Four Moments That Mattered at Horizons 2025

Photo credit: Drew Bird | drewbirdphoto.com

Speakers at the 2025 Horizons Summit, presented by Jobs for the Future, met the challenge to “Dare To Be Brave.” With blunt takes on artificial intelligence and how to reach the next generation of learners and workers, the innovators gathered in New Orleans in June didn’t hold back on what excites them—and worries them—about the future.  

“There are eight-plus billion people on the planet, generally with a very strong sense of individual agency and an understanding of our dignity and a pride in the society we're building,” said Vilas Dhar, president of the Patrick J. McGovern Foundation.  “And then you've got maybe a couple of hundred thousand people who work in tech, who have access to massive amounts of capital, sure, that are building products that are splashy launches and everything else, and somehow the rest of us have said, ‘Yeah, they're gonna figure out what this future looks like for us.’ There's a real problem to that understanding of what a society looks like.” 

Over the course of two days, leaders from across education and workforce discussed the biggest opportunities and challenges facing the country today. JFF also announced exciting progress toward our North Star goal—by 2033, 75 million Americans facing barriers to economic advancement will have quality jobs—and a powerful new partnership for measuring the impact of our collective work to reach it. 

Here are four more can’t-miss moments from Horizons 2025. Share your own on social media with the hashtag #JFFHorizons, and don’t forget to look at last week’s first four mic-drop moments.  

Julian Newman: “Maybe we're the somebody to do the something about something that we're frustrated about.” 

In a Horizons Candid Conversation, Julian Newman, author of Beautiful Together and founder and CEO of The FutureCast Foundation, broke down the barriers, real and internalized, that keep people from sharing their own stories, and suggested that now is the time to move past questioning the value of our own voices. 

Nicholas Thompson and Renée Cummings: “Don’t ever forsake your imagination to create the world we need to be in.” 

Artificial intelligence experts Nicholas Thompson, Renée Cummings, and Vilas Dhar reminded the Horizons audience that no matter how fast or powerful AI gets, humans hold the advantage in how to create and use it.  

Ken Oliver: “I’m not asking [folks] to change their entire organization. I’m asking them to hire one person.” 

Ken Oliver, chief innovation at The Just Trust, and James Cadogan, executive director of the National Basketball Social Justice Coalition, discussed what it takes to shift policies, practices, and narratives when it comes to hiring people with records of arrest, conviction, and incarceration.  

Dennis Serrette: “We want to craft and create the answers and the solutions to everything under the sun, and I've learned through my daughters, that is always the wrong path to follow.” 

Dennis Serrette, executive vice president and chief development officer at the National Urban League—and a father to four daughters—shared his insights on how to effectively create quality jobs for Gen Z learners and workers: listen before you problem-solve.