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 this bonus sixth episode of Learn/Earn/Relarn, the podcast team looks back on the series — lessons learned, concerns uncovered, inspiration, excitement, and opportunities revealed. 

In the first part of episode 6, hosts Rovy Branon and Hanson Hosein recap episode 5 with futurist Amy Webb. The future is coming fast and furious — are we ready to meet it?  

Rovy and Hanson also connect dots between our five episodes and the continuing questions: How do educators prepare the workers of the future? and How will the very nature of education have to change in response to advances in technology and longevity? 

In the second part of this episode, the podcast editorial and production team, including Tia Over of Spring Green Communications and Shannon Perry of Audiotocracy Podcast Production, talk about why this content was perfect for a podcast. Intimate, exploratory, portable, accessible, and repeatable podcasts fit how we live our lives. 

After all, effective communications will be critical in the future we've been talking about — perhaps even more crucial than now. Having the flexibility and opportunity to learn and use the best available technology is undoubtedly one of the biggest takeaways from this series. 

Thank you for joining us at Learn/Earn/Relearn. We hope you'll continue to share the episodes and let them fuel your conversations about how to prepare for the future that's ahead — or already here. 

Find out more about the series and your hosts at https://www.continuum.uw.edu/about-us/podcast, and learn more about Rovy's talk at South by Southwest at https://www.continuum.uw.edu/latest-news/articles/continuum-college-rovy-branon-speak-sxsw-edu. 

About Shannon Perry: https://www.linkedin.com/in/skperry/ 
About Tia Over: https://www.linkedin.com/in/tia-over/ 

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 learnearnrelearn@uw.edu.

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. 

And on a somewhat more serious note, should we fear that AI is coming for all our jobs?

In this riveting conversation, co-hosts Rovy Branon, University of Washington Continuum College Vice Provost, and Hanson Hosein, co-founder of the University of Washington Communication Leadership program, talk with guests Elizabeth Scallon, Director and Lead of Incubation Enablement at HP and co-founder of Find Ventures, and Kence Anderson, Director of Autonomous AI Adoption at Microsoft.

Some of the questions the teams tackle include...

We're more engaged with brands, thanks to new tech (NFTs at Starbucks!?), but is it business as usual? 

What are the implications of AI, Web3, biomedical advances, etc., as we live longer lives?

How will our kids' lives differ from ours, and how do we prepare them for the new reality they'll inhabit, if we even can?

As AI becomes even more sophisticated, how will our perception of the meaning of "life" change with it?

And perhaps most important of all: how do we ensure equitable access to new technologies and the education it will take to use and benefit from them?

Mentioned in the podcast:

Bored Ape Yacht Club
Cue health test
DALL·E: Creating Images from Text (openai.com)
Designing Autonomous AI [Book] (oreilly.com
Hidden Figures movie
National Oilwell Varco
PSi (thepsiapp.com)
Stable Diffusion
Urban Arts
Zeva

It's a critical conversation to have; we hope you listen and share this podcast. And join in the conversation by sharing your ideas and opinions at our email: learnearnrelearn@uw.edu. 

Find out more information about our hosts, guests, and podcast at https://www.continuum.uw.edu/about-us/podcast.

Could living to 100 become the norm? It’s very likely that 25-year-olds living in the US today will enjoy a greatly extended life expectancy. 

But what does that mean for work? Technology is advancing at lightning speed, changing how we live and work, creating new jobs and rendering others obsolete. What happens if you need to reskill at 70? Will the resources be there to support the 100-year life? 

Fortunately, these questions are on the radar at many educational institutions, including at the University of Washington Continuum College.

In this episode, UW’s Rovy Branon and Hanson Hosein speak with longevity expert Andrew Scott about the changes and the opportunities this new reality presents. 

Andrew J. Scott is Professor of Economics at London Business School. His multi-award-winning research, writing and speaking focuses on the economic and financial implications of longevity and ageing for society, markets and individuals. He co-authored with Lynda Gratton The 100 Year Life: Living and Working in an Age of Longevity and The New Long Life: A Framework for Flourishing in a Changing World. Professor Scott is co-founder of The Longevity Forum, a member of the WEF council on Healthy Ageing and Longevity and a consulting scholar at Stanford’s Center on Longevity.  

With a unique perspective as a global economist, professor, and government advisor, he draws upon a range of disciplines. His ground-breaking work on longevity, economics, and the value and effect technology and longevity combined will have on the wider society, is shaped by his professional connections to academia, industry, social pioneers and policymakers around the world. 

Resources: 

• The 100-Year Life (website): https://www.100yearlife.com/
• The 100-Year Life (book): https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B084JHQZ6K/ref=dbs_a_def_rwt_bibl_vppi_i0   
• The New Long Life (book): https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B08KJNVNMY/ref=dbs_a_def_rwt_bibl_vppi_i1  

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 learnearnrelearn@uw.edu. And of course, be sure to subscribe and review, wherever you listen to podcasts.