Talent Strategy
Building Colorado’s next-generation education to employment system
Colorado Succeeds is Colorado’s Engine for Employer-Led Talent Strategy
We bring the full strength of the business community, its reach, its credibility, and its urgency, to architect a statewide model that prepares learners for good jobs and ensures employers have access to the skilled, homegrown talent they need to compete.
Through employer leadership, real-time labor-market data, and learner-centered design, we are shaping the statewide model that Colorado needs for the future.
Why Employer-Led Talent Strategies Matter
Colorado’s competitiveness depends on a talent system aligned with the rapidly changing economy. Yet today:
- Learners face fragmented, inequitable, and confusing career pathways.
- Employers struggle to fill critical roles in every major industry.
- Education, training, and industry programs operate in silos disconnected from real market demand.
This isn’t a talent shortage — it’s a system design problem.
Employer leadership is the fastest, most effective way to fix it. When business sets the direction and programs align to real demand, pathways become clear and navigable, regional economies strengthen, and opportunity expands for learners across the state.
Colorado Succeeds is uniquely positioned to deliver this shift – statewide, at scale, with a proven model built on two decades of business leadership.
Our Approach: Leading Colorado’s Talent Transformation
Colorado Succeeds brings deep expertise, statewide reach, and the authority of the business community to redesign the talent system through a new era of employer-led, learner-centered talent strategy.
We don’t convene for the sake of convening. We don’t support in the background or operate on the edges of the system.
We architect the model, align the system, and build the capabilities Colorado needs to sustain employer-led talent strategies long term.
Our approach is clear and powerful:
Convene
Aligning leaders from education to employment
We unite employers, chambers, workforce intermediaries, and education partners around shared challenges and opportunities. Our statewide networks are the entry point for leaders ready to move from conversation to coordinated action.
Our Leadership In Action:
- Engaging hundreds of businesses and workforce intermediaries in a statewide talent network impacting every county and major industry in the state.
- Hosting quarterly talent strategy webinars and briefings for business leaders to shape statewide priorities.
- Leading the Education to Employment Alliance to ensure business drives system improvement
What it Changes:
A fragmented system becomes coordinated. Leaders stop operating in isolation and begin co-designing aligned strategies that deliver real results.
Connect
Translating labor-market demand into pathway design
We help leaders translate demand into design. Through resources, tools, and hands-on support, we strengthen career pathways aligned to industry needs and local economic opportunity.
Our Leadership In Action:
- Building a statewide Industry Association Community of Practice, connecting sector leaders in Colorado’s key industries to share insights, align strategies, leverage funding, and collaborate on talent solutions.
- Co-creating workforce plans anchored in employer needs and responsive to local priorities across seven economic regions
- Guiding 20 high schools across 13 school districts and impacting more than 20,000 students – in elevating career pathway navigation, work-based learning experiences, and concurrent enrollment opportunities.
What it Changes:
Ideas become programs. Pathways become aligned, relevant, and connected to real economic opportunity.
Equip
Building the capabilities to sustain employer-led systems
We train business and workforce intermediaries with the tools and frameworks that define employer-led excellence. Through Talent Pipeline Management® (TPM) and statewide employer collaboratives, we build business capacity to implement employer-led, data-driven processes that identify skills gaps, analyze data, and scale talent solutions that work.
Our Leadership In Action:
- Overseeing three statewide employer collaboratives, including:
- Project SCALE, where major construction and skilled trades employers align and scale high school programs, apprenticeships, and postsecondary pathways to fill the more than 30,000 unfilled construction jobs statewide.
- The Life Sciences Collaborative, where major bioscience employers scale pathways to fill hundreds of critically needed roles.
- The NextGen Advanced Manufacturing Collaborative, where major advanced manufacturing companies are creating major hiring goals aligned with critical occupational pathways
- Colorado Succeeds is launching two additional collaboratives in high-demand industries in 2026
- Leading the Colorado Talent Academy, a six-month experience that annually trains 35 cross-sector leaders in TPM and employer engagement strategies.
What it Changes:
Colorado builds a sustainable, statewide talent infrastructure driven by employers— not temporary pilots or isolated programs.
What Success Looks Like
Employer-led. Learner-centered. Data-driven.
These aren’t slogans. They are the principles we apply to every talent strategy we design, support, or scale across Colorado.
We measure success by the system-wide outcomes that matter most:
Engaged Employers
Business leaders shift from advisors to active co-designers of talent solutions.
Stronger Intermediaries
Regional and sector partners gain tools, data, and capacity to sustain collaboration.
Aligned
Programs
Education and training programs reflect labor-market needs and lead to living-wage careers.
Learner
Impact
More Coloradans—especially those furthest from opportunity—earn industry credentials and secure good jobs.
Systemic
Change
Insights from practice inform smarter policy, creating a continuous feedback loop that strengthens Colorado’s workforce systems statewide.
We Lead this Work in Partnership with:
Construction & Skilled Trades Employer Collaborative
Bioscience Employer Collaborative
Advanced Manufacturing Employer Collaborative
Aerospace Employer Collaborative
Now Recruiting
Workforce Intermediary Network
And many more!
Get Involved
Be part of a statewide movement to strengthen Colorado’s talent pipeline. Whether you’re an employer, intermediary, or partner organization, Colorado Succeeds offers opportunities to connect, learn, and lead.