Turning Disruption into Opportunity

How ActivateWork Is Leading with Durable Skills and AI Innovation

From Helen Young Hayes, Founder & CEO

This year marked a turning point for the American labor market. After a period of extraordinary expansion during and immediately after COVID, the pace of hiring has cooled to a steadier—yet more uneven—rhythm. Nowhere is that volatility more visible than in the tech sector.

The year opened with a flurry of optimism and strong demand for talent, only to slow after new tariffs injected uncertainty and dampened confidence. At the same time, artificial intelligence continues to reshape the composition of tech work. Hiring for traditional coding roles has flattened, while demand for cybersecurity and data analysts continues to rise.

These shifts reveal a simple truth: the skills that mattered five years ago are not the skills driving opportunity today.

Why Human Skills Matter More Than Ever in the Age of AI

Even as technical roles evolve, employers are placing greater value on the human capabilities that AI cannot replicate. An analysis of nearly two million recent U.S. job postings found that communication skills are the single most requested requirement; 60 percent of employers say that soft skills are more important today than five years ago.

The World Economic Forum echoes this trend, identifying analytical thinking, resilience, and flexibility as core competencies of the future workforce. These durable skills have always been central to economic mobility. Today, they are indispensable.

At ActivateWork, we have responded decisively to these shifts and accelerated our evolution. Since 2016, durable skills training and coaching have been fundamental to our model. This year, we strengthened that foundation.

We redesigned our curriculum to provide more instructional time and hands-on practice for our core professional competencies: communication, problem-solving, critical thinking, time management, and lifelong learning. We introduced an assessment-first approach that benchmarks skills at the outset, followed by a capstone that evaluates demonstrated mastery.

These enhancements deepen how we teach, coach, and measure durable skills at scale.

From AI-Proficient to AI-Native

We also advanced a major redesign of our IT training. In 2025, our courses were enhanced by national IT training partner Per Scholas to include foundational AI tools. In 2026, all curricula will be completely overhauled with AI driving the training. This will enable us to develop AI-native learners—graduates who do not just use AI to enhance existing tasks, but who can rethink workflows and design solutions that leverage AI from the start.

This shift moves learners beyond AI-enabled proficiency toward the mindset and capabilities needed to drive innovation inside organizations. Research shows that integrating AI-native employees into legacy teams elevates performance, enabling faster execution, stronger problem-solving, and a clear competitive edge. We intend for our graduates to be that catalyst.

You can read more about how we’re embracing AI and streamlining the way we work further along in this Impact Report.

Expanding Career Pathways in Tech-Adjacent Industries

To better support job attainment for our graduates, we are opening new pathways into tech-adjacent careers, including roles in healthcare, financial services, and other sectors that require both technical expertise and strong customer-facing skills. These resilient industries offer multiple routes to career mobility and financial stability, even when the tech sector slows.

To support this growth, we launched a data analytics course and expanded our presence to Colorado Springs, broadening access to high-demand skills and new career routes.

Transforming Disruption Into Opportunity

In a period defined by rapid innovation and widening skills gaps, our charge is clear: we must build pathways that enable talent to rise at the same pace as the speed of change. Short-term, agile models like ActivateWork’s—rooted in rapid skill development and meaningful credentials—are precisely what this moment requires.

ActivateWork is answering that call with urgency and purpose, equipping individuals and employers to thrive in a transformed—and still rapidly transforming—economy. Together, we can ensure this moment of disruption becomes a moment of possibility for every Coloradan seeking a better future.

Onward,
Helen

Impact in Numbers

Graduate Spotlight

Juan Marquez
DevOps Engineer, Ping Identity

Juan Marquez’s path to success is a testament to the power of persistence, community support, and lifelong learning. Diagnosed with hearing loss in childhood and unfairly labelled a “slow learner,” Juan faced challenge after challenge in his life. After hitting rock bottom in 2018, Juan turned his life around and launched a new career through ActivateWork’s AWS Cloud Fundamentals bootcamp.

After graduation, Juan landed a DevOps apprenticeship with Ping Identity, which led to a full-time position with the company and allowed him to achieve a lifelong dream: purchasing his family’s first home.

Read Juan’s story to learn more about how ActivateWork’s training, support, and apprenticeship program helped Juan create a future for his family that once seemed out of reach:

Funding Highlights

We are deeply grateful to our generous partners whose support empowers ActivateWork to expand life-changing training, career coaching, and job placement services for Colorado’s untapped talent.

Wells Fargo Foundation Grant

ActivateWork received $225,000 from Wells Fargo to advance economic mobility in Colorado. This funding, part of Wells Fargo’s $4.7 million national workforce development commitment, will help ActivateWork expand tuition-free tech training, career coaching, and job placement services—connecting overlooked talent with high-demand careers in IT, cybersecurity, and data analytics.

Boeing State Advocacy & Global Engagement Grant

ActivateWork received a $75,000 grant from Boeing State Advocacy & Global Engagement’s “Our Heroes” initiative to expand our Veterans and Military Families program. This investment will fund tuition-free tech training, career coaching, and job placement for transitioning service members, veterans, and military spouses.