The Skills Revolution at Escape Velocity

Recorded live at the 2025 ASU+GSV Summit in San Diego, this session featured Luben Pampoulov, Partner at GSV Ventures; Bijal Shah, Chief Executive Officer at Guild; Lissy Hu, CEO at Ascend Learning; Greg Hart, CEO at Coursera; and Chris Caren, CEO at Turnitin. As the first session of the 2025 StarTrack programming, this session was introduced by Meredith Rosenberg, Partner & Co-founder of NU Advisory Partners.

The session addressed the urgent need for upskilling in an era where AI agents are increasingly outperforming human workers. Speakers explored how to cultivate human talent that can be meaningfully enhanced by algorithms rather than displaced by them. They discussed strategies to equip individuals with durable skills for long-term career success and examined the evolving relationship between human capabilities and machine intelligence. The conversation highlighted the importance of lifelong learning and the role of education and workforce platforms in accelerating skill development at scale.