We’re just 10 days away from the big education conference SXSW EDU 2023 in Austin, Texas.
WorkingNation will be among the thousands taking part in the four-day annual gathering of thought leaders discussing the critical role education plays in our lives and livelihoods. We are once again proud to be a media partner with SXSW EDU and have a lot of stories to tell around the topic.
We’re Talking About Education and Career Pathways
This year the conference is focusing on multiple issues including the reworking of the education system to better prepare learners for the workforce, accessibility and inclusion, public policy and civic engagement, and the role tech in the way we learn.
We’re be talking about all these with many leaders from academia, nonprofits, government an,d business for our signature digital interview series WorkingNation Overheard.
If you are in Austin, we’ll be set up in the SXSW EDU Expo Hall on Tuesday, March 7 and Wednesday, March 8. Stop by and say hello!
And if you can’t make the conference, you can follow the conversations on all our WorkingNation social media. We’ll be sharing parts of the interviews all week.
Look for us at @WorkingNation #WorkingNationOverheard #SXSWEDU23.
By the way, last year, we spoke with more than two dozen people for Overheard. You can catch up on those conversations here.
We’re Talking About Skills-Based Hiring
Do you really need a bachelors degree to succeed in a career, or even get hired in a good-paying job for that matter?
I’ll be moderating a panel on Monday on how we can break down the invisible barrier to economic mobility – the lack of a four-year degree. The conversation comes out of the work our friends and partners at Opportunity@Work started with the HireSTARs and Tear Down the Paper Ceiling campaigns.
Joining me in the discussion are Bridgette Gray of Opportunity@Work, Patti Constantakis of Walmart.org, and Kenny Nguyen of ThreeSixtyEight.
We’re Talking About DEIA
For the past three years, WorkingNation has spent a lot of time discussing expanding access to education and careers for people with disabilities.
That’s the subject of our Thursday panel lead by our president Jane Oates.
Jane has an amazing group of panelists joining that discussion – Kathy Martinez of Expedia Group, Claudia Gordon of T-Mobile, and Hiren Shukla of EY.
Martinez is partially-sighted and Gordon is deaf, both since a young age. They share their personal insight into what it means to be a person with a disability in the workforce and how they are working to empower people with disabilities. Shukla founded and leads the EY Neuro-Diverse Centers of Excellence which focuses on expanding access for the neurodivergent.
It should be an amazing conversation.
Jane will be having a very busy week!
She’ll also be joining Scott Pulsipher of Western Governors University, Michael Hansen of Cengage Group, and David Barnes of IBM in a discussion of how changes in some current education policies could help quickly expand education access to millions of learners.
It’s an important topic considering how expanded access could help us further close the skills gap in today’s workforce and prepare American workers for sustainable employment in good jobs.
We hope to see you in Austin – or at least on social media!
