There is a crucial need for equitable access to jobs for all technology talent and creators, according to Charles Phillips, managing partner and co-founder at Recognize. As an executive of a technology services investment platform, Phillips says, “I wanted to do something not only to obviously stay close to technology, but something that would create a lot of well-paying jobs. That’s another passion of mine – workforce development and giving people access to jobs.”
WorkingNation sat down with Phillips 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.
“There are millions of people with aptitude that don’t have access. We have a shortage of workers in the country,” Phillips tells us, and that means many employers need to rethink how they hire.
“There are many situations in companies in which I saw a person who does not have a college degree retiring, but all of a sudden to get that job you have to have a college degree. For people of color – particularly Black people when 74% of us do not have college degrees – that’s a whole segment of the workforce being left out.”
Phillips also notes that entrepreneurial drive is an important factor in the economic recovery. He says, ”Roughly, half the jobs in the U.S. are from small businesses and in communities of color, particularly the Black community. We’ve always been entrepreneurial because we had to be. We had to create things. We didn’t have access to the same jobs. There’s a long history and culture of that.”
To that end, Phillips is working to make that access available through the Center for Black Entrepreneurship at two historically Black colleges and universities (HBCUs) – Spelman and Morehouse – “to produce, train, and support a new class of Black entrepreneurial talent.”
Phillips, himself a graduate of Hampton University in Virginia, says there is potential for expansion of this entrepreneurial programming. “If we’re successful, we’ll take it to other HBCUs. There will also be an online component to this. A tremendous amount of people want to be entrepreneurs and just need the infrastructure that other people have when they are in Silicon Valley.”
Click here to learn more about Recognize.
Follow the continuing conversation on all social media: #WorkingNationOverheard #WorkingNation #MIGlobal
© Copyright 2024 by Structural Unemployment, LLC dba WorkingNation
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.
