ASU+GSV: Ann Kirschner on major change needed to achieve inclusivity

WorkingNation interviews leaders in public, private, and nonprofit spheres attending the ASU+GSV Virtual Summit as part of our #WorkingNationOverheard campaign
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“The signs are not great for an inclusive recovery,” says Ann Kirschner CUNY professor and CEO of Comma Communications.

WorkingNation interviewed Kirschner for #WorkingNationOverheard as a media partner with ASU+GSV’s Virtual Summit 2020. You can watch all of the interviews on our YouTube channel.

She says the stats are showing that people losing their jobs during COVID-19 are mostly people without college degrees. That means employers need to change their criteria for hiring and colleges need to rethink how and what they teach if we want to change course in the coming years.

“We need to basically blow up career services as we know it,” Kirschner says. “And, of course, you know, it’s hyperbole. I don’t really mean to blow it up. But I do mean to essentially reform it because career services tend to sit on the Siberia of the college campus and totally divorced from academics, so they exist on two completely different planets. Those need to be brought together. And we need to get students thinking, from the day they walk into college, what the rest of their life is going to look like.”

In the meantime, Kirschner says the focus needs to be on reskilling and replenishing people’s skills mid-career.

Learn more about Kirschner’s initiatives by clicking here https://kirschner.org/
Learn more about the ASU+GSV Summit by clicking here https://www.asugsvsummit.com/
Follow the conversation on social media: #workingnationoverheard #asugsvsummit

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.