Work, Redefined

When the System Works at Scale: Alyssa Alvarado on Real Jobs Rhode Island

Infosys Knowledge Institute — Mon, 12 Oct 2026 17:00:00 GMT

In this episode of the Work, Redefined Podcast, Scott Jensen, Head of the Future of Work practice at Infosys Public Services, sits down with Alyssa Alvarado, Executive Director of the Rhode Island Governor's Workforce Board, to discuss how a sector-based workforce system reached scale and how the data tells that story. Real Jobs Rhode Island, which lives at the Governor's Workforce Board, turns 10 this year, and Alvarado has been with it from the start. She reframes it as a platform and a strategy that thousands of demand-driven training programs run on, built around employer-led partnerships and cooperative agreements rather than a single top-down curriculum. She walks Jensen through the numbers that show the model working, from nearly 69,000 people trained to a 70% job placement rate and a 36% salary bump for new-hire completers, all at about $3,225 a person. She explains how braiding federal, state, and other funding around each trainee depends on a data system rigorous enough to track eligibility and outcomes, which is what lets the program stay flexible and makes it a partner employers can build their hiring around. Jensen and Alvarado close on where the model is headed next, from youth work-based learning to helping Rhode Island's employers and small businesses move from AI literacy toward being AI empowered.

Building a National Microelectronics Workforce: Shari Liss on the CHIPS-Era Crunch

Infosys Knowledge Institute — Mon, 05 Oct 2026 10:00:00 GMT

In this episode of the Work, Redefined Podcast, Scott Jensen, Head of the Future of Work practice at Infosys Public Services, sits down with Shari Liss, Vice President of Workforce Development and Initiatives at SEMI, to discuss how the semiconductor industry is building talent at national scale. SEMI is the worldwide industry association for semiconductor manufacturing, with about 4,000 member companies that together employ 1.5 million people around the world. Liss has spent years at the center of the CHIPS Act buildout, and she describes an industry that has come to see talent as the thing that could slow everything else down. She walks through what the US can learn from Singapore, Taiwan, and Europe, where a plan for the workforce tends to arrive alongside the investment rather than years behind it. She explains how the National Network for Microelectronics Education is meant to work, with the SEMI Foundation as national hub and the first regional nodes about to be announced, each one a coalition of community colleges, K-12 systems, workforce boards, and employers. Jensen and Liss close on why the stakes feel personal, since all of this investment ultimately depends on getting enough people excited to build a career in the industry.

Norm or Policy: Susie Forbath on Building Public-Sector Software That Serves Everyone

Infosys Knowledge Institute — Mon, 28 Sep 2026 10:00:00 GMT

In this episode of the Work, Redefined Podcast, Jud Neer, Senior Industry Principal at Infosys Public Services, sits down with Susie Forbath, Director of Product and Design at Carina, to discuss what it takes to build public-sector software that genuinely serves the people it reaches. Carina is a nonprofit platform that has connected Medicaid-funded consumers with home care providers for 19 million hours of care. Forbath argues that building for the public good and building well are the same craft, and that the sharpest product skill is telling a real policy limit from a norm that only looks like one. On AI she makes a case that runs against the grain: as tools make prototypes cheap to produce, the scarce and rising value is human judgment, ownership, and a liberal-arts habit of mind. Neer and Forbath close on the case for treating public-sphere products as a source of real-time evidence for better policy, and on why work that puts a testimonial in your inbox every morning is worth choosing.

Don't Repeat Green Jobs: Eric Seleznow on Apprenticeship in the AI Moment

Infosys Knowledge Institute — Mon, 21 Sep 2026 10:00:00 GMT

In this episode of the Work, Redefined Podcast, Scott Jensen, Head of the Future of Work practice at Infosys Public Services, sits down with Eric Seleznow, formerly Senior Advisor and Director of Jobs for the Future's Center for Apprenticeship and Work-Based Learning. Seleznow helped lead the 2015 Department of Labor initiative that put $175 million behind expanding apprenticeship beyond construction and the trades into healthcare, technology, and dozens of other sectors, and he explains why the model has consistently beaten other workforce strategies on wages and job longevity. He compares the US system to Switzerland's, where employer buy-in and early education integration build a far more mature pipeline, and reflects on how eight years of sustained federal investment under one administration created momentum that has been harder to hold since. Turning to AI, he draws a pointed parallel to the green jobs push of the 2000s, when training programs launched before anyone knew which jobs would actually exist, and argues the field should stay grounded in labor market data this time rather than chase headline numbers. Jensen and Seleznow close on the state of WIOA reauthorization and the still-unfinished work of integrating apprenticeship funding into a system built around older program structures.

Learn the Words: Abby McQuade on How Vendors Earn Government Trust

Infosys Knowledge Institute — Tue, 15 Sep 2026 20:15:21 GMT

In this episode of Work, Redefined Podcast, Jud Neer, Senior Industry Principal at Infosys Public Services, sits down with Abby McQuade, Senior Manager of Client Services and a colleague in the Future of Work practice, to discuss how technology vendors can serve the public sector better. McQuade spent a decade inside state and local government, including technology procurement at Rhode Island's Office of Management and Budget and at the Department of Labor and Training through the pandemic, so she has bought from vendors and sold as one. She argues the relationship functions as a partnership between people working toward the same public outcome, and that the common failure is arriving with something already fully formed. Her alternative is to research the agency, its programs, and how those programs touch constituents’ day-to-day, then ask the staff what you have wrong. Neer and McQuade close on the case for internalizing a partner's mission closely enough to feel the pressure they are working under, and on why public sector technology draws people in the first place.

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Boom, Bust, Rebuild: Harvard’s Rachel Lipson on Frontier Jobs

Infosys Knowledge Institute — Thu, 03 Sep 2026 10:25:59 GMT

In this episode of the Work, Redefined Podcast, Scott Jensen, who leads the Future of Work practice at Infosys Public Services, interviews Rachel Lipson, Research Fellow at the Harvard Kennedy School. Lipson argues that the US has long treated workforce development as anti-poverty policy rather than economic strategy. That framing has left the system underfunded and disconnected from the industries it's meant to serve. She introduces the concept of frontier jobs, brand new occupations created by emerging technologies, and contrasts them with retool jobs, where the occupation stays the same but the underlying skills shift. Drawing on research for her upcoming book, Lipson points to Colorado, where community colleges are extending existing optics and photonics programs into quantum computing. She also points to Northern Virginia, where the data center workforce grew out of nuclear and skilled trades expertise, and to Massachusetts, where a biotech training pipeline had to adapt quickly once federal research cuts and a retreating venture capital market shrank the jobs it was built for. She closes on a shift already underway in hiring: as AI increasingly handles resume writing, professional networks and interview presence are becoming the deciding factor in who gets hired.