The Blueprint Design Team — three local workforce boards, working alongside CWA and EDD — will steer this project on behalf of all 45 boards. Together we build the AI Workforce Blueprint with the field, not for it, so every board and its AJCC can put it to work.
AI is reshaping California's labor market — the jobs people do, how businesses operate, and the services local boards deliver. In June 2026, the Employment Development Department (EDD) selected and is funding the California Workforce Association (CWA) to lead the state's response: a statewide AI workforce strategy for California's 45 local workforce development boards.
The effort is anchored in the Governor's Executive Order N-6-26 and delivered as the California AI Workforce Blueprint — a practical, field-tested framework, built with local boards and the workers and businesses closest to AI's impact, that any of the 45 boards and their AJCCs can adopt.
AI is reshaping which jobs exist and how work gets done — faster than the workforce system was built to respond. The Blueprint Design Team is the design body at the heart of California's answer: a small, diverse set of boards co-designs the Blueprint alongside CWA while convening the workers and businesses closest to AI's impact, so real frontline experience informs and prioritizes the work — and what we publish, every board can adopt.
The team shapes and signs off on the Blueprint's methodology, the AI-exposure data tools, and the curated curricula. Here, the team's recommendations are the default path.
We decideOn WIOA guidance (Pillar 4), the team advises. EDD controls whether and when guidance is issued. We inform that work — we don't direct it.
We advise"Member" isn't one role. Four groups sit at the table, each with a different ask, a different commitment, and a different level of authority.
Three boards are the Design Partners — the people actually building the Blueprint with us. This is the most important commitment in the charter, so here's exactly what it asks of you.
Attend the monthly rhythm
Two standing remote meetings each month. The co-design call is your working session with CWA and the other two boards — where the Blueprint actually gets shaped. The system convening is the all-boards webinar where you hear what others are doing and share your progress with the field. Both are expected; continuity is what makes co-design work, so you name a primary lead and a backup and avoid sending unfamiliar substitutes.
Participate — bring your board's reality
Show up ready to build, not just react. You shape design priorities, pressure-test prototypes against what actually happens in your AJCC, weigh in on decisions, and do a little work between meetings — short pre-reads, responding in the shared channel, and reviewing drafts within the review window. Your operational truth is the test every idea has to pass.
Convene your community — twice, on site
This is the signature ask. You host two in-person community convenings in your own region, bringing local workers and employers into the room — roughly 8 to 25 people per session, depending on your local access. Convening 1 (early): gather insight and paint the local landscape — what AI change actually looks like where you are. Convening 2 (later): put draft tools and modules in front of the same community to test, react, and refine.
Report — turn what you hear into direction
Carry your community's voice back to the team. Bring a short field-intelligence readout to each monthly co-design call, post insights to the shared channel between meetings, and share your local labor-market data with the group. This is the engine of the whole project: what you hear locally is the first input to what we prioritize and build statewide.
Co-author & represent
You're a genuine co-author of the Blueprint architecture and the curricula review — not a reviewer — and a two-way ambassador: your region's perspective into the room, and the team's work back out to your region and AJCC. You'll also join quarterly check-ins with EDD / your LWDA.
Not necessarily your director. The ideal lead is AI-literate and AI-curious, collaborative, and optimistic about what AI can mean for workers — comfortable with ambiguity and energized by building something new. They don't need to be technical. Plus a backup, so the seat is never empty.
The team names its decision model out loud, with a clear path when agreement is hard.
Two monthly meetings, two local convenings, and an always-on channel — designed to be hyper-interactive.
The project follows a human-centered design arc: we mobilize the team, frame the work together, discover what's really happening in communities, then define and design from what we hear. Here are the key dates ahead.
Launch the request for Expressions of Interest
Open the call to all 45 Local Workforce Boards.
EOI webinar
A noon webinar to outline the project and walk boards through the co-design experience.
Announce board selections
Name the three Design Partner boards that will co-design the Blueprint.
First Design Team meeting
Kick off and align — ratify the charter and frame the work together.
Round 1 of local convenings
Design Partners host their first community convenings — gathering insight and painting the local AI landscape.
In-person design session at Meeting of the Minds
The whole Design Team comes together in person at Meeting of the Minds to make sense of what the convenings surfaced and design from it.
The experience is meant to be hyper-interactive — three mechanisms keep it that way, and a short set of ground rules keeps it kind.
A shared Basecamp space is the home between meetings — field insights, prototypes, and questions flow continuously, not just on call days.
What partners hear in their community convenings is the primary input to design priorities — and the first item on every co-design call.
We open each call by showing what changed because of what members brought, so participation always feels consequential — never performative.
The honest answers to what you're probably wondering before you apply. Tap a question to open it.