Emerging technologies, demand for new skills, tight job markets, and other factors are drastically changing how people think about and participate in the workforce. As an Associate Director working on the Harvard Project on Workforce, Nathalie Gazzaneo is focusing on what the future of work should look like and what can be done by leaders in public policy, business, and education today to shape a postsecondary system that creates more and better pathways to economic mobility.
"Everyone talks about new technologies and the future of work, but what we really need is a lot more informed talking - and doing - to create the training and career systems that upskill and reskill people to be successful in future-proof, good jobs, thereby ensuring economic mobility for them and their families," Nathalie says. About two-thirds of American workers do not have a four-year college degree. Looking at specific demographics of American workers, 62% of Black workers and 55% of Latinx workers do not hold a traditional four-year degree. Instead, this diverse talent pool has largely gained critical skills through community colleges, micro-credentialing programs, on-the-job training, and other alternative training-to-job routes. It is crucial to consider these trends and how they manifest themselves in this moment in our history where only half of our children grow up to earn more than their parents, and both aggregate growth rates and an equal distribution of such growth are in decline.
Growing up in a middle class family in Brazil, Nathalie experienced these trends firsthand. She herself lived her childhood through the lens of a family unit that was impacted by economic and employment downturns. She credits these lived experiences with inspiring her deep commitment to creating systems that use technological advancements and innovation to cultivate more inclusive prosperity and human thriving.
Trained as a lawyer, Nathalie spent her early career as a public policy executive at Facebook in Latin America. She actively participated in public discussions around major federal regulations impacting technology and innovation, such as Brazil's Data Protection Act and Internet Act. She also championed the launch of social impact digital products that served millions of citizens, such as Facebook's Blood Donations feature. After half a decade working on public interest issues in the technology industry, Nathalie realized that she wanted to focus her leadership on ensuring emerging technologies and innovation become means to shared and inclusive economic growth, rather than multipliers of existing inequalities.
Driven by this goal, Nathalie applied and was accepted to Harvard's Kennedy School to complete her master's in public policy. There, she decided to focus specifically on political and economic development. Impressively, Nathalie was the recipient of the Fundação Estudar Scholarship, which is only awarded to 30 young Brazilian leaders from a pool of around 80,000 applicants each year. Her time at Harvard was formative; she was living in a new country, exploring the connections between technology and innovation policy and political and economic development, and becoming skilled in navigating these new dynamics with a global approach. While there, she produced research at the Belfer Center's Technology and Public Purpose Project to help venture capitalists and early-stage tech startups assess their business and technology for public purpose, and held positions in multiple teaching teams, including the Policy Design and Delivery team at the Public Leadership Credential, Harvard Kennedy School's flagship online learning initiative.
After completing her degree at Harvard, Nathalie stayed at the university to spearhead a research agenda called the Workforce Almanac, where she co-leads a team of researchers and technologists who are using data and technology to map the workforce development sector in the United States. As employers look for a diverse pipeline of talent and workers seek to refine their skills outside of traditional education routes, the team behind the Workforce Almanac strives to present a comprehensive view of the landscape of training providers and programs that can help people advance their careers and achieve economic mobility.
Policy work can at times feel miles away from the worlds of technology and innovation. But as Nathalie has seen firsthand, preparing for and building the future of work from which we will all benefit requires collaboration of innovative leaders across sectors. Leaders from policy, business, education, technology, and academia must come together to shape this future in the present - and in the process, have the opportunity to turn large, thorny policy challenges into successful collective missions.
