Marni Baker Stein, chief content officer, Coursera talks about AI skills on WorkingNation's Work in Progress podcast
Marni Baker Stein, chief content officer, Coursera talks about AI skills on WorkingNation's Work in Progress podcast

AI skills are a ‘must-have,’ but employers want more

A conversation with Marni Baker Stein, chief content officer, Coursera
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In this episode of the Work in Progress podcast, we’re talking about AI skills – there are more than you might think – and about the other must-have skills that employers are looking for today. I’m joined in conversation by Marni Baker Stein, chief content officer for Coursera, one of the largest online learning platform in the world.

Through partnerships with more than 350 leading universities and companies – Google, IBM, Yale, and Duke, to name a few – Coursera has helped more than 168 million people learners build new skills.

Stein says the rapid implementation of Chat-GPT and other AI products is having a “cascading effect across all sectors, all job roles, and all skills across disciplines. The Future of Jobs report [from the World Economic Forum] found that 50% of employers plan to reorient their business in response to AI.

“And 85% of those employers say they plan to upskill their workforce in response to these skills gaps,” says Stein. She adds that a large number of those employers are saying that they prefer job applicants that have verified AI skills.

Coursera’s own analysis of the fastest-growing skills for 2025 confirms that demand. “There is no doubt about it that if you don’t already have AI skills, you absolutely need to develop them. (Additionally), you absolutely need to develop them very specifically for the job that you’re in and the job tasks that you’re doing,” she emphatically points out.

In the podcast, we go into depth about what those skills actually look like – what you need to learn how to do. We also discuss the top non-tech skills all employers want. Of course, we talk about how jobseekers and workers can get those skills.

You can listen to the entire conversation here, or wherever you get your podcasts. You can also find our podcasts on the Work in Progress YouTube channel.

Episode 351: Marni Baker Stein, chief content officer, Coursera
Host & Executive Producer: Ramona Schindelheim, Editor-in-Chief, WorkingNation
Producer: Larry Buhl
Theme Music: Composed by Lee Rosevere and licensed under CC by 4
Transcript: Download the transcript for this episode here
Work in Progress Podcast: Catch up on previous episodes here

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.