Building and Investing in Your Workforce: What We Heard at the 2026 Summit

On September 16, we were pleased to welcome 101 workforce and talent practitioners to Fueled Collective for the third annual Workforce & Talent Summit. Colleagues from community organizations, education and training providers, and nonprofits spent the day on three questions the region is working on right now: what AI means for jobs, how to communicate across generations at work, and what happens when a raise costs a family their benefits. Audrey Treasure of the Workforce Innovation Center kept the day moving as our emcee, and Hamilton County Commissioner Denise Driehaus opened the morning with a warm welcome.

Keynote: Designing an AI-Ready Workforce

Audrey Mickahail of Opportunity@Work opened with a message that set the tone for the day: AI is more likely to change how a job is done than to eliminate it. About one in four Cincinnati workers, roughly 263,000 people, are in highly exposed jobs, which means their tasks are likely to shift. Her projections for the ten most exposed occupations in our region showed a small net gain in jobs over the next decade, even with some roles shrinking.

The bigger concern is pathways. Four of those ten occupations are gateway roles, the middle rungs that connect entry-level work to higher-wage jobs, and all four are projected to decline in demand. That matters most for STARs, workers skilled through alternative routes like community college, apprenticeships, bootcamps, and most commonly, on-the-job experience. STARs make up 53% of Cincinnati’s labor force, about 560,000 people, compared to 50% nationally. More than 212,000 of them already have the skills for higher-wage work. What they need are clearer pathways to get there, and that’s work this room does every day.

Then she put the room to work. At each table, attendees picked two gateway roles from their placemats and decided whether the bigger barrier was getting in or getting through. They chose an approach to address it, thought about how the region would respond if gateway opportunities narrow, and named one action that they or someone they influence could take. Each table reported out with one role, one barrier, and one action to start. It was a great way to move from “here’s the data” to “here’s what we can do about it.”

Breakouts

Attendees chose among three sessions, each offered twice.

The Benefits Cliff: Redesigning Career Pathways Around It. David Altig of the Federal Reserve Bank of Atlanta walked through how a raise can leave a family with less money overall once benefits shrink. He used “net resources” (income plus benefits, minus taxes and expenses) to show where the cliffs hit, and where benefit plateaus make extra income barely matter. His CLIFF tool suite lets workers run the numbers on a raise or new job before they commit.

The Workforce Pell Effect: What’s New for Career Navigation. Calista Smith of Scale Strategic Solutions shared how new Pell Grant flexibility is reshaping short-term credential options and what that means for the people we guide.

Apprenticeship Pay-for-Performance: A New Funding Model to Watch. Aaron Burdette of the University of Cincinnati walked attendees through a model that ties apprenticeship investment to actual outcomes.

Speaking Every Generation’s Language

After lunch, Dr. Kevin Sansberry of KEVRA got the room moving with interactive activities that put common “generational differences” to the test. His point: things like psychological safety, meaningful work, and flexibility aren’t owned by any one generation. They track more closely with tenure, financial pressure, career stage, and life circumstances, which can overlap with age but aren’t caused by it.

Spark Session: What Employers Actually Want

We closed the day with a conversation moderated by Sean Comer of the Cincinnati Regional Chamber’s Leadership Center. Cara Cross of Messer Construction, Kyla Jones of TriHealth, and Nick Morrow of ABB Optical shared their perspectives on the gap between what training programs build and what hiring teams are looking for.

The takeaway

Cincinnati’s workforce ecosystem isn’t waiting for AI, benefit cliffs, or shifting demographics to sort themselves out. The people in that room are already working on them, together.

If you’d like to keep exploring the AI conversation, Opportunity@Work and Brookings run a Regional Leadership Exchange, a network of more than 250 regional leaders working on AI’s impact on worker mobility.

The Summit was funded by Hamilton County’s ARPA grant, an investment in the people who do this work every day. Thank you to the County, our speakers, our Steering Committee, and everyone who showed up ready to share what they know.