Work-in-Progress-podcast3

“The growth in the clean energy industry is indisputable,” says Paula DiPerna, a special advisor to CDP, a nonprofit that works to build a sustainable economy by helping investors, companies, and cities understand their environmental impact.

Over the past five years, the number of green jobs has grown 10 percent. “Any job, any work that produces an environmental benefit is probably on a growth curve because all of the natural resources that we are dependent upon, if they’re not actually finite, they’re very limited. And so that requires efficiency, more and more efficiency,” explains DiPerna who joins me for this special Earth Day 2020 Work in Progress podcast.

Right now, like most of the economy, job growth is on pause in the green jobs sector. But, looking ahead, green jobs could play a role in our economic recovery after COVID-19. They could be a lifeline for the unemployed as businesses start adding jobs again.

Paula DiPerna

“I think that’s a very good way of putting it. Clearly my personal view is that protecting the environmental health of this planet is a blueprint to re-industrialize the country in a green manner.”

“And when you look at it that way, you realize that everything we buy, we design, we use, we invent, we dispose of, we eat, all of these things have to be reconsidered in light of environmental imperatives.”

DiPerna and I talk about some of the jobs you might be surprised to learn are considered “green”, how the education system could better prepare people for those jobs, and so much more.

You can listen to our Earth Day 2020 podcast here or find it and download it wherever you get your podcasts.

Thanks for listening. Have a healthy, happy, and safe Earth Day.

Episode 129: Paula DiPerna, Special Advisor to CDP and Environmental Policy Specialist
Host: Ramona Schindelheim, Editor-in-Chief, WorkingNation
Producer: Larry Buhl
Executive Producers: Joan Lynch, Melissa Panzer, and Ramona Schindelheim
Music: Composed by Lee Rosevere and licensed under CC by 4.0.

You can check out all the other podcasts at this link: Work in Progress podcasts

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.