Thought Leadership
Articles, webinars, podcasts, and research from the Defiant team. The ideas that shape how we advise and the arguments we think the industry needs to hear.
Selected works
Featured · Media
Bryan is featured as an industry expert in National Public Radio's Marketplace Uncertain Hour episode examining what happened to employment, why it happened, and what a workforce made up of "nonemployees" means for our future.
ListenA comprehensive analysis of the structural shift favoring domestic knowledge work reshoring. Examines the $100K H-1B fee impact, narrowing wage gaps, CHIPS Act incentives, and the workforce readiness challenges that will determine whether reshoring succeeds or stalls.
ReshoreReady Partners
A structural critique of the American higher education system and why the degree-as-default model is collapsing under its own economics. The workforce implications of a credentialing system that serves institutions more than the people passing through them.
Bryan Peña on LinkedIn
What happens when AI makes the lecture model obsolete, credentialing becomes skills-based, and the economic logic of a four-year degree stops holding? A structural analysis of the forces reshaping higher education from the outside in.
Bryan Peña on LinkedIn
Most workforce transformation initiatives fail because they start with technology instead of design. A practical framework for enterprises that need to restructure how they acquire, deploy, and govern talent across all labor categories.
Bryan Peña on LinkedIn
Workforce strategy in most organizations is built on inherited assumptions that nobody questions. An epistemological examination of why HR decisions fail and what it would take to ground workforce strategy in something closer to first principles.
Bryan Peña on LinkedIn
Bryan contributes his perspective on the future of expert networks and how platform businesses are reshaping how companies access specialized talent.
Forbes
A Forbes roundtable on the economics of independent writing, platform dynamics, and what the freelance talent market looks like from the platform side.
Forbes
Bryan shares his leadership framework for navigating uncertainty, drawn from decades of advising workforce organizations through market disruptions.
Authority Magazine
Practical guidance on engaging and managing independent talent effectively, from classification compliance to building productive working relationships.
Business.com
Bryan is quoted on the structural shift from temporary to strategic use of contingent workforce programs in enterprise organizations.
SHRM
The original press release announcing the launch of the Certified Contingent Workforce Professional program, the credential Bryan built at SIA that changed the industry.
PR Newswire
A wide-ranging conversation on where the workforce is headed, what enterprises are getting wrong, and why the industry needs to stop recycling the same talking points.
YouTube
An open-format session covering contingent workforce strategy, industry trends, technology adoption, and the questions nobody else in the room was asking.
YouTube
A practical look at how AI is actually being deployed in recruiting, where the risk exposure sits, and what governance frameworks enterprises need to put in place.
Webinar
Bryan joins the Ivy Podcast to discuss executive leadership in the staffing industry, the value proposition challenge, and why most companies are selling features when they should be selling differentiation.
Ivy Podcast
A conversation on where workforce strategy is headed, the gap between what companies say about talent and what they actually do, and the structural shifts reshaping labor markets.
Mission Matters
Bryan joins Titans of Talent to discuss how COVID reshaped staffing, the implications of AB-5 legislation, the CCWP program, and the rise of direct sourcing models.
Titans of Talent
Bryan discusses how staffing agencies and platforms can differentiate in the enterprise market, from value proposition design to challenger positioning.
Ascen
An in-depth conversation with Open Assembly on the open talent ecosystem, the evolution of contingent workforce management, and where Defiant fits in the landscape.
Open Assembly
Bryan is featured as an industry expert in NPR's Marketplace Uncertain Hour episode examining the future of work in America and what a workforce of nonemployees means for the economy.
NPR Marketplace