Inclusive, Worker-Centered Innovation for Resilient Communities

Organized by: International Psychoanalytical Association (IPA), with speakers from Mechanism, Northland Workforce Training Center, and New American Manufacturing Renaissance

This side event for the 2026 United Nations Science, Technology and Innovation Forum examined inclusive, worker-centered innovation for resilient communities, focusing on how post-industrial revitalization can promote dignity and mental health through inclusive practice.

Mona Jain of the International Psychoanalytical Association (IPA) opened by linking economic development to the psychological importance of home, attachment, trust, and belonging. She argued that when investment forces people away from their communities or excludes them from local opportunity, development can repeat the trauma of displacement rather than advance human rights and well-being.

Tanu Kumar of Mechanism then framed inclusive innovation as a practical challenge for manufacturing ecosystems: who gets to participate in and benefit from economic transformation. The discussion used Buffalo, New York, particularly the East Side and the Northland corridor, as a case of place-based reinvestment that connects residents to advanced manufacturing training, careers, business opportunity, and local wealth-building.

Panelists Stephen Tucker of Northland Workforce Training Center and Drew Crowe of New American Manufacturing Renaissance emphasized that STI-driven revitalization must be designed by listening carefully to communities, employers, workforce systems, and public institutions so that innovation strengthens stability rather than accelerating displacement.

Key issues discussed

• Economic development and technological reinvestment can become displacement when residents are not able to access new jobs, remain in their homes, or shape the future being built around them.

• Place, home, and “the right to stay” were presented as essential to dignity, autonomy, trust, mental health, civic participation, and the practical exercise of human rights.

• Buffalo’s manufacturing history, deindustrialization, poverty, and racialized disinvestment illustrated why inclusive innovation must begin with residents who stayed through decades of decline.

• Community stability is often treated as a public-relations add-on rather than a design requirement because it is harder to measure than return on investment, market share, or job counts.

• Panelists identified stronger measures for accountable revitalization, including household income, home ownership, educational attainment, placement, retention, wage growth, zip-code-level participation, and representation of women, people of color, immigrants, refugees, and other historically excluded groups.

• Authentic engagement requires listening tours, planning sessions, trusted community organizations, non-transactional relationships, psychological safety, and visible action on what residents say success should look like.

• Workforce programs must pair technical training with wraparound supports such as financial aid, coaching, transportation, housing and food support, legal aid, childcare, financial literacy, career coaching, and employer placement.

• Employer partnerships are critical, but they must go beyond hiring commitments to include curriculum alignment, clear job standards, inclusive workplace culture, retention, advancement, and honest communication about barriers to recruiting from underserved communities.

Key recommendations for action

• Make the right to stay in place a core principle of STI, manufacturing, and economic development policy, ensuring that new investment benefits long-term residents instead of pricing them out or bypassing them.

• Fund community engagement as an essential project cost, including time for listening, co-design, feedback loops, and resident-defined success measures before programs or facilities are built.

• Require workforce and innovation initiatives to publish meaningful equity and stability indicators, including who is enrolled, trained, placed, retained, promoted, and earning family-sustaining wages by neighborhood and demographic group.

• Build holistic workforce systems that combine advanced manufacturing skills with wraparound services, continuous upskilling, confidence-building, and pathways into automation, robotics, CNC, welding, mechatronics, and other growth fields.

• Develop employer partnerships that align training with real openings and workplace expectations while also supporting inclusive hiring, psychological safety, retention, and advancement for nontraditional talent.

• Create local production ecosystems in which community organizations, employers, training providers, schools, workforce boards, government, and residents share accountability for household income growth, home ownership and educational achievement as key indicators for long-term community resilience.