Executive Director

WAI is seeking a dynamic, strategic, and hands-on Executive Director to lead the organization through its next chapter of growth, sustainability, and impact. The Executive Director will be responsible for strengthening WAI’s position within the labor movement, expanding its programmatic and fundraising capacity, and elevating its national profile as a trusted workforce intermediary.

For more than 55 years, the AFL-CIO Working for America Institute (WAI) has served as the nonprofit workforce development and economic mobility arm of the AFL-CIO. Founded during the War on Poverty, WAI has a long and proud history of bringing together unions, employers, community partners, and the public and private sectors to help workers—especially those most economically vulnerable—access good jobs, build skills, and advance into family-sustaining careers.

Today, WAI is a mission-driven 501(c)(3) organization operating at the intersection of the labor movement, workforce development, and economic policy. We advance innovative workforce strategies that strengthen worker voice, support union growth, and build resilient communities, with a recent focus on planned growth into other non-construction sectors. Our work includes the design and implementation of high-quality apprenticeship, pre-apprenticeship, and training programs;

technical assistance to labor and workforce partners; and collaboration with national, state, and local stakeholders to respond to economic and technological change.

As the United States navigates rapid technological advances — including artificial intelligence, advanced manufacturing, and automation—and confronts persistent inequities in access to quality jobs, WAI is uniquely positioned to help ensure these changes translate into good union jobs and real economic mobility. A core priority for WAI is supporting the AFL-CIO’s leadership in shaping how emerging technologies are deployed in ways that protect workers, expand opportunity, and strengthen unions.

WAI is seeking a dynamic, strategic, and hands-on Executive Director to lead the organization through its next chapter of growth, sustainability, and impact. The Executive Director will be responsible for strengthening WAI’s position within the labor movement, expanding its programmatic and fundraising capacity, and elevating its national profile as a trusted workforce intermediary.

• Provide overall vision, strategy, and leadership for WAI in alignment with its mission, history, and values.
• Strengthen WAI’s role as the workforce development arm of the AFL-CIO, working closely with AFL-CIO officers, departments, councils, state federations, central labor councils, and affiliated unions.>
• Advance WAI’s role in supporting the AFL-CIO’s priorities around advanced technology and artificial intelligence, including worker training, upskilling, and strategies to address technological displacement.
• Identify emerging opportunities in advanced technology, artificial intelligence, robotics, and other evolving sectors, and translate them into actionable programs, apprenticeship models, and partnerships that align with labor movement priorities.
• Report to and work closely with the AFL-CIO Board of Directors, ensuring regular communication, transparency, and strategic alignment.

• Lead and significantly expand private-sector fundraising, particularly with national and regional foundations and philanthropic partners.
• Oversee public-sector funding strategies, including federal, state, and local grants, and ensure compliance with all grant requirements.
• Articulate WAI’s value proposition to funders and by clearly connecting workforce development, apprenticeship, and training to economic mobility, community stability, and worker voice.
• Identify strategic opportunities to partner with local workforce development nonprofits as part of larger grants.

• Oversee the design, implementation, and evaluation of workforce development, apprenticeship, and training initiatives.
• Ensure…