S2 E9 Beyond the Resume Panel Discussion: The Skills That Help People Thrive at Work

Show Me Yours is back from summer break, and we’re opening with a conversation about something employers talk about constantly: the skills people need to succeed at work. We hear it all the time. “They should already know how to do this.” But what are we assuming people have been taught? Have we explained what we expect? And whose responsibility is it to help people build the skills they’re missing?

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Host Reanna Werner brings together Rana Tarkenton of The Attainment Network, Georgia Reagan of Lumina Foundation, Tim Taylor of America Succeeds, and Chelsea Miller of UpSkill America at the Aspen Institute for a candid panel discussion about foundational and durable skills in workforce development. Foundational skills include reading, writing, math, digital literacy and English language proficiency. Durable skills include communication, collaboration, critical thinking and adaptability. Together with technical training, these skills help people enter the workforce and continue growing throughout their careers.

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The panel shares lessons from their own first jobs, examines the assumptions behind hiring and training, and discusses how clearer expectations and useful feedback can help. We hear about a manufacturer building foundational skills into onboarding and a networking program that helped students practice making connections. We also explore how AI could widen existing skills gaps or help people learn when designed with their needs in mind.

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In this conversation, we will explore...

• What foundational and durable skills mean in everyday work

• Why a diploma or credential may leave employers with unanswered questions about skills

• How employers and educators can agree on what successful performance looks like

• Why feedback needs to travel in both directions

• How work-based learning gives people opportunities to practice

• What we have gotten wrong about preparing people for a lifetime of work

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Meet the panel:

Rana Tarkenton, CEO, The Attainment Network

Georgia Reagan, Strategy Officer, Credentials of Value, Lumina Foundation

Tim Taylor, Cofounder and President, America Succeeds

Chelsea Miller, Associate Director, UpSkill America at the Aspen Institute

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Continue the conversation: The Attainment Network’s 2026 Career-Connected L/Earning Conference takes place October 29–30 at The Antlers Hotel in Colorado Springs.

Explore the agenda and registration details below.Conference information and registration: https://www.attainmentnetwork.org/2026-career-connected-l/earning-conference

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Watch or listen to Show Me Yours: https://www.savvionhq.com/show-me-yours

Hello and welcome to Show Me Yours. I am ReannaWerner, your co-host along with my husband, Brian Werner, who is not joining ustoday because quite frankly, he's an accountant and he really has no clue aboutany of this interesting content that we're going to be discussing today. So I'mgoing to let him do the math and the numbers as I continue on.
with my favorite topic, which is workforce development. As many of you and ouraudience know that I'm very active in the workforce development arena. I havesat on the Pikes Peak Workforce Board for about 8 years. I also sit on theboard for the Attainment Network. I chair a few committees.
I am helping to launch a local organization called Careers in Hospitality tobuild our hospitality workforce. Workforce is my passion, probably because ofmy human resources background and seeing that there was a need both on theemployer and the workforce side and seeing education bring it all together. Andhow
to create that glue and the bond, not only for all three of these segments, butfor the greater good of our community. And that's really what it's about iseconomic vitality. And well, we all believe in economic vitality in some way,shape, or form. And that's why I'm sitting
with this lovely group of people that my friend Reanna helped me assembletoday. Reanna is the CEO of the Attainment Network. And yes, that's the board Isit on. So I have a little bit of a bias here in this conversation. But she hasassembled this wonderful group of folks.
In preparation for the Attainment Network's 2026 Career Connected LearningConference, which is taking place next week, or if you're watching this podcasta little bit later, it may have taken place last week. I'm sorry you missed outon it, but we're hoping that you're catching this podcast in time so you canjoin us for the conference. It's taking place in Colorado Springs at the Ann.
Hotel on October 29th and 30th. And all of these wonderful people you'rehearing from today will be speaking and presenting at the conference. So we'rejust giving you a little taste of what's to be expected. So without any furtherado, not that this panel needs a whole lot of introduction, but I'm going toask them to introduce themselves to you.
And we're going to start off a wonderful conversation starting now. So Reanna,can you kick this off and introduce yourself and the wonderful work that theAttainment Network does?

Rana Tarkenton 17:43
Yes, and I will try to match your energy and enthusiasm, Reanna. That'sfantastic. I feel like I need another cup of coffee. Thank you so much forhaving us on Show Me Yours. We're really excited. I'm Reanna Tarkinson, the CEOof the Attainment Network. We're an intermediary working here in Colorado tobridge the gap between education and workforce. So we sit in that sticky

Tim Taylor 17:47
Yeah.

Reanna Werner 17:51
Yeah.

Rana Tarkenton 18:07
middle, trying to smooth out the seams, if you will, between K-12, highereducation and employers so that learners have a more seamless journey fromeducation and skill building to career. So that's our job and we love it. Ourgoal is that more learners and earners achieve family living wage so thatcommunities
and they can thrive. So we're really pleased to be here today talking about,well, we'll be talking about durable and foundational skills. So thank you.

Reanna Werner 18:43
Nice. Well, great. Thank you for joining us, Reanna. I appreciate you. And Tim,why don't you jump in next and tell us about you?

Tim Taylor 18:52
Yeah, thanks for having me. It's great to be here with these fellow panelists.My name is Tim Taylor. I run an organization called America Succeeds based inDenver, Colorado. We work at the intersection of workforce. We work withemployer organizations on the demand side, what it's going to take for youngpeople to be successful in today's world.
And then we try to match that to the education pipeline. We work in both K-12and post-secondary. And our North Star is economic mobility. We are trying tomake sure that young people have an opportunity as they transition fromlearners to earners to be able to be successful and not just get in the door ofa job, but to be able to stay there. And we know that that is becomingincreasingly difficult. And
there is some mismatch in skill demand and skill supply. And so that's what wedo as an organization.

Reanna Werner 19:47
Wonderful. That's important work there. Georgia, why don't you tell us a littlebit about yourself? I hear you guys just hosted a conference.

Georgia Reagan 19:55
Yes, we did. So I am Georgia Reagan, Strategy Officer of Credentials of Value,which is a portfolio through the Lumina Foundation. Lumina Foundation is anational private foundation, and we essentially support
projects that will support students and learners to enter into trainingprograms that will essentially give them a good job. And so we created our newstrategy, our new goal, just last year, and we're in the process ofimplementing that. The new goal is that by the year 2040,
75% of adults in the workforce will have some kind of credential or degree thatleads to a credential of value that leads to a good job so that ensuring thatthe degrees that folks get actually lead to a family sustaining wage. And sowith my portfolio of credentials of value, I work a lot with short-termcredentials,
And when I say short-term credentials, I essentially mean programs that aretake less than two years for an associates, definitely less than a four-yeardegree. And so a lot of these are certificate programs, maybe a weldingcertificate, maybe pre-apprenticeship programs.
and supporting the students that are trying to get into these programs thatoffer quick training and a lot of times more affordable and can help themideally get into the workforce quicker.

Reanna Werner 21:35
It is so refreshing to see that emphasis and credentialing coming to aresurfacing. So I'm excited to hear more about what you guys do. Chelsea.

Chelsea Miller 21:48
Yeah.

Reanna Werner 21:48
Tell me, tell me about yourself, my friend.

Chelsea Miller 21:51
Yeah, Chelsea Miller, I'm the Associate Director of Upskill America. We sitinside the Aspen Institute's Economic Opportunities Program. So we are sort ofa silo within a silo. But where we fit into this conversation is we're focusedon very similar things, but from the lens of the employer.
So what are the tools and resources that employers are missing to help theirworkforce gain credentials of value, have the durable skills they need toendure in the workforce, and that handoff that Reanna mentioned, right? We sortof are the connective tissue, but trying to deliver insights into themarketplace from an employer's perspective.
I spent five years leading the education benefit program at a small, it's theworld's largest retailer. I was going to try and make a joke, but I led theeducation benefit program for the world's largest retailer prior to joining theAspen Institute. So I have some firsthand experience on what it takes and sortof what's missing. And so I'm really

Tim Taylor 22:38
Yeah.

Chelsea Miller 22:52
excited to be a part of this conversation and bringing that employer lens tohow we help make the transition between education and workforce. Andoftentimes, you know, the new majority learner, those things are happening atthe same time, how we make that process easier for all parties.

Reanna Werner 23:09
on that. Boy, you really do have a bird's eye view of exactly what needs totake place and meshing all three of these components together. That's reallyexciting. So today's topic, we're really focusing on foundational and durableskills. Before we jump into that, I just want to ask you guys, looking
back on your very first job because oftentimes us in workforce, we really dolook at that first job out of high school and what does that look like? So Iwant to hear about your own personal experiences with your first job. If wewere to call your first boss and ask them, what were you great at?
and what still needed work, what would they tell us? And anybody just go aheadand jump in based on your enthusiasm.

Georgia Reagan 23:58
I'll jump in because this actually gave me a little bit of PTSD from these highrisk situations. But I remember being a cashier, handling money for food,different transactions. And I would say that my boss loved that I was friendlyand talked
could talk to anyone and, you know, have a good customer service experience.And yet I also struggled to, I struggled with the quick math exchanges. And soI remember just dreading the moments when I would tell someone, oh, your totalis, and this was
you know, 20 plus years ago before, when there was a lot more cash and coinsout in the world and not everything was through a card. But I dreaded when Iwould say, oh, your total is 578, $5.78. And they would say, oh, here's a 10.

Tim Taylor 24:46
Yeah.

Georgia Reagan 24:58
85, they would give me more cash than was required because they wanted to getan even, you know, $10 bill back or something like that. And I struggled inthose moments to be able to do that math as quickly and not have to rely on acalculator. And so I love this question because
It really made me think, here I was, I at that time was in college. So intheory, I had completed my high school math. I had completed my requiredcollege math. And yet I still struggled to do that very fast math to givesomeone their change back.

Chelsea Miller 25:32
Mhm.

Georgia Reagan 25:37
And so that was really reflecting on that as we were thinking about this, isthat I know I wasn't the only one dealing with some of those gaps infoundational skills. And so yeah, that's the one that brought to me and I'mslowly working my way through that trauma that it endured.

Reanna Werner 25:59
Anybody else? I love that.

Chelsea Miller 26:02
I can share. My first job was answering phones for a US congressman, which isnot a typical first job, but I answered an ad in a newspaper, also, you know,20 years ago, when we still read newspapers and answered ads in them without itbeing super weird. But I remember

Reanna Werner 26:02
But.

Chelsea Miller 26:22
The thing I was really good at was like the clips in the newspapers. You had tolike cut everything out. And I really liked having the clean lines. This allfeels like a way back time machine. But I was really good. I ended up by theend of my first month, I was the only person responsible for the clips, whereasit used to be a multi-person job. But the part I couldn't do very well was theinformation synthesis. So often
when people are calling public representatives, it's like one piece of thepuzzle that they need an answer for. And it might be a 20 minute conversation,but figuring out how to like listen for what matters, I would come intowhatever staffer and have like 4 pages of notes from one column or like, whatdo I need to do, right? That ability to hear.
pick out the pieces that matter. That's something that's still 20 years later.I'm often having to remind myself that that information synthesis can make sucha difference.

Reanna Werner 27:16
Oh, yeah, absolutely. At that age, that would be pretty difficult to do. Imean, that is a skill that is developed over many years of a professionalexperience. And that you were entrusted at that age to do so.

Chelsea Miller 27:25
Yes.

Reanna Werner 27:33
Reanna, Tim, do you guys have any reflections?

Rana Tarkenton 27:38
Yeah, I was actually thinking back. One of my first professional jobs was amarketing coordinator for an arts organization. And I went to a lot of meetingsand I met a lot of people and I always got great
feedback about my relationship building and getting to know people and havinga, you know, building my network, etc. But years later, when I was, severalyears later, when I was applying for another job and I was using that boss as areference from this first job,
he asked me what I wanted to say, what I wanted him to say if they asked whatmy strengths and weaknesses were. And I couldn't, I was like, well, I don't, Ihad some strengths. And I was like, oh, I don't know. What do you think myweaknesses were? And he said, well, I think you could have spoken up more inmeetings. You have a lot of great ideas,

Chelsea Miller 28:24
And.
And.

Rana Tarkenton 28:40
but you held back in meetings. And I always thought, and it was reallyeye-opening for me to get that feedback because I thought I was doing such agood job taking notes and paying attention and listening, which maybe it'sbecause I grew up in a household where kids were meant to be seen and notheard. I don't know. But

Chelsea Miller 28:55
May.

Rana Tarkenton 29:03
It really opened my eyes to the fact that, well, other people see that I havevalue and maybe I need to tap into some more confidence and build up my, youknow, my presence, if you will, in meetings. And I've thought about that overthe years and how important it was for me to receive that feedback.
So I, and it's still something I think about today when we think about how weempower learners to grow in their careers and to develop new skills, we have totell them they should be developing and provide them feedback. So that'ssomething that sticks with me.

Reanna Werner 29:42
It's funny, I coached a team member of mine a few months ago in a very similarcapacity. I told her, and this is going to sound a little brutal, but it isfrom an employer's perspective, is I'm not paying you to sit there and donothing or not take any action. I'm paying you to speak up and give us newideas and new thoughts to have a voice and be your own. So
I totally understand your former boss's sentiments there.

Rana Tarkenton 30:09
Yeah, it was a good learning experience for sure.

Reanna Werner 30:13
Yeah, absolutely. Tim, tell us about one of your first jobs.

Tim Taylor 30:17
Yeah, this is no surprise, right? Given the topic of the podcast here, likeeverybody's leading with these durable skills that we had rolling into ourfirst job and a lack of technical skills in many ways. And I'll pile on tothat, right? As a bag boy at Safeway in high school, communication or talkingto a customer or those types of things,
But, you know, you can't put your eggs on the bottom of a bag and put a gallonof milk on top of the eggs, right? Somebody's got to teach you each of thosetechnical, if you call those technical skills, but you've got to learn how todo the job. But what most of us, lots of us get hired for is how we show up,right? It is the durable skills when we walk in.
And then many employers say, give me somebody who can do these durable skillsand I'll teach them what they need to know. And I think that everything thatwe've just said here is really indicative of how you get that first job and youstart your career ladder. You start working your way up the career ladder. AndI remember a few years ago, McDonald's used to run an ad that it was America's
best first job. And that was their pitch, right? Is come learn how to work atMcDonald's, learn how to collaborate, learn how to do all of the differentthings that you're going to need to do, and then go take that to somebody else.But we'll teach you those first things, which are critical in establishing acareer ladder. And so
I love.
highly unintentionally on your on your part or just sort of not knowing whereeverybody was going to answer. We all we all walked right into it.

Reanna Werner 31:51
It was my evil little plan. You know, but I also think that that in all of myworkforce work that I've done, I think it's important for all of us to go backand reflect on that first job, because that's where you enter and nobodyreally, okay, maybe a very few selects start at the top, which I don't know ofanybody who has,

Tim Taylor 31:52
Yeah.

Reanna Werner 32:10
We all have that foundational experience that really, as you mentioned, Tim, weall enter in with our durable skills, but then we build with our technicalskills beyond that. And then eventually 20, 30 years down the road, we becomeexperienced professionals and experts in our field. But it doesn't happen withthat first job.
but it brings so much of the foundation to who we are professionally to thetable. So as we talk about this, I actually wanna start with a littledefinition from you guys. So for many, many years, we heard the term softskills, which never resonated well with me, but I went with it. We all knewwhat that was. The soft skills are more of those behavioral skills.
or even just natural behaviors. Who do we, or what do we naturally bring to thetable? Reanna's natural listener. You know, she's a natural, I come alongsidewith me. She's not the one naturally at, you know, at her first job whonaturally spoke up, but there are other people who naturally speak up.
So these soft skills we've talked about in many regards over many, many years,but I love how now we're making that shift from using the term soft skillsbecause it sounds so soft and loosey-goosey and how do you put a
finger on it, how do you put that on a resume? But now we're talking andshifting the conversation from soft skills to foundational and durable skills.And for a lot of our listeners, they may not exactly know what this shift isand what it means. So can you guys tell us?
From your perspective, what's the difference between foundational and durableskills and what does that mean to today's workforce?

Chelsea Miller 33:59
So I love how you framed that up. I think it's a couple of things. When we talkabout foundational skills, it's really the foundation upon which everythingelse gets built. So for the purpose of this conversation, that is Englishlanguage skills, that is reading and writing comprehension.
That's digital skills. Can you build a strong password? Do you know how tonavigate a phone versus a tablet versus an iPad? And then as Georgiabeautifully shared in her intro, math skills, right? Can you do that quickmath? Do you understand, right? Because as jobs and work evolve,
that having that strong ability to learn in all of those areas really sets youup for success, sort of regardless of where you're heading. And then, Tim, I'dlove for you to share sort of y'all's definition on durable skills as acomplement to foundational skills.

Tim Taylor 34:56
Yeah, so durable skills, the term came from a report that we launched in 2021,and we analyzed over 80 million job descriptions. And what we found was thatthe durable skills were eight times more in demand than the top technicalskills across all industries. And to your point about soft skills, as we weretalking to all of these employers,
They kept saying, soft skills does not do this term justice. And we keptsaying, these are skills that last a lifetime. You will take them with you fromjob to job, regardless of your geography or your industry or your educationattainment level. They're just required. And in an era where a technical skilllasts, has a shelf life of 2 1/2 years,
durable skills last forever. And so the employers kept, this was sort of thefeedback that we were getting from them. And oddly enough, I'll answer atrivial pursuit question for everybody the next time they are playing a game.Soft skills was a term that came from the US Army in the late 1960s.
And they were every skill that did not work with the machine. And that's howthe US Army began to distinguish their hard skills from their soft skills. Andthe irony there is that we are now learning these skills in order to actuallywork with the machine. These are the skills that will set
the humans apart from AI. They're the things that the machines will never beable to do. And so the demand for these skills is actually going up, not downin today's economy. And interestingly, unfortunately, more and more youngpeople are showing up without these skills that they actually need to build onthat career ladder. 60% of young people are getting hired and fired within thefirst couple of months
of their job. So they may know how to take apart your air conditioner, but theycan't talk to the homeowner when they show up on the job. And they're being letgo for those types of reasons. And I think that the huge opportunity that we'vegot and what this conversation is so exciting is that how do you take thosefoundational skills, technical skills and durable skills
and blend them all together so that you can go be adaptable in today's economy.And this is the fun of this, of the work that we all get to do and the changeshopefully we can make for young people.

Reanna Werner 37:21
So good. Gosh. Well, yeah, drop the mic there, Tim. You know, what I find isinteresting is, and you guys have probably heard this too, is that we have awhole bunch of job seekers out there saying, I've put my resume or myapplication into 45 jobs and I'm not hearing back. And then you have employerssaying, I'm getting
100 applications for each job that I post, and maybe if I'm lucky, one or twoare actually qualified. What is that disconnect right now between our workforceand the skills that people bring to work and the skills that they actually needto be successful and to get that job?

Georgia Reagan 38:06
I think it's a great question. I think a lot of it has to do with assumptions.I think there is an assumption generally in our society that if you havegraduated from high school, if you have a high school equivalency or a GED,then
You know how to read, you know how to do math, and you can do that at varyinglevels, at varying speeds, in varying situations and environments. And so Ithink, and I think that is an assumption that not only employers often have,but higher education often has as well.
And then the reality is that, yes, someone might have a high school diploma,someone might have a college degree, someone might have a degree in anothercountry. But, you know, what it comes down to is oftentimes in order to enterinto these training programs, credential programs, or a job,
there has to be a way for the student or the worker to show their skills, theircompetencies. A lot of times this comes up in an assessment exam. So even ifsomeone, I always use this example, if someone's going into a welding program,usually that
that program might be at a technical or community college, and it might be in adifferent department called kind of workforce department or non-credit,whatever you, whatever people want to call it. And they might not have the samerequirements for entering into the welding program as they would if someone wastrying to go into freshman composition class or biology.
So oftentimes, college algebra and kind of basic freshman composition are thefirst courses people take. A lot of people are able to take those in highschool. But for welding, it might be just a basic English and math exam, maybeat the 7th grade level.
And what we're seeing, and we saw the direct feedback from a lot of thegrantees that we worked with, is that colleges were able to create theseshort-term programs, whether that was welding or a certified nurse assistant.And in order to ensure that the student had the supports that they needed, theywould have them take
a assessment test. And what they found was that many people struggled just toreach proficiency and pass that test, even enter into the program. And so Ithink a lot of this is really assumptions that come from each person, each ofour own experiences in education.
And the reality is that the way that we might have learned 20, 30 years ago isnot how people are learning right now. And the things that we had in our livesare not the same things that today's students and workers have. And it's a lotmore nuanced. And so I think a big piece of this
is just breaking down assumptions.

Chelsea Miller 41:13
I totally agree. Oh.

Rana Tarkenton 41:15
Oh.

Chelsea Miller 41:17
Go ahead, Reanna.

Rana Tarkenton 41:18
Go, go ahead. I was gonna totally agree also.

Chelsea Miller 41:22
The only thing I was going to add is, is the, you mentioned assessments, whichI am like so excited about and I promise we won't spend the whole time on this,but like, I think that's one of the big potential unlocks here, but I thinkpart of it comes back to the responsibility because it's both a risk, anassumption on what
individuals know, but then also an assumption on whose problem it is to fix it.You know, we as a nation tend to add to your trivial pursuit knowledge, right?There is a national benchmark that's been done three times since 2012 in theUnited States has decreased each time.

Georgia Reagan 41:46
Mhm.

Chelsea Miller 42:01
for both reading and math skills as a nation. And we're not going to get intothe why or the how or the whatever, but I think there's an assumption, onearound what the individual can do, but then whose problem it is to fix it,right? We all need to be invested on making those numbers go up the next timethat test happens. And
my hope would be that conversations like this can help continue to bring allthe parties to the table because K-12 has a seat, higher ed has a seat,employers have a seat, workforce intermediaries and organizations like ours allneed a seat at the table to make sure that the person at the center of this
It's not a remedial class, but they genuinely are supported to gain the skills.

Rana Tarkenton 42:48
I love boiling this down, by the way, to assumptions, because there's so manydifferent ways that we make assumptions in this. And one of them is just evenassuming that higher education and employers and K-12 are defining durableskills in the same way and thinking about teaching them in the same way.

Reanna Werner 43:05
Yeah.

Rana Tarkenton 43:08
What a high school teacher thinks might be adequate problem solving or teamworkis maybe not at all what the highest, you know, the largest employers in aregion are, how they're defining it. And I think just maybe modeling.
the communication and collaboration that we're asking for from learners acrosssectors would go a long way in ensuring, are we even talking about the samethings?

Reanna Werner 43:39
Yeah.

Tim Taylor 43:39
Yeah, well, I mean, a violent agreement. So, you know, I think that...

Rana Tarkenton 43:45
I'm totally going to use that. I've never heard that violent agreement. That'sgreat.

Tim Taylor 43:51
Right, like we've never asked education systems to prepare young people withthese durable skills. This is pretty much a new thing. When I was growing up,right, as an older, as the oldest panelist, I will say that most of usdeveloped our durable skills through sports or music or religion or good dinnertable conversation or
if you were lucky, a little bit of travel. But we were not asking teachers inthe classroom to say, develop critical thinking skills or collaboration skills.The closest was, you know, were you doing group work? Yes. Well, what did youlearn? I learned that Billy didn't do a thing about what he was supposed to bedoing, but I wasn't really learning collaboration. So I think
one, I think there is a, we need a common lexicon, which America Succeeds has aplatform for this, right? We have a common lexicon and we've also built arubric about what employers expect someone to know and do. And now you canteach to a rubric and you can assess to a rubric because these are not binary.It's not that you can think critically or you can't. You think critically alongsome type of a spectrum.
And at what point are you going to transition from learner to earner, and howcan you demonstrate that to an employer? And currently, the four-year degree isa proxy for having a lot of durable skills. It's not a very good one, but it'sa huge proxy for a lot of HR managers. It's a very safe deal to go to thefour-year degree pile. But now you start talking about somebody with a two-year
certificate or just a, I mean, a short-term certificate or any other technicalskill, what they're trying to determine is, do you have the durable skills whenI hire you? And George, you mentioned welders. My absolute favorite anecdote asit relates to this is we work with a big group of community colleges that areteaching all kinds of technical programs. And they use welding as an example.And they said,
We have a line of employers standing there when we hand certificates out atgraduation. And what they tell us is, we'll hire your worst welder with durableskills over your best welder without durable skills. I mean, that's thepunchline, is it is the combination of these skills that it's going to take forsomebody to get hired.
And the problem is that welding instructor can weld six ways to Sunday, butthey've never been asked to teach somebody a growth mindset or collaboration.And so we need professional development for educators. We need to make surepeople are developing these skills before we even begin to start thinking aboutassessment, which is a huge issue in this.
But right now, the assessment would just say that they're not doing very wellbecause we're not delivering these at scale. So there's a, there's a.
sort of order of operations in the sector that we need to really take a lookat.

Reanna Werner 46:28
Tim, I think that's such an interesting point. All of you guys like, yeah,second the violent agreement here. In careers and hospitality, we worked withUCCS on surveying the hospitality industry as far as what exactly it is thatthey need, what are they missing in that industry. And I think it actuallyflows through to most industries, but they were saying as far as
The durable skills that they're looking for out of their candidates, which aremissing most of the time, are reliability, resiliency, and flexibility,communication, and believe it or not, the willingness to learn. And so when itcomes to these durable skills and other durable skills, you know,detail-orientedness, teamwork, all of these different examples that we can goon and on about.
Really, when it comes down to it, I guess this is a little bit of a two-partquestion, but I'm interested to see what you guys have to say. First, who'sresponsible for the acquisition or the development of these tools? And thenalso, how in the world do you even teach or train these skills?
Like, that's tough. I mean, you can sit down and have those, you know, thosedinner table conversations or, you know, as parents, or you can go into yourfirst job and probably get fired from your first job because you didn'tdemonstrate any of these and then you learn. But like, how does that manifestinto actual learning experience?
Two-part question: Who's responsible and how?

Rana Tarkenton 48:05
We're all responsible. We're all responsible. Maybe that's the easy answer,but, and the how, I'm gonna go back to my personal lesson, providing feedback,providing feedback, providing feedback is like, be clear about these are theskills that we're looking for, and this is the feedback that I'm gonna give youalong the way. If you're giving the wrong

Tim Taylor 48:05
Out.
Yeah.

Rana Tarkenton 48:30
Change to your customer at Safeway, because you're gonna get feedback realquick; your cash register is shorted, and so the same type of feedback ondurable skills that are or are not coming through, I think, is really critical.

Tim Taylor 48:51
I'll share a couple of anecdotes. One, when we first started having thisconversation, we were talking to K-12 systems in particular, not to pick onanybody, but I will, they're so steeped in the box of the Carnegie unit thattheir first response was, well, there's not enough time in the day to add acritical thinking course. And
The answer to this is you don't think critically from 11 to 1150 and then go tomath. You think critically while you're in math. You collaborate while you'rein science. You develop a growth mindset while you're taking history. It is allday, every day, and it's in the water. It's so embedded in what we need youngpeople to learn that they should be practicing this
at every step all the time. There should be no distinction between the durableskills and their academic skills. And again, when we have conversations likethis, a teacher came up to me after one of a session that I did and said, andthis, I am not the expert in how you embed this in education systems, but Iknow that they know how to do this. So the teacher said, I teach 10th gradegeometry.
And what I can do is say, I want everybody to get in groups of three. I wantyou to solve these five problems collaborating with your peers. And then I wanteach of you to go to the front of the class and present back how you solved oneof those problems. And as a math teacher, I can work on collaboration, problemsolving, verbal presentation skills, communication skills, like
this all starts to go together, that it's happening. So the who and the how issort of embedded. And it's just a different way of making sure young people arepracticing and the skills that they're getting, because currently educationsystems are all about certainty. You've got to get the right answer.
And we spend a lot of time in K-12 and post-secondary around certainty. Andthen we put these kids into a world that is dominated by uncertainty. And sothere has to be some shift around what the problems are, because we all havecomputers in our pockets that can answer when the War of Hastings was.
So I think that these are the types of things. That doesn't mean they don't,they get out of the core academics. It is both and.

Chelsea Miller 50:58
I think the only piece I would add is the, Tim mentioned it earlier, the sharedlexicon. I think the response, it's on all of us to not recreate the wheel onhaving different lexicons. Having been in this space for a little shy of adecade, the thing I've noticed is like,

Reanna Werner 50:59
Okay.

Chelsea Miller 51:17
employers will say, hey, we've observed this is a problem. We're going to gobuild it in our silo. And then those of us who are sort of advocates andintermediaries will do our thing and then higher ed. And so sitting in the seatI sit in now, we're constantly trying to bridge that. Anytime somebody says tome, hey, I want to do more durable skills work, I'm like,
Cool. Check out America Succeeds. Please don't do your own thing, right? And Ithink that we're, from to the responsibility part of your question, I thinkthat's on all of us to really do the due diligence and ask the questions aroundwhat already exists and how can I not recreate the wheel? Because as Tim said,the little box in our phones will often tell us, you know, what are the bestpractices around
around, you know, post-secondary partnering with employers or what have you.There are resources out there, but I think our sort of inclination to act willoften supersede that. We'll just say, oh, we'll build it ourselves. We talkedto so many small and medium-sized businesses who can't take advantage of likelarge scale.
education benefit providers, for example. And they're like, well, I'll just godo it myself. And it's like, well, maybe you don't have to, right? And sothat's the one piece I want to add here is how can you sort of look for what'salready out there versus building it yourself.

Rana Tarkenton 52:40
I want to add one more thing. I completely agree with that. And one of thethings that's happening right now that I think has a lot of promise towardscontinuing to build durable skills for learners. And I think, Tim, you alludedto when we were younger, we were in sports or I was a theater kid. I was astage manager. I learned more. I think I can do
Anything now, because I was a stage manager and durable skill-wise, butwork-based learning is the bridge between education and employers, wherelearners and earners, they're doing hopefully paid work-based learning.
are involved in the development of critical durable skills. And so, and there'sa trend towards more of that. It shouldn't be optional, it should be requiredbecause that is where a lot of this work happens and where there's anopportunity, a really clear opportunity for educators and employers to worktogether, ensure that they agree and are both providing feedback to thelearners.
That they have in common, so...

Reanna Werner 53:50
I want to continue down this rabbit hole just a little bit more. So there's twoaspects of this conversation that are just rattling around in my brain. First,McDonald's. McDonald's, you know, as Tim mentioned a few years ago, they reallyput out the campaign of the best first job. And to me, that speaks volumes inthem being committed to teaching
probably some foundational skills, but also a ton of durable skills. They knewwhat they were getting into, right? They knew that they were going to beteaching.
resiliency, reliability, and on top of that, Reanna, you brought it upfeedback. The only way these, you know, these learners can get any type offeedback is if they're in that moment, right? But here we are, and I regularlyhear employers say this. They say people should...
already know how to do this. They have the expectation that the workforceshould already know a lot of these durable skills.
They're also saying the same breath that they're not. So with that said, whatare we assuming people have been taught versus what we need to get better atteaching?

Chelsea Miller 55:06
Mmh.

Georgia Reagan 55:08
And I would actually just push back a little bit, politely push back on thispiece, because I think feedback goes both ways. There needs to be feedback toemployers as well. You know, as you posed the last question, you said you hadheard from employers saying people don't want to learn.

Reanna Werner 55:13
Uh-huh.

Georgia Reagan 55:27
And that again is an assumption based on what they see, but they may not knowthat like Reanna is furiously writing down notes and actually the expectationthat her boss had for her at the time was different. So again, it's feedbackdown to the learner.
and all the way to the employer too. And, you know, there was someone mentionedearlier about being clear when it comes to communicating. I think that needs tobe a big priority when working with employers, because I think for many, manyyears,
It has been the onus on owning this and advancing this work has lived withinK-12 and higher education and maybe workforce development. And the employershave not been an active part of this. And it's time now to be a more activepart of this and for the feedback to go all the way
from both sides so that we can all work together instead of hearing from thegrapevine about what employers want, which themselves are encased with a lot ofassumptions.

Chelsea Miller 56:39
I wanted to jump in on that because this is one of my favorite talking points.The social contract between employers and their employees has changeddramatically. I think about my grandfather who turned 86 2 weeks ago. His wholething was he went to work at the Department of Transportation here intopaycheck. He bought his first house for like $21,000, which makes me nauseous.

Tim Taylor 57:02
Yeah.

Chelsea Miller 57:02
Right. But he like, and then eventually he got to a point where he could retireand knew he was going to have a pension. And that was, you know, in mylifetime, that was his experience with work. The relationship between anemployer and an employee today looks a lot different. We do a lot of researchwith employers on what motivates them.

Reanna Werner 57:03
Yeah.

Chelsea Miller 57:21
why they offer the benefits that they offer, right? But because education, andthat's not what this podcast is about, right, but because education costs somuch money, right, education is now something that people will go to employersto look for. So to the McDonald's example you gave, one in eight Americansstarted their career at
McDonald's. They're very proud of that fact. And they offer a program calledArchways to Opportunity that offers everything from foundational skills todurable skills to whatever. And they were one of the first in the game. Theycelebrated their 10th anniversary offering these education benefits in 2025. Sothey're 11 years into this. And
what they've learned is that having the pathways makes a difference, but reallyhaving that person on the ground, Georgia, to your point, that person to givethe feedback to is really what makes the difference. And so having that personto say, hey, I don't know what I want to be. Where do I go? What do I do? Havethe employer having
those career pathways clearly identified understanding the skills that theyneed. A lot of this is connected to the skills first movement that folks mightbe familiar with, right? But when we're taking it down to like, it's not, Ineed you to be a team lead, it's, I need you to be a team lead and therefore Ineed you to make good eye contact. I need you to be able to
have difficult conversations. I need you to understand inventory management,right? Breaking roles down into component parts. So then we can teach you eachof those aspects, whether that's through the employer developed training,whether that's through an outside, you know, post-secondary or K-12, right? Allof these different parts have to click together.
to make that person successful in the career journey for both themselves andtheir employer.

Reanna Werner 59:14
So what I'm hearing a lot of is clarity. We need to clarify both on the learnerside, but especially on industry side. Industry struggles coming to the tablebecause there's probably some what's in it for me that value that they're notseeing, which there's a ton of value. They need to get.
We need them more active, but they need to provide clarity. Chelsea, I love howyou gave the example of, okay, well, we want you to be a lead, but this is howyou're a lead. And I think that, but this is how, is oftentimes forgotten onindustry side. They just, you know, if they're lucky, they'll get a jobdescription and say, okay, well, now go do this.
And it's tough to translate that into actual action without that coaching, thatmentorship, and that feedback. And yeah, Georgia, you're absolutely right.Feedback on both sides is critical. But there's a lot of pressure with thatsaid to train people.
in their current jobs or their new jobs, whatever it is, and get them trainedquickly and get them as productive as fast as possible. Us sitting here on thisconversation today, know that that's not always the best route, right? But howdo we balance the urgency?
with the time and practice it takes to building those lasting skills, likewhere's that balance? Because I mean, on the industry side, I totally get it.Time is money. We have to turn our workforce into a productive mechanism forthe business, but also the workforce needs time to actually adapt and
Move into those skills.

Tim Taylor 1:01:06
I mean, I can pick up a little bit on what's been said so far on this front.And I think that the employers, the employers that we talk to, the BusinessRoundtable, the US Chamber of Commerce, SHRM, the big employer organizations,right, they are much more willing to invest in technical skills than they arein the durable skills. There is some expectation that you show up with a baselevel of durable skills because they just, you
don't build them quickly, and they don't have the capacity to build those. So Ithink all of us have heard an employer say, give me somebody who can thinkcritically, collaborate, and has a growth mindset, and I'll teach them whatthey need to know. I always hope they don't mean like my airline pilot orsomebody who's building the bridges.
right? The engineers, the pilot, there's a technical skill that goes with thisthat again, I want to recognize. So I say all this in sort of tongue in cheekand also, but the bigger picture of the vast majority of jobs out there, youlearn a lot about the technical skills on the job. But boy, you've

Reanna Werner 1:01:48
The.

Tim Taylor 1:02:07
got to have some set of durable skills when you show up. And I think that one,this isn't new. This is something that has been an expectation for a reallylong time. I think we're just seeing bigger gaps in the way that young peopleare developing durable skills right now. Time Magazine just did something.
People are using 26% less words than we did in 2006. We just don't speak toeach other anymore. Like the collab of the, you know, how do you collaborate?How do you communicate? How do you develop some of these other things whenwe're just not talking to each other? But we are texting where somebody in anaudience that I spoke to came up to me afterwards and said,
I make my son go in and pick up our dry cleaning once a week because it's oneof the last places I can make him talk to a human. He pays for gas at the pump.He orders his stuff on Amazon. He gets his food from Uber Eats. He just like, Ijust want him to go in and have a conversation. And so this is, you know, thisis my response to that. And it's,
It's funny in some ways and also not in others, but like how do we developthese durable skills from a much earlier age and set clear expectations ineducation systems that these are the skills we want young people to have? And Ithink there's a big opportunity here, the winds at our back with theseportraits of a graduate that are happening around the country.
These portraits of a graduate are developed in local communities and they'refull of durable skills. So we've got a target now, but they won't develop thoseunless we change what their day looks like and what they're learning in classesso that they look like the portrait.

Chelsea Miller 1:03:42
Right. And I think to add on to that, the foundational skills piece iseverything that you're saying, combined with the fact that like how learnerslearn looks a lot different than how somebody coming through a K-12 educationmay experience it, right? Like I didn't know that I had an auditory processingdisorder while I was in high school. I learned that years later, right?
But I think I had, you know, I think I am one of millions of people, right, whohas struggled in some way with traditional education, right? And I think itmakes it for these reading, writing, math, digital skills, right? Things arelike the how we leverage them are changing, Tim, to your point, but the whatthey are and how you need to learn them,
That's been the same forever. Whether we've been investing in them in the rightlevels and integrating them in the right places is a different debate. But Ithink that there is this idea that like, in the same way that durable skillsdon't get taught from 1015 to 1045, right? Math is not something where I canjust send you to a boot camp for six weeks.
and all of a sudden you're going to be better. I think if we tie it, the more,Reanna, I loved your point around work-based learning, right? The more you canintegrate these things into context and into the things people are alreadydoing, the easier it's going to get. But I do think that right now, that's oneof the big disconnects is that an employer
when somebody comes to them, they're willing to teach them, you know, a certainamount of things, but they're assuming that a lot of things have already takenplace. And I think that's part of why, you know, when we talk about them notcoming to the table or whatever, they don't know what they don't know, right?They don't know the skills of their own workforce. I don't have a singleemployer that we partner with who's like, oh yeah, we've got
You know, they'll tell me things like, well, everyone we hire has a high schooldiploma. And it's like, okay, I don't think that means what you think it means,right? And so how do we help, again, them better understand what's alreadyinside their ecosystem and then everything that's available to them once theycome to the table? Because I think that's a big disconnect right now.

Rana Tarkenton 1:05:52
How do we help the learners and the earners to break down their own experiencesand identify and articulate their own skills and empower them to do so, so thatthere can be direct communication between?
the learner or employee and the employer. I believe that we know that when youtalk to first generation college students, for example, that they say they're,and any college student, most college students today, when you ask them, and welearned this at the Lumina, this was brought up at the Lumina convening lastweek, Georgia, when you ask them,
Why are you going to college, two year, technical, four year, whatever kind?Why are you going to any sort of post-secondary education? Because I want tomake more money, to be economically mobile. I mean, those may not be the wordsthat they use, but they want to have a good job.

Chelsea Miller 1:06:49
Mhm.

Rana Tarkenton 1:06:53
That's why students go to college. And if we train, and that's because that'swhat they've heard for years and years and years. So I strongly believe peoplewill rise to the bar that we set for them. And if we are transparent withlearners and earners about these are the skills that you need, and here aresome tools and resources to learn them,
that they will do that. And so again, just transparency and communication withboth employers, learners, and post-secondary, all of the above about what'sexpected. Tim, you set me up to do a demo of a really cool tool. I don'tremember the name of it right now.
But I know there are others on the market out there that help learners learnwhere their durable skills may be missing and to articulate, you know, breakdown their experiences to articulate where they have them, where they don't,and then to practice them. We need more of that because I do believe learnerswill take...
some of that responsibility on their own where we have failed, may have failedthem. So.

Tim Taylor 1:08:00
Yeah, there are a handful of really cool things on the market, but the markethas not developed fast enough yet because there's not been a lot of, therearen't a lot of systems asking to buy the tools yet. So this is all in itsinfancy, but we have a real opportunity, right, to make sure that this is highquality that can reach scale.
in a way that we have not with a lot of other things that have hit theeducation markets. And I think that what is most promising about this is thatas more people are asking for it, as you're getting more of these portraits ofa learner or portraits of a graduate that are becoming, you're starting to seepeople lean into these types of skills.
They are being taught in school now. We're just not putting the labels. We'redoing group work instead of collaboration. We need to call out what these are,and we need to talk about the fact that there are, when you're collaborating,you are learning roles and responsibility, how to handle conflict,deliverables, right? Break down those skills. So when an employer says, whendid you collaborate and what did that look like?
You can say, I know these skills and I can do it in any situation that you dropme into. Kid, you got the job if you are going to give me an answer about whenthe last time you collaborated and you break down collaboration into thoseroles and responsibilities.

Chelsea Miller 1:09:16
I would say yes, and the making sure that the employers are aligned in thetaxonomy, right? I was trying to make it the whole podcast episode withoutsaying the word taxonomy and I failed. I'm so sorry. But like, I think what'sinteresting, having worked for a large retailer, right, what customer servicemeant to us,

Tim Taylor 1:09:28
But.

Chelsea Miller 1:09:35
versus what customer service means to McDonald's may be different things,right? Food safety, for example, less of a concern in a retail environment, notzero, but less, right? And so how, like navigating those kinds of complexities,I think is also really important because it goes back to that shared definitionand those shared.
consensus. So that way the learner, right, remains in control of their owndata, but it speaks to all the systems in this ecosystem they're trying tonavigate.

Tim Taylor 1:10:09
The core tends to be the same across employers and the application slightlydifferent. And we're seeing a lot of that and you can assess for thatdifferently. But generally, if you can demonstrate, you can collaborate, thinkcritically or have a growth model.
or at a food service company, right? Like we hear a lot of that. And I justwant to call out that if we split the baby too many times, everybody's going tosay, no, no, no, that looks totally, it doesn't. Everybody thinks they're avery special snowflake, but they are not. They are far more similar than theyare different.
and then the application looks slightly different. And that's important to notebecause we don't want everybody developing these differently.

Chelsea Miller 1:10:50
Mhm.

Reanna Werner 1:11:07
Tim, are you there?

Tim Taylor 1:11:10
I am, yeah, sorry, that was a complete thought. It may not have sounded likeone, but it was my best.

Reanna Werner 1:11:16
OK, just wanted to make sure.

Chelsea Miller 1:11:18
You were, we lost your video, you're buffering for most of us.

Reanna Werner 1:11:22
Oh, there we go. You're back.

Tim Taylor 1:11:23
So.
Sorry, bad connection it seems.

Reanna Werner 1:11:29
You know, never cease to fail. Gotta love technology. That's why, you know, weleverage our resilience and our tech savviness and we move on. Problem solving.You guys, story time. I want you guys to tell me a story that you know of, thatyou've seen firsthand, that

Tim Taylor 1:11:32
Yeah.
Oh.

Chelsea Miller 1:11:38
Hey.

Reanna Werner 1:11:51
personifies what can become possible when someone gets the support that theyneed in building these durable skills that we're talking about today.

Chelsea Miller 1:12:05
I can share one. So Georgia and her team wonderfully supported us in doing someemployer landscape analysis around foundational skills specifically. And we hadthis great manufacturer on a webinar not too long ago, and he shared ananecdote that I will re-share, which is that
you know, they have these multi-million dollar machines because essentiallyevery textbook you've touched ever has gone through one of his warehouses,right? And so these are big printing machines. And so what he does is everybodywho walks in as a new employee goes through a six-week class on things likeruler maps.
but do you understand inches to centimeters and can you make the conversions,right? Not that you didn't learn that in 5th grade or whatever, right? Butmaking sure that everyone is on the same page and making sure, right, thateliminates things like educational shame, right? And other things when it'slike, everybody's got to do this because that's the way we.
eliminate the risk on our part as the employer to make sure that all ourworkers are set up for success before they touch that piece of equipment,right? And, you know, he was able to share on the call how it's impacted. It'sincreased things like retention and promotability and those kinds of thingsjust because they took the time to develop the
coursework that made the learner feel supported, the new worker, right, andhelps the employer eliminate the risk they were feeling by just like lettingpeople loose, right, even if they had had an assessment before. And so that's areally tangible example of how an employer saw a foundational skills need.
worked to address it and it's had really strong success for their workforce.

Rana Tarkenton 1:13:49
One of my favorite examples is I used to work at the Denver ScholarshipFoundation, which has given thousands of scholarships to Denver public schoolstudents over the last more than a decade at this point. And it is anincome-based, a needs-based
scholarship. And I don't know, several years in, we realized that, gosh, wereally want the scholars to have an opportunity to build their own networks andlearn networking skills and things that they may not have had access to. Andgosh, do I wish someone had done this for me.
I was younger. So before our big gala every year, we decided to host kind of anetworking 101 with the scholars to help them just practice and learn some ofthose things that you learn awkwardly over time.
No one ever teaches you in terms of how to go up and meet someone and do apolite introduction about what your interests are and what theirs are and wherethere may be commonality and then to do the follow up. We got them all businesscards and then that evolved into hosting networking events with our board andour donors and things like that.
I've seen so many scholars over the years who have been able to tap into thisnetwork of folks to get jobs, to get recommendations, to learn new things, andjust get exposure to new opportunities. And in fact, one, I
have mentored several of these students over the years. And when I knew that itwas working was when she actually reached out to my husband to help her get ajob. And so I was like, this is amazing. And yeah, I just, when you, again, Ibelieve that
People want to succeed. They want to grow and learn. And if you give them thetools on how to do it and let them fly, it's pretty incredible. So she nowworks for DaVita and gets to travel all over the country doing trainings andthings like that at different DaVita clinics.
Anyhow, great stories.

Tim Taylor 1:16:21
I can, I can share one.

Chelsea Miller 1:16:21
You are muted.
Sorry, I didn't know. I looked like Reanna was trying to talk.

Tim Taylor 1:16:26
But.

Reanna Werner 1:16:27
Thank you. I was, I was, I had some jets flying above my office that got reallyloud, so I had to put myself on mute.
We can't have a workforce conversation without talking about something verynon-workforce related, which is AI, because there is a direct impact to ourworkforce ecosystem.
With the durable skills and the foundational skills conversation, how dofoundational durable skills play into AI and what our workforce looks like inthe future?

Chelsea Miller 1:17:08
Oh, we probably need a whole other hour for this, but my super quick responseis that like one of the ways in which AI can show up is by like broadening thechasm that already exists between those who have skills to succeed in theworkplace and those who do not. So if you do not have the skills you need toset up a strong password today, digital skills,

Tim Taylor 1:17:11
But.

Chelsea Miller 1:17:29
a key foundational skill, you likely won't be able to prompt your AI of choicevery well, right? There's a strong correlation between those things. And so tome, it's like this conversation's never been more important because as workchanges so fast and the adoption of AI, right, and things like cognitive loadand blah, blah, blah, right?
having these strong sort of grounding in your foundational and durable skillsis ultimately what's going to set folks up for success. And so that's why Ithink, you know, it's so critical that we have more of these conversations nowto make sure that we're not leaving folks behind.

Reanna Werner 1:18:13
Absolutely. A friend of mine once said, AI is not going to take your job.People with AI skills will.
Similar, different, but yeah.

Tim Taylor 1:18:22
We, we were.
We work closely with Intel and one of their execs was in a meeting and said,you know, if everybody has the same AI, then what sets you apart? It's yourjudgment, it's your critical thinking, it's your growth mindset, it's yourright, it's the query. And the co-founders of Anthropic have come out and said,we hire exclusively for durable skills.
You don't need any tech skills at all to come work for us. We look for a reallyhigh demonstration of durable skills to get hired on in an AI company. And Ithink one other thing that's worth noting is that companies are now, like thesignals of companies' demand for this is now becoming really tangible. So EY,Ernst & Young, just recently announced
$100 million in bonuses for their employees who demonstrate durable skills.
That is, right, you think about how EY as one of the leaders in this and whatthey are doing is leaning heavily in to being able to do all of the skills thatare defined as durable skills. And similarly, colleges are now giving credit.So University of Maine and some community colleges in Kansas,
are now offering credit for demonstrating durable skills. And so all of thisthat we've been talking about and for years of the research that we've beendoing has largely been on what we're seeing is demand. When you see the marketmove in terms of companies investing in it and schools giving credit for it, weknow that this is where it's headed, right? This is

Chelsea Miller 1:19:36
Right.

Tim Taylor 1:19:54
All the signals are there.

Georgia Reagan 1:19:57
And I want to add in just another layer of thinking about AI is that it, as youmentioned, Chelsea, it has the potential to widen this existing already verywide chasm. And if developed intentionally, it can be a resource
for helping these people learn some of these technical or durable skills,helping people with contextualized learning so that as they're learningEnglish, they're learning the kind of English they would see in a healthcareenvironment. So I think there's also a lot of potential and
Maybe I'm a little bit of a Pollyanna in this sense, but there's a, if doneintentionally, it could really help support people who have these foundationalskills gaps and durable skills gaps. But it really, the people have to bedeveloped intentionally into that process.

Reanna Werner 1:21:02
Absolutely. Intentional development is so critical. And I agree, AI could be avery wide and broad conversation, but I really do appreciate all of yourthoughts. As we start to wrap up, in the spirit of Show Me Yours, I'd like toknow from you guys,
In the past, what's something we've gotten wrong about preparing people forwork and entering the workforce? And what have we learned from it?

Georgia Reagan 1:21:36
I can start. I, this always, whenever I hear this question, I think back tomaybe, I think it was 2020, sometime mid-COVID, and there was a very famous,very famous influencer who said, people just don't want to work. They justdon't want to show up. They don't care.
And so one of the things that I think that comments really developed waslearning, was research. And I think some of that, so I got some of theseresearch bites to kind of share.
You know, in 2025, 6 million Americans who were not counted in the labor forcesaid they wanted a job. So again, what Reanna mentioned, when people are goingto, why they're interested in any programs, because they want a job. The mostcommon reasons that people were not working included having health limitations,having a disability,
family, caregiving, elder care, child care, transportation, a lot of factorsthat are out of people's control. And also a national survey found that 60% ofworkers that were surveyed, they felt they lacked a quality job because theydidn't, they lacked control over their schedules.
They had limited input in workplace decisions. But ultimately, what all of thisis saying is that people want a job. They want to get out there and work. Theywant to support their family. It is, for many people, a part of their identity.And so I think this is something that I always
You know, I think while that was an ignorant statement, it's also led to morereasons, more clear reasons about why the truth about people wanting to workand the types of work that they want. They want it to be accessible. And soinstead of, you know, thinking, why don't people want to work?
But really changing that question to be, how can we better ensure that peoplehave access to work opportunities and good jobs?

Rana Tarkenton 1:23:54
I think.
And this was alluded to earlier.
People are going to change careers over the course of their life. I think weput too much emphasis on the technical field, the choosing the major, thechoosing a specific pathway, and not enough on the need to continue to grow
and learn. And so, I mean, it comes right back to durable skills, but there'salso something in there around, we've over-indexed kind of towards thatentry-level job and not on career growth and progression. And I think AI andhow quickly it will continue to change jobs and the economy is only going toamplify this
this over-indexing more because, I mean, I'm going to have to learn new skillsbefore next year to keep on going in my job. You know, we're all going to haveto. And so how we think about upskilling and reskilling and new skillingincumbent employees and giving them an opportunity to
continue to grow in their careers, I think is something that we have, wehaven't really gotten right yet.

Tim Taylor 1:25:16
Well, I would, I would double down on that, right? If...
Going into coding was a great major just a few years ago. The world is going, Idon't think we have any clue how fast the world is going to change with what'scoming in AI. And so I do think that, you know, certainty is a really toughthing. I mean, but
But durable skills seem to be the thing that are going to are going to outlastthis, right? That it's going to take to be able to work and partner with thecomputers and to know and right. There's going to be things that AI does betterthan humans. There's going to be things that humans do better than AI. Andthere's going to be the things that human and AI together
We'll do the right, we'll do the best. So let's, and I don't know that we couldeven predict which of those are going to win the horse race, but I do believeultimately that these durable skills are going to help everyone in every careerpath forever and ever. And not leaning into this in earlier grades and makingsure young people have them, it seems like the safest bet that we've got in

Chelsea Miller 1:26:17
It was.

Tim Taylor 1:26:25
in education systems right now.

Chelsea Miller 1:26:30
And I'll end violent agreement with everything that's been said. I think theone piece that I feel like we've gotten wrong is like any emergence ofshort-term credentials. Like I think this concept of how fast organizations canhave ready talent
is shifting. I, you know, a great example that sort of illustrates what Reannamentioned around career development. I once had a panicked business partnercome to me. Oh my God, we need cybersecurity analysts. And so I trained a bunchof cybersecurity analysts and I was like, here's 900 people because of thescale of the organization. And they needed 4.
team, entry level workers, and what they actually needed was tech, likecybersecurity people, one, trained to be tech twos. That's what they needed,but they did, they couldn't open the aperture, right? They didn't understandthe data that they had enough. And I think that happened, that's anillustrative example of something we hear over and over again.
Or, hey, I needed this six months ago. Well, that's great. It's going to takeyour local community college partner a year. Can you wait? How can you augment?What do you need? How can we start these conversations sooner? Because I thinkthat that's been a miss, right? It does not, you do not need a degree to solveeverything. I think that's been a great step in the right direction, but we dohave to get clearer on how much time it takes.
train in some of these things, particularly the foundational skills, to makesure that folks are set up for success.

Reanna Werner 1:28:00
Beautifully said, Chelsea. Wow, I'm blown away by all of you guys. And I'mgoing to be the first to say, and I think the rest of our audience will saythis, I cannot wait to connect with all of you guys in person at the conferencecoming up here. Again, everybody, we are going to all convene at the CareerConnected Learning Conference
through the Attainment Network, our wonderful, gracious hosts in ColoradoSprings at the Antlers Hotel. Reanna, can I ask you to jump in and tell ourviewers a little bit more of what they can expect during next week'sconference?

Rana Tarkenton 1:28:40
Absolutely. We'll have more than 400 cross-sector educators from K-12,post-secondary, workforce development professionals, state policy leadersconvening to have a focused conversation and learning together around how tobuild really strong career pathways.
There'll be talk about durable skills. There will be the requisite AIdiscussion. There will be talk about work-based learning. Our strands arecareer advising and navigation, employer-led innovations, data and evidencebuilding, because that's really important that we are looking at the data tosee what works and then making informed decisions about what to scale.
And then finally, learner and earner voices, because if we're not listening tothe people whose lives we are trying to improve, then we're making a mistakeright from the beginning. So would love to have folks there. And yeah, we'llsee you there. We'll make sure we drop the link into.
The notes for the show.

Reanna Werner 1:29:45
Absolutely. Yes, everybody, all of the links for registering to the CareerConnected Learning Conference are down below in your show notes. Hurry up andclick on that link to reserve your spot now, because I do know that they'reprobably going to be selling out very soon. We are coming down to the wire asfar as registrations go.
Thank you to all of our guests today, Reanna, Chelsea, Tim, Georgia. You guyswere just the absolute perfect way to start this week and my day off and justhearing such brilliant minds discuss.
Incredibly important context and content. Tim, I echo your sentiments are.
We're seeing great changes. And I don't think any of us know what we're in foras far as these changes. They say that today is the most important industrialrevolution in history. And there's a reason for that. It's impacting whitecollar workers, not so much blue collar workers. It's coming at
a whirlwind space or pace. It's a very exciting time to be alive, and it's evenmore exciting being able to watch our workforce evolve from such a uniqueviewpoint, such as all five of us have.

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S2 E9 Beyond the Resume Panel Discussion: The Skills That Help People Thrive at Work

Transcript

Helping you sleep better at night.