Q&A with Steve Nelson, Global Opportunity Initiative Program Manager
November 18, 2022
Steve Nelson, Program Manager for the Global Opportunity Initiative (GOI), works with research associates and faculty to connect ideas and find ways to solve the most pressing problems in education and workplace training. He is passionate about education and learning, having spent the last few years working to improve workplace learning in the corporate world, he is now focused on helping find research solutions to solve all education issues, from K12, Higher Ed, and Workplace Learning. Steve works with research partners on the campus of MIT to facilitate transformational learning objectives and create educational best practices.
A graduate of the University of Connecticut, Steve holds a Bachelor of Arts in English and Journalism as well as a graduate certificate in Higher Education Leadership and Management from the University of Massachusetts. When Steve isn’t helping connect education research on campus and beyond, he likes to travel with his wife and spend time with his cats.
What initially drew you to the Global Opportunity Initiative?
Honestly for me, it was to help fill a need that is there in workforce development. Having been under the umbrella of MIT Open Learning for over six years now, I’ve seen these challenges through many of our programs and realized we should also be using some of our capacities to find ways to make the future of work more equitable, but also smarter. Finding the rights skills for the right people and getting those skills to the right industry partners has always been a challenge – but it doesn’t need to be. We’re hopeful that we can help bridge the gap between education and the workforce in ways that make sense, and build a better economic outcome throughout all the regions of the world.
What past experiences have prepared you for such global challenges?
First, I’ll say that I might not really be prepared. When we first launched the GOI five months ago I was still worried that not enough people would understand what we’re trying to do. Following the successful launch in June and more recently expanding our outreach to Southeast Asia, we’ve already grown more in these few months than I could have predicted. That said, my own personal journey here is filled with twists and turns. In previous generations, maybe your parents or your grandparents, work seemed more linear. You went to school, you took a job, and you pretty much stayed in that job for forty plus years until they gave you a gold watch and thanked you for your efforts. Now, there are so many variables that make that linear career path almost impossible, right?
We just passed the 8 billion mark for the global population. And many newborns now will have a life expectancy longer than mine, and certainly longer than their great grandparents. That longevity will add to the growing need to reskill and retrain workers not only at the beginning of their careers, but throughout two, three, maybe even four career changes. Workers will spend more time in the workforce and be introduced to new technologies at a speed that hasn’t been seen since the first industrial revolution. How are we going to account for these variables without gathering some of the biggest employers together to address these challenges through collaboration rather than through competition.
What excites you most about the GOI?
There are so many things, and it’s so new and can go in so many directions. I love that we’ve already had some really important conversations with some of the biggest players globally that can help set the right action in motion. But if I’m being completely honest, the Student Ambassador program is really exciting to me. This is an opportunity for students from around the world to meet like-minded learners and discuss challenges that will have the greatest impact on their lives as they move from school to industry. We absolutely have to hear their voice and help make their values part of the next big industrial revolution. They’ve already been through a lot and have seen how large disruptions can sometimes be a blessing in disguise and how innovation and technology hasn’t stolen jobs as so many have thought would happen, but has created better opportunities for more workers and will continue to do so.
We’re just getting started with the Ambassador program but I’m really looking forward to launching in as many countries and schools as we can, because each country and region has their own unique challenges and we want to hear them all so we can make informed decisions on how best to create the future of work in a meaningful way.
How did you become a Program Manager and what does your job entail?
Ha! I’d like to think of myself as a jack-of-all-trades. As I mentioned earlier, my career path is anything but linear. I started out as a journalist – reporting sports for a local newspaper. From there I wrote for a corporate legal team, then did some teaching in Asia, before moving back to the states and settling in as an accountant of all things. I actually went back to school and took 8 more undergraduate classes to get what would be considered my third undergraduate major (including Journalism and English). But after spending a decade preparing taxes, I needed to find something new. So again, I headed back to school to get another certificate – this time in higher education management. And maybe this isn’t the last career change, right? Years from now I could be doing something completely different. And that’s the thing, the GOI is going to hopefully make it easier for people like me to find a niche, and if not, keep trying something new.
What do you like most about working at MIT?
It’s the people. I’ve been blessed to work with so many good and caring people, and smart, capable people. It’s easy to get distracted or to feel a sense of imposter syndrome, but I find that I’m too busy to even think about that sometimes. MIT has a long history of tackling some of the greatest challenges, and hopefully the GOI can continue that tradition.
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