Matt Sigelman is President of the Burning Glass Institute. He has dedicated his career to unlocking new avenues for mobility, opportunity, and equity through skills.
Matt and his team created the field of real-time labor market data, a breakthrough innovation that has transformed the way that policy makers, researchers, employers, education institutions, and workers understand, plan for, and connect with the world of work. By mining billions of job openings and career histories, Matt led the company that has become Lightcast to become a leading authority on the global market for talent, harnessing advanced AI and natural language processing to render data that provide unprecedented granularity on the changing landscape of opportunity for workers.
By tracking demand for tens of thousands of skills across over 30 countries, Matt’s work has cracked the genetic code of an increasingly dynamic market, with deep insights that not only chart how work is being redefined but also identify the skills that bridge the gap between people and opportunity. This intelligence is critical in protecting the workforce from obsolescence and in highlighting routes to social mobility even amidst the threat of massive automation-driven displacement.
Matt has served as a Visiting Fellow and now Senior Advisor at The Harvard Project on the Workforce. Before launching the Burning Glass Institute, Matt served as CEO, and then Chairman, of Lightcast for over twenty years. Previously, Matt worked at McKinsey & Company and at Capital One. He is also Founder of the Main Line Classical Academy, an elementary school bringing the classical liberal arts curriculum and rigorous study in math and science to the kindergarten level on up and dedicated to the idea that children are never too young to learn great things.
He writes widely on the job market and is consulted frequently by public officials and the global media. Matt holds an AB from Princeton University and an MBA from Harvard.
Authored Reports
Good Company, Wrong Job
Why a Brand is No Guarantee
Sidetracked: The Hidden Crisis in Mid-Career Mobility
What the Career Histories of 1.3 Million Professional Workers Reveal About Why They Stall, and How They Get Unstuck
Which Skills Matter Now?
A Data-Driven Framework for K-12 in the Age of AI
Beyond the Binary
How Automation and Augmentation Are Combining to Reshape Work
The Expertise Upheaval
How Generative AI’s Impact on Learning Curves Will Reshape the Workplace
No Country for Young Grads
The Structural Forces That Are Reshaping Entry-Level Employment
Talent Disrupted
College Graduates, Underemployment, and the Way Forward
Holding Credentials Accountable To Outcomes
We Need Evidence-Based Funding Models
The British Opportunity Index
How Great Britain's largest companies drive economic mobility and positive career outcome for their employees.
Launchpad Jobs
Achieving Career and Economic Success Without a Degree
Managing Up
Managing Education as a Ladder to Mobility
Skills For A Sustainable Future
How Green and Digital Skills Intersect and Will Change the Future of Work
Skills-Based Hiring: The Long Road from Pronouncements to Practice
America’s Tech Hubs Are Multiplying
How Tech Powerhouses’ Diaspora Are Fueling the Rise of New Cities on the Talent Frontier
Untapped Potential: How new apprenticeship approaches will increase access to economic opportunity
Our report in partnership with Multiverse on expanding the use of apprenticeship models in the US to drive greater worker opportunity.
Cities on the Tech Frontier
Assessing Regional Competitiveness by Measuring the Concentration of Leading Edge Skills in the Local Workforce
A Playbook for the Inclusive Hiring of Later-Career Workers
Making the Bachelor’s Degree More Valuable
2023 Skills Compass Report
Strategic skills planning for upskilling and reskilling the workforce
How Skills Are Disrupting Work
The Transformational Power of Fast Growing, In-Demand Skills
The American Opportunity Index
A Corporate Scorecard of Worker Advancement
Shifting Skills, Moving Targets, and Remaking the Workforce
Our analysis of 15 million job postings illuminates the future of work
The Through-the-Looking-Glass Recovery
New, complex dynamics in the U.S. economy suggest that employment in some industries won’t come back from the pandemic
HBR: Skills-Based Hiring Is on the Rise
The Emerging Degree Reset
How the Shift to Skills-Based Hiring Holds the Keys to Growing the U.S. Workforce at a Time of Talent Shortage
Dynamos for Diversity
How Higher Education Can Build a More Equitable Society
Our Leadership
Meet the experts driving our mission. Our leadership team and senior fellows bring decades of experience in labor economics, workforce strategy, and AI innovation.
BGI Leadership
Matt Sigelman
Gad Levanon
Debbie Wasden
Yustina Saleh, Ph.D.
Carlo Salerno
Erik Leiden
Steve Lynch
David Parento
