Gretchen Koch

Consultant, Workforce Development

Before retiring in 2018, Gretchen Koch, Advisory Board, was responsible for CompTIA’s Creating IT Futures Foundation’s IT workforce development and education initiatives. She joined the foundation in 2014, after 11 years of developing national workforce initiatives for CompTIA, where she parlayed her knowledge of the industry and educational systems to become a nationally known change agent for IT workforce development.

Gretchen worked closely with the U.S. Department of Education on its Certification Data Exchange Project and led efforts with the State of Illinois and the Chicagoland Workforce Funder Alliance to develop and promote IT career pipelines in the state. She has also been the National IT Career Cluster Leader for the States’ Career Clusters Initiative and the Lead Entity for the IT Learning Exchange for Illinois’ Race to the Top Pathways Initiative.

When she was not working from the Foundation’s headquarters in Downers Grove, IL, she spent a great amount of time in Los Angeles, working with local leaders in education and workforce development. She currently sits on the Board of the National Alliance for Partnerships in Equity (NAPE) Education Foundation, serving as its Secretary and member of the Executive Committee.

Before joining CompTIA and its foundation, Gretchen had more than 20 years of experience in IT management at Digital Equipment, Compaq, and Hewlett-Packard corporations. Her most recent position in the IT Industry was as national education manager, Global Services Division at Compaq & Hewlett-Packard Corporation.

Gretchen is a graduate of the University of Michigan, with honors, and holds a MAT from Harvard Graduate School of Education and an MBA from Simmons Graduate School of Business.

Dana Beth Ardi

Executive Committee

Dana Beth Ardi, PhD, Executive Committee, is a thought leader and expert in the fields of executive search, talent management, organizational design, assessment, leadership and coaching. As an innovator in the human capital movement, Ardi creates enhanced value in companies by matching the most sought after talent with the best opportunities. Ardi coaches boards and investors on the art and science of building high caliber management teams. She provides them with the necessary skills to seek out and attract top-level management, to design the ideal organizational architectures and to deploy people against strategy. Ardi unearths the way a business works and the most effective way for people to work in them.

Ardi is an experienced business executive and senior consultant who leverages business organizational transformation through talent strategies. She uses her knowledge and experience to develop talent strategies to enhance revenue and profit contributions. She has a deep expertise in change management and organizational effectiveness and has designed and built high performance cultures. Ardi has significant experience in mergers, acquisitions, divestitures, IPO’s and turnarounds.

Ardi is an expert on the multi-generational workforce. She understands the four intersecting generations of workers coming together in contemporary companies, each with their own mindsets, leadership and communications styles, values and motivations. Ardi is sought after to assist companies manage and thrive by bringing the generations together. Her book, Fall of the Alphas: How Beta Leaders Win Through Connection, Collaboration and Influence, will be published by St. Martin’s Press. The book reflects Ardi’s deep expertise in understanding organizations and our changing society. It focuses on building a winning culture, how companies must grow and evolve, and how talent influences and shapes communities of work. This is what she has coined “Corporate Anthropology.” It is a playbook on how modern companies must meet challenges – culturally, globally, digitally, across genders and generations.

Ardi is currently the Managing Director and Founder of Corporate Anthropology Advisors, LLC, a consulting company that provides human capital advisory and innovative solutions to companies building value through people. Corporate Anthropology works with organizations, their cultures, the way they grow and develop, and the people who are responsible for forming their communities of work.

Prior to her position at Corporate Anthropology Advisors, Ardi served as a Partner/Managing Director at the private equity firms CCMP Capital and JPMorgan Partners. She was a partner at Flatiron Partners, a venture capital firm working with early state companies where she pioneered the human capital role within an investment portfolio.

Ardi holds a BS from the State University of New York at Buffalo as well as a Masters degree and PhD from Boston College. She started her career as professor at the Graduate Center at Fordham University in New York.