Despite many employers complaining about not being able to find talent during “The Great Resignation,” there’s one group of our nation's population that is more than ready to tackle any kind of job, our veterans. However, amongst all the flag waving, the “thank you for your servicing,” and patriotic social media posts on holidays, the jobless rate for all veterans rose to 6.5% across 2020 (for reference, the non-military unemployment rate rose to 6.7% over 2020). Tony Stewart, a 20-year-veteran of the U.S. Naval Submarine fleet, found a new mission after leaving the Navy. An impressive tenure creating dozens of new Navy SEAL classes and as a legislative member of The American Legion, Tony eventually cofounded Us4Warriors, a group dedicated to helping veterans, active-duty military, and their families overcome hardships to improve their ability to contribute to society. Boasting dozens of programs, ranging from providing food, shelter, and medical needs, to counseling, athletic programs, and even blockchain based programming, Tony understands what returning veterans need to orient themselves in a changing workforce, so they can unleash their full potential. With many employers and job seekers still struggling to find and maintain work, and with the end of November marking the end of Veterans month, Tony’s insights and experience couldn't come at a more perfect time. So with that...let’s bring it in!

In the early 2010s, a study was conducted across the U.S. to get a sense of the levels of poverty in the nation. Staggeringly, in the supposed “wealthiest nation on Earth,” 1.5 million households were living on $2.00 a day, including over 3 million children. These were families where people had jobs, often multiple jobs, working their hardest and longest, and still were unable to escape from this extreme poverty, despite doing everything in their power to “pull themselves up by the bootstraps.” Luke Shaefer was one of the conductors of this study and has dedicated his life to educating people about the effects and causes of extreme poverty in America. As the longtime Professor of Social Justice and Social Policy and associate dean for research and policy engagement at the University of Michigan's Gerald R. Ford School of Public Policy, Luke’s work has been cited in the New York Times, Washington Post, The Economist, The Atlantic, and Los Angeles Times, and he has been featured on such programs as Marketplace and CNBC's Nightly Business Report. He compiled much of his research into the book $2.00 a Day: Living on Almost Nothing in America, co-authored by Kathryn Edin. The book was named one of the 100 Notable Books of 2015 by the New York Times Book Review and won the Hillman Prize for Book Journalism among other awards. Poverty is a full-time job and isn’t something that just goes away when a worker clocks in for their job. Luke understands how the effects of poverty permeate every part of a person's life, and ultimately, how that affects our economy, society, and country as a whole. In a time when power is shifting in the labor market, this is something that desperately needs to be talked about, so with that...let’s bring it in!

We’ve talked a lot about the importance of culture in the workplace, but what exactly is culture? How does it impact your company? Why is it such a make-or-break part of your company? Geoff Smart, Chairman and Founder of ghSMART and 3X Forbes Winner of Best Management Consulting Firm in its segment, has made developing a winning culture the foundation of his business. According to a Gallup study pre-pandemic, 70% of people who left their jobs said it had nothing to do with pay. It all came down to growth opportunities, teammates and managers, and culture. These numbers have only gotten worse during the pandemic, and it’s a large contributor to “The Great Resignation” we’re going through right now. Geoff and his ghSMART group combine psychological practices with the guidance of some of the most experienced managers in their fields, to tailor a strategy to develop a culture that fosters growth, inclusion, and the opportunity for every employee to win at work. So with that...let’s bring it in!

If you Google the word ‘talent’ and click the news tab, hundreds of articles pop up about the tightest labor market in people's lifetime. This environment has been changing hiring practices, starting wages, and caused many companies to send out desperate cries for new workers, hoping to find talented individuals to fill the gap. However, many employers are still unsatisfied with the amount of qualified applicants they’re receiving, despite the hundreds of thousands of workers still looking for a job. One way to tackle the issue that you won’t find being discussed as much in the news, is employers' ability to provide spaces to attract and develop talent. This is something Michael Solomon and Rishon Blumberg understand well and have weaved into the very fabric of their company, 10x Management, an agency that connects the worlds best developers with projects around the workforce. WIth both starting in the music industry working with legends such as Bruce Springstein, Sony Music, Epic Records, and Live Nation, representing, coaching, and developing talent is what these two specialize in. In 2020 they released their book, Game Changer: How To Be 10x in The Talent Economy diving into how companies, individuals, and teams can create a space where people can develop from good, to great, to 10x. This is another one of those episodes that are super timely, so with that...let’s bring it in!

According to a CDC Survey, 1 in 3 adults in the U.S. say they feel as though they don’t get enough sleep. The U.S. has the highest annual economic loss due to insufficient sleep in the world with up to $411 billion lost per year, mostly made of lost productivity from workers. Kristen Holmes is the Vice President of Performance Science at WHOOP, an innovative wearable that helps users optimize their days for peak performance. She works with hundreds of the best tactical, professional, surgical, and NCAA athletes and teams in the world helping them interpret WHOOP data to optimize training, recovery, and sleep behavior. Prior to her position at WHOOP, Kristen was the Head Coach for the Princeton Field Hockey Team, leading them to 12 national titles over her tenure. While she was creating one of the best field hockey programs in the nation, she also joined several projects that focused on using technology to track the recovery practices of high performing athletes, data that she brought to her coaching philosophy at Princeton. With rates of workplace fatigue, burnout, and declining mental health skyrocketing in a tight labor market and ongoing pandemic, the well being of our workforce needs to be at the forefront for managers and talent leaders. The workplace has often framed working through fatigue as a badge of honor, but Kristen has become a vocal speaker for the power of rest and recovery for both on the field and workplace. So with that...let’s bring it in!

While a lot of the national spotlight gets pushed to the federal level, the state and local levels are arguable what impact American constituents and businesses more on the day to day. Representative Joe Ciresi has dutifully served the 146th District in the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania since 2018 and has made it a priority to create an effective, all inclusive job training pipeline from K-12 to the workforce. Born in Long Island to two first generation Americans who had never gone to college, Rep. Ciresi learned at a young age the value of both encouraging vocational skills alongside expanding options to college. Prior to his election to the Pennsylvania House of Representatives, he served for nearly 20 years as the Director of Sales and Promotions at the Kimmel Center for Performing Arts. In addition, he spent 11 years as a board member of the Western Montgomery Career and Technology Center, which provides trade or skill classes not offered at conventional four-year universities. With things influencing the future of work like a rising gig economy, remote work, and a cultural emphasis on valuing desk based jobs, Rep. Ciresi’s experience in education, skill-based labor, and policy making put him in a great intersection to talk about how we can best support skill-based and frontline workers in our workforce. So with that...let’s bring it in.

The majority of working Americans today have temporary, unstable, low paying jobs. When a monthly job report flaunts how many ‘new jobs’ have been created, very often it’s these types of jobs. This discrepancy leaves a vast population in a state of constant poverty, stress, and in no exaggeration, life threatening circumstances. This is the crux of our guest, Jamie McCallum’s work. After years teaching at the University of New York, Jamie moved into a position at Middlebury College as an Associate Professor on Sociology, focusing on labor, politics, and globalization. His latest book “Worked Over: How Round-the-Clock Work is Killing the American Dream,” hones in on those most overworked, underpaid, and vulnerable, from the Amazon warehouses to Rust Belt factories to California’s gig economy. It’s the hours of low-wage workers that are the most the most subject to crises. These are the exact people that in the midst of the pandemic, we were calling heroes, and now, many employers are calling them ‘lazy.’ How does that make sense? We can’t have a healthy society, we can’t stand for every worker, unless we take into account the health, safety, and wellbeing of every worker. This is an episode that’s essential to listen to, so with that...let’s bring it in!

In the 2018-2019 School Year, New Jersey Homelessness Statistics estimated that about 14,000 K-12 public school students experienced homelessness over the year. Of those homeless, approximately 9.2% were likely victims of human trafficking. Since COVID,  unfortunately these statistics have only increased. Since 1989 Covenant House New Jersey has served homeless youth across the state and from the very beginning, Jim White has been growing and working alongside the organization. Jim first started out in CHNJ developing their Rights of Passage, a transitional living program that is now used nationally across all Covenant House Locations. From there he became the Director of Covenant House’s Faith Community and was in charge of recruiting and training full time volunteers in six different locations. Since 1994 he has served as the Executive Director of all operations across CHNJ, helping serve hundreds of thousands of at-risk youth. Under Jim’s leadership, Covenant House has developed programs to fight youth homelessness, create job training and continued education opportunities, provide healthcare assistance including natal care, mental health services, HIV/AIDScare, substance rehabilitation, and offer young people across New Jersey a stable environment in their tumultuous lives. Caring about the future of work means caring about the future of our people. If young people aren’t given a chance at a stable life, then our society, and labor force, suffers from it. This is an episode you’re not going to want to miss so...let’s bring it in!

According to the Center for American Progress, 1 in 7 children fall under the poverty line and this was pre-pandemic. Over a year into the pandemic, 4 out of 10 children live in a family that struggles to meet basic needs and anywhere between seven to eleven million children live in a household with inconsistent access to meals from cost. It’s safe to say poverty, especially generational poverty, is the root of thousands of issues that plague our nation. Today’s guest has dedicated her life to advising educators and employers about the effects of generational poverty. Ruby Payne is a former lifelong educator, a Doctorate Recipient in Education and Development from Layola University Chicago, and the Founder of the aha Process! Inc, a group that informs schools, companies and other organizations about poverty. Ruby has authored a number of books focusing on the effects of poverty, most notably “A Framework for Understanding Poverty,” which looks at the effects of poverty from both an economical and psychological perspective and has since sold over 1.5 million copies since it’s publication. With 1 in 2 jobs considered sub-poverty line paying jobs, the work Ruby is doing is more crucial than ever, especially during a time when employers are struggling to find workers and many workers are struggling to make ends meet. We can’t have a truly inclusive discussion about the workforce, without addressing poverty so...let’s bring it in!

“Innovation brings promise or peril.” That’s one of the standout lines in the book "Industries of the Future" by today’s guest, Alec Ross. Alec’s experience as an entrepreneur, investor, political advisor, and educator, has given him a unique perspective on the relationship between business, government, and the people that make up these groups. Alec’s success in building a startup in the South Side of Chicago led him to be appointed to Former President Obama’s 2008 Election Campaign as the Convener of Technology and Media Policy and he also became the Senior Advisor for Innovation to the Secretary of State. Since then, he’s invested and built a portfolio of dozens of successful businesses, becoming a distinguished fellow at educational institutes like John Hopkins, Columbia University, and University of Bologna. He’s the author of two books, the New York Time’s Best Selling Industries of the Future, and the newly released "The Raging 2020s: Companies, Countries, People and the Fight for our Future." In a time where the power of technology is used to divide or unite, empower or replace, and continues to change rapidly, Alec’s insight into the relationship between technology, people, and the bodies that use tech is absolutely critical. This is an episode you definitely want to listen to more than once so with that...let’s bring it in!