Photo: Joshua Franzos
Byron Auguste
Economy
30th Heinz Awards - 2025
Byron Auguste, Ph.D., is leading a national movement to rewire the U.S. labor market to recognize the skills, value and potential of STARs — workers Skilled Through Alternative Routes rather than a bachelor’s degree. The co-founder of Opportunity@Work, he is working to remove the barriers blocking 50% of U.S. workers from accessing opportunities for upward career mobility while benefitting employers looking for skills-based employees.
Dr. Auguste, whose career spans 20 years with McKinsey advising Fortune 500 companies and serving as an economic policy advisor in the White House and the National Economic Council during the Obama administration, founded Opportunity@Work to change entrenched hiring practices that rely on automated screens, algorithms and stereotypes. Rather, Opportunity@Work envisions a labor market in which an individual’s skills matter more than where those skills were achieved, and a future in which all Americans can work, learn and earn to their full potential .
Using research, data visualization tools and other resources, Opportunity@Work equips companies to modify their talent acquisition practices to tap the 70 million STARs who lack college degrees but have gained valuable, market-ready skills through military service, community college, training programs, partial college completion and on-the-job experience.
Opportunity@Work’s Tear the Paper Ceiling campaign, launched in 2022 in partnership with the Ad Council, is sparking national awareness and motivating action by companies, policymakers, talent platforms and decision-makers. Over 90 partners, including major corporate employers, have removed degree requirements and are now adopting skills-first hiring. To date, 30 states have committed to removing degree barriers from their hiring processes.
Dr. Auguste and Opportunity@Work are also working with corporate, public sector and philanthropic partners to make hiring STARs for higher-wage roles the norm. In the next decade, Opportunity@Work aims to enable upward mobility for 1 million STARs by opening up 10 million good-paying jobs, boosting their earnings by $100 billion.
“Employers screening out by degrees have blocked STARs from over 7 million good jobs, such as administrative assistant, medical technician, sales rep and IT support. Like a paper ceiling stifling careers and wage growth, this practice has a disparate impact on Black and Brown workers, military veterans and rural Americans. We can do better.
Our research proves that low wage does not equal low skill: 30 million STARs already have the skills for roles with at least 50% higher salaries than their current jobs. If we truly want a merit-based economy, the starting point is to value all skills. If you’re building more inclusive talent pipelines, if you’re working to expand economic mobility, if your goal is scalable, positive solutions to the big forces reshaping our labor market — AI, inflation, uncertainty — then you need STARs.”
— Byron Auguste
Videos
WorkingNation Overheard | Byron Auguste on looking beyond the four-year degree requirement
Opportunity@Work's Paperless Pathways Podcast | Episode 1
From the Heinz Awards
Press Release
PITTSBURGH, September 16, 2025— The Heinz Family Foundation today named Byron G. Auguste, Ph.D., co-founder and CEO, Opportunity@Work, and Sara C. Bronin, J.D., founder, National Zoning Atlas, recipients of the prestigious 30th Heinz Award for the Economy.
Read MorePress Release
From Reducing Food Waste and Advocating for Healthy Spaces to Visualizing our Lived Stories and Breaking Barriers in Jobs and Housing — 30th Heinz Awards Recipients Are Forging an Equitable Future
PITTSBURGH, September 16, 2025 — The Heinz Family Foundation today announced the recipients of the 30th Heinz Awards, which will present unrestricted cash awards totaling $1.5 million to six Americans for outstanding contributions in the categories of theArts, theEconomy and theEnvironment. Two awards are given per category. As part of the accolade, each recipient receives an unrestricted cash award of $250,000.