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Colorado provides the green-print to success

This week, Jay Tipton ventures west to Colorado to investigate how the Centennial State became home to a groundswell of green jobs. As he’ll come to find out, a mixture of public policy, entrepreneurial endeavors, and a love of outdoor recreation provided the perfect formula for massive growth in environmentally friendly start-ups.
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As a former fossil fuel state that has swung both red and blue, Colorado has become a national leader when it comes to green innovation. To better understand how the state could give rise to so many environmentally-friendly enterprises, Jay speaks with professor of entrepreneurship Jeff York who explains the three factors Colorado has working in its favor: renewable energy standards, an ecosystem of entrepreneurs, and a ubiquitous love of the outdoors. 

Next, Jay sets out to see how businesses of all shapes and sizes came to call Colorado home. In the case of Motili, VP of Sales Matt Sallee reveals how a national HVAC provider pivoted into an energy efficiency operation. On a smaller scale, Eric Adamson of Tortuga Agtech explains why he picked Denver over Silicon Valley as the location to build his crop-picking agricultural robots. And for those of us with homegrown operations, Jay speaks with Ashley Tindall, founder of Soul Bean Roasters, a coffee roasting company with the goal of zero waste, to see how Fort Collins provided the opportunity to wed her passions for coffee and sustainability together.

A trip to Colorado wouldn’t be complete without a trip to the Rockies, and so Jay heads to Aspen to hear from world-renowned environmental activist Auden Schendler about how Colorado’s ski industries are adapting to shorter ski seasons, and to find out what green businesses they have invested in to provide proof of concept for scalable change. Finally, Jay talks to Mario Molina of Protect Our Winters to get a sense of the impact winter recreation has on the local economy.

CREDITS:
Featuring: Jay Tipton, Jeff York, Matt Sallee, Paula DiPerna, Eric Adamson, Ashley Tindall, Auden Schendler, Mario Molina
Produced by: Alicia Clark
Executive Produced by: Melissa Panzer, Joan Lynch, Art Bilger
Written by: Jay Tipton, Alicia Clark, Mike Zunic
Edited and Sound Mixed by: Lynz Floren
Music by: Avocado Junkie
Made possible by: the Walton Family Foundation

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.