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Date and Location
Jamel McMullin
How can higher education reimagine itself to better meet the future of work? That’s the driving question behind Kathleen deLaski’s new book, Who Needs College Anymore?, which draws on a decade of her research as founder of the Education Design Lab as well as interviews with experts, employers, teachers, and students.
Join a conversation with deLaski and Taubman Center Executive Director Rafael Carbonell as they discuss the role that state and local government can play in shaping policy for a changing college landscape and how education, workforce development, and economic development can work together more seamlessly. They will also explore deLaski’s inspiration for writing her book, what she’s learned since its publication, and the reactions to her research.
In addition to founding the Education Design Lab, deLaski spent twenty years as a journalist, including time as White House correspondent.
She currently serves as a senior advisor to the Project on Workforce at Harvard University and teaches human-centered design and higher ed reform as an adjunct professor in the Honors College at George Mason University. Kathleen is an alumna of the Harvard Kennedy School.
Guest Speaker:
Kathleen deLaski founded the Education Design Lab in 2013, seeing the need for a non-profit to help learning institutions and other emerging school-to-work providers design more equitable education and hiring models toward a fast changing world of work. Using a human-centered design process, the Lab has co-created 100 pilots to demonstrate where “college” needs to move to support the changing needs of learners, earners and employers. The Lab has worked with and built innovation capacity at 200+ colleges and helped them redefine their role with employers, cities, regions, as groups look to transform the broken talent pipeline and address the wealth gap. Recently moving from CEO to Chairman of the Board, Kathleen has been asked to speak globally to set the stage for how the future of work meets the advent of skills-based, visible, work-integrated learning and what that means for New Majority Learners and earners.
In addition, Kathleen serves as the president of the deLaski Family Foundation, a leading grant-maker in education reform and new pathways to the middle class. She founded or co-founded three previous education non-profits, including EdFuel, a national organization working to build a diverse talent leadership pipeline for K-12 education. Previously, Kathleen served for eight years on the Governor-appointed Board of Visitors for George Mason University, chairing the Academic Affairs and Diversity committees.
Kathleen created Sallie Mae’s award-winning college access foundation and co-founded Building Hope, a charter school facilities financing non-profit. In previous careers, Kathleen was a television correspondent for ABC News covering the White House and foreign affairs, a consumer product developer in the early days of AOL and was appointed by President Clinton as the first woman to serve as chief Pentagon spokesperson.