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CoGen Challenge: Older and younger people working together to advance economic opportunity

A conversation with Marci Alboher of CoGenerate and Janet Oh of CoGenerate
By Ramona Schindelheim
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In this episode of Work in Progress, I am joined by Marci Alboher, vice president at CoGenerate, and Janet Oh, director of innovation at CoGenerate, a social-impact nonprofit dedicated to bringing older and younger people together to help create a more inclusive and prosperous future. 

CoGenerate today announced the launch of the CoGen Challenge to Advance Economic Opportunity, an initiative to elevate gogenerational models that can transform the economic landscape for people of all ages living and working side-by-side.

The Challenge will engage thought leaders to inspire and activate others, provide $20,000 investments to each of eight innovative initiatives, and sponsor a virtual public showcase of their cogenerational work.

Additionally, leaders of the selected initiatives will participate in a six-month accelerator providing a supportive community, plus expert and peer coaching in program development, expansion, storytelling and fundraising.

Marci Alboher says the Challenge comes out of the work the organization has been doing to break down barriers between the different age groups that make up our society.

“We are perhaps the most age-diverse society that we have ever experienced. We have more people living at every age between 17 and up to the 80s than have ever been alive at once. A lot of people talk often about how we’re an aging society, but the interesting thing is we are actually an all-ages society. But, at the same time, we are a highly age-segregated society.”

Some of that segregation is in the workplace, adds Alboher.

“In many workplaces, there are age silos. We’re seeing some movement where there are organizations that are really trying to reach out and make age diversity part of how they hire and how they structure teams. The benefit of doing that, of course, is that you could speak to different audiences, you can make your products and services relevant to people of all ages, but we have a long way to go to get there,” she says.

Janet Oh explains that work is just one of the many aspects of society the CoGen Challenge will be looking at.

“One goal of the challenge is to really unleash people’s creativity on how to utilize the talents of youngers and olders. We totally expect to be surprised and delighted by the things that we see. Sometimes we find solutions that are hidden in plain sight that are already there, but haven’t really been named and identified. And then sometimes we find ideas that are first of their kind.”

Oh says the Challenge is seeing U.S.-based initiatives that will advance economic opportunity for everyone.

“We’re looking for innovators who are really eager to jump in and be with peers to test and learn and to be generous with each other and be in this iterative state. We found that our innovators are often very lonely, that this is a new field, and so coming together in this group gives them a chance to, as one innovator said, take off their mask and really be honest about what is hard and what is working, and then come together to open doors for one another,” Oh tells me in the podcast.

Applications for the CoGen Challenge are due by October 16. For more information and to apply, visit their website here.

Funding for the CoGen Challenge to Advance Economic Opportunity has been provided by the Ares Charitable Foundation.

You can listen to the podcast here or wherever you get your podcasts.

Episode 284: Marci Alboher of CoGenerate and Janet Oh of CoGenerate
Host & Executive Producer: Ramona Schindelheim, Editor-in-Chief, WorkingNation
Producer: Larry Buhl
Executive Producers: Joan Lynch and Melissa Panzer
Theme Music: Composed by Lee Rosevere and licensed under CC by 4
Download the transcript for this podcast here.
You can check out all the other podcasts at this link: Work in Progress podcasts

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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.

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