Pete Carlson has 30 years of experience in consulting, research, and policy analysis. Over the past decade, he has done in-depth studies and hands-on work in over two-dozen regions, exploring what it takes to grow good jobs, what kind of leadership is needed to guide those efforts, how to build and sustain the cross-sector partnerships needed to carry out those efforts, and how to develop a skilled workforce as part of that process.

For the past three years, Pete has co-managed the Regional Prosperity Project, a national action-learning network of regional leaders experimenting with new approaches to creating jobs and expanding opportunity in ways that are mutually reinforcing. Prior to that, he managed the America Works Initiative for the Walmart Foundation, helping seven regions better integrate their workforce development and economic development efforts, and link them more closely to regional growth strategies.

Earlier in his career, Pete served as an advisor to the U.S. Secretary of Labor on strategies to promote skill-based economic growth. As the director of the National Advisory Commission on Work-Based Learning, comprised of business, education and labor leaders, he organized forums of leading experts and practitioners to identify what was working and what was getting in the way of improving the skills of the American workforce and spreading the adoption of high-performance work practices.