Workforce Leadership Café
In this series, we explore how the workforce development field can be more reflective of the change it seeks to cultivate.
The field of workforce development helps job seekers enter and advance in the workforce, and it helps employers improve their hiring, training, and advancement practices. To optimize local workforce systems, practitioners must dismantle silos and create coherent systems and services that balance the needs of both workers and businesses. Can the workforce development field itself set an example as it strives for equitable economic mobility?
In the blog post “The Cobbler’s Children Have No Shoes: Why Workforce Professionals Need Their Own Good Jobs Strategy,” authors Dee Wallace and Sheila Maguire — senior fellows with the Aspen Institute Economic Opportunities Program — refer to a pre-pandemic survey revealing that half of workforce professionals in New York City earned less than the city’s median wage, and half of those surveyed considered leaving their jobs within the year. That same study found that people of color made up 80% of the city’s workforce development staff, yet higher earners and organizational leaders were disproportionately white.
Let’s explore how the workforce development field can be more reflective of the change it seeks to cultivate. Join us this fall and winter in the “Workforce Leadership Café” for a series of conversations with leaders who are contributing their talents and insights to this rich field of practice. Guests include sponsors of local Workforce Leadership Academies and others who are exploring talent development and job quality in workforce development.
Events
About the Workforce Leadership Academies
The Aspen Institute’s Workforce Leadership Academies, part of the Economic Opportunities Program, bring together leaders across the many siloed fields of practice, organization types, and government policies that make up the field. The Academies strengthen Fellows’ capacity to develop and sustain effective workforce strategies, collaborate more deeply with employers, and expand the number and quality of leaders who advance opportunities for low-wage workers and job seekers as they meet employers’ talent development needs.
About the Economic Opportunities Program
The Aspen Institute Economic Opportunities Program advances strategies, policies, and ideas to help low- and moderate-income people thrive in a changing economy.
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Local Leaders Advancing Workforce Development
Announcing the 2025 Workforce Leadership Academies
Shoes To Walk the Talk: Four Steps for Workforce Systems to Advance Our Own Workforce
Five Questions with a Workforce Leader: Holly Kurtz, Center for the Future of Arizona
