Introducing: Work in Progress

There’s a gap in the conversation about the future of work, and it doesn’t quite have a name. It sits at the intersection of economic opportunity, technology, and human potential and it asks questions like this:

• What’s the fastest way to create a million jobs?
• Why is it so hard to build a scalable edtech business that achieves impact? (how do you measure impact in education anyways?)
• What are the implications of emerging technologies (e.g. generative AI) on who gets access to opportunity, and who doesn’t?

I’m calling this gap the future of talent.

A quick note on semantics: I prefer ‘future of talent’ to ‘future of work’ because I care about more than just work. I’m interested in the humans impacted by the changing relationship between organizations and individuals, and empowering individuals both within and beyond work.

Why another newsletter?

I’ve experienced firsthand the unique challenges of building and discovering successful businesses in this space. Over the past year, I’ve been part of conversations across the Stanford GSB and Graduate School of Education about scaling education ventures or thinking about cultivating talent within organizations. I asked myself (and others): why can’t we do this with even more people interested in this space?

I hope to use Work in Progress as a platform to share the lessons learned by other founders — “successful” and not — to enable a new generation of entrepreneurs, investors, and policymakers to drive progress. Issues like inequality, economic opportunity, and access to education and employment are huge wicked problems that will likely be solved not by a single silver bullet but rather by a thousand lead bullets.

Who is this for?

I’m writing for my 1st year MBA self that was trying to make sense of this widely intersectional and complex space. I wanted to understand where the space was headed, and what lessons we might have learned from past successes and failures.

I hope this newsletter serves those of you who are interested in building or investing/funding in this space. Or really, any of you who deeply care about talent and people and how we build a better future. If this is you, allow me to join your journey! I’d love to hear what you are curious about and explore with you.

Who am I?

Thanks for asking! I’m Elle Kang. I’m a consultant at McKinsey where I focus on building people-centric organizations. I just graduated from Stanford Graduate School of Business and Harvard Kennedy School of Government, where I spent my time nerding out on my passion for broadening access to opportunity and upward mobility. Before, I’ve worked across the social and private sectors, including Google.org, and Alter Global.

What can you expect going forward?

You’ll hear from me once a month (or two. Hopefully that’s easy on your content fatigue). I’ll share our own thoughts, conversations with experts in the field — entrepreneurs, investors, academics, policy makers, etc, and feature guest posts from passionate and knowledgable others, sprinkled in with other surprises along the way.

First few posts lined up include:

• Lessons in entrepreneurship in the future of workforce
• Deep dive series into platform (gig) work
• Deep dive series into employee ownership
• Implications of Generative AI on the Future of Talent

Subscribe to join me in my monthly conversation on the Future of Talent! And as you do, I’d love to hear from you: what are you working on, and what do you want to learn?