The Great Resignation, COVID-19, and the Super Age, with demographic futurist Bradley Schurman

The Diversity Movement has produced over 500 micro-videos to help you make daily progress toward a more inclusive culture.
It’s diversity, equity, and inclusion microlearning that fits the way you work.

With birth rates plummeting and life expectancy rising, one out of every five people are over 65 – what Bradley Schurman calls The Super Age. This age shift challenges us to change our historical bias about older populations and be intentional about inclusion – in both work and in the community.

Bradley Schurman is a demographic futurist and opinion maker on business longevity. He’s the founder of The Super Age, a global strategic advisory firm, where he helps organizations understand how shifting demographics and mega trends are remaking social and economic norms. He’s the author of the book, The Super Age, Decoding our Demographic Destiny.

Transcript

Jackie Ferguson: Thank you for tuning into our show. My guest today is Bradley Sherman. Bradley is a demographic futurist and opinion maker on business longevity. He’s the founder of The Super Age, a global strategic advisory firm. Bradley helps organizations understand how shifting demographics and mega trends are remaking social and economic norms. He’s the author of the book, The Super Age, Decoding our Demographic Destiny. Bradley, welcome to the show. 

Bradley Schurman: Thanks for having me today. 

Jackie: Of course. Bradley, I always like to start by just asking our guests to tell me a little about yourself, your family, your identity, anything you’d like to share.

Bradley: Yeah. I’m from Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. That’s a big part of my identity, in large part because the socio-cultural elements there leave such an impression on people. It’s hard to get away from the place. even though I haven’t lived there for twenty-five years. 

I’m the son of Gary and Carol Sherman, my dad’s a doctor, my mother’s a teacher. And I suppose that my path is a bit different than most people in my family because I left, I left Pittsburgh I moved away and I moved to Washington DC because I wanted to try something new, explore my own identity and, you know, realized moving here that I was comfortable as a gay man.

And that has influenced my perspective on the world. And I’m not sure if people will see the video cast of this, but I am white. I don’t hide from that. and I realized that obviously with that brings certain privileges as well as certain challenges, that I think I’m getting more comfortable exploring. 

Jackie: Awesome. Bradley, thank you for sharing that. I want to get into exactly what, I said demographic futurist, right, in your intro. Can you describe what a demographic futurist is?

Bradley: Yeah. I think a lot of people think of futurism is kind of BS a BS science. But my brand, a futurism, doesn’t just kind of look into a crystal ball and give you an idea of what could come. It’s actually based on, on a lot of heavy research into where populations are where they move looking at historic trends, as well as past behaviors, human behaviors. And from there we can, you know, with pretty reasonable accuracy predict how certain events will turn out. we have a very good idea, of what the labor market will look like you know, 5, 10, 15 years out, in large part because we have done such a good job as a society of capturing data.

People don’t realize this, but the American government in particular, although I will give lots of credit to the UN and its agencies, the European countries, obviously some in east Asia as well, Korea and Japan, really good at capturing data. So we have a sense of what our population trends are and what they will look like for the foreseeable future. 

Jackie: Wow, you know, you’re right. When you hear the word futurist, a lot of us are like, okay, this, this might be some hokey information, right?

Full Episode Transcript

Diversity Beyond the Checkbox is brought to you by The Diversity Movement, hosted by Head of Content Jackie Ferguson, and is a production of Earfluence.

Amplify Your Expertise
About the Author
At Earfluence, we are proud to produce this podcast. We believe in sharing amazing stories, providing knowledge to the world, and celebrating diverse voices. Through podcasting, our clients are amplifying their expertise, expanding their networks, building a content engine, and growing their influence. If you're interested in podcasting, we'd love to hear from you! Schedule your free 15 minute podcast consult today.