2월 3일

Haley Glover: Building Employer Upskilling Strategies

Haley Glover, Senior Director of UpSkill America at the Aspen Institute, discusses how businesses can effectively upskill their workforce in an AI-driven economy. Drawing on her experience at Lumina Foundation, Amazon, and the Aspen Institute, Glover explains how upskilling has shifted from talent acquisition crisis management to strategic workforce planning focused on validated skills. She details findings from The Upskilling Playbook, emphasizing that successful AI adoption requires thoughtful, worker-focused training aligned with business strategy—not just technology purchases driven by peer pressure. The conversation also explores the All Learning Counts initiative, which advocates for recognizing skills regardless of where they were acquired, and new research on internship programs showing how companies find value through talent pipeline development, retention, and innovation from fresh thinking. Glover addresses distinct challenges facing small versus large employers and offers practical guidance for learners, educators, advocates, and employers to build resilient upskilling programs that withstand economic shocks. Transcript Julian Alssid: Welcome to the Work Forces podcast. I'm Julian Alssid. Kaitlin LeMoine: And I'm Kaitlin LeMoine, and we speak with innovators who are shaping the future of work and learning. Julian Alssid: Together, we unpack the complex elements of workforce and career preparation and offer practical solutions that can be scaled and sustained. Kaitlin LeMoine: This podcast is an outgrowth of our workforce consulting practice. Through weekly discussions, we seek to share the trends and themes we see in our work and amplify impactful efforts happening in higher education, industry, and workforce development all across the country. Julian Alssid: We are grateful to Lumina Foundation for its past support during the initial development and launch of this podcast, and invite future sponsors of this effort. Please check out our Work Forces podcast website to learn more. And so with that, let's dive in. Julian Alssid: Kaitlin, so much of the conversation around the future of work focuses on the what—what skills are needed, what jobs are disappearing. But the harder question, and the one that really determines success, is the how. How do businesses actually help their existing employees develop the skills they need to succeed in a changing economy? Kaitlin LeMoine: Absolutely. While we know the need for and importance of upskilling initiatives, actually building an effective system that helps workers grow and advance is a really complex undertaking for employers. Julian Alssid: Right. It's one thing to agree that upskilling is necessary; it's another to have a playbook that works for both the employee and the bottom line. To create that playbook, we need guidance from leaders who understand both the policy landscape and the operational reality of business. Kaitlin LeMoine: Exactly. We need that along with insight into researched best practices across industries. And luckily, today we're joined by someone who brings that multi-sector perspective to the table. Today we're speaking with Haley Glover, Senior Director of UpSkill America, a national initiative of the Aspen Institute Economic Opportunities Program. UpSkill America drives research and efforts that promote employer-led education and training to help workers advance and help businesses compete. Julian Alssid: Prior to this role, Haley was Senior Program Manager at Amazon, where she led college programming for the company's Career Choice team. And before that, she served as a Strategy Director at Lumina Foundation—which is where we first met Haley—leading efforts to reduce racial disparities in credential attainment. Haley holds a bachelor's degree from Franklin College, a Master of Liberal Arts from St. John's College Graduate Institute, and an MPA from Syracuse University. Haley, welcome to Work Forces, we're thrilled to have you with us. Haley Glover: Thanks, guys. Good morning. Julian Alssid: Please tell us, in your own words, about your background and what led you to your role at Aspen Institute. Haley Glover: In the spirit of time, I will give you the short journey instead of the meandering one. But fun story: you mentioned I was at Lumina Foundation, and I was there for a very long time—about 11 and a half, 12 years. I not only led the work in my last four years at Lumina focusing on eliminating racial disparities and that kind of thing, I also led portfolios focused on what we called "employer mobilization," which in my glib moments I described as getting employers to do stuff. But it was really focused on understanding and motivating how employers can take their considerable resources, influence, and that unique positioning in employees' lives to mobilize toward the credential attainment mission. Back in 2015, when UpSkill started, I actually was one of the first funders of UpSkill at Aspen and helped try to kick that off back in the day. So my time with UpSkill started right at the beginning. Obviously, the initiative changed a lot over a decade, along with the economy, the workforce, and all of the things. But that is how I found myself here about three and a half years ago. This idea, this question about how employers can not only benefit from investment in skill development but create benefits for individuals, their companies, society, and our country—that has been a throughline of work that I've been doing for quite a long time. Between my past life as an educator, working in economic development, working in nonprofits, government, and philanthropy, as well as the private sector, that's been the river running through my work: trying to blend the streams and get more people to think very critically about how we leverage all of the power we need to get people the skills they need to thrive. Kaitlin LeMoine: Thank you for that overview and that story of how you got to where you are. I'm curious to know: how has the focus of your work through UpSkill America evolved over the last few years? You mentioned all the changes that are occurring—what do you see as the primary focus, and how do you see that shifting? Haley Glover: That is a fantastic question. I think there's a very simple answer, which is that the economy we're in in January 2026 is not the economy we were in when I came to UpSkill back in the summer of 2022. Three and a half years ago, employers were absolutely just falling over themselves to acquire and retain talent. The question of the time was: how do I find people with the right skills? How do I keep people with the right skills? How do I get the mass that I need in order to proceed? That is not the question now. Now, I think employers are really leaning into: what skills and competencies do I actually need to not only fill tasks and roles that I have right now, but to take me into the future? How do I not just retain talent, but retain the right talent in particular roles that are going to have strategic value for me going forward? How do I create robust pipelines that guarantee that I, as an employer, am not going to be wasting time, energy, and effort on the upfront acquisition? How do I build my workforce strategy muscles in order to understand with much more nuance and robustness this idea of what I'm going to need in the future? So, it's pivoted from a "fire on my front line right now" focus three or four years ago to a need to think much more critically about what's down the road and into the future. That's been huge. From the work that UpSkill is doing, we've leaned more heavily into this idea of getting much more specific and intentional. With the addition of AI—which is both a positive in that it can help people do things with less time, energy, and effort, but also a complicator—you've got this skills validation issue. I just read a piece the other day about a $600 billion resume fraud issue, which is really asking the question about skills validation. We are trying to make sure that (1) we get people to understand and be recognized for the things that they know and are able to do, regardless of where they acquired them. We've been calling this movement "All Learning Counts" for a very long time. It is this idea that it shouldn't matter whether you attended the most prestigious elite institution or you gained your skills through work. If you've got the same skills, you should be competing in the same way. What we do right now is we conflate a lot of different things with being "better" at something instead of really understanding what people can really bring to the table. So this idea of skills validation has become a much more important part of our work because it addresses both sides of the coin: employers need validated skills, and people need to understand their own skill set. A lot of people will go through education programs, training programs, and work experiences and not develop what we call this metacognition of what they know. Knowing what you know and knowing what you're able to do can be a very powerful, empowering scenario for an individual. It can also be the thing that sets you apart in an interview or a process because you can say, "I know what I know, and here's how I know it, and here's what I did to show it." We're also trying to really help the employer get specific about what skills they need and how to find them through this validated skills movement. So, we're much deeper into technology than I think we ever thought we would be, or that I ever wanted to be, frankly, because it is not my primary language. But it is the method that I think will ultimately produce the right kind of results for both people and the employers they work for. Julian Alssid: So Haley, I mentioned earlier in your intro that we need that playbook—how do you do it? You have produced a playbook: The Upskilling Playbook: AI Skill Development in the Workforce. T

37분

1월 20일

David Adams: Aligning K-12 Education with Industry Needs

24분

1월 6일

Mitchell Stevens on Building a Learning Society

Mitchell Stevens, Professor of Education and Sociology at Stanford University and Co-Director of the Stanford Center on Longevity, discusses the urgent transition from a "schooled society" focused on credentials to a true "learning society" that recognizes and supports learning across the entire lifespan. Stevens explains how the traditional three-stage model of education, work, and retirement is becoming obsolete as Americans move toward 100-year lives amid rapid technological change brought by the Fourth Industrial Revolution. He argues that legacy school structures that are built for durability and stability cannot by themselves prepare people for ongoing adaptation, emphasizing instead that learning happens everywhere: at home, work, and play. The conversation explores how declining fertility rates mean societies must rely on older workers, requiring a fundamental reimagining of human capital investment beyond children and young adults. Stevens calls for new conversations about who is responsible for lifelong employability and offers practical guidance for parents, young people and voters alike. Transcript Kaitlin LeMoine: Welcome to the Work Forces Podcast. I'm Julian Alssid And I'm Kaitlin LeMoine, and we speak with innovators who are shaping the future of work and learning Julian Alssid: Together, we unpack the complex elements of workforce and career preparation and offer practical solutions that can be scaled and sustained. Kaitlin LeMoine: This podcast is an outgrowth of our Work Forces consulting practice. Through weekly discussions, we seek to share the trends and themes we see in our work and amplify impactful efforts happening in higher education industry and workforce development all across the country. We are grateful to Lumina Foundation for its past support during the initial development and launch of this podcast, and invite future sponsors of this effort, please check out our Work Forces podcast website to learn more. And so with that, let's dive in. Welcome back. You know, Julian, we spend a lot of time on this show talking about the future of work, but there is a massive variable in that equation that we don't discuss enough, the reality that we are all likely to live much longer lives and need to learn continuously along the way. Julian Alssid: It's so true. Kaitlin, we're moving toward what researchers call the 100 year life. The old three stage model where you learn in your 20s, work for 40 years, and then retire is rapidly becoming obsolete. We can't rely on a one and done dose of education, and need to fundamentally rethink how we access and engage in learning experiences across our lives. Kaitlin LeMoine: Exactly. We need to move from what our guest today calls a school society focused on credentials and early life education to a true learning society where learning is ongoing and achieved through many contexts over one's life. Our guest is leading the initiative to define what that society can look like, mapping out a future where learning work and leisure intersect throughout the entire lifespan. Julian Alssid: Our guest today is Mitchell Stevens, Professor of Education and Sociology at Stanford University. He convenes the Pathways Network and studies history, finance and politics of post secondary education in the United States and worldwide. Mitchell is the author of award winning studies on home education and selective admissions, and his most recent books are Remaking College: the Changing Ecology of Higher Education and Seeing the World: How US Universities Make Knowledge in the Global Era. Kaitlin LeMoine: Mitchell is also co director of the Stanford Center on Longevity, where he convenes the Learning Society initiative. This effort brings together leaders from various sectors to imagine a learning ecosystem that supports all of us across longer and multifaceted life. He's written scholarly articles for variety of academic journals and editorial for the Chronicle of Higher Education, Inside Higher Education, The New York Times, and The Washington Post. We are so thrilled to have you join us today. Mitchell, welcome to the workforces podcast. Mitchell Stevens: Thank you for having me. Julian Alssid: Yes Mitchell, welcome, and we've talked a little bit about your background, but we'd like to have you tell us about your background and what led you to co directing the Center on Longevity. Mitchell Stevens: I would say one of the formative experiences for me, intellectually, as is often the case for academics, was their doctoral work back in the 90s, I studied the home education movement and drove my multi-used car all over the Chicagoland suburbs to talk with men and women who were making, at the time, a very radical decision to remove their children from school and teach them at home. One of the big lessons that home schoolers taught me and now many others, is that the rhythms of conventional schooling that so many of us take for granted are highly demanding and often fairly rigid structures. They are not very flexible for the needs of particular people or even the rhythms of complicated lives. That's really what planted the seeds for what we're currently calling the limitations of a schooled society, one in which not only education and learning, but many social rewards, good jobs, social status, looks of approval from parents and grandparents, is really tied to educational credentials, and especially in the face of very dramatic and rapid changes in the character of work and technological change coming to question whether legacy school structures themselves are the best way to prepare people for ever more complicated futures. Kaitlin LeMoine: So there are many places to jump into based on that explanation. We appreciate, we appreciate you kind of giving a sense of what has led you to this work. I guess one place I'd love to take the conversation to start is we recognize, within the last year, your work on the Learning Society within the Center on Longevity has really taken off. We'd love to hear more about the goals of that initiative and what you've sought to accomplish this year, and where you're where you see it headed. Mitchell Stevens: How we get from home schooling to longevity, I guess, is the second half of that question that I elided the first time around. I came into the Stanford Center on Longevity, just as a professor at Stanford around 2017. Someone encouraged me to go because their assemblies were so good. I was in my mid 50s. I'd been at Stanford for just a couple of years, and I was, frankly, kind of blown away by the intellectual breadth of the conversations of that organization. First of all, we call it the Center on Longevity, not the Center on Aging, right? Aging is a frowny face, right? As in anti-aging and preventing aging and denying aging. Longevity is a strong net positive. It's a gift that the 20th century gave all of us. In fact, Laura Carstensen, the director of the Stanford Center on Longevity, likes to point out that lifespan grew in the 20th century more than it ever had in the entire previous centuries of human history combined. Very large change, say, additional 30 years of life over that decade, and it's happened very quickly. Societies and cultures have not had time to adapt to this gift. What have most societies done? In fact, all societies on earth at present, we parked those additional years in old age. Old age is the most expensive and arguably least fun part of the life course. It's when our bodies are most frail and when our minds are most fragile as well. So the goal of the Center on Longevity, and in fact, a global longevity movement, is to make functional adulthood as long as possible, keep old age short, but extend functional adulthood so that our minds and bodies can enjoy life and contribute to the well being of others for long, as long as we possibly can. And let's say also this is not the Silicon Valley live forever longevity. That's not really the game that the Center on Longevity is playing. We are trying to think about longevity as a civic gift that all of us should be able to enjoy, and in fact, that we need to be able to take advantage of, because also of declining fertility. Around the world, except for Sub Saharan Africa, are experiencing net declines in fertility. So that means that the men and women we're going to need to rely on for economic prosperity and civic health, are going to be older. They're going to be more mature, and so we need to sort of rethink pretty much all of our institutions in order to enable those older men and women to make the best contributions they can to their own lives, to their families, and to their societies. Another tie to the homeschooling movement, however, is that the longevity movement has developed a bunch of terms heuristics to make sense of transitions that we used to think were the sole purview of childhood. One of my colleagues refers to, for example, there's adolescence, but Barbara Waxman calls it middlessence. Middlessence is the transitions that adults make between different life stages. Michael Clinton argues that we don't retire, we should instead rewire, right, so the idea that longer lives require but also allow us to change our lives in fairly fundamental and substantial ways, to have multiple chapters in life that look and feel different from each other. So again, these are the sorts of conceptual tools that once you start to use them, it's really hard to it's hard to move backwards, Kaitlin LeMoine: Well, and it's interesting to think about that framing of how to rewire and think differently about these different stages, but without the formal structure of schooling, or without the formal like now I'm going from K 12 to higher ed, right? Like these, these formal moments in one's trajectory. I feel like it's a whole other experience to say, how do we rewire without those formal structures, and what does it look like to structure it for oneself?

35분

2025. 12. 30.

Work Forces Rewind: Isaac Agbeshie-Noye: Bridging the Skills-First Gap

Isaac Agbeshie-Noye, Program Director for Widening Pathways to Work at the Society for Human Resource Management (SHRM) Foundation, addresses the critical gap between employers' intent to adopt skills-first hiring practices and actual implementation. Drawing from his background in higher education and workforce development, Agbeshie-Noye discusses the newly launched Center for a Skills First Future, designed specifically to support small and medium-sized businesses that employ half of all Americans but often lack the resources of large corporations to navigate hiring transformation. He explores the striking disconnect where 90% of employers acknowledge the benefits of skills-first hiring, yet only 15% have actively implemented it, and explains how the Center's many resources—including a Skills Action Planner, resource library, skills-first credential, and vendor database—helps employers determine an achievable place to start rather than boiling the ocean. The conversation addresses frustrations from both job seekers navigating an AI-enhanced application landscape, and employers struggling to distinguish genuine skills from enhanced resumes, while emphasizing that skills-first approaches complement rather than replace traditional degrees by treating skills as the primary currency for understanding what all credentials represent. Transcript Julian Alssid: Welcome to the Work Forces Podcast. I'm Julian Alssid. Kaitlin LeMoine: And I'm Kaitlin LeMoine, and we speak with innovators who are shaping the future of work and learning. Julian Alssid: Together, we unpack the complex elements of workforce and career preparation and offer practical solutions that can be scaled and sustained. Kaitlin LeMoine: This podcast is an outgrowth of our Work Forces consulting practice. Through weekly discussions, we seek to share the trends and themes we see in our work and amplify impactful efforts happening in higher education industry and workforce development all across the country. We are grateful to Lumina Foundation for its past support during the initial development and launch of this podcast, and invite future sponsors of this effort. Please check out our Work Forces podcast website to learn more. And so with that, let's dive in. Kaitlin: Hello all, hope you are having a wonderful time as we wind down 2025. We are back with another Work Forces "Rewind" episode before we launch our new season. Today, we're revisiting our conversation with Isaac Agbeshie-Noye, Program Director for Widening Pathways to Work at the Society for Human Resource Management (or SHRM) Foundation. In this discussion, we unpacked the critical gap between the intent to hire for skills and actually implementing the practice of doing so. Among many takeaways, Isaac shared insights on how employers can move toward a true skills-first approach to hiring. We hope you enjoy this conversation. As always, Julian and I want to express our deep appreciation for you, our listeners. We are so grateful for your continued feedback and engagement with the Work Forces podcast. Your support drives the conversations we have and the work we do. Enjoy this Rewind episode, and stay tuned—we'll be back with brand new episodes to kick off the next season very soon. In the meantime, we wish you a very happy new year! Kaitlin LeMoine: So our conversations on the podcast and in our consulting practice recently, increasingly revolve around the movement to a skills first approach to educating, hiring and developing talent. Julian Alssid: Absolutely Kaitlin and and today we're turning our attention to the employer side of of that equation. And this is a critical conversation for all employers, but it's particularly critical for small and medium sized companies, where half of all Americans work. These smaller companies often lack the dedicated resources of large corporations to measure and track skills development, and it makes it challenging for them to adapt to new hiring models. Kaitlin LeMoine: That's right. And while skills are all the buzz, there can be a real gap between intent and action. According to the Society for Human Resource Management, or SHRM Foundation, 90% of employers acknowledge the benefits of skills-first hiring, but only 15% have actively implemented it. That's a striking gap, and many HR leaders and executives recognize its strategic value, but struggle to implement significant changes. Julian Alssid: Our guest today is uniquely positioned to address this challenge with a particular focus on helping small and medium sized employers unlock a wider range of qualified candidates by valuing a candidate's abilities and understanding how skills relate to traditional credentials. Kaitlin LeMoine: Isaac Agbeshie-Noye is Program Director for Widening Pathways to Work at the SHRM Foundation. Over the last decade, he's served in a variety of leadership roles across nonprofit organizations and higher education institutions, and focused on aligning strategy, culture, and operations to create lasting transformation. He's also been an instructor for undergraduate and doctoral student seminars, exploring his passion for easing student transitions through their educational experiences. Isaac earned his bachelor's degree in sociology from the University of Virginia, as well as masters and doctoral degrees in higher education administration from George Washington University. Isaac, welcome to this podcast. We're so excited to have you on Work Forces with us today. Isaac Agbeshie-Noye: Yes, thank you so much for having me. I'm excited to be here. Julian Alssid: Yes, and thank you for joining us, Isaac. We've talked a little bit about your background. Well, tell us a bit more and what led you to your role at the SHRM Foundation. Isaac Agbeshie-Noye: I got here in part because I'm always very fascinated and very passionate about education and how people go about learning things that then activates them to do things. And so working in higher education, and encountering all of these college students that came in at 18, 19, 20, 21 years old with some understanding of the things that they thought that they were going to do for the rest of their lives, that was just really fascinating to me. And then seeing the evolution over time where their mind changed around that thing, that was also fascinating. I ended up getting into workforce development and talent cultivation, because I realized that it wasn't just enough to understand what they were learning when they were on the college campus, I was really intrigued by then what did they do? Like, where did they go? Where did they end up? How did they navigate their careers after they left that environment? And so that kind of helped me think more broadly, beyond getting people to degree attainment to getting them actually to career mobility and to ultimately, a productive citizenry, which is what, which is what the mission of higher education is actually designed to be. And so I got connected to the SHRM Foundation in part because I just have been really fascinated with, how do we get employers into the game even further to understand their role and to help them as they are trying to tap into this workforce that is filled with skills, but yet we're not matching people in ways that are quick, even though we can see some of the ways in which there might be alignment. And so this position is is actually structured to help try and address that, that gap. Kaitlin LeMoine: As we jump into this conversation, we'd love to learn a little bit more about the SHRM Foundation and your role in widening pathways to work. Isaac Agbeshie-Noye: The SHRM Foundation is the 501(c)(3) nonprofit arm of the Society for Human Resource Management. And the Society for Human Resource Management is the largest network of HR professionals in the world. And so we have 340,000 members that are then deployed and activated into all types of businesses around the world. And so we believe that we can leverage HR and leverage those professionals to advance social good, which is how the foundation came to be. And so in the foundation, we focus on three bodies of work: strengthening the HR field, because we don't often think about who's going to come behind the current HR folks, and who is actually going to take on the new challenges related to HR, and how are we positioning those folks to be successful in that, and so we have a body of work that's focused there. We have a body of work that's focused on thriving together, and how are we creating cultures of care within employers and employer environments. And so how are we focusing on things like the social determinants of health, about or caregiving or workplace mental health, the types of things that make people feel seen and safe at work in order to continue to be there. And then the third part is my area, which is the widening pathways to work area which is focused on skills first, and the things that we do to help employers adopt skills first approaches. How do we test things, try things out so that we are reducing the risk as best we can for people to adopt initiatives that are going to help talent be seen better. And then the other part of that is untapped pools of talent. So who are we not seeing and how can we create opportunities to see them better and also to get them fully activated in this world of work. And so the SHRM Foundation does all of that, and our goal is to try and figure out where are, what's the messaging, what are the levers, where, who are the partners that we need to bring together to actually make this ecosystem work for job seekers and employers at the same time. Julian Alssid: Tell us a bit more about your area, Widening Pathways to Work. And in particular, we're really interested in hearing about the new Center for a Skills First Future. Isaac Agbeshie-Noye: What's so exciting about that portfolio is that we're really trying to figure out what are the things

33분

2025. 12. 16.

Work Forces Rewind: Joe E. Ross: Pioneering the Apprenticeship Degree Model

Joe E. Ross, President, CEO and co-founder of Reach University and the National Center for the Apprenticeship Degree, discusses Reach University's "apprenticeship degree" model that turns jobs into degrees rather than the traditional approach of obtaining a job post-graduation. The conversation explores Reach's approach to addressing the "hiding in plain sight" talent crisis by serving the 40-50 million Americans in the workforce without degrees who wish they had them. Ross outlines Reach's three ABCs framework: Affordability, Based in the workplace from day one to graduation, and Credit for learning at work. He shares compelling outcomes from Reach's growth from 67 candidates to over 3,000 across eight states, with 70% graduation rates for Pell-eligible students compared to the typical 40-50%. Ross also discusses the National Center for the Apprenticeship Degree's work with 50 institutions across a dozen states, and offers practical steps for listeners interested in getting involved with apprenticeship degrees. Transcript Julian Alssid: Welcome to the Work Forces Podcast. I'm Julian Alssid. Kaitlin LeMoine: And I'm Kaitlin LeMoine, and we speak with innovators who are shaping the future of work and learning. Julian Alssid: Together, we unpack the complex elements of workforce and career preparation and offer practical solutions that can be scaled and sustained. Kaitlin LeMoine: This podcast is an outgrowth of our Work Forces consulting practice. Through weekly discussions, we seek to share the trends and themes we see in our work and amplify impactful efforts happening in higher education, industry and workforce development all across the country. We are grateful to Lumina Foundation for its past support during the initial development and launch of this podcast, and invite future sponsors of this effort. Please check out our Work Forces podcast website to learn more. And so with that, let's dive in. Kaitlin LeMoine: Hello all, hope you are doing well and enjoying the lead-up to the holiday season. As we prepare for our next podcast season, we're closing out the month with a couple of Work Forces "Rewinds", featuring two insightful conversations from this past year. Today, we're revisiting our conversation with Joe E. Ross, President of Reach University. In this conversation, we dive deep into Reach's pioneering "apprenticeship degree" model, which turns jobs into degrees rather than the traditional approach of obtaining a job post-graduation. We hope you enjoy the discussion with Joe as much as we did. While we'll be back with new episodes in the new year, we want to pause to express our appreciation for you, our listeners. Julian and I are so grateful for your feedback, your likes and shares, and your overall engagement with the Work Forces podcast. Your encouragement and perspectives continue to shape the conversations we hold and inform our consulting work every day. We'll be back to kick off our next season soon..in the meantime, we hope you enjoy this episode! Julian Alssid: Welcome back today. We're diving deep into a topic that's central to our work, the evolution of higher education to better serve the modern workforce. Kaitlin LeMoine: Yes, we are Julian. We've talked a lot about the need for new models, especially those that bridge the gap between learning and earning. So many of our conversations have pointed to the power of apprenticeships and skills based pathways, including our past podcast discussions with Bob Lehrman and John Colborn on the evolution of apprenticeships and the opportunities they afford learners and employers alike. Julian Alssid: That's right. Kaitlan and as we discussed with Bob and John, the apprenticeship movement has been gaining momentum in recent years. Just in August 2025 the Trump administration issued a talent strategy report that calls for the expansion of Federal Registered Apprenticeships, including promoting stronger connections to universities and colleges. Our guest today is at the forefront of this movement, pioneering a groundbreaking model that's reshaping what a degree can look like, the apprenticeship degree. In fact, the apprenticeship degree was called out in the Feds report as a key part of the new apprenticeship initiative. And so today, we'll be discussing this and more with Joe E Ross, President, CEO and co founder of Reach University and the National Center for the apprenticeship degree. Kaitlin LeMoine: Before building Reach, Joe served as president of the statewide association for county school boards in California, and served for 10 years as a locally elected school board member. He previously served as general counsel to a venture studio in several technology startups, and as a deputy district attorney, he acted as sole counsel in numerous hearings and jury trials. Earlier in his career, he served eight years on active duty in the US Navy. The son of a US Postal Service labor custodian, Joe went on to earn degrees from Yale and Stanford Law School. And Joe, we're excited to welcome you to the podcast with us today. Thanks so much for joining us here. Joe E. Ross: Kaitlin, Julian, it's such a pleasure to be here. Thanks for having me. Julian Alssid: Yes, indeed, it is a pleasure to have you, and if you will, you know, we've said a little bit about your background, but we'd love to hear you tell us a little bit more, and the story of what led you to co found Reach. Joe E. Ross: Yeah, sure. So first off, I must offer the disclaimer, I never imagined that I would be a college president growing up. That's not the thing that was on my bucket list, among many things, but I do think I, very early on, acquired a conviction that education is the way you build your own future, I think of it as the pen that you need to have in your hand to write your own future. As you mentioned, my biological father worked for the post office as a labor custodian (that means janitor), and my mom died kind of young, and he was injured in an accident. And I was raised starting at age four by my aunt and uncle, and I think in moving into that new household, in my little head, I must have noticed that these adults had careers and they had degrees and they had power over their lives. And I think in my little head, I thought, I want all three of those things, and I got it into my head that education was my way to those things. That's the only thing I can point to as an explanation for why I was such a nerd in school and so motivated in school, and also why later, after trying all sorts of other things with that pen to my hand, I was a Navy officer, I was a prosecutor, I was an ed tech entrepreneur, I always tacked back to education as where my passion was, and so about 15 years ago, I started running an after school program that sought to turn after school staff into teachers, and that was essentially a job embedded, apprenticeship based program, the first of its kind. And I saw this, this potential of combining work with higher ed. And so fast forward to the fall of 2020, Reach University launched as it's in its current form as an accredited nonprofit institution with a very simple mission, which is to turn jobs into degrees, as you said in the intro, as opposed the other way around. And that model is called the apprenticeship degree. Now. Kaitlin LeMoine: So you know. Reach University has a unique B2B2C model, right where you partner directly with employers, but you have this dual customer approach of working with employers but also serving the needs of your learners. Can we dive in a little bit there? I mean, this is a complex model to build. How have you gone about it? Joe E. Ross: Yeah, so it's, it's interesting, it's complex, but it also creates some simplicity as well. If you're running an apprenticeship degree, by definition, you are running a model that's based in the workplace from day one to the day of graduation. In fact, I'll back up. I probably should share for everybody what we mean by apprenticeship degree, and then that will lead lead to the answer. So an apprenticeship degree is defined by elements associated with apprenticeship going back centuries. This is not something that the Department of Labor defined 50 years ago or 10 years ago or this summer. It's something that goes back to a tradition that is very long standing, and apprenticeships had three defining elements that I think of as the ABCs that apply to an apprenticeship degree, a stands for Affordability for the learner, and in this day and age, that means without student debt, apprentices have been asked for their sweat, not for their debt, right? So at Reach University, we made this commitment the beginning, that no one would be would pay out of pocket. No learner would pay out of pocket more than $75 a month for full time enrollment in a full time work embedded degree program that's a for affordability. B stands for Based in the workplace from day one to the day of graduation or the day of completion. An apprenticeship degree starts with a paid job. It ends, or is designed to end, with a better paid job. And C stands for Credit for work, Credit for learning at work. Kind of has a double meaning. Learning at work means literally learning at work, but it also means learning put to work, theory, meaning practice. C also stands for Credential of value. This is not a compromise. It is still a Bachelor of Arts or a Master of Arts or an Associate of Arts. AA does not stand for Apprenticeship Arts Degree. It stands for Associate of Arts degree. So with that definition in mind, let me go back to B based in the workplace. The reason we think of this as a B2B2C model, as opposed to a, B2C model is because you can't run an apprenticeship or an apprenticeship degree without close engagement with employers and for the university. What that means, among many things, is that instead of coming to the university looking for graduates, the employer comes to the university

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2025. 12. 02.

Amber Garrison Duncan: Advancing Competency-Based Education

Amber Garrison Duncan, Executive Vice President and Chief Operating Officer of the Competency-Based Education Network (C-BEN), discusses the evolution of competency-based education from seven pioneering institutions in 2013 to over 600 institutions and 1,000 programs today. Drawing from her experience assessing co-curricular learning outcomes in traditional higher education and later as a grantmaker at Lumina Foundation, Garrison Duncan explains how CBE restores the promise of economic mobility by focusing on mastery of skills rather than seat time. She details C-BEN's systems-level work through initiatives like the Center for Skills and the Partnership for Skills Validation, which build consensus across K-12, higher education, and employers on quality standards for skills assessment and validation. The conversation explores how policy shifts like Workforce Pell and state-level innovations in Alabama, Arkansas, and Texas are accelerating the movement toward skills-based credentials, financial aid, and talent management systems. Duncan emphasizes the urgency of iterative innovation, comparing the current moment to the iPhone era where institutions must test and adapt quickly rather than waiting for lengthy pilot programs, and offers practical guidance for institutions to begin their CBE journey using C-BEN's Quality Framework while building authentic connections between learning outcomes and employer needs. Transcript Julian Alssid: Welcome to the Work Forces Podcast. I'm Julian Alssid. Kaitlin LeMoine: And I'm Kaitlin LeMoine, and we speak with innovators who are shaping the future of work and learning. Julian Alssid: Together, we unpack the complex elements of workforce and career preparation and offer practical solutions that can be scaled and sustained. Kaitlin LeMoine: This podcast is an outgrowth of our Work Forces Consulting practice. Through weekly discussions, we seek to share the trends and themes we see in our work and amplify impactful efforts happening in higher education industry and workforce development all across the country. We are grateful to Lumina Foundation for its past support during the initial development and launch of this podcast, and invite future sponsors of this effort, please check out our workforces podcast website to learn more. And so with that, let's dive in. Julian Alssid: You know, Kaitlin, it feels like just yesterday, but it was actually over a dozen years ago now that we were helping to launch College for America at Southern New Hampshire University, which was one of the very first competency-based education models. And back then CBE, it felt like a radical experiment, you know, trying to prove that demonstrating mastery of competencies and not seat time in a course was the key metric to helping people advance their education and careers. Kaitlin LeMoine: Yeah, it's true. And while it does feel like that was just yesterday, the competency based movement has come so far in so many years. While CBE is still viewed as an alternative, non traditional approach by some in the field of education and training, many institutions have and are continuing to holistically implement competency based models to go beyond the traditional credit hour and ensure a curricular emphasis on what learners can do with what they know, and as we think about the intersection of work and learning in which we're all operating, this movement has only been further strengthened as employers further focus on skills based hiring and learners seek to clearly communicate their skills and abilities in a competitive job market. Julian Alssid: Yes, and our guest today is with an organization that's been central to growing the CBE field, Amber Garrison Duncan is Executive Vice President and Chief Operating Officer of the Competency-Based Education Network, or C-BEN. In her role, Amber spearheads initiatives to strengthen collaboration between education and workforce partners with a focus on competency and skill taxonomies and quality assurance before C-BEN, Amber spent eight years as a grant maker at Lumina Foundation, focusing on higher education success. And in her early career, she served in numerous Student Affairs roles at the University of Oregon, Florida State University, the University of Michigan, Hope College, and Texas A&M University. Amber, we're so excited to welcome you to the podcast. Thanks so much for joining us. Amber Garrison Duncan: Well, thank you for having me. It's so exciting to think back to those early days and just also how far we've come. So it's a good moment to reflect. And so thank you for this opportunity. Kaitlin LeMoine: Well, thank you for joining us and for taking this moment in time to both reflect, and I guess maybe, you know, we'll spend a little time thinking about what's ahead as well. So I'm really glad to see you today for this conversation. Amber, and as we get started, we'd love to hear a little bit more about your background and what led you to your role at C-BEN, sure. Amber Garrison Duncan: Well, as you probably heard in my introduction, I had quite a bit of experience on a couple of campuses in higher ed, and are some of what I would call today our legacy institutions that have been around a long time and really are major leaders when you think about higher education. But in my experience there, I was doing assessment in the co-curriculum, and so I was not working in courses, and I was not working in time based measures. I was working on how students apply what they know and can do? How are they doing that and their co-curricular experiences or at work? And then at the University of Oregon, we were just getting to the point where saying, can we validate this and put it on a record for somebody? And so I was having that experience and also saw how hard it was to do, how much of a change it was to think about. Could people be learning outside of the four walls of this classroom, outside this desk, and where are they taking this knowledge? How would I know? And so from that just knew that also it was a lot of change, and was tired as a change maker, banging my head against the wall. So I said, Where else can I go? This is a systemic issue that, again, I worked at institutions across the country. Why is this so hard? And so then decided to pursue something that could support more of the system's change, and was lucky enough to be at Lumina for that which was a really transformative experience for me to see how the ecosystem is set up, why there's a lot of these incentives and barriers to change. And had the fortune to be leading a portfolio called Learning Infrastructure, and that was a portfolio focused on how we make sure that all high quality learning can count. And I learned there that the only way to maybe do that is, if we were to work in competencies and skills. Other countries around the world were figuring this out. We had to figure it out in the US. And luckily, there were seven institutions that said, Hey, we're already trying this Southern New Hampshire being one of those. And so C-BEN's origin story really is, how do we learn as quickly as possible from these seven institutions. Now that was back in 2013 when we were having that initial meeting and conversation. Today we have over 5000 members. There's no way to track fully and know how many CBE programs there are in the US, but we know there's well over 600 institutions that we know of, over 1000 programs. So it's kind of fascinating when we think about turning the ship in higher ed and how hard that is, and that in just 10 years time, we've gone from those early days to where we are now that really are proving out that CBE is a way to provide greater access. It's a way to ensure mastery, for that every learner gets the quality education and the skills they need. And then employers, again, are very much leaning forward to doing their skills based hiring by connecting with CBE programs. So that's like a quick evolution, and my history is just it's all tied up together in those two pieces. And so once I left Lumina, I just said, I really want to continue to be a part of this and continuing to help lead change. And so now I've been at C-BEN for four years, which, again, time flies, but a lot of really exciting progress to see and be a part of people's stories and watch our community grow. Julian Alssid: It is quite a quite a story, and you're right in the thick of it, Amber. And so looking back, you know, you mentioned the seven institutions initially. I'm pretty sure we were, we were one of them at College for America. Amber Garrison Duncan: You were the home of C-BEN at SNHU, yeah. Julian Alssid: Looking back, what are some of the key moments in the evolution of CBE since those early days that led to the growth we see today? Because it really is quite remarkable. Amber Garrison Duncan: It is, it is. Also a couple of things, I would say is we also like to remind folks that CBE, if we look at the theory and science of learning this, goes back 100 years. I mean, we all probably, if we came up through education, we're big fans of John Dewey and thinking about all this. And so it's, it's kind of interesting as like, the old ideas that have new ways of implementing and scaling. And I think that was always our problem, as you looked at the movement in the cities, that people really again, University Without Walls, and we're really trying to do this, but again, it's hard to do this without new tools. And our tools of the moment were not really there. And so early leaders, as technology started to be used in higher ed to say, Can we do this async? Can we do this in a more flexible way? Can we, you know, again, recognize what people already know and can do and move them on a personalized pathway, not treat everybody as a cohort and teach them all the same thing at the same time, right? So as we started to see that world move, I think that's where CBE started to take hold, and it was a lot of

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2025. 11. 18.

Dan Gonzalez: Scaling a Reimagined Approach to Internships

Dan Gonzalez, Co-founder and CEO of District C, discusses how his nonprofit is democratizing access to authentic workplace learning through Teamship, a reimagined internship model where teams of high school students solve real business problems. Drawing from his background as a physics teacher and education entrepreneur, Gonzalez explains how District C emerged from early conversations about AI's impact on work and the need to develop uniquely human, durable skills. He details the program's innovative design—breaking abstract concepts like "teamwork" into observable behaviors and coaching protocols—and shares how they've made the model accessible to over 7,000 students by embedding it in Career and Technical Education courses. Gonzalez describes their low-lift, high-impact approach to employer engagement that requires just five hours of business partner time across four to five weeks, enabling 700 employers to participate without the complications of traditional internships. The conversation explores their test-and-learn philosophy from startup through scaling, the dramatic student improvement across multiple cycles, and practical strategies for both educators seeking to implement experiential learning and employers wanting to support youth development while addressing real business challenges. Transcript Julian Alssid Welcome to the Work Forces Podcast. I'm Julian Alssid. Kaitlin LeMoine And I'm Kaitlin LeMoine, and we speak with innovators who are shaping the future of work and learning. Julian Alssid Together, we unpack the complex elements of workforce and career preparation and offer practical solutions that can be scaled and sustained. Kaitlin LeMoine: This podcast is an outgrowth of our Work Forces consulting practice through weekly discussions, we seek to share the trends and themes we see in our work and amplify impactful efforts happening in higher education, industry, and workforce development all across the country. We are grateful to Lumina Foundation for its past support during the initial development and launch of this podcast, and invite future sponsors of this effort. Please check out our Work Forces Podcast website to learn more. And so with that, let's dive in. Welcome to today's show. It feels like every day we're both reading and hearing about the importance of experiential learning opportunities for students while enrolled in college, and more and more so in K through 12 education, while the importance of these opportunities has been recognized for many years, efforts to develop authentic applied learning in real world contexts at scale have become front and center. Julian Alssid: It's so true, Kaitlin, we're seeing a significant alignment around this. More employers are actively seeking practical, applied skills earlier in the talent pipeline, and educators and learners alike are seeing the value of academic learning applied in real world work environments. Authentic projects are becoming an integral and essential part of the learning experience. Kaitlin LeMoine: Exactly, and with all that being said, we're really looking forward to our discussion today with Dan Gonzalez, co-founder and CEO of District C, a national nonprofit that prepares the next generation of diverse talent for modern work. District C offers a unique program called Teamship, which is a reimagined internship where teams of students solve real problems for real businesses. Julian Alssid: To provide a bit of background. Dan studied engineering at Dartmouth College before becoming a high school physics teacher. After teaching, Dan joined Manhattan Prep, a global leader in test preparation, and became president of the company in 2011 shortly after it was acquired by Kaplan. In 2017, Dan co-founded District C and has been working on its build out since. We're thrilled to have you on the podcast, Dan, and thanks so much for joining us. Dan Gonzalez: My gosh, thanks for having me. I'm excited to be here. Kaitlin LeMoine: We're really excited to have the chance to speak with you today, Dan. So as we get started today, we'd love to learn a little bit more about your background and what led you to founding District C. Tell us the story. Dan Gonzalez: Yeah, so one, one interesting, what I think is an interesting kind of founding story about the founding is my wife and I started District C together as co-founders. We started our research back in 2016 and we both quit our jobs at the same time to invest full time in District C. And I think what we were seeing at the time was, you know, obviously people have been talking about artificial intelligence for many, many decades, but around 2016, 2017 the conversation started to come into the national forefront as it relates to work and preparing for work. And we were kind of trying to look ahead and imagine what do we need to be preparing students for if we are kind of confronting this reality of an AI dominated workplace, and so, you know, at the time, this was a couple of years after the code.org put out that video, and there was kind of this national movement around preparing students to be coders and software developers. And the thing that we are trying to imagine is, all right, if, if we are thinking about how to prepare young people for any job in the future with the skills and competencies they need to cut across any industry, how would we design a learning model that would do that? Now you can call them professional skills, durable skills, soft skills, 3Cs, 5cs, 10, Cs whatever you want to call them, but these like uniquely human skills, and that's what we were after, and that's what we set out to try to figure out. Julian Alssid: So you were you? You were talking AI practically before it was born. Dan Gonzalez: Maybe, maybe not, not so, so early. But I would say, Yeah, we were thinking about it back then. And I think, like, obviously looking back now, we feel like it was the right place to be focused. And I would say one challenge we had early on as we were thinking about building a program like the one we built, is a lot of conversation was centered on, as I said, coding, entrepreneurship, entrepreneurial education. And so it was hard to cut through some of that conversation. And even though there was a lot of discussion around portraits of a graduate, how do we help students develop durable skills, soft skills, the default in education, as you all know, is to kind of generally come back to the content and focus on the content. And so things like coding, entrepreneurship, etc., stem where content tends to be at the front and center, those are the things that tend to carry the day in education conversations. So we had a little trouble initially, kind of cutting through some of that and really trying to focus on all right, if we're serious about durable skills, how do we really get down past the abstractions into learning models that really help students develop these things. And so it took, you know, a couple of years of trial and error and experimentation with the model that we built before we started to kind of feel like the conversation was changing. Julian Alssid: Okay, so, how? So, how are you teaching durable skills? What is the program model? Yeah, yeah. This is the question everyone wants to know. Dan Gonzalez: So the program model is called Teamship. You can think of Teamship as a reimagined team-based internship, where teams of students solve real problems for real businesses in the community, and all the while, they're getting coached by an educator who's been trained and certified by District C and so students are getting proactive support as they're going through this generally 25 to 35 hour experience. The thing that we learned early on was putting students in teams and asking them to solve a real problem actually ended up being the easy part of the model. Of course, it takes work to go out and find businesses, engage them, prep them, Tee them up for the experience, etc. And that's a whole system of work that requires attention and care. But I think what we learned was the most difficult part was helping students actually get better at the work. So it's not enough just to create the experience and create the context for the experience to help students actually develop these skills, you actually have to coach them proactively and consistently, and as I mentioned before, kind of break away from the abstractions and get down to observable behavior. So just as an example, if I were to say Julian and Kaitlin and I'm watching you do your Teamwork, you're solving a problem for a business. Just keep in mind, be team players. Respect your teammates. Those are abstractions, right? Students don't really know what to do with that, that kind of coaching. So what we try to do is break those abstractions down into ways of working, tools, protocols, et cetera, that we can coach students on and actually observe those in their work. Instead of, Hey, be great team players. I might say, hey, Julian and Kaitlin, which set of your tools do you think you can pull out to make sure that you're getting better equity of voice in your team conversations, and they should know like, Oh, if I take tool X, I and Z and snap them together, it will create more balance of voice in our team conversation, and our work is going to be better. Our thinking is going to be better, our ideas are going to be better. Trying to break away from the abstractions and get down to the observable behavior. I think that was an insight we had early on that we really tried to build off of in subsequent years. Kaitlin LeMoine: So I feel like that response has...now I have so many other questions about the program model, but I mean, I guess one area I'm curious to hear a little bit more about is so you partner with employers and with schools to offer this program. And what is, what does the program the 25 to 35 hour model, what does that look like in schools? Is it held after sch

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2025. 11. 04.

Rick Laferriere: Building Talent Pipelines at CVS Health

Rick Laferriere, Lead Director of Workforce Initiatives at CVS Health, discusses his team's 25-year commitment to building what he calls "non-traditional talent pipelines" by partnering with workforce systems, educators, and community organizations to reach individuals who face barriers to employment. Drawing from his own journey starting as a CVScashier in high school and spending over 30 years with the company, Laferriere shares the philosophy behind creating relationships rather than transactions with community partners. He explores the complexities of operating across all 50 states where workforce systems, funding priorities, and political landscapes differ dramatically, emphasizing why customization matters more than one-size-fits-all approaches. The conversation delves into practical strategies for employers looking to engage in workforce development, including the importance of sharing curriculum and training rather than keeping it proprietary, offering work-based learning experiences before hiring, and dedicating resources to build genuine partnerships. Laferriere also addresses the challenge of measuring success in work that carries both quantitative and qualitative value, explaining why his team takes pride in the fact that only 30% of program participants come to work for CVS while the other 70% strengthen the broader community workforce. He calls on employers to get curious, join workforce boards, and find champions within their organizations who can balance passion for community impact with demonstrating business value. Transcript Julian Alssid: Welcome to the Work Forces Podcast. I'm Julian Alssid Kaitlin LeMoine: And I'm Kaitlin LeMoine, and we speak with innovators who are shaping the future of work and learning. Julian Alssid: Together, we unpack the complex elements of workforce and career preparation and offer practical solutions that can be scaled and sustained. Kaitlin LeMoine: This podcast is an outgrowth of our Work Forces consulting practice through weekly discussions, we seek to share the trends and themes we see in our work and amplify impactful efforts happening in higher education industry and workforce development all across the country. We are grateful to Lumina Foundation for its past support during the initial development and launch of this podcast, and invite future sponsors of this effort, please check out our workforce's podcast website to learn more. And so with that, let's dive in. Julian Alssid: Welcome back. For a long time, the education and workforce system was tasked with preparing people for jobs, with employers often playing a more passive role. But that dynamic has shifted, with employers increasingly leading the way on workforce development. Kaitlin LeMoine: It's true, Julian employers have stepped into that gap, not just to solve their own talent gaps through internal training and upskilling initiatives, but also through broader partnership initiatives designed to expand the overall talent pipeline, to reach and educate those who may otherwise not know about those career opportunities, or those who previously faced barriers to employment or educational attainment? Julian Alssid: Yes, absolutely Kaitlin. And as more companies are seeking to innovate in this space, it's helpful to look at models that are established and continuing to respond to the evolving needs of their industries and the labor market. Our guest today is Rick LaFerriere, Lead Director of Workforce Initiatives at CVS Health. Rick leads CVS award winning programs that are designed to create opportunities for people facing barriers to employment, partnering with education, community organizations and government agencies to build bridges to meaningful careers. Rick serves as the advisor to CVS Health Abilities in Abundance programming, and has oversight of CVS, highly regarded Workforce Innovation and Talent Center concept. He also contributes his time and expertise in the workforce space to several advisory and workforce boards locally and nationally. Rick, welcome to Work Forces. Rick Laferriere: Thanks, Julian, Kaitlin, nice to see you both and glad to join you today here. This is great. Kaitlin LeMoine: Yes, thanks so much for being with us today, Rick. It's great to see you as well, and looking forward to jumping into this conversation today. So as we get started, could you please tell us a bit more about your background, your trajectory, and what led you to your current role at CVS Health? Rick Laferriere: I've been with CVS Health for over 30 years. I actually started in a local CVS Pharmacy store when I was in high school as a cashier. And so my career here started at entry level in our stores, doing customer service. And at the time for me it was, it was a job to make money, to save money to go to college. And interestingly enough, it turned out to be a lot more than that. I ended up staying with CVS throughout my time at college. I went to school at Boston College and ended up working at CVS all throughout my college career, and when I graduated from college, realizing I had five years with CVS and an opportunity to continue in the management program, I jumped at it. It was an easy transition for me from college into the workforce and to the full time workforce. And so I ended up working on our retail side of the business for about eight or nine years as a store manager in the management program, being at ground level, really working with customers and patients in our stores. And then one day, at the end of 2007 I got a tap on my shoulder asking me if I wanted to run our brand new Regional Learning Center in Boston, which was this new concept of having a training facility, co located inside of a community partner, and in this case, it's Jewish Vocational Services in Boston, where we could work together with JVS and other community organizations and government agencies and the educational community to provide individuals from the communities we serve with the opportunity to engage in workforce and education. And at the time, I'll be honest, I didn't know much about it. I didn't know much about this team. I didn't know much about the workforce or the education space. I had had all my time at retail, but it was an opportunity I couldn't pass up. So not knowing a lot about it, I said, sure, let's go for it. Let's do this. And so at the beginning of 2008 I joined the Workforce Initiatives team. Still here today, 17 plus years later, and it's pretty amazing to me to think about this journey, because I never expected to be here. I never expected that this, this was going to be my career. I never expected that I would be so invested in workforce and education and supporting people with barriers to employment. But I quickly realized after I joined the team that this was this was my calling. This is where I wanted to be. I wanted to be in this space. I had the passion, the creativity, the interest of doing it. So hopefully, my career has grown since I've been with the team. This is my fourth different position on the team. I'm now co leading the team, along with two of my colleagues. We have a team of about 40 across the country. And so when I think about the work that our team does, and I think about my own pathway here, they're very similar. We want people to engage in careers with us, because you never know where you'll end up. And I did not know that I would end up here, but I certainly am glad I did. Julian Alssid: You're the embodiment of walking the walk, I guess, or talking the talk, or whatever that term is, even though it's really, really cool. So today, then Rick, your current role, you know, what are the main workforce challenges that you're looking to solve in this role? And some of the key initiatives? Rick Laferriere: Our workforce initiative team has actually been around for 25 years, and at the core of what our team does, it's building what we call non traditional talent pipelines. Think of a traditional talent pipeline is what your talent acquisition team is doing the standard sort of recruiting approach. Our team takes a non-traditional approach, which is working with the workforce system and with education, looking at individuals who tend to be overlooked, who tend to face barriers to employment, and working with the community, working with government to build programming that helps folks attain the skills they need to come to work for us. And folks know CVS Health, mainly because of CVS Pharmacy, which are our retail stores. And of course, we've got, you know, we've got thousands of stores across the country. Retail tends to be a very high volume, high turnover type of industry. And so, you know, part of the strategy for our team and our company is, how do we find people who we've never engaged with, and have not been in the workforce, or have never considered retail for a variety of reasons, and get them interested in coming to retail. And so for us, you know, there's a bit of an existential need for talent. You know, we're constantly looking for folks for our stores, for the front part of our stores, for the pharmacy part of our stores. And you know when, when you've been doing this for as long as we've been doing it, you discover that the community has, in some way, shape or form, engaged with us at some time, but they may not know enough about our careers and our opportunities. And so there's, there's a portion of that, which is just engaging the community about what it's like to work here. But at the same time, the other part of this is being a solution to filling skills gaps and to providing people with opportunity to enter the workforce. And so for us, we are constantly hiring. We're constantly growing. You know, healthcare, even retail pharmacy is still growing. So we always need talent. And if you, if you're doing it the same way with your talent acquisition folks, or you're doing it, you know in a traditional way that others are doi

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Work Forces

Haley Glover: Building Employer Upskilling Strategies

David Adams: Aligning K-12 Education with Industry Needs

Mitchell Stevens on Building a Learning Society

Work Forces Rewind: Isaac Agbeshie-Noye: Bridging the Skills-First Gap

Work Forces Rewind: Joe E. Ross: Pioneering the Apprenticeship Degree Model

Amber Garrison Duncan: Advancing Competency-Based Education

Dan Gonzalez: Scaling a Reimagined Approach to Internships

Rick Laferriere: Building Talent Pipelines at CVS Health

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Work Forces

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Haley Glover: Building Employer Upskilling Strategies

David Adams: Aligning K-12 Education with Industry Needs

Mitchell Stevens on Building a Learning Society

Work Forces Rewind: Isaac Agbeshie-Noye: Bridging the Skills-First Gap

Work Forces Rewind: Joe E. Ross: Pioneering the Apprenticeship Degree Model

Amber Garrison Duncan: Advancing Competency-Based Education

Dan Gonzalez: Scaling a Reimagined Approach to Internships

Rick Laferriere: Building Talent Pipelines at CVS Health

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