​Future of Work Alliance · New York City · Invitation Only

​Understanding AI, Reinventing the Workforce

​Beyond the hype: what leaders and workers are planning and doing right now to build AI-ready workforces.

​📅 Tuesday, June 17 ⏰ 9:00 AM – 12:00 PM 📍New York City

​What this is

​The AI conversation has been dominated by individual use cases, hype cycles, and speculation about futures that may or may not arrive. What's been missing is a clear-eyed look at what's actually happening to advance workers and workforces right now.

​This roundtable goes there. We're bringing together 15 leaders and practitioners to examine workforce readiness directly; skills development, role transformation, and what it takes to keep people at the center of this shift. No hype. No doom. Real signals from people doing the work.

​Who's leading the room

​Denise Brouder — Founder, Future of Work Alliance · Director of Work Solutions, JobsFirstNYC

​The structural lens. Denise has spent years building a new model for what replaces the industrial era of work, where systems thinking meets human potential. At JobsFirstNYC she leads citywide employer and sector partnerships, connecting young New Yorkers to real career pathways. Her question: how do you actually evolve a workforce, build the pathways, and rewire the systems around people as the work changes?

​Eileen Crossin — Founder & CEO, Quantum Potential

​The human lens. Eileen spent her career as a revenue leader in media, including a leadership role at TikTok, before building Quantum Potential to answer the question most companies skip: how do people perform through this much change without burning out? Her Momentum Method works through mindfulness, mindset, and micro-actions, and she's run it with 15+ organizations in the past year. Certified meditation teacher. Author of the forthcoming Being Unrealized. She brings the mindset and capacity shift AI readiness actually depends on.

​Ginger Dhaliwal — Partner - Sero Partners · Future of Work Alliance

​The how. A founder who's scaled teams from zero to hundreds, Ginger advises companies on putting AI to work without losing the people, and mentors founders daily on the skills-first hiring this shift demands.

​Together the three make the case this whole series is built on: AI readiness isn't just capacity — doing more, faster. It's capacity and new human capability and the discipline to actually implement. That combination is what turns AI into a real force multiplier.

​Opening talk

​Vishal Misra, Vice Dean of Computing and AI, Columbia University

​What AI actually is.

​Vishal cuts through the noise on AI. A straight, grounded take on what it can and can't do and what that really means for your workforce.

​Who's in the room

​Senior people leaders, innovation heads, and business leaders who think beyond their own function. They share a belief in human potential and a real question: how do you evolve a workforce as AI changes the work?

​Agenda

​9:00 – 9:30: Arrival and coffee

​9:30 – 9:55: What AI actually is and isn't Vishal Misra, Columbia

​9:55 – 11:15: Trends and perspectives: how roles are shifting, which skills and capabilities matter now, and how to lead people through it

​11:15 – 12:00: Synthesis, themes, close

​What comes out of it

​New York is the first of seven global cities where the Future of Work Alliance (FWA) runs this conversation. Same structure, same questions, different rooms — building a cross-city picture of what workforce readiness actually looks like in practice.

​A briefing memo goes to the attendees and community within two weeks of each event. As the series builds, we release cross-city pattern analyses and share best practices and insights back with every attendee.

​The insight we're testing across all seven cities: AI's real potential isn't just productivity. It's the combination of building capacity — doing more, faster — and building new capabilities, that will make AI the force multiplier that it can be. Together, that's what amplifies impact. That's what workforce readiness for AI actually has to deliver.