Building a National Microelectronics Workforce: Shari Liss on the CHIPS-Era Crunch

Shari Liss: The companies are seeing workforce now as a true business imperative. It has become a potential significant bottleneck in all of the growth that's happening in our industry, especially given what's going on with AI and the pace at which everything is growing. We're looking at almost 200,000 new workers that are going to be needed in the US alone. We're looking at over a million-person gap across the globe right now in our industry as we continue to invest and scale.

Scott Jensen: Hi, I'm Scott Jensen. In my time in state government and as a Fed, I've been lucky enough to get to know a lot of people who, like me, are committed to trying to figure out our nation's workforce challenges. Now, I'm leading the Future of Work practice at Infosys Public Services. And in this podcast, I'm going to check in with some of the best practitioners in the business to see how we're preparing for the future of work. Today, I'm speaking with Shari Liss. Shari, let me see if I got all these right. You are the vice president of workforce development and initiatives at SEMI, which is the premier, the premier worldwide trade association for semiconductor manufacturers. SEMI has about 3,000 member companies, not people, companies. And together, all those companies employ 1.5 million people around the world in some of the most technologically advanced manufacturing jobs in human history. Is that fair?

Shari Liss: Fair. I would say SEMI is now at 4,000 companies globally.

Scott Jensen: I'm using bad information. Sometimes, Shari, when we hear about workforce folks, and when we hear from workforce folks, they're talking about demand-driven, workforce development at scale. And sometimes that seems to ring a little bit hollow, but for you and the semiconductor industry, scale's like a real thing every day. So Shari, welcome.

Shari Liss: Thank you so much for having me today. I'm excited to talk with you about all of this. I know we both care about it a lot.

Scott Jensen: So can we start with talking about the companies? Semiconductors have been going gangbusters for decades now, but AI has made it even more vital. Like the industry's even gotten more of a juice. You and I met during the CHIPS Act. We're bringing semiconductor manufacturing back to the United States. That's creating all kinds of workforce demand. So I want to get out of you about all these great companies that you're working with. All these companies, hyper competitive, super technological, they execute like machines. I know they need a highly skilled workforce, but what do the companies think about workforce development, workforce development systems, practitioners, organizations? How would you characterize how they feel about workforce development?

Shari Liss: I think that the companies are seeing workforce now as a true business imperative. It has become a potential significant bottleneck in all of the growth that's happening in our industry, especially given what's going on with AI and the pace at which everything is growing. So I think the companies are embracing the need to look at invest in be a part of developing really strong workforce development pathways and possibilities around training because we can't rely on a system where a university is going to train somebody in the absence of understanding the competencies and skills and what's really needed in this industry. And then as we introduce AI, we're seeing all of these technical skills change and adapt and shift in ways that our academic systems need are going to struggle to keep up with, of course. And we need that partnership between academia and industry in order to make things thrive. And I think our companies are starting to really embrace models in that vein to make sure that we can meet this significant growth need. I mean, we're looking at almost 200,000 new workers that are going to be needed in the US alone. We're looking at over a million-person gap across the globe right now in our industry as we continue to invest and scale. And I think the companies are really feeling that pinch and knowing that they need to be engaged and involved. So that is a shift as far as I've seen over the last number of years in this space. And it's exciting to be partnering with so many companies to make that happen.

Scott Jensen: What's an example of growth from a company's perspective and how they've approached workforce development?

Shari Liss: Right before you and I met, right before CHIPS passed, we were asked to start embracing Earn and Learn and apprenticeship model building in the US in the anticipation of the CHIPS Act, in the anticipation of building FABS, in needing to fill those entry level roles. And in the US, a lot of companies hadn't yet embraced the idea and concept of an Earn and Learn or an apprenticeship or true registered apprenticeship model. Our industry is really based and everybody has to be brilliant and has to have multiple degrees. And you know, the idea of an apprenticeship wasn't top of mind. And I would say that now it's one of the quickest growing parts of our work and of the industry's workforce development infrastructure. And so a lot of companies have shifted their thinking around how they hire and who they hire and what pathways are available. So I think the biggest shift we're seeing is just the willingness to explore other pathways to hiring and like these alternative methods as opposed to kind of the last 50 years of how we looked at training and hiring. So company has to adopt and change and embrace new models. It's not a perfect system and there are some that are more quickly embracing newer models than others but we're seeing a huge shift in that space so that's exciting.

Scott Jensen: We always talk about economics in terms of competitiveness and you had mentioned a few minutes ago that all over the world it's hard for companies to find workers. Tell us a little bit about our competitors.

Shari Liss: I think what some other countries are doing well that we are learning from, is the partnership between government, industry and academia. I think if you look at some of the smaller Asian countries and the moment there are economic investments in this industry, there is already a plan around how to build a workforce to meet that investment. We're seeing that in Singapore, in Taiwan, we're seeing that in other countries, that that is immediately embraced as part of the infrastructure development. Now, it moves more quickly in some ways. I think the willingness to approach and accept alternative pathways had been more established than in the US prior to CHIPS, prior to all of the investing that's going on in the US. So we are learning from other parts of the globe. We are learning how to build pathways in a way that's really successful. And there's also lots of great work happening in the US, but it's unifying that and not making it so disparate across the country and trying to look at ways to bring what we're learning from one part of the country to another together. But there's certain advancements that happened in other countries. If I look at Europe, and the embracing of apprenticeships that had been going on for years and years, and we're learning from that to implement here in the US. We're all kind of moving forward in a really positive and incredible way around workforce in this industry. But there are certainly models that have been really efficient across the globe that we still have some learning to do, I think is the right way to say it. But really, the partnership, I mean, what we were establishing with CHIPS, what the hope of all of the workforce dollars was doing was integrating just exactly what was working in other parts of the world. So hopefully we'll get there.

Scott Jensen: Yeah, it seems like we have to do workforce development American style. And by that, I mean, we don't economically plan very well. We don't have five-year plans. Everybody needs to choose who they want to be when they grow up, what they want to learn. And I think those are great things. But that does make planning tricky. So we need to figure out our way and I think always been partnership. Do some of the big companies from around the globe, does that partnership model seem strange to them? Like how do they react to us when they come?

Shari Liss: Yes, people are embracing this idea of partnership. I think it was happening not here. A lot of the companies that are coming here are used to looking at partnering with government agencies, are looking at, are used to partnering with academia. I think in the U.S., the bridge between academia and industry has been a little bit harder to define in some regions. You know, there's some really incredible work happening in a number of states around the country that are, you know, that are used to those partnerships or are trying to navigate those partnerships or have done it quite well. But there are also a lot of schools that struggle with that. So when we pull, when we look at our member companies, that are now building in the US that are coming from Asia that are coming from Europe or wherever, there is kind of a point at which we have to find the right partners to work together and we have to get over like an initial hump but like the reality is based even on what we talked about at the top of this like we're seeing this need so dramatically that people are embracing and adopting new ways of approaching it so although it may seem like a lift at first it's becoming kind of the norm, everybody wants to help inform competencies it's one of the things it's one of SEMI's superpowers in my opinion is that we can bring all of these companies into a room together and when you talk about workforce everybody gets involved. It doesn't matter about the competition at that point we all need more people. We all need to create a bigger pie so to speak. We just need to be able to get more people excited about this industry so building those partnerships has been a phenomenal part of this work and I think it is a hurdle that we don't have to jump so high anymore. People really want to be engaged in that way.

Scott Jensen: I used to travel to Arizona a lot and to see what they're doing there, what they're doing in Austin. It's going to be so fantastic. Upstate New York and Syracuse and all the work that Micron and all those folks are doing. Just remarkable.

Shari Liss: Yes. It's pretty amazing to watch it all. I think, not to jump the gun on questions or anything here, but I think the model, the NNME model, the National Network for Microelectronics Education model is the idea that everybody's developing these regional programs, but if we could feed it into this national infrastructure, if we can share what we're learning, we can lift programs more quickly. We can use less resources from place to place to place and just kind of unify across what are really good practices in this work. So, you know, hopefully that'll become even bigger part of everything.

Scott Jensen: Speaking of practices, give me a best practice or two, both on the education side for preparing people, but also a company side. What has a company done in your judgment that you find has been really successful, really best practice, a real best practice?

Shari Liss: From the academic side, I think well, actually, from both sides, I'll start there. When we can bring academia and industry together and really look at competencies that are needed for specific roles and inform the curriculum and content based on those needs, it's been a really powerful win on all sides, right? It's powerful for the incoming workers and their success in the industry. It's powerful for the companies to be able to examine where are they struggling in terms of hiring? What are those competencies that are needed? And it's great for our academic partners, whether it's community colleges, universities, training organizations, nonprofits, whoever, to be able to understand what they're building towards. What do those jobs look like and how can they get their students there? So from a best practice perspective, that to me has been the key to success in so many ways in this work. A lot of schools are wanting to meet the needs of their local economy, their local region, so being able to make those connections has been really critical. And you've seen the successes like Austin Community College does incredible work in that space, right? But there's so many, there's just that model works really well. From an industry side, yes, getting that engagement and their willingness to do that part is such a big success, but also adopting and accepting other pathways to hire has been really powerful. So we have initiatives around the veteran community and how do we bring people into industry as they transition into civilian careers. And those, that's another really incredible best practice that's being embraced more and more around the country in terms of looking at that pathway and what are the skill sets that can thrive. And there's incredible leadership skills and technical skills. There's all these different layers to that particular population that's being embraced company by company, and we're seeing huge lifts in that community too, in terms of bringing people into our industry. So that's been a shift that's been super positive. And I'll talk about one more because I can't help myself. But the other thing is, you know, we're seeing an investment in students and young students, right in K-12. And again, company by company it differs, but there is an understanding now that in order for this pipeline to continue, we have to start early. We have to get people engaged and involved as soon as we can. And when you talk to students right now, they hold chips in their hands all day, every day, and they have no idea, right? They know everything that's on every device, but not how they operate. And so breaking through those barriers and having our companies acknowledge that that matters too has been a huge win also for the industry.

Scott Jensen: Yeah, you can't be it if you can't imagine it at all.

Shari Liss: Yes, yes, absolutely. So giving them hands on like experiential learning opportunities is such a powerful win. And watching that unfold with our company partners is glorious.

Scott Jensen: Well, Shari, you mentioned the NNME, and I bet you there might be some people that don't yet know what that is. Tell me a little bit about the NNME and what SEMI's doing.

Shari Liss: The NNME, which is a mouthful, the National Network for Microelectronics Education is an investment under the CHIPS Act. The idea behind it was to unify workforce programming around the country in some ways to learn from one another, to share best practices. The SEMI Foundation was selected to be the national hub of the NNME, meaning we're going to set up the infrastructure needed to share content and curriculum. We're going to set up a careers site where students can be attached directly to jobs. We're going to set up resources and data and metric analysis across all of the regions. And then the hope is that through the NNME and partnership with the National Science Foundation, Department of Commerce, we're going to fund these regional ecosystems around the country and we're calling them regional nodes. We're actually about to announce the first four nodes that are being funded under the NNME. Each regional node is looking at how can we support the local ecosystem? So they're looking at regional investment. What do we need to build from a workforce development perspective to meet the needs right here on the ground? All of these investments happening around the country and we were recreating programs over, and I say we collectively, like the industry and university partners and community college partners and our industry members, we kept recreating programs rather than learning from them on a national scale. And so the hope of this is that we can really address regional needs through the regional node investments, but then inform on a national level and unify when we can programs that meet the broader ecosystem of this industry.

Scott Jensen: That's workforce development American style. Because I don't think people realize the way that we set up our governments. And this is a really good thing. We fund community colleges at the regional level, typically. K-12 systems are controlled by school boards at the local level. And yes, federal funding comes in. But there are all of these disparate groups, all independent, and they have to willingly work together. And I think the theory is that when they willingly work together and figure it out, yeah, they can share with other people, but it's stronger even than it would be.

Shari Liss: Absolutely. And each regional node has like a whole collection of partners like K-12, community college, nonprofit, workforce boards, university partners, veteran community. Like there's just, it's going to be such a beautiful system. Once it's all launched and it's, I'm very excited to see it lift across the country.

Scott Jensen: If you had to guess in a given NNME node, for scale, how many partners will be involved once the thing is really chugging along well?

Shari Liss: We got so many applications. They were all different, right? And I would say that there's going to be between 15 and 20 partners maybe per node. But that could expand. So right now, yes, we're announcing the first four. The hope, of course, is to continue to build out and have more nodes in the future. We're waiting on funding and all the things that have to happen to make that work. And I think that each node will grow in some ways and also shrink in some ways. I think people were looking at very large geographic areas in the beginning because we all knew we were only able to fund for in the first round of this RFP process. And as we go along, it's probably going to shape differently each year in some ways to meet the needs on the ground.

Scott Jensen: As an American, Shari, I'm really glad that you're on the case.

Shari Liss: Thank you.

Scott Jensen: Yeah sure, I think you guys are going to do great work. And we'll have a thriving semiconductor industry in the United States. And many thousands of people will get remarkably good, high-paying, stable jobs, which is great.

Shari Liss: It is an exciting moment to be doing this work and it's also intimidating, right? We really, it needs to work in order for all of this to succeed, all of the investments to succeed. We can't do it without people. I mean, AI is going to have some impact, but we're still going to need some humans.

Scott Jensen: Well, thank you, thank you, thank you. I think we're going to wrap it up. You can find out more details, show notes, and transcripts from this podcast by going to Infosys.com/IKI, Thank you so much to our producers, Christine Calhoun, Yulia De Bari and our audio engineer, Dode Bigley. I'm Scott Jensen and I look forward to seeing you next time.