WILLIAMSBURG, Va.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Apr 23, 2026--
Speaking to industry leaders at a recent Index AR Solutions conference, Anthony W. Gagliardo, Ed.D. delivered a sobering message: the greatest threat to America’s energy future is not technology – it is workforce readiness.
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Drawing on decades of executive leadership in aerospace, aviation, nuclear energy and enterprise workforce transformation, Gagliardo framed the industry’s moment as a true crossroads where aging infrastructure, exponential technological change and a looming workforce crisis converge. Gagliardo formerly served as Vice President of Nuclear, Technical & Enterprise Learning at Xcel Energy and has held senior leadership roles at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL), the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) and other major national institutions, where he has led transformative workforce modernization initiatives.
“Historic trends indicate that many of today’s companies will not survive today’s rate of exponential change, and likely won’t be in business in 15 to 20 years,” Gagliardo said. “It’s not a failure to innovate. It’s an inability to support and adapt to change.”
Infrastructure at a Crossroads
Gagliardo described an energy system under mounting strain. Much of the nation’s transmission infrastructure dates back to the 1950s and 1960s, even as electricity demand is now rising for the first time in decades. Utilities are being asked to expand capacity, modernize grids and maintain near-perfect reliability simultaneously. Electricity demand growth is accelerating, fueled in part by energy-intensive data centers, electrification and industrial reshoring.
“This is not optional,” Gagliardo said as he underscored the need for maintaining a well-trained, high performing workforce. “It must be taught, practiced and renewed – one leader, one crew and one shift at a time.”
The Talent Gap: A Strategic Risk
According to Brookings, the U.S. will need to hire 32 million new workers just in infrastructure and other construction-related occupations over the next decade. At the same time, global surveys show the vast majority of companies across multiple industries struggling to find skilled talent.
Within utilities, nearly six in ten employees have less than 10 years of experience, creating a compressed experience curve and widening knowledge proficiency gaps that must be addressed.
“Rather than a cyclical hiring issue, this is a long-term structural talent shortage,” said Gagliardo.
Gagliardo noted that this challenge mirrors workforce transitions he has helped lead in aviation and aerospace, including his work developing NASA JPL’s Future Workforce Destination 2025 Roadmap and transforming technical training systems for the FAA’s geographically dispersed workforce.
A New Model for Learning
Instead of relying solely on traditional classroom instruction or institutional memory, Gagliardo outlined a modern approach to workforce development built on adaptive curriculum pathways, immersive simulation, proficiency verification and learning integrated directly into workflow.
He challenged leaders to rethink how people gain experience, arguing that immersive, multimodal tools can accelerate proficiency, reduce safety risks and improve operational outcomes.
“The talent shortages we are facing require significant investment in human resources,” Gagliardo explained. “The multi-modal learning tools being developed and deployed by companies like Index AR Solutions are going to be key to how we solve these acute workforce challenges.”
Gagliardo suggested the companies that make the right investments get to a place where they develop a capability, a workforce and a proficiency, and then have the ability to replicate it – ultimately reducing unit cost.
Turning Risk into Opportunity
Another benefit of investing in workforce development offerings from Index AR Solutions is that utility executives are not continually competing for limited operations and maintenance (O&M) funding. Instead, they can rely on more stable capital allocations, enabling them to strategically scale their workforce and invest in critical infrastructure. This approach benefits energy customers by enabling greater performance and service of their rate-based infrastructure investment. Utilities also have significant opportunities to identify and leverage new funding streams that enhance operational performance, workforce safety and system reliability
Gagliardo encouraged organizations to evaluate whether their employee knowledge and proficiency strategies align with capital growth demands, resilience planning and rapidly changing technologies.
“We are approaching a huge opportunity,” Gagliardo said. “And it’s through the use of cognitive science and experiential learning techniques being brought to life by companies like Index AR Solutions that companies will reimagine the way they train and skill.”
To learn more about how Index AR solutions can help create a training curriculum roadmap, visit indexarsolutions.com.
About Index AR Solutions
Index AR Solutions partners with utilities, energy providers and enterprise organizations to design and deliver immersive, multimodal workforce development solutions that accelerate proficiency, improve safety and protect operational continuity in an era of exponential change. For more information, visit indexarsolutions.com.
Dr. Anthony W. Gagliardo, Ed.D. addresses industry leaders at an Index AR Solutions conference, highlighting the critical workforce development challenges shaping the future of the energy industry.
MACAPA, Brazil (AP) — Paving roads in the Amazon rainforest has long brought deforestation that threatens the people who live there. The same roadwork, however, has also allowed archaeologists to get glimpses of the region’s past long before Europeans arrived to reshape it.
The construction often requires archaeological surveys before the paving starts, and some of the latest discoveries have emerged along the BR-156 highway in Brazil's northern state of Amapa. Among the findings so far from nine dig sites: pottery vases that may be funerary urns, as well as small artifacts that resemble human faces.
“What we now about the region’s past is also tied to the opening created by these projects, which gives our relationship with them a somewhat ambivalent character,” said Lúcio Flávio Costa Leite, who manages the Archaeological Research Center at Amapa’s Institute for Scientific and Technological Research. “At the same time, the knowledge we gain about these sites leads us to pay closer attention to these regions, including by adopting permanent protection measures.”
Scientists say recent research has reinforced understanding of the region's past not as a human desert, but rather as a landscape shaped by interconnected societies long before Columbus arrived. The material found along BR-156, for example, included pottery in multiple styles and techniques that reflected influences from communities ranging from Brazil’s Para state to the Caribbean.
It's been cleaned and analyzed by a team working for the National Department of Transport Infrastructure. One of the archaeologists, Manoel Fabiano da Silva Santos, said the layers of the Amazon soil he excavated are a historic timeline.
In the upper layers, he found items such as Portuguese porcelain and nails linked to European occupation.
“Digging deeper, we uncovered pottery and ceramics associated with earlier Indigenous presence, marking the site’s transition before and after the arrival of colonizers,” Santos said.
The artifacts will eventually go to Amapa's state collection, overseen by Costa Leite, which includes about 530,000 pieces. The oldest piece is around 6,140 years old, confirming a long human presence across Amapa, he said.
The artifacts offer insight into how ancient Indigenous societies lived, died and interacted with the rainforest.
“Here is something I often debate with my students -- we usually think of technology as computers and microchips,” Costa Leite said, walking through shelves of ancient pottery. “But all of this required careful reading of the landscape and deliberate choices of materials.”
One of the most impressive historic areas in Amapa is in the city of Calcoene, where a 1,000‑year‑old stone monument made up of 127 carved monoliths arranged in a circle about 30 meters (98 feet) in diameter, set in open grassland amid the rainforest and bordered by a slow river.
Some have dubbed the Archaeological Park of the Solstice the “Stonehenge of the Amazon” for its resemblance to the British monument. Researchers found that the stones were positioned so that during the winter solstice in the Northern Hemisphere they marked the exact point where the sun rises, said archaeologist Mariana Petry Cabral, a professor at the Federal University of Minas Gerais who was part of the team that began digging at the site some two decades ago.
“It’s hard to say exactly what all the stones mean, but what we do know is that they are not from the site itself. They were brought from other nearby locations,” she said.
Subsequent research and excavations found the site also served as a burial ground. Radiocarbon dating showed it was occupied for hundreds of years, beginning around 1,100 years ago, she said.
The site, discovered by scientists in 2005, can be visited with prior approval from Amapa’s Institute for Scientific and Technological Research. At the same time, the site is going through the process to become a national park, which will allow more people to visit.
Such archaeological sites are protected by Brazilian law, which prohibits them being altered. That adds a layer of protection for surrounding rainforest.
Modern archaeological and historical ecology research shows that Indigenous peoples not only lived in the Amazon for centuries but also shaped it. They managed and cultivated the landscape through long‑term, sustainable practices, said Eduardo Neves, an archaeologist professor at the University of Sao Paulo.
Neves has studied the Amazon rainforest for more than 30 years and, since 2023, has led the Amazon Revealed project, which uses satellite scans to identify archaeological sites hidden beneath the forest canopy.
Scans have revealed roads linking archaeological sites and buried patterns in the rainforest that point to repeated occupation and deliberate landscape modification. Together, Neves said, the features suggest large settlements.
Archaeologists had long suspected such connections, Neves added, but technology has made it possible to see their broader geographic reach. The scans show networks of roads connecting clusters of settlements across the forest, most clearly in southern Amazonas state and Acre.
“When people think of an Indigenous tribe, they often imagine a small village isolated in the middle of the forest. But evidence shows a high degree of interconnectivity linking different settlements,” Neves said.
“Amapa is a key piece that helps us see how dynamic and active these populations were, and how they maintained networks of exchange that have been in place for millennia,” Cabral said.
Felipe Campos Mello contributed reporting.
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The Archaeological Park of the Solstice, which some call the "Stonehenge of the Amazon" is visible in Calcoene, Amapa state, Brazil, Friday, March 13, 2026. (AP Photo/Eraldo Peres)
Archaeologists conduct a technical visit at the Quintela site in the Vila Nova community along the BR-156 highway in Santana, Amapa state, Brazil, Saturday, March 14, 2026. (AP Photo/Eraldo Peres)
The Archaeological Park of the Solstice, which some call the "Stonehenge of the Amazon" is visible in Calcoene, Amapa state, Brazil, Friday, March 13, 2026. (AP Photo/Eraldo Peres)
Vehicles drive on a fully paved section of BR-156 highway that connects the state capital Macapa with the city of Oiapoque, Amapa state, Brazil, Monday, March 9, 2026. (AP Photo/Eraldo Peres)
Archaeologists conduct a technical visit at the Quintela site in the Vila Nova community along the BR-156 highway in Santana, Amapa state, Brazil, Saturday, March 14, 2026. (AP Photo/Eraldo Peres)
A pottery vessel with anthropomorphic features believed to be an urn is displayed at the Institute for Scientific and Technological Research in Macapa, Amapa state, Brazil, Sunday, March 8, 2026. (AP Photo/Eraldo Peres)
Archaeologist Manoel Fabiano da Silva Santos shows an anthropomorphic artifact found at the Quintela archaeological site at the National Department of Transport Infrastructure in Macapa, Amapa state, Brazil, Saturday, March 14, 2026. (AP Photo/Eraldo Peres)
An anthropomorphic ceramic figurine found during archaeological work in a state is displayed at the Institute for Scientific and Technological Research in Macapa, Amapa state, Brazil, Sunday, March 8, 2026. (AP Photo/Eraldo Peres)
Archaeologist Lucio Flavio Costa Leite speaks about the collection of cataloged archaeological artifacts at the Institute for Scientific and Technological Research in Macapa, Amapa state, Brazil, Sunday, March 8, 2026. (AP Photo/Eraldo Peres)
Pottery vessels with anthropomorphic features believed to be urns are displayed at the Institute for Scientific and Technological Research in Macapa, Amapa state, Brazil, Sunday, March 8, 2026. (AP Photo/Eraldo Peres)
Archaeologist Manoel Fabiano da Silva Santos shows a soil layer scale while explaining the historical timeline at National Department of Transport Infrastructure in Macapa, Amapa state, Brazil, Saturday, March 14, 2026. (AP Photo/Eraldo Peres)
Archaeologists conduct a technical visit at Quintela archaeological site in the Vila Nova community along the BR-156 highway in Santana, Amapa state, Brazil, Saturday, March 14, 2026. (AP Photo/Eraldo Peres)
Grass and flowers surround the Archaeological Park of the Solstice, which some call the "Stonehenge of the Amazon" in Calcoene, Amapa state, Brazil, Friday, March 13, 2026. (AP Photo/Eraldo Peres)
