About

Shalin Jyotishi is an award-winning researcher, writer, and policy strategist at the think-tank New America where he is Founder and Managing Director of the Future of Work and Innovation Economy initiative, research, storytelling, and policy incubator dedicated to improving and aligning science, workforce, labor, and innovation policies to renew the American middle class. He is also a Forbes Contributor covering higher education, labor, and workforce issues relating to science, industrial, and innovation policy.

For more than a decade, Shalin has built an international body of research, policy, technical assistance, and storytelling initiatives that offer complexity-busting clarity and pragmatic solutions for challenges facing the future of learning and work. Specific focus areas include micro-credentials; STEM upskilling and workforce training; workforce development needs and job creation in emerging technology fields; advancing job quality and equity for workers; strategic planning and doing at community colleges and universities; integrating science & technology policy and workforce policy; and promoting employer and employee experience innovation.

A seasoned industry analyst and commentator, Shalin’s subject matter expertise have appeared in dozens of media outlets including NPR, U.S. News & World Report, Fast Company, Politico, Washington Post, Financial Times, USA Today, InsideHigherEd, and the Chronicle of Higher Education. A sought-after speaker and facilitator, Shalin has delivered more than 500 invited keynotes, presentations, and talks for corporate, academic, policy, media, and non-profit leaders and for general audiences on high-level stages, including at Davos, United Nations, OECD, World Bank, U.S. National Academies, SXSW, ASU-GSV, and the Education Writers Association.

Shalin has been appointed to advisory boards for the U.S. National Science Foundation, MIT’s Science Policy Review, UN International Telecommunications Unions, International Economic Development Council, American Enterprise Institute, George Washington University’s Institute for Public Policy, Georgetown University’s Center on Security and Emerging Technology, Apprenticeships for America, New America’s Community College Workforce Transformation & Implementation Cohort, Credential Engine, and Arizona State University’s Future of Being Human Initiative.

Previously, Shalin was the first civil society Fellow on the AI team at the World Economic Forum where he led research and storytelling around improving job quality through AI, years before ChatGPT was introduced. He was also a Visiting Scholar in Science and Technology Policy at the American Association for the Advancement of Science, the world’s largest membership association of scientists, where he conducted research and co-authored a book on science and technology policy (Forthcoming MIT Press).

Before that, Shalin built and led teams and a dozen initiatives at the Association of Public and Land-grant Universities, North America’s oldest presidential higher education association, that advised and empowered more than a hundred university presidents and senior executives on proactive economic and workforce development and R&D innovation strategy and implementation. He also led or co-led a number of sensemaking, advocacy, and research projects focused on technology transfer, industry partnerships, work-based learning, entrepreneurship ecosystem building, and embedding industry certifications in degrees.

Shalin served as the CEO and Managing Publisher of the internationally acclaimed Journal of Science Policy & Governance. He led the non-profit to double the journal’s staff and publishing frequency and pioneered global partnerships with the U.K. government, the United Nations, and the Kavli Foundation. Before that, he worked on science policy research alongside government, academia, industry, philanthropy, and celebrities at the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, the nation’s oldest learned society. He was also a science policy researcher at the University of Michigan, a consultant to the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation, and a University Innovation Fellow at Stanford University’s Hasso Plattner Institute of Design. Shalin earned his B.S. from the University of Georgia and earned his M.S. from Arizona State University. Reach Shalin on Twitter, Bluesky, YouTube and LinkedIn.