Work In Progress

In this episode of the Work in Progress podcast, I am joined by Ryan Craig, managing director of Achieve Partners, to discuss the role apprenticeship can and should play in developing a skilled workforce. A four-year college education has played a vital role in the economic growth and prosperity for many people in this country, but it has not been the silver bullet for everyone for a variety of re...

Workers over age 50 will soon represent 25% of our nation’s workforce. Yet, few reskilling and upskilling programs are built to meet the needs of older workers and connect them with employers. Earlier this month, WorkingNation collaborated with the Center for Workforce Inclusion and CWILabs on the Equity Summit 2023, a daylong event addressing the workforce needs of midcareer and older workers. In...

In this episode of Work in Progress, I speak with Diego Mariscal, CEO and chief disabled person of 2Gether-International (2GI), about how his organization is working to flip the narrative about the way people think about entrepreneurs with disabilities. "It's really important that we start to highlight the competitive advantage of disability as opposed to disability just as something that needs to...

In this episode of Work in Progress, I'm joined by Nat Lyckowski, the global neurodiversity advancement leader for tech giant IBM. “Neurodiversity is a concept to respect and accept neurological differences as a natural part of human variation. Just like eye color or our height, it's part of who we are,” explains Lyckowski. Neurodivergent differences includes things like dyslexia, ADHD, autism, To...

In this episode of Work in Progress, I am joined by Henry Cisneros, the chairman and co-founder of the infrastructure investment and management firm American Triple I (ATI) and the former secretary of the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development under President Bill Clinton. I sat down with Cisneros at the Aspen Latino Business Summit in Washington, D.C. in early September. American Triple...

In this episode of Work in Progress, I am joined by Dwana Franklin-Davis, CEO of Reboot Representation whose mission is to double the number of Black, Latina, and Native American (BLNA) women in the tech industry by the year 2025. I sat down with Franklin-Davis at the Aspen Latino Business Summit in Washington, D.C. in early September. Reboot Representation Tech Coalition was launched in 2018 by P...

In this episode of Work in Progress, I discuss increasing access to capital for Latino entrepreneurs with Isabella Casillas Guzman, administrator of the U.S. Small Business Administration (SBA), and Nina Vaca, the founder and CEO of Pinnacle Group, a global IT staffing agency. I sat down with Guzman and Vaca at the Aspen Latino Business Summit in Washington, D.C. in early September. Small business...

In this episode of Work in Progress, I'm joined by William Raduchel, a pioneer in the tech industry and author of The New Technology State: How Our Digital Dreams Became Societal Nightmares – and What We Can Do About It. Bill Raduchel has been fascinated with technology since he was at summer camp that was trying to get teenagers interested in a career in STEM. "One of the things they did was show...

In this episode of Work in Progress, I am joined by Marci Alboher, vice president at CoGenerate, and Janet Oh, director of innovation at CoGenerate, a social-impact nonprofit dedicated to bringing older and younger people together to help create a more inclusive and prosperous future.  CoGenerate today announced the launch of the CoGen Challenge to Advance Economic Opportunity, an initiative to el...

In this episode of Work in Progress, I'm joined by Joseph Fuller, professor at Harvard Business School and co-head of the school's Managing the Future of Work Project, and Rajiv Chandrasekaran, head of strategy at the Schultz Family Foundation. Everybody benefits from an upwardly mobile workforce, So, how is corporate America doing when it comes to creating a culture of advancement for workers wit...

On this episode of Work in Progress, I'm discussing increasing representation of Black talent in the tech industry and the new career exploration tool Black Genius Academy with Rachelle Olden, head of Google's Tech Equity Collective, and Ruben Harris, co-founder and CEO of Career Karma. Black talent is underrepresented in some of the fastest-growing jobs in the country. According to a report from...

In this episode of the Work in Progress podcast, I'm joined by Alex Kotran, the co-founder and CEO of The AI Education Project (aiEDU) to discuss preparing K-12 students for the impact of artificial intelligence on the way we learn, work, and live. While AI – more precisely ChatGPT – seems to be the word of 2023, aiEDU has been focused on the issue of artificial intelligence and education for the...

In this episode of Work in Progress, I am joined by Jayshree Seth, chief science advocate and corporate scientist for global manufacturing company 3M. Seth's role at the company is two-pronged. As a corporate scientist, she uses her engineering skills to solve complex problems and, in her words, "find solutions that stick." (It is 3M after all!) As the chief science advocate, she works with people...

In this episode of Work in Progress, Joanna Smith-Ramani, co-executive director of the The Aspen Institute Financial Security Program (FSP), and I discuss how we, as a society, can improve financial security and democratize access to wealth to improve economic equity across our country. Every day, more than 50 million Americans live in or near financial crisis. Financial instability has gone mains...

In this episode of Work in Progress, I am joined by Andy Van Kleunen, founder and CEO of the National Skills Coalition. We sat down in the "Bucky Dome" on the Aspen Institute campus at the Aspen Ideas Festival to discuss what is being done to upskill workers to fill the 10.1 million open jobs across the country. Since 2000, the National Skills Coalition (NSC) has been advocating for what it descri...

In this episode of Work in Progress, I'm joined by Johnny C. Taylor, president and CEO of SHRM – the Society for Human Resource Managment – from their annual conference held last week in Las Vegas. There was a lot of talk at the annual conference about skills-based hiring and skills training, notably from guest speaker former president Bill Clinton and from the SHRM leadership, including Taylor. "...

In this episode of Work in Progress, Daniel Cervantes, SVP of National Expansion & Strategic Initiatives for Skills for America's Future, and Camille DeCicco, director of Social Impact for Discover Financial Services, join me to discuss the national expansion of an eleven-year-old Chicago-area nonprofit that works with local employers to put unemployed and underemployed residents to work in good j...

In this episode of Work in Progress, I speak to Gerald Chertavian, founder and CEO of Year Up, a nonprofit helping young adults in underrepresented communities get started in livable wage careers on a pathway to economic mobility. Year Up has three interconnected strategies – providing targeted skills training and connections to livable-wage employment for students and alumni; empowering others to...

In this episode of the Work in Progress podcast, a deeper dive into a new report on how the pandemic changed what lower-wage earners expect from a job, what they are doing to improve their economic mobility, and the impact it is having on the workforce today. One of the tasks of the U.S. Federal Reserve System is to take the pulse of economic conditions to better understand the economic health of...

In this episode of Work in Progress, I am joined by Jean C. Accius, PhD, the president and CEO of CHC: Creating Healthier Communities, to discuss the link between employment and mental and physical health. For nearly 70 years, CHC has been on the front lines of working with businesses, nonprofits, government, and communities to address the barriers to health and longevity. Earlier this year, Acciu...

In this episode of the Work in Progress podcast, we're talking artificial intelligence and education with Rohit Sharma of ETS and John Fillmore of Chegg. For the past few months, we've been hearing that artificial intelligence and machine learning could transform nearly every job on the planet. With the introduction and popularity of ChatGPT, it feels like that transformation might be coming very...

In this episode of the Work in Progress podcast, I'm joined by Zoe Peterson-Ward, the chief customer officer of Workhuman, and Beverly Jones, host of Jazzed About Work podcast and author of Find Your Happy at Work. How do people thrive in the workplace? Of course, a good-paying job and job security are import. Experts say employees also need meaningful work, a sense of purpose, and a sense of bein...

In this episode of Work in Progress, Moroni Benally of Aspire Ability and Amber Garrison Duncan of C-BEN join me to discuss the just-announced workforce initiative, the Navajo Nation Talent Marketplace, which will be the first-ever repository of all jobs available on the Navajo reservation and the skills needed to fill them. The Navajo Nation covers a lot of territory – nearly 27,000 square miles ...

In this episode of Work in Progress, I am joined by Vilas Dhar, the president of The Patrick J. McGovern Foundation, $1.5 billion philanthropy advancing AI and data solutions to create a thriving, equitable, and sustainable future for all. Advances in artificial intelligence are moving faster than our ability to comprehend their implications. Will these technologies enable inclusion and access to...

In this episode of Work in Progress, Ida Rademacher, vice president at the Aspen Institute, joins me from the Global Inclusive Growth Summit in Washington, DC, hosted by the Aspen Institute and The MasterCard Center for Inclusive Growth. Leaders from business, government, philanthropy, and nonprofits gathered at the Summit to discuss an important issue: How do we ensure that everyone has equal acc...