BHEF's Kristen Fox on Bridging the Higher Ed-Business Gap

Work Forces

Kristen Fox, CEO of the Business-Higher Education Forum (BHEF), joins Work Forces to delve into the critical intersection of business and higher education. With extensive experience in education, digital learning, and workforce development, Kristen brings a contemporary lens to BHEF's mission of creating inclusive solutions for talent challenges. In this episode, Kristen shares BHEF's strategic focus areas, including illuminating skill gaps, developing new work-based learning models, and convening action-oriented forums. She also emphasizes the importance of strong leadership, clear signaling mechanisms, and effective intermediaries in fostering successful cross-sector collaboration. Kristen shares valuable insights into the practical steps needed to bridge the gap between education and employment and create a more inclusive and agile talent pipeline, ultimately connecting learners in the higher education ecosystem to opportunity and sharing what's working to achieve greater impact together.

Transcript

Julian Alssid: Welcome to Work Forces. I'm Julian Alssid.

Kaitlin LeMoine: And I'm Kaitlin LeMoine. And we speak with the innovators who shape the future of work and learning.

Julian: Together, we unpack the complex elements of workforce and career preparation and offer practical solutions that can be scaled and sustained.

Kaitlin: Work Forces is supported by Lumina Foundation. Lumina is an independent private foundation in Indianapolis that is committed to making opportunities for learning beyond high school available to all. Let's dive in.

We're excited to kick off today's conversation by welcoming Kristen Fox, CEO of the Business-Higher Education Forum, or BHEF, to the podcast. It feels like conversations at the intersection of business and higher ed are more critical than ever, especially as we think about the future of work and learning.

Julian: Yeah, I couldn't agree more, Kaitlin. The world is changing so rapidly. And Kristen brings us a contemporary lens on what works. And I'm looking forward to hearing how she's applying this lens to the BHEF, which has been around since the late seventies, I believe.

Kaitlin: Yeah, same here, Julian. To provide a bit of background, the Business-Higher Education Forum is a national nonprofit that brings together business and higher education leaders to create inclusive solutions for talent challenges. In Kristen's role as CEO, she brings 20 years of leadership experience working at the intersection of education, digital learning, and workforce development. Kristen has advised foundations, institutions, and companies on the design and implementation of successful strategies that drive impact, growth, and sustainability. She's also published research on the impact of digital learning and AI in higher ed, and prior to her role at BHEF, Kristen held leadership positions at Titan Partners, Northeastern University, and Edge Adventures. She holds a BA in International Relations and Chinese from Colgate University and an MA in International Affairs and Economic Development from the School of Global Policy and Strategy at the University of California, San Diego. Thank you for joining us on the podcast today, Kristen.

Kristen Fox: Thanks for having me. It's great to be with both of you.

Julian: It's great to be with you as well, Kristen. So to kick us off, if you would, please tell us more about your background and how you approach your work at BHEF.

Kristen: So as you mentioned a little bit in your intro, I've spent the last 20 years or so working across the higher education sector. And I'll give a little bit more detail around that because I think it's important to the lens that I bring and part of the things that I'm excited about and think are so important about the work that we're doing at the Business-Higher Education Forum. But I worked in three kinds of types of roles. So in consulting or advisory roles, in leadership roles at an institution, and at membership types of organizations, all focused on issues related to workforce development, digital learning, innovation, student success, and equity. And in consulting in those roles, I had the opportunity to really get on hundreds of campuses, both two-year and four-year institutions over a long period of time across many different states and regions, and to work with different regional and sector business leaders through that lens as well, and also to work at philanthropies as they've considered impact and scale across the space, as well as at tech firms and organizations as well. That's given me a really powerful 360 degree view of the shared challenges and effective and ineffective solutions that leaders, faculty, and staff are really grappling with and behind closed doors. And one of my key takeaways there has been there's always a unique local flavor, right? So labor market challenges, to institutional strategies, et cetera. But there's a lot more commonality there than difference in terms of what we're trying to solve for. In addition, I've also had the opportunity to work at an institution, Northeastern University, with a significant focus on workforce alignment and experiential learning. And some of my efforts there were really focused on leading innovation related to making the traditional, really strong and effective co-op experiential learning model more accessible through something we launched called the Experiential Network, which is now more project-based learning online, connecting part-time learners, non-traditional or the new majority learner to different types of opportunities, for example. And then in addition, I did that with faculty, with advisors, and really working to support systemic change throughout the institution, really giving me a sense of, you know, how you work collaboratively in traditional institutions to more agilely align to workforce, to drive innovation, and to also engage employers effectively throughout the process. And so, you know, that experience of working to drive change within an institution has also been really powerful, right, in understanding some of the different dynamics that both can support or prevent change and innovation. And then early in my career, I worked in an organization that developed a pretty unique membership model approach that brought together institutions for shared learning and best practices. So, you know, really got a sense as to how that can be powerful and transformational in leading sector change. And I would also say that early in my career, I had the opportunity to teach undergraduate courses at the UC system and that gave me a real appreciation for just the diversity of experiences that different students are bringing to that first year experience and also you know really the ability to see on the front lines as to where we as a higher ed sector were meeting their needs well and and where we are not. All of those different experiences and a real focus and passion for economic development, workforce development led me to believe that a platform that is collaborative and that is national like the Business-Higher Education Forum is really important because it's an opportunity to focus on and catalyze impact on one of the most important issues of our time–better and closer collaboration between businesses and education, to support economic mobility, economic growth, to build those more inclusive, effective, and affordable pathways that we seek to be built. And I'm really honored to be working with leaders across business and institutions that are doing that. So what that leads me to bring to our work, right, is that focus on collaborative models, proven approaches to support change, and understanding of and how to translate across the business and higher ed sector. One brief experience I had that's helpful oftentimes there is working in the state department as a diplomat, right? One of the things that you will find that, right, can hamper, I think, and we hear this frequently, collaboration between the business sector and the higher ed sector–it's just the translation, right? Even something as simple as skills and learning outcomes, right? It's a different language and a different vernacular. And so we play a really important role there in the translation. So those are some of the things about me that I bring to our work. And then I look forward to telling you more about some of the work that I'm excited about that we're doing at the Business-Higher Education Forum.

Kaitlin: Great. Well, thank you so much for sharing more about your background, Kristen. And really appreciate the description of how you have this 360 degree view on this work. And so much of what you said rings true to me, especially that translation of really just, right, sometimes it's just definition of terms across higher ed and business and how it is that when we use these terms, what do we mean by them? So we're looking forward to diving in with you in this conversation. Recognizing that you've taken on your role at BHEF relatively recently, we're curious to learn more about the strategy you're putting in place as you work at the nexus of business and higher ed at BHEF?

Kristen: I started in February of 2024, so just about at the six month mark. So definitely excited to share with you some of the work we're putting in motion while also continuing to make sure that we evolve agilely our work in ways that are responsive to the needs of the market, et cetera. Yes, so I mean, I left a great role and incredible colleagues at a boutique strategy consulting firm that I was at before because I again, I think that the mission and platform and work that our board of directors and our network and partners and team at the Business-Higher Education Forum are working on are the most important issues of our time. There's, as you know, what we are positioned to do is again, build those bridges and points of collaboration and points of partnership. Deep, sustained partnership between higher education and business. And so a couple of things that we're thinking about are obviously, there are huge transformations happening across our economy. Emerging technologies are accelerating those, and we continue to see significant shortages in key occupations, like cyber, advanced manufacturing, green jobs, and STEM. And those are roles that are really critical to the security and economic growth of our country as well as the economic mobility and opportunities of individuals. In addition, as you all know, the kind of half-life on skills is shortening. And so, one recent estimate from IBM is that 40% of the workforce will need to re-skill due to these disruptions in the next three years. I've seen estimates even more than that. But so, there's a real imperative to make sure that number one we as a sector are aligning talent supply and demand, so that both at an occupational level, as well as from a skills alignment level and acknowledging that that's a lifelong process. And we also believe, and I also believe, that higher education needs to and is a critical talent engine for economic development and can be a talent partner of choice for business. And so one of the things that's core to our work and mission is that we create spaces for higher education and business leaders to co-create and experiment with building those more inclusive, agile, and effective paradigms that enable us to recruit, develop, and connect talent to opportunity across those areas. A few of the things that we're really doubling down on to address those issues and that build on our history and legacy but refashion us for a new era. So for context, you know, and Kaitlin, you shared this at the outset, the Business-Higher Education Forum has operated as a national nonprofit organization that's comprised of really committed leaders from major corporations, as well as presidents and chancellors and their teams of innovative, agile colleges and universities, so inclusive of two-year and four-year institutions across the country. Those leaders have opted in to studying, co-designing, piloting, and building new pathways that close those critical talent gaps and emerging and in-demand skill areas. Some of the strategic areas of focus that we are either recommitting to or pursuing that are a little bit different than in the past, I'll walk you through. But we're committed as ever to our why of building those stronger pathways between education and employment. We are not a think tank or a research house. We do put out research and some insights and we put out toolkits. You can find some of those on our website. There's a lot of great, really well done reports and research assets there. But most importantly, we are working to catalyze and test, refine, and replicate what works in the field. So there's kind of four things that we're really focused on there and doing for our network, and then sharing also more broadly with the field at large. First, we continue to do work that we've done historically, both individually and with our partners, around illuminating and shining a light on those places where we need to close skill gaps. We've done and continue to do a significant amount of work looking at how AI is impacting the workforce, green jobs and skills, and you can find actually several blogs, etc. on that on our website to see more of what we're working on there. The second and a really major piece that we're also focused on is the development of new models. So as I said before, prototyping, implementing and scaling solutions that bridge learning and work. Two places there that I'll mention as examples: we're spending a lot of time right now focused on new work-based learning models. We're going to be coming out and releasing in September a national survey of over 2,500 employers, and focus groups around how to design work-based learning and scale work-based learning in ways that increase supply because it's responsive to employer needs in addition to being a high quality experience for the learner. We know how important internships are. We can talk more about that later in our conversation. But because of that, that's a place that we're really committed to not only sharing research around design and design models that can increase scale, but also supporting and being a part of the sets of solutions that enable institutions and employers to more effectively implement work-based learning models. We also continue to look at and help on the institution side in particular, think about how do you design and how do you implement more effective models for employer engagement. We know that's a real area of challenge in terms of higher ed really asking and how do we more effectively engage with employers and what does that look like? And then last but not least, a key piece of what we continue to do is convening and bringing together an action oriented forums leaders so that we can catalyze, we can sense make and then catalyze change and really sharing that with the field. And I think that's something that's a little bit different than you'll see in the past. We've launched a blog. We're really working to, you know, get out the work and insights that our team has been learning from 45 years of facilitating effective partnership, and making sure those best practices and solutions are out there. The last thing I'll say is there's three ways that we work and that we're committed to. One is around a membership network so institutions and businesses can work with us as part of an annual collaboration where we develop an annual research and impact agenda, have frequent virtual round tables and emerging topics and just really allow for peer to peer executive and team learning. And then secondly, we have a solutions lab where we build on our strong track record of working across our network and partners to do things like implement regional initiatives, cross-sector pilots, and to really work to again implement in the field. And we work with many philanthropic partners there as well in terms of implementing, again, regional initiatives and bringing together business and higher ed leaders to solve for talent gaps. And I can give you more examples as we talk today. The last thing I would just say that I think is important as we move forward, is we're really focused on expanding and growing our network of innovators. Historically, the forum had some convenings that were a little bit more exclusive and our philosophy and board has really taken the approach that to have the impact on the student experience and on the economy that we want to, we need to have a thriving and growing network of innovators. In addition to our incredibly strong board and leadership of Fortune 100, Fortune 500, and large public and private institutions, we also are continuing to expand our partnerships with the community college sector, for example, with regional public colleges, as well as with other corporate leaders. And for example, we've just named some new board members that represent those sectors and allow us to better serve their needs. Those are some of the things that we're really focused on. And I'm really excited about the work that our team continues to do. We've got an incredibly, we have a small but diverse team that includes experience from the Department of Commerce from workforce development boards, from working at institutions, from working in HR and talent roles. And so really have experienced both in building community, advising the stakeholders that we work with and having walked in their shoes. So really excited about the work that we continue to do and the opportunities to foster collaboration and impact across the business and higher education sectors because we know how important it is.

Julian: Well, it sounds like you've really hit the ground running, Kristen, in the first six months, so congrats. It's amazing. You sound like you've been there for six years, maybe. But I'd like to dig a little bit deeper in terms of the modeling. One of the things we like to do on Work Force is people want specifics. They want to know what are examples and how to do it. And so we'd love to hear a little bit more. You've talked some, but about what learning models do you feel are working well as you look across business and higher ed partnerships? And then as well, you mentioned, for example, the language issue, which keeps coming up again and again with us. It's like so much of this is about language. And what do you see as challenges? So let's work in challenges, examples, please.

Kristen: So I'm really encouraged at what I see around the role of, you know, in regions, business and higher ed working together to address talent gaps and mobilize, right, by whether it be state or fed record federal investments, and in certain cases, philanthropic investments as well to, you know, seed and scale work. So I think that, you know, place-based focus on solving specific regional economic development challenges is important. And there are a few examples of effective approaches that we've been working a part of that I'd be happy to share. And what I see as being some of the key ingredients around them. So a couple of things that I would say, so we've been doing, for example, our team in the state of Connecticut, working pretty expansively with the office of the governor's office, working with the business sector leadership, so really strong business sector leadership out of you know organizations that include but are not limited to. Accenture, Stanley Black and Decker, also working side by side with the and representing the broader business community. Also working side by side with the higher education community, the independent colleges and leadership in the state as well as the public colleges in the state, in the system, and the individual institutions. That was brought together, again, by strong higher ed leadership and business leadership coming together saying, number one, we as a state have significant workforce shortages and key talent areas that are critical to our economic growth, and we also are one of the most, the states with the highest levels of economic inequality in terms of the income variation and ranges. So we need to mobilize together to do something about that, right? So strong leadership, right, is a key ingredient when it comes to cross sector collaboration. And that's one example from this, that's one takeaway from this Connecticut example that I think transcends. Secondly, I think another important thing that's really important that we see as what's working and what can drive success is then clear signaling mechanisms and the use of data. So in this case and in the case of other effective cross-sector partnerships that we see, it is then the use of data to hone in, so labor market data in terms of what is it, right, that it's being expressed by the employer community. What is it, where do we have gaps, as well as then what those supply side avenues look like. And when I say supply side, I mean the traditional higher education credentials in terms of the associate's degree, the bachelor's degree, as well as the certificates and the industry embedded credentials that might be a part of that pathway as well. So really, looking at that data together, getting us a sense of those supply and demand gaps, those KSAs, et cetera, but then also acknowledging that there are emerging skills and dialogue that needs to happen around those skills that's critical as well. And ensuring that that's being updated, et cetera. And again, that's something that in the case of this example of the tech talent accelerator in Connecticut, all focused then on many tech roles that got pretty specific around what the workforce needs and then enabled the application of different credential pathways across the ecosystem to meet that needs, right? Building on what institutions had what capabilities, et cetera, based on, again, executive leadership, clear signaling mechanisms. And then last but not least, there's a really important role in making that all happen in a way that is highly collaborative, right? Around project management, around sustaining long-term partnerships, and around providing capacity and support for that. So there's an important role of then intermediaries that are convening the different groups that are creating template agreements, and that are supporting the application and implementation of the development of those talent pathways. And some of that might include things that, you know, there's general convening, sense-making, and, you know, project planning. There is the bringing funding, whether it's philanthropic or otherwise to the approach. There's also that translation, right, that skill around the translation. And then there is also sometimes the bringing to the table of how to implement industry credentials, how to implement experiential learning models and how to think about the use of different technologies to do that as well. That sector-based collaborative approach to solve at scale a regional talent challenge, right? And the use of leadership, data signaling and strong intermediaries, whether it be the use of industry associations, regional workforce boards, organizations like ours, and in this case, we work collaboratively with NEBI, which is the regional board, and those being really important kind of takeaways in terms of how to do the multi-institution, multi-industry collaboration, which is where you can really see scaled impact as one example.

Julian: I in particular like that you are looking at sustainability in a very practical way, you know, agreements and project management, because I think so often and with all the money that's out there now, we see, you know, money, something's gonna happen if you pour a lot of money into it and then the money goes away and we revert. And I think that, you know, the approach you're taking seems to give us a greater chance of having some of this, some of this work really stick over the long haul.

Kristen: Yes, I think that is really important, right? There's leadership, focus, right? Metrics, what are the goals we're seeking to achieve? How are we ensuring that we are investing collaboratively, even in recruitment strategies in some cases, especially for emerging areas that where we're learners, whether they're traditional or non-traditional age, may not be aware of them, right? I see sometimes that if we build it, they will come model, right? Which is, as you all know, it doesn't work that way. You need to also think about marketing and recruitment and how are you gonna partner with community-based organizations to ensure that you're accessing different learner and worker populations and really reaching out to sideline talent in some of these cases as well. A huge challenge that we have as a nation is that we need to make sure that we are activating and empowering all talent to be successful for the... because of the skill gaps that we see, because of the occupational demand that we have, and to ensure that everyone can participate in the economic success and mobility that we know higher education can help to achieve.

Kaitlin: So Kristen, you've given us so many practical takeaways and examples in what you've shared today. But as we think about the question, we often ask our guests, what steps can our audience take to become forces in this work? I'm wondering specifically about, as you just mentioned, the goal of activating all talent and how to do that effectively and pulling on some of these threads of the importance of regional initiatives and collaboration across stakeholders and effective communication. Are there a couple of…when you think about all this work you've done, are there one or two practical steps that you'd really say, you know what, in order to kick this work off well, or in order to sustain this work effectively, you've got to do X, Y or Z.

Kristen: First is, I think it is really important for business and higher education leaders to be at the table in a way that is not just transactional, right? So that it is about, and this is hard, but it is about not just thinking about the immediate term, but thinking about longer term systemic talent strategies. Because one of the things that is important is that higher education needs to work more quickly, agilely and nimbly than it traditionally has to be able to be a partner in talent supply chains, right? For if we think about it that way. And to do that though, business really needs to be a committed long-term partner at the table that is co-investing in different ways in building those pathways into jobs that we may not know exactly how they're evolving and what they're going to look like in the future, right? Especially as we think about the impact of automation, for example, and artificial intelligence on different roles and that's playing out in real time before us. One way that that can look like that I think can actually be pretty tactical. So I mean, first it is, you know, making that longer term commitment and thinking about both the near term and the longer term needs and helping one another de-risk, right? Help the institution de-risk the development of a credential that they're working quickly to develop, that there's unknown, you know, and how much demand on the other side is there for that. We think it's this, but that might change over time. So help de-risk that for the student and the institution. You know, ways to support, right, financially, the students and the learners themselves and ways for business to give their time and expertise, right, to that, right, to de-risk it. Those are examples of what I mean when I say de-risk. And then I think on the higher ed side, help business de-risk their ability to access high quality talent by providing those different opportunities to offer input, et cetera. A specific way to do that that I think is really important is the offering of internships. And so I think this is just one other important area that I think is critical is that thinking about how do we create more capacity for work-based learning, experiential learning experiences, whether they be short-form micro internships up through a full-on internship, co-op, even onto apprenticeship, ensuring that there are more occasions and more opportunities for those. There's research out from Strada, The Burning Glass Institute, just the incredible power of internships on getting a better first job for students, ensuring that students are better prepared and equipped for their first jobs and that they're getting jobs that pay higher wages out of the gates. And so, you know, the ability, the investment and collaboration around more work-based learning opportunities is I think a really important place for, again, many to get involved and to think about how we can better design those. And one of the things that we've found from some of our work that will be coming out in September is that one of the primary motivations for employers in recruiting and offering internships is around attracting talent. But that's not the only reason, right? So there's some different typologies and motivations. It's around, we need to recruit and secure talent. We want to expose students to our workforce and our industry. And we want to test out students and see about mutual fit. But a second area of motivation is around, well, we want to provide our staff with some opportunities to supervise, right? That's really helpful too. Another is around, well, actually that also gives us some additional capacity to help with some additional project work that we have, right, through paid internships, et cetera. And then a last set of motivations around giving back. So things like mentoring and helping and giving back to institutions, mentoring students, aligning and strengthening partnerships with a certain university or community college in your area, and things like that. So as we look at what we know is important to employers, it's important to acknowledge that diversity of motivations and think about that. Secondly, as we look at some of the challenges around offering expanding internships, so one of the big ones is around just operational capacity. So it's hard to find and attract candidates. It is hard to, what's the work that's appropriate? How should I shape it? How should I structure that experience for students at different levels or in different contexts? So given that, I think that as a, both at individual institutions, at individual companies, and as we look across the sector, one of the things that I see real need and opportunity for is to think about how can different intermediaries and organizations reduce that friction so that we can create more of those opportunities and we can make sure those opportunities are more equitably distributed than they have been historically. Because the other thing that's really important for us as a sector to make sure that we are addressing to ensure that we've got more students who are graduating and ready to go into the workforce and into emerging areas is that they've got that supply of internships. And we know that right now it's not equitably distributed based on where you go to school, race, income, and other factors like that.

Julian: It's really interesting, Kristen, hearing you sort of talk about going beyond the transactional, because what I'm hearing is really what you're talking about is building relationships between employers and faculty and students and students who may not have had introductions and experiences with employers of a certain kind and so on.

Kristen: Yeah, absolutely. It's, you know, how do you think about that? There's the, we're talking about relationships at multiple different levels, right? This is fundamentally about how do we build the relationship between the learner and the employer? How do we make sure we've got the real strong relationships between the employers and the institution? And how do we manage those in ways that really align the motivations, goals, and needs of those organizations and of those individuals? Because ultimately, as we start out our conversation saying, for us to address the scale of magnitude of talent supply demand challenges that we have as a nation, we need to be working collectively together to share data, to share best practices, and to it's also sure what's not working, right? In ways that allow us to move farther faster to connect talent to opportunity.

Julian: Wow, well, you've given us a lot to think about, Kristen. And as we wind down the conversation, how can our listeners learn more and continue to follow your work?

Kristen: You can Google the Business-Higher Education Forum and check out our website. We've got a blog post that we publish on LinkedIn. We also host for our network a convening for our network members in October. And if you are a business leader or a higher education leader or intermediary serving those audiences, you can reach out to me to learn more about that and about our network and our work. And I'm always happy to talk to other change makers who are leading the work to ensure that we are connecting learners in the higher education ecosystem to opportunity and that we are sharing what's working so that we can have greater impact together.

Kaitlin: Thank you, Kristen, for taking the time to join us today and for sharing what your learning is working in this complex space of the intersection of business and higher ed and industry. And we really appreciate your sharing your lessons learned and vision for going forward and look forward to continue to being in touch.

Kristen: Thank you. It's been great to be with you both. Stay cool.

Julian: Thank you, you too, Kristen.

Kaitlin: That's all we have for you today. Thank you for listening to Workforces. We hope that you take away nuggets that you can use in your own work. Thank you to our sponsor, Lumina Foundation. We're also grateful to our wonderful producer, Dustin Ramsdell. You can listen to future episodes at Workforces.info or on Apple, Amazon, and Spotify. Please subscribe, like, and share the podcast with your colleagues and friends.