Learn/Earn/Relearn

The future of education extends beyond the classroom — we all have a stake in determining what changes need to happen in higher ed to meet current and coming challenges.

Rovy Branon, vice provost at the University of Washington Continuum College, believes that time is of the essence. Given that young people now have a better than 50% chance of living to 100 or greater, how they re-skill and learn for 60 years of work is key to their longevity and prosperity.

This has to be a larger conversation. So, UW Continuum College turned the spotlight on Learn/Earn/Relearn in a live event: the inaugural Continuum Convenes, a gathering of regional business and community leaders to address the challenges head-on and explore possible solutions.

Listen in as host Hanson Hosein, Rovy, and Jessie Woolley-Wilson, former CEO of DreamBox Learning and now operating partner of educational technology firm Owl Ventures, explore the following questions:

1. Can higher education produce the skills and expertise to meet the needs of a quickly changing economy?
2. Can we create a more accessible and inclusive post-secondary education system fast enough?
3. Can higher education keep up with the pace of change – in technology and society?

This Learn/Earn/Relearn episode reveals astonishing insights into developing a more accessible, flexible, and welcoming higher education system. We hope you enjoy the podcast and share it with your networks.

For more on how UW Continuum College is addressing the needs of nontraditional students, watch Rebecca Bramwell’s story at https://youtu.be/1El0zZi4UrY?si=f_NM1weCtrWCvesb and visit continuum.uw.edu.

In episode five of Learn/Earn/Relearn, we're looking ahead to the future. Will our 100-plus-year lives include "panda" sandwiches, engineered offspring, and freedom from disease? As we contemplate the technological changes that may lie ahead, our hosts ask — Are we ready?

How do educators, parents, and workers prepare themselves and others for a complex and fast-changing near-future? Co-hosts Rovy Branon and Hanson Hosein are speaking with renowned quantitative futurist and best-selling author Amy Webb about consequential trends that indicate what was once science fiction is nearly reality. Our mindset around learning may need to fundamentally shift because of this.

Futurists don't make predictions, says Amy Webb; they build rigorous data models, analyze the information those models reveal, and provide strategies to meet what's coming. But we're seeing a compression and acceleration of concern now, or, as Amy explains, VUCA (Volatility, Uncertainty, Complexity, and Ambiguity), as global forces and technologies become increasingly intertwined.

When we start talking about petri-dish grown "meat," bio-engineering, synthetic DNA, — the same innovations leading to the 100-year-life premise of this series — many of us grow uncomfortable.

But, Amy says, that discomfort is the motivation we need to contemplate the difficult decisions ahead for any institution subject to the forces of disruption — notably, in our instance, higher education.

We hope you'll listen to this fascinating discussion, check out Amy's book The Genesis Machine, and be a part of this uncomfortable but critical conversation.

Listen to previous episodes of Learn/Earn/Relearn and find out more about your hosts at https://www.continuum.uw.edu/about-us/podcast. Please feel free to email your thoughts to [email protected].

About our guest:

Amy Webb advises CEOs of the world’s most-admired companies, three-star admirals and generals, and the senior leadership of central banks and intergovernmental organizations.

Founder of the Future Today Institute, a leading foresight and strategy firm that helps leaders and their organizations prepare for complex futures, Amy pioneered a data-driven, technology-led foresight methodology that is now used within hundreds of organizations.

She is a professor of strategic foresight at the NYU Stern School of Business, where she developed and teaches the MBA course on strategic foresight. She is a Visiting Fellow at Oxford University’s Säid School of Business, a Nonresident Senior Fellow in the Atlantic Council’s GeoTech Center, a Fellow in the United States-Japan Leadership Program and a Foresight Fellow in the U.S. Government Accountability Office Center for Strategic Foresight.

She was elected a life member to the Council on Foreign Relations and is a member of the Bretton Woods Committee. She is a member of the World Economic Forum where she serves on the Global Future Council on Media, Entertainment and Culture and the Stewardship Board of the Forum's Platform for Shaping the Future of Media, Entertainment and Culture.

Amy was a Visiting Nieman Fellow at Harvard University, where her research received a national Sigma Delta Chi award. She was also a Delegate on the former U.S.-Russia Bilateral Presidential Commission, where she worked on the future of technology, media and international diplomacy.

She is the author of several popular books, including The Big Nine: How the Tech Titans and Their Thinking Machines Could Warp Humanity, which was longlisted for the Financial Times & McKinsey Business Book of the Year award, shortlisted for the Thinkers50 Digital Thinking Award, and won the 2020 Gold Axiom Medal for the best book about business and technology, and The Signals Are Talking: Why Today’s Fringe Is Tomorrow’s Mainstream, which won the Thinkers50 Radar Award, was selected as one of Fast Company’s Best Books of 2016, Amazon’s best books 2016, and was the recipient of the 2017 Gold Axiom Medal for the best book about business and technology.

Amy was named by Forbes as one of the five women changing the world, listed as the BBC’s 100 Women of 2020, ranked on the Thinkers50 list of the 50 most influential management thinkers globally. Her latest book, The Genesis Machine, explores the futures of synthetic biology and was named one of the best books of 2022 by The New Yorker.

Back-to-school time used to mean August/September... is that accurate anymore?

Probably not, say our hosts Rovy Branon, Vice Provost for Continuum College at the University of Washington, and Hanson Hosein, co-founder of a UW graduate program in Communication Leadership. Given increasing life spans and the acceleration of technology and its impacts on our work lives, well, institutions of learning may need faster revolving doors.

As you listen to this series, you may be considering your options for your own and your family's future. Is your profession likely to change radically during your career? How do you prepare your kids for a work life that will probably look very different from your own? In this part 1 of episode 4, we discuss, Why we should consider going back to school?

Guest Anne Szeto, Amazon Director of Strategic Recruiting and Academic Relations, spends a lot of time thinking about how to help Amazon prepare for a future that may not exist today.

Transitioning into an ambiguous future—whether your own or your organization's—is tricky. What are recruiters looking for? And how can education prepare future leaders with so many unknown variables in terms of skills, education, and needs? When does an employer such as Amazon want its employees to go “back to school?” And why is it so important to the company?

In part 2 of episode 4, guest, colleague, and UW Continuum College Director of Enrollment Services Danial Powers details how continuing learners can get the education and tools to be successful in that next great role.

Going back to school can seem daunting, from the obvious question of How do I know what classes to take? to the less obvious but equally unsettling, What if I'm the oldest person in the room — including the Prof?

Fortunately, institutions like UW Continuum College are aware of the needs and concerns of older students. Conversations with enrollment coaches can help potential students understand their learning styles, consider the realities of adding schoolwork on top of everything else, and evaluate the full range of options they have to make learning work for them.

About our guests:

Anne Szeto leads a 125-person Strategic Recruiting and Academic Partnerships team at Amazon where she is focused on building and cultivating specialized talent communities, particularly in applied research and design.

The team is embedded in Recruiting Engine, which builds next-generation technology to improve and enhance recruiting processes and the experience of job seekers.

She joined Amazon in 2008 as the company’s first executive recruiter and has recruited and coached senior leaders across multiple businesses globally. Since joining Amazon, Anne has experienced the company’s employee population grow by 100,000X.

Anne also sits on Amazon’s Science Leadership team, dedicated to accelerating customer-obsessed science. Anne previously worked at an organizational design and executive search consultancy in New York. She conducted graduate studies in economics and Slavic cultures and languages. Her undergraduate studies was in biochemistry and history.

As director of Enrollment Services, Danial Powers is one of the foremost experts on advising prospective students on their return to school. She’s responsible for the management of student recruitment, admissions, and enrollment for Professional and Continuing Education certificate programs and select degrees offered by UW Continuum College.

Danial is also responsible for developing and implementing an enrollment management strategy for certificate programs and for defining the goals, staffing, policies, budget, and processes according to industry best practices. Learn more about Danial on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/dpowers/. Learn more about Enrollment Coaching on the UW website: https://www.pce.uw.edu/about-us/enrollment-coaching.

“You’re not college material, Rovy,” said the high school counselor to the now-head of professional and continuing education at the University of Washington.

To be fair, Rovy admits that his counselor was probably correct at that time in his life. In the end, a non-traditional route to higher education was the answer, allowing Rovy to access higher education when he was ready.

In this episode, Rovy Branon and Hanson Hosein are talking with guests Asha Aravindakshan and Paul Fain about just that — meeting students “where they are,” personally and professionally.

The “traditional” path of finishing high school and going directly to college at 17 or 18, living on campus, and finishing a Bachelor’s degree at 21 or 22 is only experienced by about 20% of students in higher education.

So how are institutions of higher education meeting students where they are and when they are ready?

Asha Aravindakshan is the first person friends call when they want to make a career move. Early in her career, she learned the importance of identifying and articulating her own transferable skills to land jobs she loves. Asha also developed key skills in relationship building and business networking to overcome the loneliness that many job seekers experience.

Among her volunteer and advisory positions, she served on the alumni boards of both of her alma maters. This vantage, along with her own experiences, led Asha to write her debut book, Skills: The Common Denominator, to help people find fulfillment in their professional lives.

During her executive career, she streamlined business operations to maximize accountability, growth and strategic alignment of diverse organizations. Asha speaks regularly on the future of work and digital transformation. She holds a B.B.A. from The George Washington University and M.B.A. from the MIT Sloan School of Management.

Find her on Twitter and Instagram @dcasha, on LinkedIn at https://www.linkedin.com/in/ashaa12/ and on Facebook at https://www.facebook.com/skillsthecommondenominator.

Paul Fain writes The Job, a newsletter about connections between education and work. He also recently helped found a new weekly publication, Work Shift, which features in-depth reporting on workforce issues.

For the last decade, Fain was a reporter and editor at Inside Higher Ed. He oversaw the news outlet's coverage of nontraditional students, policy, and more. Fain also was the founding host of the successful podcast, The Key with Inside Higher Ed, and managed IHE's coverage of the pandemic in 2020.

Before IHE, Fain was a senior reporter at The Chronicle of Higher Education, where he covered leadership and finance for more than six years. A former staff writer for C-Ville Weekly in Charlottesville, Va., Fain has written for The New York Times and contributed chapters for books on innovation in higher education, published by the Harvard University Press and the Stanford University Press. A graduate of the University of Delaware, he is a native of Dayton, Ohio, and currently lives in Takoma Park, Md.

Find Paul on Twitter @paulfain and find his newsletter, The Job, at @workshiftnews. You can also contact Paul on LinkedIn, https://www.linkedin.com/in/paul-fain-5428b719/. Find his organization, OpenCampusMedia, at their website, https://www.opencampusmedia.org/ or on LinkedIn at https://www.linkedin.com/company/opencampusmedia/.

If you’re a student or considering going back to school to reskill, upskill, or fulfill your own curiosity, how can colleges, universities, tech schools, etc., remove boundaries and make you feel welcome? Let us know your thoughts at [email protected].

Learn more about hosts Rovy Branon and Hanson Hosein on the University of Washington Continuum College website: https://www.continuum.uw.edu/about-us/podcast. And please share, rate, and review this podcast wherever you listen to podcasts.

Imagine living to one hundred years or more! Thanks to technological advances, a 25-year-old living in the United States today is likely to do just that. Sustaining this extended lifespan presents all kinds of challenges — and compelling opportunities.

Younger generations will have to “re-boot” professionally every few years. What will it mean to support and sustain multiple livelihoods? What tools do we need to see the disruptions that are coming, and what resources are out there to help us adapt? It’s time to reimagine what we mean by “career.”

In each episode of Learn/Earn/Relearn, University of Washington Continuum College Vice Provost Rovy Branon and UW Communication Leadership Co-Founder Hanson Hosein explore with national experts the essential skills, credentials, and vocational credibility necessary to thrive throughout a longer life.

Find out more about Learn/Earn/Relearn at our website, https://www.continuum.uw.edu/about-us/podcast. Send us feedback at [email protected]. And of course, be sure to subscribe and review, wherever you listen to podcasts.