👋 Open Strong

Hey friends —

Here's what hit me this week: the wins that stuck weren't the loud ones. They were built on a stack of unglamorous Tuesday mornings. A trainer with eleven years in someone else's barn. Twenty-six college students who treated four years with ChatGPT as 1,460 reps instead of a shortcut. A 22-year-old strapped to a pull-up bar for 24 hours. The headlines came on Saturday. The work came every other day.

That's the muscle this week. Let's build.

🔥 Resilience in the Wild

Bet on humans (healthcare edition): While Big Tech keeps publishing layoff letters, two North Carolina health systems went the other way. Last Friday, Atrium Health and WakeMed proposed a merger anchored by a $2 billion Wake County investment and 3,300 new healthcare jobs across the state over five years. Wake County commissioners hit pause for a 90-day review — but the bet is already on the table. [→ ABC11 coverage]

Class of 2026, building edition: On Tuesday, OpenAI named the inaugural ChatGPT Futures Class of 2026 — 26 student innovators from 20+ universities (Smith, Waterloo, Vanderbilt, Toronto, Oxford, Georgia Tech). They are the first cohort to start AND finish college with ChatGPT — they showed up to campus the same week ChatGPT launched in Fall 2022. Instead of using it to cut corners, they spent four years building with it: mental-health translation tools for underserved communities, accessibility features for disabled students, peer-built study aids. Each gets a $10,000 grant and frontier-model access. Smith College honoree Michelle Lawson, 20, on what AI unlocked: "AI has made that happen not only for myself, but for hundreds of thousands of people." [→ OpenAI announcement]

Where I land: The story under both is the same — the people winning right now are the ones building things that take longer than a news cycle. Atrium is placing a five-year, $2 billion bet on humans in hospital wings. The Class of 2026 placed a four-year bet on what students could build instead of what AI could replace. While the timeline argues about whether AI is going to take everyone's jobs, real people are quietly putting reps in. Long. Quiet. Built.

🏆 Hero of the Week

ChatGPT Futures: Class of 2026 — the first cohort in history to start AND finish college with generative AI in their pockets every day.

On Tuesday, OpenAI named 26 student innovators from 20+ universities — Smith, Waterloo, Vanderbilt, Toronto, Oxford, Georgia Tech, and others — as the inaugural ChatGPT Futures Class of 2026. Each receives a $10,000 grant and access to OpenAI's frontier models. But the headline number isn't the money. It's the cohort itself.

These are the students who matriculated in Fall 2022 — the same week ChatGPT launched. They are the first generation in human history to walk onto a college campus with a generative AI tool in their pockets every single day, and to walk off four years later with a diploma. While the rest of the conversation argued about whether AI would erode learning, these 26 students spent four years quietly testing what AI could BUILD: mental-health translation tools for underserved communities, accessibility features for students with disabilities, peer-built study aids, scientific research support.

Smith College honoree Michelle Lawson, 20, on what the work unlocked: "AI has made that happen not only for myself, but for hundreds of thousands of people." Waterloo's Kyle Scenna, 24: "I never thought the gap between noticing a problem and building something real could get this small."

That is the muscle. AI is a tool. The reps are still yours. The Class of 2026 didn't wait for permission to use it, and they didn't outsource their thinking to it. They put it next to four years of work and let the combination compound.

“I never thought the gap between noticing a problem and building something real could get this small.”

— Kyle Scenna, 24, University of Waterloo, ChatGPT Futures Class of 2026

[Read the OpenAI announcement →]

🎤 On the Mic – Resilience is a muscle

Episode 02 — Drew Burdick on "Will I Have a Job in Five Years?"

It's the question keeping professionals and leaders up at night. I sit down with Drew Burdick — founder of Stealth X, a Charlotte product studio building AI-native customer and employee experiences — to break it down honestly. Drew has a front-row seat to how AI is reshaping roles, skills, and entire organizations. We get into what resilience looks like in a fast-shifting economy, which jobs are gaining power and which are quietly disappearing, and what it actually takes to lead — and survive — in the age of AI.

· The 80/20 truth about AI no one admits — getting to 80% is easy, the last 20% is brutal

· High agency vs. low agency — Drew's “island and raft” metaphor for who actually survives the next five years

· Which roles are quietly gaining leverage right now — and which ones are quietly losing it

[🎧 Listen now →] Stealth X

✍️ From the Blog

"The Students Are Ready. The Model Needs to Catch Up."

National Apprenticeship Week ended May 2. The real conversation didn't. I spent time this week at BMCC with apprentices working at EY, Accenture, and BMCC itself, and came back energized AND impatient. Three gaps in the traditional model. What we're building at We Connect The Dots and Nebula Academy. The on-ramp question no one is asking out loud — and why pre-apprenticeship isn't a consolation prize. It's the runway.

Keep reading →

📖 Muscle Memory — The Book Is Live!

Resilience is a Muscle tour began this week. It's in the wild — Amazon, Barnes & Noble, and your nearest indie bookstore.