An Olympian is leading a dive into STEM

A new partnership gives access to young students

January 20, 2022

Students in grades 3-8 are being encouraged to take the plunge. Katie Ledecky, a 3-time Olympian and 7-time Olympic Gold Medalist swimmer wants kids to get excited about STEM. Ledecky, in partnership with Panasonic North America and Discovery Education, has launched the STEM Forward educational initiative.

“[STEM Forward is] going to provide students, educators, and families with dynamic digital resources that will help them explore how technology improves lives and makes the world a better place,” says Alejandra Ceja, vice president, office of social impact and inclusion with Panasonic North America and executive director of the Panasonic Foundation. “The initiative includes activities for families and students, and tools for teachers.”

Shortly, there will also be a virtual field trip available. “It is a behind-the-scenes of innovation centers. And it brings some of our engineers, some of our scientists from Panasonic talking about the different components that exist in a STEM career.”

The partnership with Discovery Education ensures that the content continues to expand and stay relevant, notes Ceja.

Ceja says Ledecky’s passion for STEM is inspiring. “Katie talks about how STEM influences her swimming. We’ve seen her in action with students breaking down how STEM influences her competition.”

Creating Access and Equity

Ceja says key to the company’s initiatives is advancing educational equity. “The work that we’ve been doing is making sure we can talk about access, making sure we can work with communities of color. What does it mean to have an equity agenda in a school district? We are looking to partner with nonprofit organizations that have the pulse in the community that help us reach students that need to have access to STEM education.”

Ceja continues, “I think the pandemic really proved that education goes beyond the classroom. We have to do more to better leverage technology, reach students, and connect them to the world and the workforce that they’re going to shape and transform.”

“We want to make sure that students have access to information that’s critical for them to make a decision on whether or not they want to pursue a certificate program, a two-year degree, or four-year college education. At the end of the day, as a company, we want to do our part and have great initiatives that will inspire students and help close that opportunity gap that we know exists.”

Filling the Talent Pipeline

“There’s a current and future demand from the labor workforce when it comes to why we need to do more to promote STEM education, to promote the lifelong learning, to ensure that people keep up with STEM skills,” says Ceja.

“As a tech and innovation company, we know our future is directly connected to the ability to hire top talent in the STEM fields. We know the fastest growing jobs of the future are going to require strong literacy in STEM proficiency. It is important that we keep the lens on ‘how do we strengthen those pipelines?’”

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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.