Working-Mothers

How is the pandemic affecting working moms?

Are you a working mother? Tell us your story at [email protected]
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Working women continue to be disproportionately hit by the economic impact of the COVID-19 pandemic. Even as 4.3 million people have found work this year, women are returning to work at a much slower pace than men, and this is particularly true for working mothers.

Melissa Panzer headshot
Melissa Panzer, executive producer, WorkingNation

WorkingNation’s Melissa Panzer—executive producer who oversees all our video production and development—has a nearly three-year old son, and she has personally struggled to find a balance between parenting and working from home throughout the pandemic.

Monday, Panzer appeared on ABC7 in Los Angeles to discuss the impact the pandemic is having on working moms across the country and to discuss her new interview series, currently called the WorkingNation Mom Project.

As news started to break this spring on the staggeringly slow speed at which mothers were returning to work, she became interested in getting to the heart of the issue. Panzer has since started an interview series, in which she has committed to interviewing at least 200 moms across America to understand what is keeping them from returning to the workplace.


Watch Melissa Panzer on ABC7 in Los Angeles

She is currently collecting stories for her interview series. If you are interested in sharing your story or you have someone you would like to nominate to share their story, please reach out to [email protected]

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.