Which is just amazing. So you know, of course, yes, I would like to work for Man City, but that's a different conversation. So bringing us back to to your namesake BrandEd, how will BrandEd continue to grow?

Brandon Busteed: The programs we have with current partners? There's, in my mind, plenty of growth ahead, just in building, you know, those programs as they exist. We're also launching, you know, new versions what we're doing, right? So last several years, we've done exclusively in person summer pre college programs for high school students. Just this week, we're going to be launching the first online pre college offering. So for students that can't take, you know, a two week block in the summer. Can't afford an in person, you know, intensive summer program. You know, we will have fully online offerings available that also won't require students necessarily to have to do it just in the summer. So, you know, expanding by modality and some of the differences in options. But certainly, you know, we're going to keep our eyes open to, what are other iconic brands in? I would argue, iconic industries that we know students are interested in, that we know would really excite and engage them in ways that you know, that you wouldn't otherwise. Why you say, like, what's the essence of a globally recognized brand? It's that you know, it's like students hear Sotheby's, or they hear New York Times, or Vogue, like, if you're interested in fashion, Vogue is the name, right? And you know, so if I could attend or be part of a Vogue program, you know, you're excited from the very beginning, and then on the end of it, you also have something very exciting to add to your resume that stands out uniquely and differently than other experiences. Right? When you can put a globally recognized brand as part of your experience and your resume, that's a big deal. So, you know, we've talked about the experience being a really engaging one, but it's the you know, the excitement based on the brand that you know, certainly attracts a lot of students to it, and then on the, you know, once they've left the program, it's something that stands as a really unique attribute on their resume. So we will be thinking about, you know, potentially other brands and industries, but it's going to be, you know, I think, a very careful decision making process, because when and if we do it, we do it at such a high quality and with demanding standards and expectations from our partners that, like, you can't just go run and do 60 of these things, and, you know, I mean, we've done four over 20 years, so you got to do it right is, is one of the pieces. So certainly, there may be a day where, you know, there's another brand or industry that's part of what we do. But certainly right now we've we've got a lot of growth ahead in working with the the four partners that we work with today.

Kaitlin LeMoine: So I think you just started to go in the direction of my next question. But in saying, you know, you need to kind of be really intentional and start with the programs you have and really build them out effectively. But as we consider practical steps our listeners can take to become forces in developing models to prepare learners for the future of work. What are some of your transferable learnings from these programs at this point, whether it's common program elements, I know you mentioned co teaching is one, but other program elements that are transferable, or other ideas that you're considering as you go forward?

Brandon Busteed: I think I've largely mentioned it, but it's probably helpful to summarize, right, certainly, co teaching, right? And that's different and distinct from, oh, we're just going to have an invited lecturer come in, right? Like, think of how many invited lectures we have come in from industry where there's no preparation, there's no context given to that lecture about what's being taught in the class, how they might sync up with it. There's usually no opportunity for students to interact with that person beyond the 30 or 40 minutes that they were in the class, right? So, I mean, this is truly co teaching. Have an industry expert and a teacher working together on developing a program, a syllabus, the idea for the projects, the rubric, right? I fundamentally believe any school can do that if they invest intentionally in that type of effort. The other one is making sure that there's some form of hands on work and projects that students are engaged in where they're given feedback and opportunity to make modifications and changes to their work. Right? That happens frequently in work situations, not just like there's a pop quiz and that's a one time event, like we have, we have relatively little of that in the workplace. It's usually, I'm working on something. I've gathered some new data. It changes my thesis. I got some feedback from my manager before we present it to the, you know, the C suite, whatever it might be, right? So it's that hands on experience, where there's some feedback and ability to iterate. And so I think that's it. And then to take time to pause on saying, you know, I know we're talking about the art industry today, but think of the diversity of jobs in the art industry, from museum curation for a non profit museum to working at a, you know, a corporate auction house. I mean, it's and everything in between is opening that aperture right to pause and say, Hey, I know this is a course on medicine. Let's talk about some of the different roles in a hospital that you know, make our medical world work, right? And you see the stuff up front of the house, you see very little of all the other components that make it work, including the business people who you know, the CFOs, the accountants behind the scenes, right? I mean, there's all that. So I'd say those are elements that are transferable to pretty much any educational entity. It's just a matter of whether they're going to be intentional in doing that, in their design and in their programmatic follow through. And then, of course, the other thing it forces Kaitlin is a little bit of a difference in how we grade or assess this work, right? If it's project based, there's a there's a different rubric. It's not as simple as, you know, multiple choice assessments. It's not, you know. So so that, I think becomes the next challenge is that, you know, if you really want accountability built around it, you've got to think about different ways to assess the quality of the work that students are doing.

Julian Alssid: Well, it sounds like as you're speaking Brendan, correct me, if you see it differently, that you know, while you're working with these iconic, you know, global superstar organizations, that many of the very elements in your approach could become part of regional, sectoral or statewide or or global, iconic, but working in regions around the country.

Brandon Busteed: Absolutely. I mean, look and you know, we, we're all suffering from this issue of, how do we do a better job working across sectors, right across the larger employment world? Because it's not just for profits and companies, right? It's large nonprofits. It's state and federal government entities, right, employers writ large, and educational institutions. And the reality is that, like, one of the reasons why BrandEd exists is because schools aren't very good at doing work-integrated learning, and employers aren't very good at doing learning-integrated work. And so voila, an organization like branded, you know, can have an important place in the world. But to your points, you know, both of you, I think a lot of the elements of what really make these programs come to life for students can be done in many different ways, and I would be thrilled to see that happen. I mean, I know what we're doing is special and unique. We're going to stay, you know, within that type of framework, but the examples from some of the core of what we're doing certainly applicable to others. It's certainly scalable. And I think, you know Kaitlin, you use, use the word intentionality, like that really is the story. If you're intentional, you'll figure out a way to make this happen. I say to every college leader I talk to where there is a will, there is a way. That's our issue is we've had little will on this relative to anything else.

Julian Alssid: It's really wonderful learning about the model and your approach to this work. And you know, you continue to be quite a force and and so how can our listeners continue to follow you learn more? Because we certainly intend to.

Brandon Busteed: Well, the you know, the work we're doing through brand Ed is at our website. It's branded-edu.com, and then the only place that I really invest time and energy, really two sources. I write regularly at Forbes, as a contributor for forbes.com Easy to find me there, and then on LinkedIn. I think I'm the only Brandon Busteed on LinkedIn, at least that was the case as of my recent check, so I'm not hard to find on LinkedIn. Please connect with me there, follow me there, and then, obviously my Forbes authors page will will give you any updates on on articles that I publish.

Julian Alssid: Well, thank you so much for taking the time to speak with us today, Brandon, and good luck with this important work. Yeah. Well, thank thank thank you guys for continuing to highlight all the important work that's taking place in the space, and that was a pleasure to be on the podcast with you today. Thanks, and look forward to staying in touch for sure.

Kaitlin LeMoine: Yes, same here. Thanks so much. That's all we have for you today. Thank you for listening to workforces. We hope that you take away nuggets that you can use in your own work. Thank you to our sponsor, Lumina Foundation. We are also grateful to our wonderful producer, Dustin Ramsdell. You can listen to future episodes at workforces, dot info or on Apple, Amazon and Spotify. Please subscribe, like and share the podcast with your colleagues and friends.