“Connecting students to the perfect pathway to be able to accomplish their careers is a major obligation of the universities,” says Eduardo J. Padrón, Ph.D., president emeritus of Miami Dade College, the largest degree-granting institution in the country. Under his leadership and continuing legacy, the college’s eight campuses now offer more than 300 career pathways.
WorkingNation sat down with Padrón 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.
Padrón says the mission to guide students to their careers cannot be done alone. “You have to work with employers because, in the end, they are the ones who are going to hire the talent that you produce. You want to make sure that the students have the preparation that is needed to meet the needs of today’s employers, which by the way, is constantly changing. The pace of change in the world today has accelerated to the point where you need to constantly be revising and reviewing the career paths and what goes into a specific course and a program.”
Padrón notes that students and jobseekers are not the only ones who need to keep up with 21st century skills. Everyone is a lifelong learner. “We all have to go back and upskill and reskill. Teachers are not the exception. They have to constantly update their knowledge and skills to be able to keep up with what’s happening in the marketplace and being able to give the students the latest information, the latest technology, and everything else that is needed to be able to graduate students that are really truly prepared to start being effective and productive on Day One when they join any company.”
He adds, “Institutions that do not support their faculty in terms of professional development are institutions that are falling behind in terms of their ability to really train the students well.”
Postsecondary education should be free or very affordable, according to Padrón. “It was about a hundred years ago that there was a big debate in America. The debate was whether high school education should be a universal right of every student. The country came to the conclusion that high school education should be provided free to all Americans. Today, we take it for granted.”
Padrón sums it up, “The message that I really am trying to convey to people constantly is the fact that we need to make sure that, in America, no one falls behind.”
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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.
