Business-Higher Education Forum Powers National Playbook on Place-Based Workforce Partnerships for Corporations and Higher Education through Workforce Partnership Initiative
June 18, 2025 | Washington, D.C. — The Business-Higher Education Forum (BHEF), the national implementation partner for the Business Roundtable Workforce Partnership Initiative (WPI), is pleased to announce the release of WPI’s latest publication, The WPI Playbook: How Business-Education Partnerships Prepare Tomorrow’s Talent. Created under a partnership by Business Roundtable, BHEF, and JPMorganChase, the playbook was unveiled yesterday at the Business Roundtable 2025 CEO Workforce Forum in Washington, D.C., by JPMorganChase Chairman and Chief Executive Officer Jamie Dimon. The playbook provides corporate executives, higher education leaders, and policy leaders a strategic roadmap to build scalable, high-impact workforce development partnerships to meet today’s economic competitiveness needs.
Nick Timiraos (Chief Economics Correspondent, Wall Street Journal), Kathy Warden (Chair, Chief Executive Officer and President, Northrop Grumman Corporation) and Jamie Dimon (Chairman and Chief Executive Officer, JPMorganChase)
As the nation’s only national network explicitly dedicated to fostering competitive, high-performing business-higher education partnerships, BHEF brought deep experience in convening industry leaders and translating employer demand into best practices for execution. BHEF’s work in this area focuses on scaling and replicating tested practices and emerging models to help regional coalitions expand career-aligned education, strengthen economic mobility, and meet evolving labor market needs.
“This playbook captures decades of insights from aligning business, higher education, and other key ecosystem partners into high-impact collaborations that deliver measurable results,” said Kristen Fox, Chief Executive Officer of the Business-Higher Education Forum. “It serves as both a strategic guide and a call to action, informed by what’s working in communities today and scaled through national collaboration. We’re proud to partner with Business Roundtable and JPMorganChase on the Workforce Partnership Initiative to help employers, educators, and communities navigate today’s talent needs.”
Since the release of the initial playbook and accompanying case studies in 2022, BHEF has continued to support expanded regional efforts under the Workforce Partnership Initiative (WPI), including:
- Milwaukee (2022): Highlighting regional employer collaboration in advanced manufacturing and healthcare.
- Chicago (Updated 2023): Detailing the growth and replication of the Chicago Apprentice Network into new regions.
- Connecticut (2023): Launching Connecticut, capturing the momentum of business, higher education, and policy leaders seeking to better retain and grow the nation’s leading tech talent, and
- Texas (2023): Launching Texas as WPI’s most recent site, showcasing how EY, BHEF, Alamo Colleges, and similar collaborations in Texas can rapidly update college experiences to meet new business and legislative needs across the state.
Together, these contributions have shaped a national movement by engaging over 13,000 students, 18,000 apprentices, nearly 500 businesses, and more than 130 colleges and universities since 2018. The new playbook serves as a blueprint for growing that impact and sustaining it into a new generation of partnerships.
To learn more about BHEF’s contributions to workforce strategy and regional talent initiatives, visit www.bhef.com.
About the Business-Higher Education Forum
The Business-Higher Education Forum is a national network connecting pioneering corporate and higher education leaders to identify emerging skills and co-develop inclusive pathways that address talent needs. We empower and catalyze collaborations that deliver accelerated, inclusive, and effective solutions across education and work and to meet the changing talent needs of learners, workers, and businesses.