Meet the Advisory Board of XPRIZE Rapid Reskilling

Feb 16 2021

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Photo by Milad B. Fakurian on Unsplash

Introducing the experts and thought leaders shaping XPRIZE Rapid Reskilling and transforming the future of work 

A digital revolution is upon us, and it’s quickly shifting the job market. Workers across America must adapt to this change with new and relevant skills. But first, the resources and technology for building these skills need to be put in place. 

Enter XPRIZE Rapid Reskilling, a $5 million dollar, 30-month competition that will forever change the face of work. Incentivizing teams to devise novel training solutions across industries, the Prize will lead to the retraining of talented but under-equipped workers across the US. This will not only ready society for the digital revolution but start to undo some of the damage caused by the pandemic in terms of mass unemployment. It will close America’s widening skill gap, and give thousands of people the livelihoods and lives that they deserve. 

However, none of this would be possible without the XPRIZE Rapid Reskilling Advisory Board. A group of thought-leaders in the field of work, training, and technology, they have been core to consulting the competition and will help to ensure that the winning team’s solution can have maximum impact. They have also helped to connect us with the existing ecosystems of individuals and organizations helping Americans into the careers that they want and deserve. 

Meet our amazing advisory board below. 

Katherine Makinney, Deputy Director, Workforce, JVS-SoCal

Starting her career in high tech sales at a startup that went public, Katherine then built an e-commerce site, spent two years as an investment banker, became COO of another startup, and is now working in nonprofits. Founded in 1931, JVS SoCal offers individuals, businesses and agencies high quality programs related to job seeking, career planning, skills assessment, training and retraining.

Katherine is excited by the challenge of: “How do you take a minimally skilled workforce and upskill them for the future of work, of which a large component will be technical?” Together with the rest of our advisory board and the Rapid Reskilling teams, she’s helping us create answers to this question. 


Dr. Chris Laney, Senior Workforce Strategist, Emsi 

Dr. Chris Laney is a Senior Workforce Strategist at the labor market analytics firm Emsi. Chris specializes in workforce and economic development, strategic workforce planning, comprehensive planning, and data analysis. Chris works on projects related to industry sector strategies, labor market demand, and workforce availability, for workforce development boards throughout the U.S. He has long been interested in this sector – his dissertation focused on WIOA’s influence on economic mobility among disenfranchised young adults.

“Communities are struggling to develop strategies to meet their specific workforce needs,” Chris explains of the current landscape. “While unemployment was low previous to COVID-19, there were still segmented populations facing significant challenges. COVID-19 exacerbated the issues and workforce organizations are being forced to think outside the box to help jobseekers. XPRIZE Rapid Reskilling is a vital component to getting individuals into better careers and this prize money can make a huge impact on an organization's ability to help people in their communities.”


Jeff Wald, Founder, WorkMarket

“My first job was cleaning the meat department at the local supermarket. I would go there after school and clean the machines the butchers had been using to cut and package meat. It was... not pleasant. But the butcher that trained me was the nicest person. He provided countless tips and tricks for getting through the tasks. While I didn't last long in the job, I will always remember his kindness and expertise.”

Jeff Wald is the Founder of Work Market, an enterprise software platform that enables companies to manage freelancers (acquired by ADP). Jeff has founded several other technology companies, including Spinback, a social sharing platform (eventually purchased by Salesforce). Jeff is an active angel investor and startup advisor, as well as serving on numerous public and private boards of directors. He is also the author of the Amazon Best Seller The End of Jobs: The Rise of On-Demand Workers and Agile Corporations. Jeff holds an MBA from Harvard University and an MS/BS from Cornell University.

“The coming disruptions due to robots and AI will create the need for a rapid reskilling of many workforces in the coming years,” he explains. “Our best path to helping workers whose jobs are displaced is helping them to rapidly reskill to the jobs and industries that are growing.” 


Vinice Davis, Venture Partner, Imaginable Futures

Vinice Davis is a venture partner at Imaginable Futures, where she co-lead a two-generational approach to learning by focusing on post-secondary success of adult learners with children. Prior to joining Imaginable Futures, Vinice served as the Chief Operating Officer of Purpose Built Schools Atlanta, a partnership with Atlanta Public Schools established to turn around several of the city’s lowest-performing schools. Vinice currently serves on the boards of All Our Kin, TNTP, Inc., and Ingenuity Prep Charter School.

Why is reskilling important to her? “Workforce development is one of the most critical and important issues of our time. Learning is life-long and the way in which we think about education must be reshaped to consider that we will always want or need to be unskilled or reskilled for the future of work.” 


Jomayra Herrera, Principal, Cowboy Ventures

Jomayra Herrera is an investor at Cowboy Ventures, where she spends a lot of time focused on companies tackling the future of work – specifically tools and platforms that help workers thrive in their work environments and become agents of their careers. 

Prior to Cowboy, she was an early hire on the venture investing team at Emerson Collective. She played an important role in building key investment theses, creating internal processes, and helping to grow the team. During her time there, she led the firm's investments in companies like Handshake and Career Karma. Before Emerson Collective, she worked at BloomBoard, an early-stage education technology company, where she focused on customer success and sales.

“My first job post-college was working as an account manager at an early-stage ed tech startup. I didn't really have any training for this job, so I learned a ton while doing the role, especially about what it means to have a ‘no task too small or too large’ attitude that I've tried to take to every job I've had since!”


Andre Green, Executive Director, Skillworks, The Boston Foundation

My first job after college was as the assistant manager at a well known athletic shoe store chain,” remembers Andre Green. Putting aside the irony given that I hate feet, my training was perfunctory and the work demanding. But what I quickly realized is that my specific technical skills would come and go, but that the skills of verbal communication, deep listening, reliability and resilience would transfer to whatever field I applied them to.” 

Andre is the Executive Director of SkillWorks, a nationally recognized workforce development funders' collaborative, where he brings a wide variety of experience in secondary education, workforce development, public policy analysis and advocacy, data analysis and technology support, addressing issues of housing instability and homelessness, and expanding funding for arts education. 

“Workforce development spends a lot of time and energy working from a deficit mindset. Implicit in XPRIZE Rapid Reskilling is the assumption that we can remake job training because, far from the deficient souls they are often portrayed as, job seekers are incredible and talented; we just have to position them to unlock those skills.” 


Janice Urbanik, Sr. Director of Innovation and Strategy, National Fund for Workforce Solutions

Janice Urbanik is Senior Director of Innovation and Strategy for the National Fund for Workforce Solutions. She leverages her past experience as the Executive Director of Partners for a Competitive Workforce in Cincinnati to help other National Fund sites achieve their full potential and has presented to numerous national and local audiences on workforce development and job quality.  

Janice previously facilitated the Employer Roundtable of the Cincinnati Child Poverty Collaborative where employers learn from other employers about the policies and practices they can implement to improve recruiting, retention and advancement while also building competitive advantage in their industry. Janice and her work teams have been recognized nationally for their work in assisting under-represented populations attain and retain employment in growing industry sectors in the region. 


Karan Chopra, Co-Founder, Opportunity@Work

Karan is an entrepreneur with experience in building ventures at the intersection of technology, economic mobility and sustainability. He is the Co-Founder of Opportunity@Work focused on rewiring the labor market so that individuals Skilled Through Alternative Routes (STARs) can work, learn and earn to their full potential. 

Previously, Karan co-founded, built and sold GADCO, which is the largest producer and processor of rice in Ghana using best-in-class science and technology. He serves on the governing or advisory boards of multiple ventures including WAVE (tackling unemployment in West Africa), Tomato Jos (food venture in Nigeria), Cervest (machine learning for climate resilience), and SkillUp (focusing on rehiring workers). 

Karan was previously at McKinsey & Company and a software developer at Siemens. He was named a 30 under 30 Social Entrepreneur by Forbes and an Aspen Institute New Voices Fellow. He holds a BS from Georgia Tech and an MBA from Harvard Business School as a Baker Scholar.


Lisa Neuberger Fernandez, Managing Director, Strategy and Innovation, Corporate Citizenship, Accenture

Lisa oversees global teams for Accenture’s Strategy and Innovation team, managing networks spanning 50 countries that tackle environmental and societal challenges.

A lifelong social innovator, Lisa has an extensive track record managing diverse, cross-functional teams to launch high impact models such as Accenture’s Social Innovators Accelerator, the company’s first Sustainability Services for the telecom sector, an NGO consulting spin-off New Sector Alliance, and a patented SROI method Public Service Value.

When we asked Lisa her thoughts about workforce development, she shared: “I see the Star Wars scene where the Millennium Falcon pauses for a split second and then jumps to hyper speed,” explaining that she believes XPRIZE Rapid Reskilling can identify and accelerate the diffusion of solutions that can reduce the issues of cognitive scarring, wage scarring, and other significant delays and inequalities, all gaps that have been widened by COVID-19.


Stay tuned for our upcoming Qualified Teams announcement in March, when competing teams begin testing their technology in job centers across six U.S. cities. Learn more about how it’s going with XPRIZE Rapid Reskilling in our Meet The Cities blog series