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This interview has been edited for length and clarity.

Nick Beadle: Tell me about FutureRise and what you guys are doing right now. I’m curious to see how it kind of connects this broader national conversation we're having about states and workforce.

Alison Griffin: FutureRise is a little over a year old. We are a Colorado-based, national, philanthropic, intermediary operating foundation and have become in Colorado a neutral convenor at the intersection of post-secondary education and workforce development. We invest in education and training providers—including, but not limited to institutions of higher education and non-profit training providers—that are moving Coloradans such as career-changers, veterans, or historically underserved populations, from completion into a family-sustaining job.

We operate on a two-track model. The first is to actually invest in those learners, and we do that through block grants to providers that are demonstrating outcomes and meeting certain metrics. And then taking those learnings and actually being more involved in the systems transformation and policy-reform side of state activity. The piece that sits at the center that I have been leading and working on is really that narrative infrastructure that helps to make sense of all the things that are happening at the local level, at the ground level, and translating that to people who have influence in the state.

This will be no surprise to you or your readers, but a lot of our colleagues in the states have really no understanding of what is happening at the federal level and the way in which it impacts their everyday life. So obvious statement, [but] people read headlines, they see that the Department of Education has announced a new grant program or put out new regulations, but there are very few colleagues in the states who are doing that translation work, that sense-making work.

It’s less of making sense of the philosophic or ideological position. It's more about explaining how those changes may impact what's happening on the ground in the state.

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Nick: I just wrote about how it’s very hard when you're just seeing pieces of this stuff out in the field to figure out what you should be doing. And I gather y'all are seeing that a lot in Colorado, which I know has been at the forefront of a lot of workforce conversations. I suspect there's probably concern about, “Hey, this big national wave may wipe out a lot of good work we've done.”

Alison: Well, it may wipe out a lot of good work we've done, or in some cases, it may actually accelerate some of the work we've done. I can't say that about every policy coming from the Administration right now, but I would suggest that there are a number of synergies between what is happening in Washington with the alignment between post-secondary education or even education and workforce and labor policy. The state has spent really the last year and a half focused on how we can better align education and workforce programs.

The governor just signed a bill to actually take the first step in combining state agencies around talent. The idea [is] bringing together the [state] Department of Higher Education, our workforce development council, elements of economic development, elements of labor and employment, all into one single state agency. To be honest, with the Administration's focus on bringing education back to the states, Colorado may be well positioned practically to be able to bring in some of that work or lead some of that work—even though there may be philosophical or ideological differences between leadership in the state and in D.C.

Nick: Granted, it's very early on, but from your perspective as someone doing what you're doing in Colorado and the work you've done nationally, I'm wondering what lessons might be learned nationally about Colorado's efforts. I have encountered a decent amount of skepticism about the Administration’s ambitions to blend education and workforce.

Alison: The reality is we have experts at the state level in the things that the state does. A lot of the programs and initiatives that take place in the state are siloed and segmented. So, not only are we trying to combine agencies and programs and funding streams, there is also a real personnel challenge and opportunity to help people get out of their siloed lane and start understanding how they fit into the bigger picture.

That's the piece of the systems transformation that is actually harder in my opinion than combining programs and funding streams. I also think that unless there is a vision or strategy or goal that is trying to be unlocked or advanced, it's very hard for people to see how what they do should change or be modified. I say that because Colorado has been playing around the edges of this work for at least the 15 years that I have been in the state, but no one has cast a broad vision to say this is the problem we're trying to solve.

My advice to other states that may be interested in doing this work [is to ask] what's the transformation you're actually seeking and why? What's the problem that you're trying to solve? And then how do all these pieces of policy reform actually align to that bigger vision?

One of the other challenges in Colorado, I would argue we have a significant number of policies that we have heard about nationally or from funders or from advocacy organizations. We have a number of those policies on the books, but not the funding to implement them. So we've been a state sitting almost idle with the policy framework in place, but without the resources to act on it, and, frankly, without having yet made some of the hard choices that real systems transformation requires.

Nick: As a former policymaker, I can tell you that you can’t just do something just to do it. If you don’t have a good reason for what you’re changing or don’t do the work to make it happen, I can tell you that the people on the ground and the people who are in those silos are going to probably outlast you and the change won’t happen.

I’m not trying to just rag on the Trump Administration here, but I have done this kind of work. I had to go program by program inside the Department of Labor to sell change to individual programs and figure out how change worked inside each program. In the Administration’s work, I see a lot of add-ons of various ideas in grant opportunities, but I get the vibe that they don’t have the time to do that kind of in-the-weeds, change-making work.

Alison: Part of the reason I would argue we haven't been able to make a lot of changes at the federal level in my 26 years of doing this work nationally is because you have a lot of people who outlast the policy leaders, right? And they know the way the systems operate and they know the way the budget lines get folded into one another.

That could be incredibly helpful, right? It could also be an incredible impediment to actually building this sort of transformational culture. That’s the other piece I would go back to. This is as much about systems transformation as it is about culture change. What I would put under the umbrella of culture change is the way we talk about the work we’re doing. For so long, we’ve talked about higher education. Even our state agency is the Department of Higher Education and Workforce Development. Only recently in our state have we started to talk about postsecondary education, of which higher ed is a part.

But all the things that learners can do beyond high school could be captured as postsecondary education. So how do we just change the language we use and therefore change the way in which we are bringing people together or helping them to see the connections between the work they’re doing?

That’s why in the work of FutureRise, part of our goal is this narrative change. It’s not just a communications thing, or it’s not just a press release. It’s actually changing the way we are both positioning and talking about the work.

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Nick: From the work in Colorado that’s happened so far, is anything in particular giving you hope that this is going to make some headway? Or is it too early even to say?

Alison: It takes time. The result of the governor's executive order a year ago [was] a 120-page-plus page report with tens of recommendations for systems transformation, moving a bipartisan bill to establish this transition advisory committee, having gubernatorial candidates now take on these issues as part of their education and workforce platform—and that's happening across candidates in one party. It's also happening across candidates in multiple parties.

Those foundations of both narrative and policy framework have started to take on a life of their own, so I am optimistic that some part of this work will survive beyond the Polis Administration and to me that is exciting.

Nick: That makes a lot of sense and it speaks to another thing I hear a lot right now—and not necessarily from Colorado—which is how do you sell this to future governors? I've had conversations with states along the lines of, "Hey, y'all got a good thing. Don't mess this up."

How is that being communicated in Colorado right now? Acknowledging you have term-limited governor and you’re always going to get outlasted like we discussed earlier?

Alison: There was a letter that was sent by 65 organizations in Colorado to the General Assembly in support of the principles of the legislation. So, you now have, both on record but also in action, organizations whose work is outlasting respectfully the Polis administration and wants to see these activities continue under the next governor, whoever that may be.

Nick: I’ve been wondering about something lately, which is a question about how, in these efforts to combine education and workforce, which side has the most to gain here? This might be the way you would love to think about it, but I think both education and workforce are in interesting places where they could meet some use some help. So who gains the most here and what do they gain?

Alison: Actually, I think the Coloradan wins.

Nick: Good answer.

Alison: I say that because Colorado has long been one of the most highly educated states in the country -- we used to trail Mareporssachusetts, and Lumina's Stronger Nation data now puts us at the top. But that headline hides one of the largest educational equity gaps in the country.

Colorado takes pride in the fact that the people who live here are Coloradans, full stop. But the reality is we have one of the largest equity gaps in the country between our highly credentialed population and Coloradans who haven't yet had access to these opportunities.

I believe that in this merger of agencies, this transformation work that is happening, we will see wins for postsecondary education. We may see wins for historically traditional higher ed, but I also believe that we will start to see wins for our broad workforce and employer and industry community. It is my hope that if you are a Colorado-based employer or Colorado-located employer that you will first be able to fill your roles with Colorado talent.

We have seen greater out-migration from Colorado than in-migration. It is incredibly expensive to live here. A recent bipartisan statewide poll found fewer than one in five Coloradans feel financially comfortable. Everyone else is treading water or worried about sinking. That kind of pressure has a real impact on how people see their own future

So, there’s a lot in that, but at the end of the day, I think the thing I’m excited about is that we will, through this systems transformation work, be able to better support the Coloradan staying in Colorado.

Nick: I can tell you as someone who was just looking for a new place to live, Colorado came off the board early because of cost. And what you get paid definitely plays into whether or not you can live in a place.

Alison: Absolutely. And the thing people miss is how geographically diverse Colorado is. Most picture Denver or the ski resorts, but much of this state is deeply rural. A talent strategy that links education to employment can't be one-size-fits-all—it has to be built for the whole map.

If you are a state and you are trying to think about what that talent strategy looks like and what the connection between education and employment and workforce opportunities looks like, it has to be multi-dimensional.