Elon President Book Urges AI Integration, Aging Workforce Planning at Alamance Summit

A data point about adult diapers stopped Elon University President Connie Ledoux Book mid-conversation: 2025 marked the first year in U.S. history that more adult diapers were sold than baby diapers. She heard it from the director of the MIT AgeLab, and it crystallized the central argument she brought to the Triad Business Journal's Alamance Growth Summit on March 12: Alamance County needs a 50-year vision, not a five-year plan.

Book argued that the county must redesign meaningful work and workplaces for people who are choosing, or needing, to stay employed longer. Her case rested on a generational reality most local employers are already navigating. "We actually have five generations in the workplace working side by side for the first time in history right now in the United States," Book said at the summit.

That demographic shift is landing at the same moment that artificial intelligence is spreading rapidly across every sector Alamance employers depend on, from health care and manufacturing to technology. Book's position was not that AI threatens jobs, but that it should be deployed to augment worker capacity, keeping people productive longer rather than pushing them out earlier.

Elon has been building toward this internally. Mustafa Akben, assistant professor of management and director of artificial intelligence integration in Elon's management and entrepreneurship department, has been developing faculty and student fluency in applied AI. That work is increasingly pointed outward: Book made clear that Elon faculty and staff are available to work directly with local employers on curriculum modernization, short-course credentials, and AI literacy programs built around the workforce Alamance companies actually have today.

That offer carries real weight because Alamance Community College is already running employer-driven upskilling pilots aimed at matching training directly to hiring demand in the county. A tighter alignment between ACC, Elon, and area employers would expand pathways for workers while giving companies faster access to trained candidates in fields where demand is already outpacing supply.

For a county whose economic future hinges on getting both the aging-workforce and AI transitions right, the March 12 summit suggested the institutions needed to drive that change are finally in the same conversation.