In this conversation, Haley Glover — senior director of UpSkill America at the Aspen Institute — speaks with Molly Dodge and Jennifer Gasiorek — leaders from Ivy Tech Community College — about RAND's recent report on the college's Achieve Your Degree (AYD) program. They discuss the importance of employer-supported education, the motivation behind the AYD, what RAND's evaluation tells us about the impact of this work.

For more information on the RAND report, check out, "Employers as Partners in the Success of Working Adult Learners: The Achieve Your Degree Program": https://www.rand.org/pubs/research_reports/RRA3681-1.html

To learn more about Ivy Tech, visit: https://www.ivytech.edu/

For more from UpSkill America, visit: https://www.aspeninstitute.org/programs/upskill-america/

Since the mid-1900s, the nine-to-five work schedule has often been viewed as the standard. For many workers, this schedule has never worked. Parenting and other caregiving responsibilities, health challenges, the pursuit of education and skills, existing employment, and other factors mean many people do not have a lot of predictability and consistency in their availability. Some may only be able to work a few hours a week and may not know week to week when that can happen. And yet, many obviously need to work to get by and meet their basic needs. While app-based platforms have often been heralded for providing the flexibility workers in these situations need, these jobs have often perpetuated low wages and low job quality standards.

In this event — hosted by the Aspen Institute Economic Opportunities Program on January 21, 2026 — we explore how Workforce Investment Boards, labor unions, and businesses are adapting to this context and striving to ensure that those who need a flexible and adaptable work arrangement don’t have to endure low quality jobs and low wages.

Our speakers include Marcy Chong (Director, Service Employees International Union), Minsun Ji (Executive Director, Rocky Mountain Employee Ownership Center; Executive Director, Drivers Cooperative-Colorado), Wingham Rowan (Project Lead, Beyond Jobs), Nick Schultz (Consultant; Former Executive Director, Pacific Gateway Workforce Investment Network), and moderator Matt Helmer (Director, Job Quality and Worker Well-Being, Economic Opportunities Program, The Aspen Institute).

For more information about this event, including a transcript, speaker bios, and additional resources, visit our website.

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This event is part of our Job Quality in Practice series.

When contemporary conversations on the “future of work” began a decade ago, most of the technologies that would define that term still resided comfortably in the realm of science fiction, or were only just emerging into public view — self-driving cars, artificial intelligence, and personal deliveries at the push of a button. Today — after a pandemic that prompted many to reexamine their relationship with their jobs, exposed the precarity of work for many more, and accelerated the adoption of technology — all these phenomena have come into their own, to varying degrees. Regulators, employers, and commentators alike struggle to keep pace with what this means for our labor force and for the role work will play in our society in the decades to come.

All year we’ve been marking the tenth anniversary of Aspen Institute's Future of Work Initiative with an editorial series examining the lessons learned from a decade of "future of work" discourse, with contributions from leaders in academia, business, labor, policy, and philanthropy. This discussion with Future of Work Fellows and contributors to explore how, together, we can shape a future of work that works for all Americans.

This conversation includes opening remarks from Future of Work Initiative Director Liba Wenig Rubenstein, followed by a panel discussion with Mary L. Gray (Senior Principal Researcher, Microsoft Research), Michelle Miller (Director of Innovation, Center for Labor and a Just Economy, Harvard Law School), Arun Sundararajan (Harold Price Professor of Entrepreneurship and Director, Fubon Center for Technology Business and Innovation, NYU Stern School of Business), and moderator Anmol Chaddha (Principal, Omidyar Network, and Fellow, Future of Work Initiative).

For more information about this event, including a transcript, speaker bios, and additional resources, visit our website.

For highlights from this discussion, subscribe to our YouTube channel.

Or subscribe to our podcast to listen on the go.
This event is part of our Opportunity in America series.