Helping those on the downward slope of the K-shaped recovery

A conversation with Steve Lee, executive director, SkillUp Coalition

February 2, 2021

Podcast: Play in new window | Download | Embed

Subscribe: Apple Podcasts | Spotify | Pandora | Youtube Music | RSS

Last summer, in the shadow of COVID-19, a new coalition was formed to help put low-wage, frontline workers on the path to an in-demand career, one that will ultimately provide better pay and a better life.

“The people we want to help were impacted even before COVID, it’s just COVID has exacerbated and put a shining light on some of the inequalities that exist,” explains Steve Lee, the executive director of the SkillUp Coalition. “Our mission is very simple: it’s to help those who are on the downward slope of the K-shaped economic recovery.”

They are the tens of millions of Americans who, because of the pandemic, have either lost their jobs, been furloughed, or been laid off. In this episode of the Work in Progress podcast, Lee explains how the SkillUp initiative is working to help them.

“The end goal is to get someone into a better career, and we do that by four relatively simple steps. First, we have a technology which we think is relatively straight forward, which will guide someone through the journey of getting into a better career.

“Second, when the participant thinks this is a career that I want to choose, we connect them to a best-in-class training provider who will provide them skillsets to get the job. Then we offer some financial support to the participants who may just need something to pay for a laptop or to actually pay for the tuition of our program.

“And then, lastly, we connect them to employers to actually get the job.”

SkillUp is rolling out its first effort in Los Angeles, where in-demand jobs include pharmacy technician, electrician, and IT support specialist. The organization is partnered with Goodwill of Southern California to help facilitate the training programs. The plan is to expand to a half-dozen more cities by the end of summer.

Lee himself is not new to public service. He spent more than 12 years at the poverty-fighting nonprofit Robin Hood Foundation, working with adults on workforce issues.

“Over that time, I learned that the work is both incredibly rewarding, but also challenging. I think about what transforms family’s lives and, just as important, their children’s lives. The stuff that SkillUp does is one of two pillars. One pillar being education—how do we keep our kids better? But the second is how do we transform people’s careers and lives so that they can sustainably lift themselves out of poverty,” says Lee.

“Creating transformational change is what I think SkillUp is about. I think for me, personally, the goal is multi-generational because then the children of these families can do better in life and then their children’s children. And that’s how you create some level of change within the country, even if it’s a baby step now.”

Lee is genuine and passionate in his advocacy for the mission. You can listen in on our full conversation here, or download it wherever you get your podcast.

Download the transcript for this podcast here.

Episode 166: Steve Lee, executive director, SkillUp Coalition
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

Work in Progress podcast on high-tech jobs with Katy Knight of Siegel Family Endowment and Allison Scott of Kapor Foundation

Increasing the number of women, Black, and Hispanic workers in high-tech jobs

Work in Progress The Manufacturing Comeback Episode 3 Recruiting women and veterans

Recruiting women and veterans for thousands of jobs created by the manufacturing comeback

Work in Progress podcast The Manufacturing Comeback Episode 2 Small Employers

Small employers are recruiting workers for the manufacturing comeback. Here’s how.

Work in Progress podcast series The Manufacturing Comeback Episode 1 Large Employers

Manufacturing is making a comeback in the U.S. Here’s how large companies are filling jobs.

Get the latest from WorkingNation

Our Mission

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.