Care, led with care.

Robert Espinoza is a nationally recognized workforce and care economy strategist who helps leaders rethink how work, care, and economic security are designed in a rapidly changing world.

As Founder and CEO of The CareWorks Project, Robert partners with public, private, and philanthropic leaders to challenge outdated assumptions about caregiving, labor, and skills—and to design new systems that better reflect how people actually live and work today. His work blends strategy, storytelling, and institutional design to create long-term care solutions so people can live with dignity, workers can thrive, and communities. He also serves as a Leadership & Society Fellow at the University of Chicago.

Robert was the CEO of the National Skills Coalition, which advances bipartisan solutions that help working people obtain the skills, supports, and career pathway they need to thrive, and the Executive Vice President of Policy at PHI, the country’s leading authority on the direct care workforce.

He has also served as a Nonresident Senior Fellow at the Brookings Institution, and as a Distinguished Fellow and Senior Advisor at the National Academy of Social Insurance, contributing even further to national policy conversations on workforce development, caregiving, and economic security.

Robert has held senior board and advisory roles across the aging, caregiving, and health policy fields, including leadership positions at the American Society on Aging and the National Academy of Social Insurance. He currently serves as Governance Committee Chair at the FrameWorks Institute and has advised national initiatives spanning workforce training, aging, and federal health policy.

His work has appeared in major national outlets, and he has testified before Congress, spoken widely across the country, and authored more than 100 publications.

Across every role, Robert advances one core idea: caregiving and workforce systems shape our shared future—and redesigning them is essential to a more humane, fair, and durable economy.