Every job can be a green job

Climate and Careers: A WorkingNation digital magazine produced in collaboration with Jobs for the Future (JFF), Ares Charitable Foundation, and World Resources Institute (WRI)

By Ramona Schindelheim

April 20, 2024

For more than four years, WorkingNation has turned a magnifying glass on a growing part of our economy and workforce: climate-resilient or green jobs. What we learned early on was that any job can be a green job.

That’s what attracted us to the mission at the heart of Climate-Resilient Employees for a Sustainable Tomorrow (CREST), a five-year, $25 million grant-funded initiative of the Ares Charitable Foundation in partnership with Jobs for the Future (JFF) and the World Resources Institute (WRI).

All too often, conversations about the environment focus solely on the threats to our planet. But protecting and repairing the environment is not just good news for our world, it is also good news for the American worker.

Climate change is causing economic shifts across all industries, requiring workers with new skills and capabilities. CREST’s goal is to close the gap between the demand for a skilled workforce for green jobs and the number of people prepared for these opportunities.

And those green job opportunities are popping up in urban and rural areas everywhere and in every industry – in construction, manufacturing, the skilled trades, agriculture, textiles, tech, and more.

CREST kicked off two years ago on Earth Day. The initiative has embraced the idea that any job can be a green job and the partners are actively working to make certain there are workers prepared to fill the roles that are being created and reimagined in the move toward climate resiliency.

To better understand this CREST initiative and movement, WorkingNation has collaborated with Ares Foundation, JFF, and WRI to bring you our Climate and Careers digital magazine.

Inside these pages, you will hear from the leaders in this mission, the entrepreneurs who are innovating changes, and learn about the skills needed to thrive in the green economy.

We invite you to dive in. And we invite you to share Climate and Careers with your community.

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Quality Jobs. Digital Magazine. A WorkingNation JFF digital magazine

Building a blueprint for an inclusive, sustainable, and economically viable green future

CREST Initiative is creating quality green jobs in communities facing ongoing climate crises. Jobs for the Future, Ares Charitable Foundation, WRI Institute, WorkingNation

‘They know their climate risks. They know the job opportunities.’

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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.