A note from NYATEP's Interim Executive Director

Dear NYATEP Members and Partners,

As summer winds down, I hope you all are enjoying some time to relax and recharge with family and friends. In lieu of our usual biweekly federal and state policy updates, I wanted to use this space to share some thoughts and updates as we head into a very busy fall season to come. (There is one policy note, at the end. Feel free to skip ahead, if you’d like.)

First off, I’d like to thank everyone who came out to any of the five events on our now-concluded Listening Tour. Through stops in the Hudson Valley, the Capital Region, Syracuse, Buffalo, and New York City, we heard from hundreds of you—workforce providers, educators, employers, and other system stakeholders. You shared how you describe your work to strangers, your biggest points of pride and concern in the work, how NYATEP can better support your efforts, and what workforce policy you would change if given a magic wand to do so. You also asked insightful and tough (in the best way) questions of us, on everything from how to connect with higher education institutions to how we define our own success. Enormous thanks also to our partners at the New York State Department of Labor and State University of New York, who joined us onstage at every stop on the tour.

We are currently digesting everything you shared over those five sessions, and plan to report what we heard to the community in September. We will share key themes from both the Listening Tour and our Member Survey, which we fielded earlier this summer. Thanks also to all who responded to the Survey, which is already informing our plans for 2026 related to professional development, advocacy, and more. We are also preparing to release our 2026 Policy Priorities in early fall, featuring an emphasis on skill-building strategies that deliver win-win outcomes for workers and employers alike.

Of course, the highlight of NYATEP’s fall calendar is the Workforce Development Conference scheduled for October 20-22 at the Desmond Hotel in Albany. We have a fantastic lineup of speakers and sessions on tap for you, running the gamut from big-picture analyses of the policy and funding landscapes and the roiling labor market to hands-on workshops around data usage, apprenticeship, AI in workforce, and much more. If you haven’t yet registered, what are you waiting for?

This surge of activity for NYATEP will reflect a highly consequential few months for the field. As you probably have seen, the Trump administration recently released “America’s Talent Strategy: Building the Workforce for the Golden Age,” its blueprint for workforce policy over the next several years. We have an extensive analysis of the blueprint in development that NYATEP members will receive later this week.  Also on the docket for this fall: federal funding for the next fiscal year, rulemaking around “workforce Pell,” and potential reauthorization of the Workforce Innovation and Opportunity Act.

As always, NYATEP will keep an eye on these issues and share with you the most important information and the best analysis we can provide. Please feel free to reach out to me directly at [email protected], and I’ll look forward to seeing you in October at the Conference in Albany.

Best, 

David