Rearchitecting the future of work and workforce development is critical at a moment when millions of displaced and underserved workers are facing systemic barriers to even providing for themselves and their families. A wave of transformative possibilities—from reskilling to alternative post-secondary pathways and technological innovation to policy change—have started to take root, led by social entrepreneurs, and the time is now to invest behind them to drive towards equitable economic opportunity.

“We want to make sure that we’re actually centering proximate leaders who are thinking about workers and centering worker values,” Dr. Angela Jackson, a partner at New Profit who leads its Future of Work Initiative, explained. “For too long, we’ve had entrepreneurs developing innovations, supposedly to help workers, but not working with them. And so, our goal…is really to shift the power dynamic and to think about how we center workers and their lived realities.”

Watch the full video about workforce development at Worth.