Imagine it’s 2035. AI has reshaped how businesses operate. Funding priorities have shifted. What will it take to ensure more people have the opportunity to build a good life?

That was the challenge we put to the early-career business leaders participating in the Farber Fellowship this summer. Drawing on their MBA coursework, professional backgrounds, and hands-on work experience with employment social enterprises (ESEs), they explored how Redefine, ESEs, and the movement for inclusive employment could prepare for the decade ahead.

Two key themes emerged from this exercise: the opportunity within artificial intelligence (AI) and the power of partnerships. Our Farbers’ ideas reinforced priorities in Redefine’s 2026–2030 strategy while raising questions worth considering for anyone who cares about social impact.

Here are the lessons that these business leaders shared with us:

1. We must make AI practical. The fellows urged us to move beyond the chatbot conversation. Help enterprises explore tools for financial management, operations, and coaching, while building AI literacy and durable human skills. The opportunity is to strengthen businesses and help workers navigate changing expectations.
2. We need to build partnerships that open doors. Employers can help shape training and create hiring pathways. Technology partners can support experimentation. Government can expand access through policy and public funding. Philanthropy can give promising approaches room to develop. Deeper relationships across these groups could help inclusive employment reach more people.
3. We all must connect evidence to action. Research, storytelling, and partnerships work best together. Evidence helps establish what works; stories make its significance clear; partners can translate those insights into hiring decisions, investment, and policy.
4. It’s time to think beyond the next job. The fellows also pushed us to consider how employee ownership and other business models could help workers share in the wealth they help create. That question connects directly to economic power: the work, wealth, and well-being people need to shape their futures.

Their insights offered no single prediction for 2035. It offered a challenge for today: we must strengthen the businesses, relationships, and pathways that will allow more people to contribute to the future of work.

The Farber Fellowship is a consulting-like engagement that gives graduate students the opportunity and autonomy to work on a mission-critical project at a social enterprise in Redefine Alliance’s Community, over the course of one summer. The 2027 application cycle opens in early December; learn more and view application details now.