The Many Futures of Work initiative began in 2017 with a conference that united frontline workers, organizers, and policymakers to shape fairer work policies. Guided by lived experience, the Institute bridges expert insight with community wisdom to drive lasting change.
Our work in 2025 and 2026 is organized into five functional areas:
AI in Work
Employment & Fair Access
Soybean Product Innovation
Broadband Equity
IWE Ideas Incubator
AI adoption is accelerating but remains uneven, creating gaps between policy and real-world application. The Institute is building a field-based library to document how AI truly impacts workers and businesses. Findings from this effort will inform equitable, ethical, and effective AI strategies. A companion podcast and our partnership with the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign will share insights and guide ongoing expansion.
AI is spreading rapidly across industries, but its adoption remains uneven and uncoordinated. Many workers are not sharing in its benefits, widening disparities across roles. Formal policies often lag how AI is used day to day, leaving leaders without the evidence needed to guide fair and effective adoption.
The Institute is developing a curated field-based library to capture how AI is used in workplaces and how it affects workers and business outcomes. Insights from this work will result in playbooks, metrics, practices and policy tools supporting fair and effective AI adoption. In collaboration with faculty from the University of Illinois and members of the Institute’s Board of Directors, the project launched a podcast in October 2025 to share real stories of AI in action. Full project funding is under development.
Employment & Fair Access aims to create a more inclusive economy by ensuring that everyone has a genuine opportunity to participate and succeed. Rather than relying on vague diversity language, the initiative focuses on practical tools and clear communication that empower hiring managers and workforce professionals to unlock untapped talent. By shifting the conversation and fostering collaboration among business, education, and workforce leaders, the effort helps employers find and retain diverse talent without stigma.
We envision an inclusive economy that prioritizes workers and shared prosperity by ensuring fair access for all. Today’s hiring systems often rely on narrow talent pools and leave barriers intact. Diversity language has grown divisive, creating hesitation around inclusive practices. Front-line managers and workforce developers are frequently left to bridge these gaps on their own.
Opportunity is framed by actionable ideas, such as Fair Access, which gives people a genuine chance. Our purpose is to support those who share these ideas, and not to change minds. By equipping hiring managers and workforce leaders with practical tools and building coalitions across business and education, we open pathways for untapped talent and drive a more inclusive economy.
Our strategy advances through four pathways: using plain, relatable language about fair opportunities; empowering front-line champions with tools and training; developing business-focused solutions that link outcomes with Fair Access; and uniting leaders across sectors to strengthen workforce success and shared growth.
A new podcast series, launched with initial support from the Institute’s Board of Directors, features stories from workforce development professionals and hiring managers who are successfully implementing Fair Access practices. The Institute is currently developing funding and partnerships to provide practical guidance on how to achieve Fair Access.
The Institute is partnering with the Illinois Soybean Association and its Soy Innovation Center to expand the non-food uses of soybeans. The goal is to create renewable, sustainable alternatives to petroleum-based products and grow new markets—funded through the Illinois farmers check program.
The Institute also manages the SpringBoard Funding Initiative, an annual competition awarding up to $40,000 for soy-based product R&D aligned with Illinois Soybean Association priorities. In addition, it is building a broader innovation ecosystem linking the Association with universities, researchers, and networks statewide.
The Institute serves as the project evaluator for ABE-LINC, a participatory Community Navigator program addressing digital inequity in historically underserved communities. Led by Chicago State University with NEIU, UIC, and community partners, the initiative promotes access, inclusion, and digital opportunity across Chicago.
The evaluation measures the benefits for Digital Navigators, households, and small businesses in underserved areas. Using interviews and operational data, it tracks program performance in two phases: ongoing assessment to guide improvements and a final review six months after ABE-LINC concludes.
The Institute serves as an incubator for new thinking in workforce and economic development. Guided by the Board of Directors, the Institute “sponsors” innovators by serving as fiscal agents for their projects and by providing a public platform to amplify their ideas. Selected innovators are also invited to share their work as guest podcasters and bloggers on the Institute’s media platforms, helping to inspire broader dialogue on inclusive innovation and opportunity.
The Institute for Work and the Economy co-convened virtual Day After conversations with local partners to address inequities that risk deepening without action. These two-hour sessions brought together community leaders to discuss challenges, share experiences, and envision the future of work and community life. Each convening centered local voices, with grassroots leaders guiding dialogue and participation. The Institute organized and synthesized these discussions into actionable steps, ensuring that outcomes reflected authentic, community-driven solutions.
The project revealed something extraordinary: unfiltered ideas from those actively rebuilding the economy—offering a sharp contrast to recycled policies from think tanks and special interests. The pandemic and civil unrest created a rare moment for bold, community-led action on long-standing inequities. History shows that transformative change begins locally, with people sharing insights and charting paths forward together. While not every idea was revolutionary, many offered genuine promise for addressing the challenges ahead.
The National Governors Association Center for Best Practices and the Institute collaborated on a multi-state collaborative project supporting state efforts to understand and analyze the on-demand economy and take swift action to identify and implement policies to support economic opportunity for on-demand workers. Project-related papers and resources are on the Institute’s Resources page. Walmart, Inc. and the Annie E. Casey Foundation funded the project.
The Institute led an 18-month initiative of the Great Lakes Employment and Training Association and Midwestern state workforce agencies under the leadership of the Workforce Development Division of the Minnesota Department of Employment and Economic Development. The project examined the collective future workforce needs of the Midwest in order to better align the area’s human resources development strategies with research and development investments, innovations in core industries, and with business investments that further the region’s global competitive advantages. The goals were to:
The Employment and Training Administration of the U.S. Department of Labor funded the project.
This study was accomplished as a sub-grantee to the Aspen Institute. The study produced a report on innovative apprenticeships. The Institute for Work and the Economy conducted interviews of employers who developed and implemented these apprenticeships. Funding was provided by the Annie E. Casey Foundation.
Peter Creticos and Eleanor Sohnen of the Migration Policy Institute (MPI) wrote this paper on advanced manufacturing in the U.S., Mexico and Central America. This was one of several papers written in support of MPI’s initiative on regional migration. It was published in early 2013 in Washington DC by MPI and the Wilson Center.
The Institute provided subject matter expertise in workforce and economic development for the territorial review mission to the Puebla/Tlaxcala Metropolitan area.
The Institute was engaged by the Chicagoland Chamber of Commerce Foundation to aggregate economic and demographic data for the OECD territorial review of the 21-county region encompassing the Chicago Tri-State Metropolitan area, an effort led by Dr. Lance Pressl, now serving as Senior Policy Fellow at the Institute. The Institute also collected and synthesized responses to the draft OECD report and worked closely with the Chamber and with the OECD in shaping the final report.
The Institute, in collaboration with researchers from the School of Information Studies at Syracuse University, developed the pilot for an open knowledge exchange for the workforce system. WOKE includes:
Funding was from the Employment and Training Administration of the U. S. Department of Labor.
RTI International, an international non-governmental organization, commissioned the Institute to prepare a report on the state of the art in workforce development policies, practices and diagnostic tools in developing regions.
The primary objective of this initiative was to illuminate successful policies, practices and processes. In the second phase of the project, the Institute and our partner, the Migration Policy Institute, focused on employment barriers to immigrants who arrive in the U.S. with advance education. The project was funded by the Joyce Foundation.
The Institute worked with RTI International on RTI’s innovative Learning States Initiative (LSI). This initiative joined a group of multinational corporations in a collective effort to explore together emerging markets. The emerging markets targeted by this project are lower on the economic pyramid than where multinationals typically focus their efforts. The pilot was conducted in the Little Village Community in Chicago, a neighborhood of Mexican immigrants and Mexican Americans, and with a partner community in Michoacan, Mexico. The objective was to grow the collective wealth and improve the quality of life of community residents while opening new markets for businesses. Through this partnership, both the multinationals and these communities can learn, grow and achieve success together. The project was originated by RTI International.
The Institute organized two national conferences in 2001 and 2003 on the state of the art in workplace-based learning. These conferences brought together leaders from business, labor, government, and education.
Institute President, Peter Creticos, and Non-Resident Senior Policy Fellow, Jeff Marcella, conducted case studies of several pre-apprenticeship, union-related construction trade programs in Northern Illinois and how they foster new opportunities in construction for women, African Americans and returning citizens. The report was supported by the Chicago Federation of Labor.
The Institute supported ConstructionWorks, the Illinois State Toll Highway Authority’s efforts to develop and implement a program to diversify the composition of workers in the construction industry generally, and for workers engaged by contractors to the Authority. The initiative extends the northern third of the State of Illinois and is administered by the Chicago Cook Workforce Partnership.
The Institute was the principal evaluator as a subcontractor to the University of Illinois at Chicago on an evaluation of a project of the Tri-Rivers Workforce Investment Board in Pittsburgh. Tri-Rivers is supporting the development and implementation of an apprenticeship initiative in advanced manufacturing that joins area small manufacturers with dislocated workers. This project concluded in 2015.
The objective of the project was to create a comprehensive database of the intellectual resources of Chicago metro area universities and make it available through a web-based platform. This demonstration project resulted in a resource that enabled users to find comprehensive academic profiles of participating faculty, access a complete searchable database of their research, and display a global map of their research collaborations.
Cash funding for the project came from U.S. Economic Development Agency. The Institute provided the required match.
The Institute conceived and helped develop an online tool that enabled Illinois citizens to explore and manipulate the Illinois state budget. The project was led by the Center for Tax and Budget Accountability. Other partners include Kineo, a public relations firm, and Crain’s Chicago Business. The project was funded by the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation.
The Institute and the Institute for Latino Studies at the University of Notre Dame conducted research for the Latino Technology Alliance on Latino entrepreneurship, especially in high technology. We addressed the current status of Latinos in high technology, the factors that influence Latino participation, and the policies and practices that will expand overall participation and success.
The Institute addressed the information requirements of business and workers in the Greater Pittsburgh area and made recommendations (including examples) for a labor market information system that supported both in the labor exchange.
The Institute was involved in the development of a skills standards strategy for the State of Ohio. It partnered as a subcontractor to the Urban Institute at Cleveland State University.
The Institute developed recommendations leading to increased engagement in workforce development by the business community.
The Institute prepared an economic impact analysis of various strategies addressing the infestation of emerald ash borer in Illinois. It also co-hosted with Northern Illinois University a conference of municipal officials and arborists.