Senior Advisor, Workforce and Public Capital
Tony Lodge
Tony works one question for employers, states, and investors: how do you build a workforce for jobs that do not exist yet, and who pays for it?
He has answered both halves inside one government. As a political appointee to Governor Wes Moore's innovation team, a Bloomberg Philanthropies partnership working on child poverty and economic mobility, he worked where public capital meets emerging technology. On the capital side the team moved $2.5 million through the Maryland Community Investment Venture Fund into community banks and credit unions and rebuilt the state's Community Business Compass into an AI-powered platform routing entrepreneurs to nearly 2,500 funding sources.
On the workforce side it shipped 14 open-source AI tools for state agencies, trained more than 200 employees across 13 agencies, and ran hands-on workshops with Anthropic that brought more than 70 Baltimore small businesses into practical AI use. Maryland entered RAISE US as an inaugural partner state on that record. He also serves on the AI Workforce Initiative of Maryland's Governor's Workforce Development Board, the state's response to AI-driven labor displacement.
At Urban Strategies LLC he led business development for workforce and apprenticeship programs. His policy career runs from Capitol Hill through Williams & Jensen, First Focus, and the Congressional Coalition on Adoption Institute.
He now advises employers and agencies standing up AI workstreams, where three questions arrive together: which roles the technology absorbs, what exposure it opens and who pays to retrain the people in between. His certification in AI-enabled cyber defense is why he answers the second one himself.
He holds degrees from Western Kentucky University, Georgetown University and Harvard University, and writes on venture capital, mobility infrastructure, and entrepreneurship at The Hustle Report.
A first-generation graduate and former foster youth from Appalachian Kentucky, he has been on the receiving end of the systems he now redesigns.