Tessa Forshaw, PhD

Faculty Chair of Workforce and Workplace Learning at the Harvard Graduate School of Education

Research Expertise

Creative and Cognitive Skills

Workforce Learning

Workplace Learning

L&D

Design Based Research

Design Thinking

About

Work is more complex, more ambiguous, and moving faster than ever. Organizations are spending billions trying to build workforces that can match it. Almost none of that investment is informed by the sciences of how people actually learn, work, and create.I'm a cognitive scientist exploring how we work, learn, and create. Especially alongside AI. I bring academic research and insights into applied, real-world settings to build leaders' and teams' cognitive and creative capabilities. Faculty Chair, Workforce and Workplace Learning Concentration and Faculty Director of the Workforce Learning and Innovation Initiative @ The Harvard Graduate School of Education. Co-founding Scholar @ Next Level Lab, Harvard Graduate School of Education. Teacher of Design Thinking & Innovation at Harvard DCE, Stanford GSB, and Stanford d.school. Former IDEO CoLab and Accenture. Award-winning designer (Core77, Fast Company), TEDx speaker, and co-author of Innovation-ish (Wiley, 2025). <br>

Publications

Artificial Intelligence and Upskilling

Upskilling

2026

Jobs and skills in the digital economy

OECD Observer

2017

Addressing Emotions and Beliefs for Vulnerable Jobseekers with Virtual Reality

Education and Information Technologies

2023

Adaptive Teaching Teams and Collaborative Expertise

Developing Teaching Expertise: A Guide to Adaptive Professional Learning Design

2022

Not Far or Fast Enough

Sink or Swim

2025

The American Working Class: Economic Decline and Growing Inequality

Workforce Education

2021

From Craftsmanship to Connectivity: Exploring Networked Learning in a Contemporary Corporate Apprenticeship Program in the United States

Research in Networked Learning

2026

“THE SYDNEY MORNING HERALD” AND AUSTRALIAN HISTORY

Medical Journal of Australia

1931

Learning Transfer During Role Transitions Work

AERA 2025

2025

Figure 1—figure supplement 5. Distribution of TF subfamily members.

Unknown Venue

Emerging Findings on Learning Transfer Between Novel Roles for Working Learners and Learning Workers

Proceedings of the International Conference of the Learning Sciences

2024

Western States Building Energy & Controls Apprenticeship (BECA) Program

Unknown Venue

2024

Advancing Energy Efficiency Through Workforce Training

Unknown Venue

2023

Designing a Modern Apprentice Program for a Digital Era

Proceedings of the International Conference of the Learning Sciences

2023

Voluntary sector is missing from the NHS workforce plan

BMJ

2023

Maximizing Your Learning Opportunities and Documenting Your Competencies

The Social Work Field Placement

2023

Commentary: Complicated complications—making lemonade from lemons

JTCVS Techniques

2022

Ensuring Quality Articulation For Enhancement Of Construction Workforce Education

2001 Annual Conference Proceedings

GENERATING GLOBAL MODEL TO PREDICT STUDENTS' DROPOUT IN MOROCCAN HIGHER EDUCATIONAL INSTITUTIONS USING CLUSTERING

Proceedings of the 16th International Conference on e-Learning (EL 2022)

2022

From Learning How to Manage A Pandemic to Learning How to Be More Sustainable: Covid-19 Crisis Management and Double-Level Learning

Tourism Analysis

2022

'What Is? What If? What Next?' Why institutions must urgently identify, support, and celebrate their student-parents – and imagining a world in which they do so

Widening Participation and Lifelong Learning

2023

2. Talent and Influence beyond Numbers

Exporting Revolution

2020

Decent Work

SDG8 – Sustainable Economic Growth and Decent Work for All

2019

Can Workforce Development Help Us Reach Full Employment?

SSRN Electronic Journal

2023

Limit theorems for Parrondo's paradox

Electronic Journal of Probability

2009

Closing the Signaling Gap: Leveraging learning science and technology design principles to support marginalized and vulnerable youth to transfer their skills, knowledge, and abilities, to new and different types of work.

EPiC Series in Education Science

MAKING SENSE OF AI: EDUCATORS' ADOPTION AND BARRIERS IN WORKFORCE DEVELOPMENT

ICERI Proceedings

2025

NETWORKED LEARNING IN THE FLOW OF WORK: STRATEGY CONSULTANTS RAPIDLY ACQUIRE SKILLS IN DYNAMIC WORKPLACES

EDULEARN Proceedings

2025

Opening the “Black Box” of VR for Workforce Development: Investigating Learners’ Device, Usage, and Identities

Communications in Computer and Information Science

2023

Education

Harvard University

Doctor of Philosophy , Graduate School of Arts and Science

Cambridge, Massachusetts, United States of America

Stanford University

Masters of Arts (Learning, Design, Technology), Education

Stanford, California, United States of America

Experience

Harvard University

Postdoctoral Research Fellow / July, 2025 — Present

Stanford University

Appointed Lecturer / 2018 — 2023

Accenture

Strategy, Insights and Innovation Manager / March, 2011 — August, 2018

Links & Social Media

Link

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