{"id":324609,"date":"2026-06-05T20:43:09","date_gmt":"2026-06-05T20:43:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/324609\/"},"modified":"2026-06-05T20:43:09","modified_gmt":"2026-06-05T20:43:09","slug":"industry-leaders-address-talent-gaps-ai-adoption-at-hutto-chamber-forum","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/324609\/","title":{"rendered":"Industry leaders address talent gaps, AI adoption at Hutto Chamber forum"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>\t\t\t\t\t\t\tThe Hutto Area Chamber of Commerce held an executive leadership forum June 2, focused on navigating industry changes and scaling organizations within the Texas economic landscape.<\/p>\n<p>The discussion<\/p>\n<p>Panelists included Jana Spruce, a strategic advisor for space companies; Andrew Bennett, regional chief operating officer at Baylor Scott &amp; White; Gordon Kellerman, executive VP at<a href=\"https:\/\/www.skyboxdatacenters.com\/\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\"> SkyBox Data Centers<\/a>; and Mike Reeser, chancellor at <a href=\"https:\/\/www.tstc.edu\/\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">Texas State Technical College.<\/a><\/p>\n<p>Moderated by Community Impact, the panelists spoke about challenges and opportunities in their industries.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cWhat I like to tell people, especially the early career folks, is you don&#8217;t have to be a rocket scientist to work in a rocket company,\u201d Spruce said. \u201cWe hire welders. We hire people who sew. It&#8217;s almost like arts and crafts, right? You might be really good at laying up composites.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Reeser said 40% of recent bachelor\u2019s degree graduates are working jobs that do not require a college credential.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cWe have a chronic underemployment problem,\u201d Reeser said. \u201cYou look at the data in Texas, and what you find is we are producing the right number of graduates, but what we aren&#8217;t producing is the right blend or mix of output. It&#8217;s mismatched to the job market. So I would suggest that typically happens because people pick their college pathway, they do it based on notions, like how good is the football team as opposed to what is the job I&#8217;m going to get if I study in a particular field.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>When asked about AI, Spruce said people have to treat AI as an intern.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cIt doesn&#8217;t know very much,\u201d Spruce said. \u201cIt doesn&#8217;t know your business that well. It doesn&#8217;t make good decisions always. Sometimes it&#8217;s wrong. So, you need to treat it that way.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Additionally, Reeser noted that AI is not replacing people, but rather replacing people who do not know how to use AI. Panelists suggested it be treated as a developing tool rather than a total replacement for human expertise.\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The Hutto Area Chamber of Commerce held an executive leadership forum June 2, focused on navigating industry changes&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":324610,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[11],"tags":[4267,3436,132,134,133,50045,116099,66867,116100],"class_list":["post-324609","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-austin","tag-ai","tag-artificial-intelligence","tag-austin","tag-austin-headlines","tag-austin-news","tag-baylor-scott-white","tag-hutto-area-chamber-of-commerce","tag-skybox-data-center","tag-tstc"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/324609","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=324609"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/324609\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/324610"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=324609"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=324609"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=324609"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}