As technology changes the skills needed in the workforce, it’s critical that educators and employers are on the same page regarding creating equitable access to quality tech jobs, especially for people living outside the nation’s bigger cities, according to David M. Sander, Ph.D., the mayor of Rancho Cordova, California.
Sander – who is also president of the National League of Cities – explains that the NLC has partnered with the U.S. Department of Labor and Siemens Foundation on the Good Jobs, Great Cities initiative to ensure that quality jobs are available to everyone, regardless of where they live.
Sander sat down with me for an interview for WorkingNation Overheard from CES 2024 in Las Vegas to discuss the goals of the Good Jobs, Great Cities program.
“We have a real challenge with equity and opportunity with regard to a lot of tech jobs and particularly these evolving new sectors in our community and all across the country,” he tells me. “When I talk to city leaders across the nation, they are really focused on that issue. We can’t allow a group of individuals who have historically been left behind to just continually be left behind.”
Sander describes his own city of Rancho Cordova as “jobs-rich and tech-focused,” but notes, “We have a lot of residents there who are underserved with respect to education and opportunity. Our challenge is to figure out how we create opportunities for them in this enormous job center that we’ve got.”
NLC describes itself as “the voice of cities, towns, and villages, representing more than 200 million people.”
The Good Jobs, Great Cities Academy includes 16 cities working throughout 2024 to develop innovative and scalable city-supported solutions that upskill and reskill workers into high-demand, quality jobs in infrastructure, clean energy, and advanced manufacturing jobs.
“So many programs and so much focus is placed on just the largest cities. And the reality is, as we all know, not very many Americans live in the largest cities. The vast majority of us live elsewhere in rural communities and in small communities and in suburbs,” says Sander.
“We chose those participating cities that represent all of those sectors sort of proportionally, as opposed to just focusing on cities that might have the most resources to begin with.
“We believe in cities. We believe in experimentation in the sense that you try something new, you look and measure the results to be sure you know what you’re doing, and then you iterate, you find new ways to improve, and you repeat the cycle.
“Good Jobs, Great Cities is on its way to making a very big impact in the United States on helping cities, working hand-in-hand with them, finding new pathways for residents to access these great jobs.”
Learn more about the City of Rancho Cordova.
Learn more about the National League of Cities.
Learn more about CES 2024.
Funding for WorkingNation Overheard at CES 2024 was provided, in part, by Walmart.
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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.
