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Dr. Angela Jackson    

Harvard University Professor of Entrepreneurship & Innovation; Future of Work Strategist & Writer

Dr. Angela Jackson is a Professor of Entrepreneurship and Innovation at Harvard Graduate School of Education and the Chief Executive Officer at Future Forward Strategies, a labor market intelligence, design thinking and strategy firm. An expert in impact investing and Environmental, Social, and Corporate Governance (ESG), and a leading voice on the future of work, Dr. Jackson has deep knowledge of the technology trends that are transforming organizations, and the human capital infrastructure necessary to ensure long-term profitability and sustainability.

As a Managing Partner at New Profit, a Boston-based venture philanthropy, she was the architect of the Future of Work Grand Challenge, an initiative that reskilled 25,000 workers impacted by COVID-19 and placed them in living wage jobs, and resulted in the development of an innovation ecosystem of over 60 employers, foundations and education operating partners. She is an advisor to Guild Education, Freedom Learning Group, and Education Design Lab, and serves on the boards of Beyond 12 and Summer Search.

Dr. Jackson is passionate about modernizing the public education to employment system, and advancing academic and professional opportunities for women, people of color, and veterans. Her work and writing has been featured in CNN, Forbes, Fortune, Huffington Post, Newsweek, Stanford Social Innovation Review and Harvard Business Review.

Having been a senior advisor to over 100 workforce EdTech startup organizations, Dr. Jackson uses her deep domain expertise to transform portfolio company's talent and sales functions in order to drive growth, scale and liquidity events. She works with executive teams to connect social impact outcomes to broader business goals, proving that business is a critical platform for change. Dr. Jackson holds a doctoral degree from Harvard University, where her research focused on using capital as a lever in service of systems change. She also holds business, marketing and journalism degrees, and certifications from University Missouri-Columbia and INSEAD Business School.

Speech Topics

The Grand Challenge of Modernizing the American Workforce

Automation. A growing skills gap. Low wages. The enormous challenges we face related to the Future of Work have now been heightened by the global pandemic and rising inequities. How will we rebuild the economy and create a future of work that works for everyone? Dr. Angela Jackson will share insights and lessons from the Future of Work Grand Challenge — a multi-million dollar effort to rapidly reskill displaced workers into higher-wage jobs and workforce success. In her talk, Dr. Jackson will share ideas about competitive challenges spurs innovation by putting equity at its core, sourcing ideas from diverse entrepreneurs, elevating frontline workers in the challenge design, and advancing solutions that serve the most under-invested workers. The session will address the importance of worker-centered design and solutions; key learnings to fuel effective, equitable and rapid reskilling; and insights on what still needs to be done to create a future of work that works for everyone.

The Future of Work Is Human

Throughout human history, talent was primarily a function of the production of tangible, physical assets. Recent research has revealed that over the past fifty years the source of value creation shifted from tangible, physical assets to intangible assets notably human capital. In 2020 intangible assets, primarily human capital, comprises 90% of all enterprise value in the S&P 500. Additionally, as we hand off more and more mentally routine or predictable tasks to technology, human talent and ingenuity become increasingly important. The Securities and Exchange Commission began requiring all public companies disclose their human capital in order to provide investors insight into the operating model, talent planning, learning and innovation, employee experience, and the work environment. As a result, Dr. Jackson predicts we have entered the human capital era, an era in which we realize that humans are assets to develop rather than costs to contain—a profound shift in how we think about work and learning.

Business as a force for good: 5 Trends to Watch

Dr. Angela Jackson has been a senior advisor to over 100 workforce EdTech startup organizations. She has used her deep domain expertise to transform portfolio company's talent and sales functions in order to drive growth, scale and liquidity events. In this keynote she outlines how executive teams can connect social impact outcomes to broader business goals, proving that business is a critical platform for change.

Turning Urban Youth to Global Citizens: Transform how we prepare students with skills to succeed in a global economy and workforce

Based on her 2013 Urban youth talk, Dr. Angela Jackson explains the importance of exposing children from disinvested communities to culture and languages prepared to succeed in a global economy. She shares her experience working with underestimated students who have the potential to be global citizens if people who care about the future of the world think in innovative ways to expand their horizons and battle statistics. She talks about our work as an education advisor to education leaders to create programs that not only give students transferable job skills, but the educational mindsets to break the cycle of poverty within their own communities.

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