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Investing in people and closing the skills gap in a changed economy

A conversation with Andy Van Kleunen, CEO, National Skills Coalition
By Ramona Schindelheim
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My guest in this episode of Work in Progress is Andy Van Kleunen, the founder and CEO of National Skills Coalition, a national organization which describes its mission as “fighting for inclusive, high-quality skills training so that people have access to a better life, and local businesses see sustained growth.”

NSC is a diverse group of stakeholders—business leaders, community leaders, community colleges, and industry intermediates—all trying to figure out how to reskill the workforce, says Van Kleunen, “so we can get more folks into the good jobs that are available in a very rapidly changing economy.” As a group, NSC makes recommendations to state and federal leaders that they hope will influence policy and spending on skills training and education.

Van Kleunen says it all comes down to investing in people.

“The job market that those folks are going back into is very different than the one they faced back in March 2020. So we’re very worried about the fact that with all of the great things that Washington has done to bring support and rescue to businesses and local workers who’ve been really challenged by this pandemic, we’ve done virtually nothing up until now to actually invest in the futures of those millions of workers who are currently out of the labor market, and are going to have a really tough time getting back in unless we invest in them now to get them ready for a very different economy.”

Van Kleunen says that we’ve seen how the challenges of the last 18 months have disproportionately impacted workers of color, workers without a bachelor’s degree or even any kind of post-secondary training, low-wage workers, older workers, and women. Some of these workers and job seekers will need short-term training, others would benefit from a longer-term strategy and collaborative partnerships among various stakeholders.

“I do think the American Jobs Plan that the Biden administration has proposed as part of its infrastructure strategy is very explicit about wanting to have those kinds of partnerships there to figure out both employment strategies for new workers that are coming into skilled work, but also how we’re thinking about our unemployment policies and how it is that we’re trying to transition workers if it’s not back into the industry from which they left into new industries locally. And so I think that that partnership idea has really taken hold,” he adds.

Van Kleunen says he’s encourage by signs that investing in people—investing in training for workers—is a bi-partisan issue. “It resonates with Republican and Democratic and Independent voters. We did a recent poll, 89% of U.S. voters want to see workforce training be part of any infrastructure job creation package coming out of Congress this year. They see that as an essential part.”

“I’m also encouraged by the fact that the kind of partners that we’re bringing together, who don’t typically work together on policy—business leaders both large and small, labor unions, colleges, and community organizations—they’ve done a great job of coming together to work on this stuff. And so I think that that’s where we’ve got a great opportunity to move this conversation forward, not just with what we do here in 2021, but in some years to follow.”

You can listen to the full podcast here, or wherever you get your podcasts.
Download the transcript for this podcast here.
You can check out all the other podcasts at this link: Work in Progress podcasts

Episode 195: Andy Van Kleunen, National Skills Coalition founder & CEO
Host & Executive Producer: Ramona Schindelheim, Editor-in-Chief, WorkingNation
Producer: Larry Buhl
Executive Producers: Joan Lynch and Melissa Panzer
Music: Composed by Lee Rosevere and licensed under CC by 4.0.

Program Alert!

Andy Van Kleunen is among the guests when WorkingNation president Jane Oates moderates a Federal Reserve Bank of Atlanta and AARP virtual panel discussion about solving some of these long-term unemployment issues. It’s Wednesday, August 4. Watch here.

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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.

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