Janeva Mitchell, 23, was working overnights on the weekends at Denny’s and raising her daughter when she found out about Generation from a family friend. “We were looking for jobs together and she found the class we signed up for.” Led by WorkingNation Advisory Board Member Dr. Mona Mourshed, Generation is a global youth employment program that seeks to help close the skills gap affecting nearly 75 million young adults worldwide. Generation helps connect unemployed young people, aged 18-29, with the skills and support they need to achieve personal and professional success. Mourshed explained some of those efforts in Episode One of our series, The Table. With programs in Spain, Mexico, Kenya, India and the United States, Generation works with 600+ employer partners globally to provide them high-quality talent for entry-level positions in four sectors: healthcare, technology, retail/sales, and skilled trades. 93% of them say Generation graduates are better trained than their peers and 98% of them say they would hire Generation graduates again. The 8-12-week program is a full-time commitment that requires students to work hard, and commit to it as you would to a full-time job. Think of it like a bootcamp in how to be successful in the workforce. Janeva says Generation helped her not only find a job that is less stressful, more fulfilling, and offers more pay, she was also able to simply talk her way into job number 2. The program also helped improved her family life and prepare for the future. “Generation has given me vision, direction, and how-to’s on pretty much everything as far as the job/career field.” You can find out more about Janeva’s story in the video below. To learn more about Generation’s programs, click here.

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.