Robert Espinoza
US Board Member
Robert Espinoza, Founder & CEO, The CareWorks Project
Robert Espinoza is a nationally recognized workforce and care economy strategist who helps leaders rethink how work, long-term care, and aging supports 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Founder and CEO of The CareWorks Project, Robert partners with public, private, and philanthropic leaders to challenge outdated assumptions about caregiving, labor, and skills—and to design new systems that better reflect how people actually live and work today.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 can rely on care that truly works.
Robert was the CEO of the National Skills Coalition, which advances bipartisan solutions that help working people obtain the skills, supports, and career pathways they need to thrive, and the Executive Vice President of Policy at PHI, the country’s leading authority on the direct care workforce.
He also serves as a Leadership & Society Fellow at the University of Chicago and has held national fellowship roles as a Nonresident Senior Fellow at the Brookings Institution and as a Distinguished Fellow and Senior Advisor at the National Academy of Social Insurance, shaping 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. He is currently the Governance Committee Chair at FrameWorks Institute. His work has appeared in major national outlets, and he has testified before Congress—including in 2021 on investing in the direct care workforce—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 thriving and human economy that benefits everyone.
