Does it accurately capture all the things you know and can do? All your skills, knowledge, and accomplishments? Increasingly, the ol' resume is falling short for learners, workers, and employers. Our economy is shifting rapidly, and so are the needs of companies across practically every industry. There are still more available jobs than workers to fill them, but a critical aspect for many employers is finding the right people with the right skills for what they need. This is where technology and innovation connect to create opportunity, access, and impact.
That spirit of connection and possibility shaped this year's T3 Innovation Network Mid-Year Meeting, held in conjunction with the Badge Summit at CU Boulder. The event outlined a bold vision for collectively forging pathways in learning and work where everyone taps into success — a vision rooted in digital transformation.
Ahead of the Curve with Digital Transformation
As the future of work unfolds before us, more employers are prioritizing a skills-based approach to finding and keeping workers. According to Deloitte, skills-based organizations are 107% more likely to place talent effectively, and 98% are more likely to retain high performers. But here's the thing — skills are often hard to communicate.
Taylor Hansen, executive director with the U.S. Chamber Foundation, pointed to a key part of the solution: using skills-rich digital credentials, otherwise known as Learning and Employment Records (LERs). These digital records capture a person's skills and experiences in a way that can be easily shared, verified, and used across workforce systems. For workers, they provide a clearer way to showcase what they know and can do. For employers, LERs are a game-changer — helping them identify, recruit, and retain top talent more effectively.
"Employers are moving to skills already, and they're seeing positive results," said Hansen. "These are positive returns before they're even doing it with a full stack of technology and digital transformation tools. Just imagine what the impact will be of skills-based hiring once we get to that ideal state soon."
Ensuring Digital Credentials Matter
Preceding the Mid-Year Meeting, Colorado Governor Jared Polis joined the Badge Summit to discuss the importance of short-term non-degree credentials, apprenticeships, and skills-based hiring in Colorado. He emphasized the need for meaningful credentials that align with employer needs and promote upward mobility. Polis also highlighted solutions-based initiatives like free associate's degrees for families earning under $90,000 and tax credits for employers to support apprenticeships. He noted efforts to streamline education pathways and align them with economic needs.
"We don't want credentials that don't mean anything and don't have employer buy-in," said Governor Polis. "We need to make sure that there is employer buy-in — not just to help design these efforts, but to ensure that we're certifying the right skills needed for hiring. That's how we deliver more opportunities that lead to real jobs, real wage gains and, ultimately, real upward mobility."
Same Focus, More Progress
This year's Mid-Year Meeting also included a panel discussion on initiatives that are actively working to solve challenges around digital credentials and skills-based hiring. One of those key initiatives includes Experience You, which uses AI and emerging technologies to help individuals translate their past learning and work experience into digital credentials.
"Experience You is really meant to be an opportunity for technology providers, higher education institutions, and every stakeholder along the gamut, to come together to help translate existing experience and skills into skills-rich credentials," said Colin Reynolds, senior education designer at Education Design Lab. "I think the T3 Network has been a really great environment for those people to get together to start working on solutions."
The Experience You: Digital Transformation panel explored leveraging AI to personalize learning and career pathways, make skills easier to recognize, simplify systems, and improve how people navigate education and work. Lauren Runco, vice president of innovation, strategy, and delivery at Solutions for Information Design, Inc., stressed the importance of maintaining human involvement in AI processes, mainly to ensure consistency in job recommendations. The panel agreed on the necessity of balancing human skills with AI efficiency, aiming for scalable, intuitive systems as we move forward with technology.
Key panel themes included:
- Importance of open standards
- Field testing new ideas and technologies
- Need for partnerships across education and business
- Employer training (to better balance comprehensive skills data with hiring simplicity)
This growing network of organizations and individuals is evolving — moving from big ideas and early experiments to real-world strategies that are starting to take hold and scale. We're entering a new phase where digital transformation for a skills-first economy isn't just a vision — it's becoming a reality. The T3 Network is supporting this progress in many ways, from bringing end-to-end demonstration projects to life to developing open-source tools that make it easier for others to adopt and scale these innovations.
The U.S. Chamber Foundation will continue to lead and support digital transformation across various sectors, encouraging collaboration and innovation because a strong American workforce benefits everyone — from employers to workers to communities.
About the author
Joseph Davis
Joseph Davis is communications director at the U.S. Chamber Chamber of Commerce Foundation.
