Future of Work Chertavian

‘How do we as a society increase mobility, allowing people a chance to take care of themselves and their families?’

Reflections on the big issues shaping our workforce in the coming year from our WorkingNation Advisory Board
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We asked our WorkingNation Advisory Board to share their thoughts on the most important issues and challenges facing the workforce and the labor market in 2024.

Gerald Chertavian is the founder, former CEO, and now senior advisor to the nonprofit Year Up, a national program that empowers underserved young adults to enter the economic mainstream.

Here are his thoughts on The Future of Work 2024.

“I am passionate about the opportunity to include more people in economic mobility. We have two big problems in our world today – inequality and climate, two of the greatest challenges. The impacts of inequality are what threaten our democracy, what increase our depths of despair that we see. You think about why is democracy often threatened? One of the reasons is the level of inequality in people’s inability to gain access to economic mobility.

“So, I’m passionate about how do we, writ large, as a society increase mobility, allowing people a chance to take care of themselves and their families. I believe that one of the most important parts of preserving our democracy is getting that right. It is not an easy fix.

“I’m heartened to see many companies realizing that they can’t just keep fishing in the same pond for the same talent and believe they’re going to build the best workforces.

“Companies thinking about a skills-first approach to hiring, companies creating environments where everyone feels like they’re included and they belong – I see more of that happening in the last few years than I’ve seen in the prior 20 years that I had the opportunity to lead Year Up.

Watch Gerald Chertavian on The Future of Work 2024

“I think what still has to be done to connect the skills that people have with the skills employers want is really twofold. How do we help employers better assess and understand the skills that people actually do have right now in the market, especially in the lower ends of the market in terms of pay? There is so much noise and so little signal.

“When you’re trying to hire someone, how do you truly understand and assess what skills and competencies they do have? How do I (as an employer) authentically assess that so that I don’t have to lean on something like a degree, which is a proxy for skills? What are the tools and methods we can use to better assist companies to assess what are those skills that someone has?

“And then obviously an individual needs to know, how do I best represent my skills? How do I best put that forward such that more companies can seek to acquire those, seek to engage with me? Right now, there is a translation problem, right? I say I have ‘skill x’, how do you assess whether I have ‘skill x’?

“Once we start to solve that, it unlocks a tremendous amount of economic activity and ability for supply and demand to clear in the labor market.”

Read more from our WorkingNation Advisory Board members on The Future of Work 2024.

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.