Addressing issues related to climate change is leading to a major investment boom and job creation, according to Aniket Shah, managing director and global head of environmental, social, and governance (ESG), and sustainability research at Jefferies.
Shah says over the next 30 years, investments could reach $100 trillion and those opportunities will require a major workforce. “It will require high-skilled workers, engineers, and technologists who are thinking about how is it that we actually construct these types of energy systems? It’ll require a lot of physical laborers, a lot of construction, and a lot of manufacturing. This is an enormous opportunity.”
WorkingNation sat down with Shah at the Milken Institute Global Conference 2021 in Beverly Hills as part of our #WorkingNationOverheard interview series. With Charting a New Course as the guiding theme, thought leaders and innovators shared ideas about the changing economy, worker development, education, tech, philanthropy, and more.
Shah warns that while more will be created, there will be also be jobs that change, requiring new skills. “There will be dislocation, like any transition. There will be people who lose out in their jobs. Part of this whole project is to figure out how do we lessen the blow for them? How do we transition that workforce in the oil and gas industry, people in the coal industry, and so on into a new form of work?”
The sustainability conversation is being driven by a confluence of factors, according to Shah. Consumers, investors, and policymakers are pushing the business community to respond to concerns about the environment and in our society. He says business leaders are embracing their call to action. “They’re saying, ‘If our customers want something different, if our investors want something different, if our regulators want something different, we need to evolve.’”
“I think that we are in a moment of transition. It’s a very complicated set of issues, and we want more and more people on board and trying to think these things through so that, frankly, tomorrow can be better than today. The only thing that is holding us back right now is our ability not to go faster. And if we change that, if we put our shoulders into it and say, ‘We want this energy transition to speed up,’ we can do that. And a lot of people will be employed as a result.”
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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.
